PSYCH238 Lecture 2: Psych 238 Chapter 2 Notes

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH238
• Professor: Doug Brown

Document Summary

Initially believed it was an important factor in many areas of organizational behavior including motivation, attitude, leadership and performance: dispositional approach individuals possess stable traits or characteristics that influence their attitudes and behaviors. Individuals are predisposed to behave in certain ways: research failed to support the usefulness of personality as a predictor of organizational behavior & job performance. Interactionist approach individuals" attitudes and behavior are a function of both dispositions and situation. In order to predict organizational behavior, individual"s personality and work setting should be known. Some personality characteristics are more useful in certain organizational situations: trait activation theory personality traits lead to certain behaviors only when the situation makes the need for the trait salient. Personality characteristics influence people"s behavior when the situation calls for a specific trait: personality has the most impact on weak situations due to loosely defined roles, rules and weak reward/punishment contingencies. Extraversion extent to which a person is outgoing versus shy.