Starting class with some group discussion today. “The Alligator River Story”. Rank all the characters in order of badness.
It’s an interesting example, actually, since it’s very unclear in the text who is actually the worst. It’s very arguable. In fact, none of the five groups completely agreed on our rankings.
One interesting thing is seeing why people ranked things how they did. The characters consisted of a woman who traded sex for transportation and was happy when her boyfriend got beaten up, a boat captain who demanded sex from her to transport her, her boyfriend who dumped her when he found out about the whole sex-for-transport thing, a guy who beat up the boyfriend for dumping her, and another guy who did nothing.
There was a lot of variability in how people ranked the guy who beat up the boyfriend. Some people thought that was terrible, some thought it was justified. His motives were questioned. Interestingly, many people judged the woman more harshly for taking pleasure in the thug beating her ex than in the thug for giving the beating. Not sure where to attribute that; it would easy to call it sexist, and say we have different standards for male and female behavior. I doubt it’s that simple, but there’s probably some of that at work.
Interestingly, the professor seems to place most of the blame on the woman as being ruthless and manipulative. That doesn’t contradict the story, but it’s not how I read things. This story seems like a good exercise for learning things about the reader.
On to the more formal material.
Personality is the unique and relatively stable pattern of behavior, thoughts, and emotions shown by an individual. The Interactionist Perspective is the view that behavior is a result of a complex interplay between personality and situational factors.
Person-Job Fit is the extent to which individuals possess the traits and competencies required to perform specific jobs.
Personality is at least somewhat measurable. I’ve seen these sorts of tests before. This class is using a model which divided people by five aspects.
- Conscientionsness
- Extroversion-Introversion
- Agreeableness — The extent to which individuals are cooperative and warm vs. cold and belligerant
- Emotional Stability — The degree to which individuals are insecure, anxious, depressed, or emotional vs. calm, self-confident, and secure.
- Openness to Experience — The extent to which individuals are creative, cultured, and experienced
Affectivity is the tendency of a person to experience positive or negative moods and feelings under a wide range of settings and different conditions. Positive Affectivity is the tendency to experience positive moods and feelings; Negative Affectivity is the tendency to experience negative moods.
Self-Efficacy is an individual’s beliefs concerning their ability to perform specific tasks successfully. Judgment of self-efficacy has three components.
- Magnitude — Level at which a person can perform
- Strength — confidence of ability to perform at that level
- Generality —
Beliefs about self-efficacy develop through direct experience and feedback upon that experience, and through vicarious experience of others performing.
Self-Monitoring is a personality trait involving the extent to which individuals adapt their behavior to the demands of specific situations so as to make a good impression on others. This affects work performance, career success, and interpersonal relationships. High levels of self-monitoring helps in work performance in areas involving boundary-spanning activities, tend to be promoted more, and tend to have shallower and less stable interpersonal relationships.
High self-monitors tend to act in ways designed to please others. This can help or hurt them. They can be perceived as being empathetic, which is helpful. On the other hand, they can be perceived as manipulative and disingenuous, which will make people unhappy.
Machiavellianism is the willingness to manipulate others for personal benefit. Not a highly respected or desired trait.
Achievement Motivation is the strength of an individual’s desire to excel, as opposed to gain other sorts of rewards. People with a high need to achieve prefer moderately difficult tasks. They tend to be successful, are disinclined to delegate work, are interested in performance feedback, and are generally more interested in merit-based pay schemes than seniority-based pay.