The general assumption in popular
culture is that behavior is influenced only by the “character” of the
individual. In scientific terms, “character” is called personality.
Attributing the behavior only to personality is erroneous and it is
called “The Fundamental Attribution Error”. I have described it in an earlier
post “Are you a jerk?”
Throughout posts on this blog I
have described influences on behavior of factors other than personality. At the
same time in the 4 Dimensional Model of Behavior I have included personality as a source of human behavior.
Personality is not the only source of behavior and neither does it have
the most important influence on behavior. At the same time, ignoring
personality is wrong for both theory and practice. In some areas of
practice such as marketing research personality has been (and still is)
over-rated, but it does not mean that it should be ignored. Rather we should reassess its role in influencing behavior.
In other areas such as human resources management and particularly recruitment personality
was and still is highly relevant for assessing future behavior.
Not very long ago there was a
school of thought in psychology (Behavioristic) which claimed that humans are born with “a blank mind” and
that the environment and society is what shapes people in being what they are. For
many years people believed that “society” is responsible for everything being
it either good or bad.
Later research has shown that this perspective is fundamentally flawed.
This is not to say that the environment and society don’t have an influence on
us as individuals, but rather that for
sure people are not born with “a blank mind”. Social and environmental factors
influence how we behave and if we attribute behavior entirely to personality,
then we can say that the environment and society shape personality. But, again,
this is wrong.
Reality is that what an individual is (personality) has a huge
heritable component, but more on that a bit later.
Let’s see what personality is.
According to the American Psychology Association (APA), “Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns
of thinking, feeling and behaving.” (Source http://www.apa.org/topics/personality/index.aspx)
To put this in another light, personality refers to elements that are
consistent through time across many behaviors. Earlier I have mentioned
that it is wrong to attribute behavior to personality only. However, patterns in (and not individual instances
of) behavior can come from personality.
Personality refers to stable
traits that are consistent throughout life (or at least long periods of time). Personality gives a base-line for behavior
and the other three sources (Dimensions) of behavior build on the baseline set
by personality.
Earlier research and popular
culture tend to see personality in a categorical
manner. In other words, they tend to
categorize people as having “This” or “That” type of personality. However,
this is wrong because personality is complex and personality traits are not categorical.
Current research on personality
makes use of the “Big Five Personality
Traits” model (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and
Neuroticism). I will explain in a future post each of these personality traits,
but now it is important to know that each
and every one of us has each of these personality traits and we have a
score on each of them. In other words the Big Five is not a categorical model
which says that some people are Agreeable while others are Neurotic. The Big
Five says that everyone has these traits and scores different on each of them.
Another very important individual trait is intelligence (IQ). For
marketing it is not necessarily important in the sense of measuring consumers’
IQs. For other areas such as human resources management and particularly
recruiting it is very important. Numerous studies have proved that IQ is a very powerful predictor of job
performance.
The study of personality has
identified numerous personality traits, but their relevance is not fully clear.
The Big Five and IQ are highly relevant
for research and practice, so I will focus mostly on these traits. However,
I will describe (in later posts) some
other traits that I consider having a wider relevance. These traits are: need for cognition, need for uniqueness, regulatory
focus, price conscientiousness and Life History Strategy adopted.
Another element that I consider
to be highly important and include it in the Personality dimension (although it
is not a personality trait) is gender.
Men and women are different and this influences behavior. In no way I am saying
men are better than women or the other way around. It is just that when analyzing and trying to influence
behavior it is not necessarily a good idea to always think that men and women
are exactly the same. In some cases men and women react to stimuli in similar
manners, in other cases they don’t.
Hormonal activity influences
behavior and to a certain degree personality. I will not address these
influences, but you should know that a lot of behavior comes from the levels of
different hormones we have. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend looking
at behavioral biology.
Before concluding, I would like
to make a note on the Big Five Personality traits and IQ. These personal
characteristics are to a large extent heritable through both genetic and
cultural (nurture) means. Putting things a bit differently, with what we are born is what we will have
for the rest of our lives. It is not impossible to slightly improve one’s
IQ or other traits, but don’t expect miracles.
To sum up, The Personality dimension of the 4D Model of Behavior represents those traits (characteristics) that are stable across time and an
individual has them throughout life. They set a base-line for behavior and are
not the only (nor the most important) source of behavior.
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