This document discusses 9 individual-level variables that can affect group performance and satisfaction: biographical characteristics, ability, learning, personality, emotional intelligence, assertiveness, perception, values, and attitude. It focuses on biographical characteristics like age, gender, and tenure; abilities including intellectual and physical abilities; and personality traits and types assessed by tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Perception is defined as how people organize and interpret sensory information to understand their environment. The document also discusses biases and shortcuts that influence perceptions, like the fundamental attribution error.

1. Foundations of Individual Behavior
Personality, Perception and Ability
Session 1

2. Nine Individual-level variables
1. Biographical Characteristics
2. Ability
3. Learning
4. Personality
5. Emotional Intelligence
6. Assertiveness
7. Perception
8. Values
9. Attitude
How these individual variables affect group performance and
satisfaction?
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3. 1. Biographical Characteristics & their
implications for Group Performance
I. Age: No affect on individual’s performance and hence
overall group performance
I. Gender: No significant differences in job productivity
between men and women
I. Tenure: Positive relationship between tenure and
member’s productivity and satisfaction.
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4. 2. Ability
⮚ An individual’s capacity to perform the various tasks in a
job.
⮚ Make an individual relatively superior or inferior to others in
performing certain tasks or activities.
⮚ Type of abilities:
– Intellectual Abilities
– Physical Abilities.
3

5. Ability, Intellect, and Intelligence
Intellectual Ability
The capacity to do mental activities
Multiple Intelligences
Intelligence contains four subparts: cognitive,
social, emotional, and cultural
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6. • Number aptitude
• Verbal comprehension
• Perceptual speed
• Inductive reasoning
• Deductive reasoning
• Spatial visualization
• Memory
Dimensions of Intellectual Ability
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7. Physical Abilities
Physical Abilities
The capacity to do tasks
demanding stamina, dexterity,
strength, and similar
characteristics
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8. Other Factors
7. Body coordination
8. Balance
9. Stamina
Nine Physical Abilities
Strength Factors
1. Dynamic strength
2. Trunk strength
3. Static strength
4. Explosive strength Flexibility Factors
5. Extent flexibility
6. Dynamic flexibility
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9. Ability: Its implications
⮚ Group performance is enhanced when there is a high
ability-job fit.
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10. Personality
“The dynamic organization within the individual of
those psychophysical systems that determine his
unique adjustment to his environment” - Allport
The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts
and interacts with others.
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11. Personality
●Personality factors
–Heredity
–Environment
–Situation
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12. Personality Traits
– Enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s
behaviour
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13. vs.
vs.
vs.
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vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
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vs.
Outgoing
More intelligent
Emotionally stable
Dominant
Happy-go-lucky
Conscientious
Venturesome
Sensitive
Suspicious
Imaginative
Shrewd
Apprehensive
Experimenting
Self-sufficient
Controlled
Tense
Sixteen Primary Traits
⮚ Reserved
⮚ Less intelligent
⮚ Affected by feelings
⮚ Submissive
⮚ Serious
⮚ Expedient
⮚ Timid
⮚ Tough-minded
⮚ Trusting
⮚ Practical
⮚ Forthright
⮚ Self-assured
⮚ Conservative
⮚ Group-dependent
⮚ Uncontrolled
⮚ Relaxed
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14. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
⮚ Extroverted or Introverted (E or I)
⮚ Sensing or Intuitive (S or N)
⮚ Thinking or Feeling (T or F)
⮚ Perceiving or Judging (P or J)
These classifications are then combined into sixteen personality
types.
A personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies people
into one of 16 personality types.
It is a 100 question personality test that asks people how they usually
feel or act in particular situations.
On the basis of the answers individuals give to the test, they are
classified as
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15. 14

16. Major Personality Attributes
⮚Locus of Control
⮚Machiavellianism
⮚Self-Esteem
⮚Self- Monitoring
⮚Risk Taking
⮚Proactive Personality
⮚Type A-Type B-Type C – Type D
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17. Type A: Leader

18. Type B: Socializer

19. Type A and Type B

20. Type C: Detail Seeker

21. Type D: Distressed

22. What Is Perception?
⮚ A process by which individuals organize and interpret
their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to
their environment.
⮚ People’s behavior is based on their perception of
what reality is, not on reality itself.
⮚ The world as it is perceived is the world that is
behaviorally important.
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23. Factors That Influence Perception
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E X H I B I T 6-1

24. Errors and Biases in Attributions
⮚ Fundamental Attribution Error
– The tendency to underestimate the influence of
external factors and overestimate the influence of
internal factors when making judgments about the
behavior of others
– We blame people first, not the situation
⮚ Self-Serving Bias
– The tendency for individuals to attribute their own
successes to internal factors while putting the blame
for failures on external factors
– It is “our” success but “their” failure
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25. Frequently Used Shortcuts in Judging Others
⮚ Selective Perception
– People selectively interpret what
they see on the basis of their
interests, background,
experience, and attitudes
⮚ Halo Effect
– Drawing a general impression
about an individual on the basis of
a single characteristic
⮚ Contrast Effect
– Evaluation of a person’s
characteristics that are affected by
comparisons with other people
recently encountered who rank
higher or lower on the same
characteristics
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26. Another Shortcut: Stereotyping
Judging someone on the basis of one’s perception of
the group to which that person belongs – a prevalent
and often useful, if not always accurate,
generalization
⮚Profiling
– A form of stereotyping in which members of a group
are singled out for intense scrutiny based on a single,
often racial, trait.
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27. Perceptions and Individual Decision Making
⮚ Problem
– A perceived discrepancy between the
current state of affairs and a desired
state
⮚ Decisions
– Choices made from among alternatives
developed from data
⮚ Perception Linkage:
– All elements of problem identification
and the decision-making process are
influenced by perception.
• Problems must be recognized.
• Data must be selected and evaluated.
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