Deck 3: Personality, Perception, and Attribution

Question 1

Which traits are associated with less absenteeism at work?

A)extraversion and emotional stability
B)introversion and emotional stability
C)extraversion and conscientiousness
D)introversion and conscientiousness

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Research on locus of control has strong implications for organizations because internals have been found to be associated with stronger relationships with all of the following Except:

A)job satisfaction
B)more effective coping strategies
C)better interpersonal relationship
D)reluctance to participate in decision making

Answer 2

D

Question 3

All of the following are examples of individual differences except:

A)personality
B)general mental ability
C)emotional intelligence
D)norming

Answer 3

D

Question 4

The way in which factors such as skills, abilities, personalities, perceptions, attitudes, values, and ethics differ from one individual to another is referred to as:

A)personality
B)individual differences
C)the basis for group differences
D)variation in traits

Question 5

The approach to the study of personality that focuses on both person (dispositions) and situational variables as combined predictors of behavior is known as:

A)trait theory
B)the integrative approach
C)psychodynamic theory
D)wholistic humanism

Question 6

Personality is shaped by:

A)consequences of behavior and the environment
B)the person and the situation
C)thinkings and feelings
D)heredity and environment

Question 7

According to the Science Feature of Chapter 3, where General mental ability (GMA) was investigated in association with victimization, all of the following were supported by this study Except:

A)Having a high GMA does not have a downside in terms of being a target at work.
B)An individual with high cognitive ability and also a caring, cooperative, and secure personality will not experience an increase in victimization.
C)An individual with high GMA and a personality that includes independence and dominance will be more likely to be victimized.
D)Highly intelligent individuals should cultivate their positive personality traits as well as their intellectual skills.

Question 8

According to the proponents of interactional psychology, all of the following are correct except:

A)behavior is a function of heredity and physical stature
B)people vary in terms of cognitive, affective, motivational, and ability factors
C)a situation can be viewed objectively
D)one's subjective view of the situation can also be important

Question 9

Which of the following statements regarding internals and externals is FALSE?

A)Internals and externals have similar positive reactions to being promoted.
B)Internals and externals have distinctly different reactions to being promoted with internals having higher organizational commitment than externals.
C)Internals tend to have positive feelings to a promotion longer than do externals.
D)Externals may be more reluctant than internals to participate in decision making.

Question 10

Which of the following is one of the most important determinants of high self-efficacy?

A)an internal locus of control
B)high self-esteem
C)previous success
D)the tendency to be a low self-monitor

Question 11

What is considered the single best predictor or work performance across many occupations studied both here in the United States and across different cultures?

A)GMA
B)Extraversion
C)Conscientiousness
D)Emotional Stability

Question 12

A relatively stable set of characteristics that influence an individual's behavior defines:

A)behavioral predispositions
B)personality
C)the integrative approach to behavior
D)the approach emphasizing the perceptual process

Question 13

Generalized self-efficacy is the general:

A)feeling of one's self-worth
B)extent to which people base their behavior on cues from other people and situations
C)belief about one's own capabilities to deal with the events and challenges that make life demanding
D)belief about self or situational control over what happens to them

Question 14

Individuals possessing an internal locus of control:

A)display high anxiety
B)tend to be dissatisfied on the job
C)prefer participative management styles
D)avoid greater responsibility

Question 15

The two determinants of one's personality are heredity (genetics) and the environment. Larry Ellison, cofounder and CEO of Oracle attributes much of his success to his personality and states that his personality was mostly shaped by his:

A)love of hiking and sailing
B)penchant for having fun which led him to drop out of two universities
C)relationship with his father
D)service in the Air Force

Question 16

Denise and Teresa are two students in a course on organizational behavior.Denise outperforms Teresa on the first exam in OB, and Teresa convinces herself that Denise is not really a good person to compare herself to because Denise is a psychology major and Teresa is majoring in accounting.Which of the following is the best explanation for Teresa's reaction?

A)Teresa's high self-esteem is protecting her from this unfavorable comparison.
B)Teresa is a low self-monitor.
C)Teresa has an external locus of control.
D)Teresa probably has an inflated generalized belief of her capabilities.

Question 17

Which of the following is not considered one of the "Big Five" personality traits?

