Скачать или смотреть What is Personality?

When we speak of someone’s personality, we use many adjectives to describe how they act and seem to think. As organizational behaviorists, however, we organize personality characteristics by overall traits. Think of personality as the sum of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others. We most often describe personality in terms of the measurable traits a person exhibits.

The most common means of measuring personality is through self-report surveys in which individuals evaluate themselves on a series of factors, such as “I worry a lot about the future.” In general, when people know their personality scores are going to be used for hiring decisions, they rate themselves as more conscientious and emotionally stable than if they are taking the test to learn more about themselves. An early debate centered on whether an individual’s personality is the result of heredity or environment. Personality appears to be a result of both; however, research tends to support the importance of heredity over environment.

People’s scores on dependability tend to increase over time, as when young adults start families and establish careers. Personality is more changeable in adolescence and more stable among adults. Early work on personality tried to identify and label enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior, including shy, aggressive, submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal, and timid. When someone frequently exhibits these characteristics and they are relatively enduring over time and across situations, we call them personality traits. The more consistent the characteristic the more important it is in describing the individual.