A)heredity
B)extraversion
C)emotional stability
D)conscientiousness

Question 18

The traits associated with high-performing employees are:

A)extraversion and agreeableness
B)agreeableness and conscientiousness
C)conscientiousness and emotional stability
D)emotional stability and agreeableness

Question 19

As a supervisor of a group of employees, all of whom have an internal locus of control, you should:

A)closely supervise them
B)provide explicit and frequent job instructions
C)expect to frequently discipline group members for slowness and lack of initiative
D)allow them considerable leeway in determining how to perform their work

Question 20

The basis for understanding individual differences stems from:

A)Jung's development of personality archetypes
B)Carl Roger's contention that everyone is unique
C)Bandura's approach to social-cognitive social learning theory
D)Lewin's contention that behavior is a function of the person and the environment

Question 21

A problem frequently associated with self report methods for assessing ones personality includes:

A)the biases of the assessor in interpreting the information
B)the observer's ability to stay focused
C)respondents answering questions in terms of how they want to be seen rather than as they are
D)the effect of observation on those being observed

Question 22

When predicting behavior, an important idea to remember concerns the extent to which a situation overwhelms the effects of individual personalities by providing cues for appropriate behavior.This type of situation is called a:

A)weak situation
B)weak individual difference
C)strong individual difference
D)strong situation

Question 23

Which of the following is NOT a component of CSE.

A)General mental ability
B)Locus of control
C)Generalized self-efficacy
D)Self-esteem

Question 24

You need to hire someone for a marketing position within a product team responsible for home cleaning detergents. Your organization has several products within this category and the team includes representatives from operations and R&D.Which of the following personality types for the marketing position would result in the most effective team member?

A)high self monitor
B)low self monitor
C)internal locus of control
D)external locus of control

Question 25

A person who is unconstrained by his or her situation and who brings about environmental change would more likely have a(n):

A)ISTJ type personality
B)high level of self monitoring
C)proactive personality
D)negative affect

Question 26

The extent to which people base their behavior on cues from other people and situations refers to:

A)locus of control
B)self-esteem
C)self-efficacy
D)self-monitoring

Question 27

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory:

A)is a projective test
B)provides direct indices of personality
C)is administered as an inkblot test
D)assesses a variety of traits

Question 28

Which of the following personality types would most likely display the most consistent behavior "across situations"?

A)External locus of control
B)High self efficacy
C)High self monitor
D)Low self monitor

Question 29

A problem with the behavioral measure for personality would be:

A)low reliability
B)the fact self-report measures suffer from potential bias
C)their tendency to be too long
D)the observer's ability to stay focused

Question 30

As a manager that understands the implications of self-esteem on work behavior, you should:

A)clearly measure the results of employee tasks
B)provide continual positive feedback
C)clearly tie rewards to performance
D)give them appropriate challenges and opportunities for success

Question 31

A member of a work group who loafs and makes only a very minimal contribution:

A)exhibits negative affectivity
B)likes to experience control over others
C)has an internal locus of control
D)will be successful if left alone

Question 32

Masculine women in the workplace have often experienced a backlash for violating the nurturing gender role stereotype. A recent study followed promotion rates of male and female MBAs over eight years and found that masculine women:

A)who were also high self-monitors did not experience this backlash and received more promotions
B)tend to have a more positive affect and higher job satisfaction
C)will have a stronger influence in weak situations
D)have been shown to have a higher general self-efficacy

Question 33

Low self-monitors tend to:

A)be slow in responding to situational cues
B)be high on self-efficacy
C)be high in self-esteem
D)require little supervision

Question 34

ELoyalty, founded by Kelly Conway has perfected software that:

A)decodes a caller's personality using voice recognition
B)identifies customers most loyal to a product's offering and matched loyalty with type personality
C)identifies repeat buyers of a product as a result of online surveys that are used to identify through specific response patterns their personality
D)identifies customers that are the most satisfied through voice recognition

Question 35

An individual's generalized belief about internal control versus external control is called:

A)self-efficacy
B)self-esteem
C)locus of control
D)self-monitoring

Question 36

Managers who want to promote positive affectivity should:

A)allow participative decision making and provide pleasant working conditions
B)hire those with an external orientation
C)reduce the anxiety in jobs
D)give positive feedback in order to increase self-esteem

Question 37

The most common method of assessing personality is the:

A)projective test
B)behavioral measurement through observation
C)self-report questionnaire
D)Rorschach ink blot test

Question 38

Individuals with high levels of CSE tend to experience or exhibit all of the following Except:

A)perform better on their jobs
B)more satisfaction with their jobs and lives
C)report lower levels of stress
D)higher levels of organizational commitment

Question 39

Positive affectivity is likely to be displayed by:

A)persons with low self-efficacy
B)low self-monitors
C)persons with high anxiety
D)internals, or those with an internal locus of control

Question 40

A count of the times a student asks a question or makes a comment in an organizational behavior course is a/an:

A)self-report measure of personality
B)projective measure of personality
C)example of the MMPI
D)behavioral measure of personality

Question 41

Which of the following is NOT an important characteristic of the perceiver that can affect social perception?

A)attitude
B)mood
C)self-concept
D)emotional stability

Question 42

The basic preference in type theory that represents where you get your energy is the:

A)extraversion/introversion preference
B)sensing/intuiting preference
C)thinking/feeling preference
D)judging/perceiving preference

Question 43

The three major categories of factors that influence our perception of another person include:

A)characteristics of ourselves, the target person, and the situation
B)availability of information, the target person, and the situation
C)recentcy of information, availability of information, and consistency of information
D)characteristics of ourselves, the target person, and consistency of information

Question 44

When you encounter a warm and personable car salesperson and don't assume that this behavior reflects the salesperson's personality, you are using which principle in social perception?

A)perceiver principle
B)discounting principle
C)cognitive bias principle
D)social context principle

Question 45

The discounting principle is a characteristic of the:

A)situation
B)perceiver
C)target
D)cognitive miser

Question 46

Jung contended that the most important distinction between individuals was the:

A)extravert/introvert preference
B)sensing/intuiting preference
C)thinking/feeling preference
D)judging/perceiving preference

Question 47

An employee who does not get along well with other employees but generates the most sales is evaluated only on sales performance.This is an example of:

A)stereotyping
B)the cognitive miser
C)the self-fulfilling prophecy
D)selective perception

Question 48

In which of the following situations are situational cues and social context most formalized?

A)job interview
B)employee coaching session
C)on-the-job instruction for new employees
D)employee briefing at start of work shift

Question 49

Which of the following organizations has perfected software that decodes a caller's personality using voice recognition in order to match them with an agent with a similar personality?

A)EVR
B)ELoyalty
C)EPersonalityRecognition
D)EPersonalityCallCenter (EPCC)

Question 50

A supervisor's high expectations of a new employee and the subsequent high performance of that employee is known as:

A)impression management
B)stereotyping
C)perceptual bias
D)self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 51

The MBTI is a:

A)projective test that captures psychological disorders
B)way to identify human differences and similarities by separating behavioral tendencies or dispositions
C)self-report questionnaire designed to assess personality
D)direct index of personality

Question 52

The process of interpreting information about another person is:

A)high external control
B)social perception
C)encoding
D)evaluation

Question 53

The social context and discounting principle are characteristics of the:

A)perceiver
B)target
C)situation
D)interaction

Question 54

All of the following are characteristics of the target that influence social perception except:

A)inferred intentions
B)nonverbal communication
C)verbal communication
D)cognitive complexity

Question 55

The perceiver's pattern of thinking or manner in which they assemble and interpret information about another person is:

A)the strength of situational cues
B)cognitive structure
C)self-concept
D)attitude structuring

Question 56

All of the following are characteristics of the target of one's perceptions, except:

A)physical appearances
B)oral communication
C)nonverbal cues
D)purpose and context of encounter or interaction

Question 57

According to the Jungian approach to personality, the basic preference that reflects what we pay attention to or how we prefer to gather information is:

A)extraversion/introversion
B)sensing/intuiting
C)thinking/feeling
D)judging/perceiving

Question 58

According to the MBTI a successful top executive is likely to be a/an:

A)introvert, intuitor, feeler, and perceiver
B)introvert, sensor, thinker, and perceiver
C)extrovert, intuitor, feeler, and judger
D)extrovert, sensor, thinker, and judger

Question 59

The ability of an individual to perceive multiple characteristics of another person rather than attend to just a few traits is a function of their:

A)attention span
B)ability to focus
C)cognitive weighting
D)cognitive complexity

Question 60

In an interview situation, the interviewer's first impression of the interviewee (or target) is likely to be based upon:

A)nonverbal cues of the target
B)verbal communication by the target
C)the intentions of the target
D)the target's physical appearance

Question 61

Suppose, for example, that a sales manager is evaluating the performance of his employees.One employee does not get along well with colleagues and rarely completes sales reports on time.This employee, however, generates the most new sales contracts in the office.The sales manager chooses to ignore the negative information and evaluates the salesperson only on contracts generated.The manager is exercising:

A)projection
B)selective perception
C)self-fulfilling prophecy
D)fundamental attribution error

Question 62

The tendency to make attributions to internal causes when focusing on someone else's behavior is:

A)remedied by the discounting principle
B)known as the fundamental attribution error
C)has been shown to not be related to cultural pre-dispositions
D)known as the fundamental cognitive error

Question 63

When a student attributes a high test grade to his or her diligent study habits and a low grade to the instructor's poorly worded questions, the student is displaying:

A)the fundamental attribution error
B)the consensus error
C)the acceptance error
D)self-serving bias

Question 64

The largest civil rights class action lawsuit in U.S.history centered around gender discrimination at Walmart. The U.S.Supreme Court ruling in this case is best supported by which of the following statements?

A)The Supreme Court found that the gender stereotype of women workers as fundamentally inferior to male workers was ingrained in Walmart's culture and led to discrimination.
B)The Supreme Court found that Walmart did have policies against discrimination and that the unfair treatment of women happened at the local level.
C)The Supreme Court found that a group of over one million women could not be certified as a class, and because of individual circumstance variability, did not have enough in common to band together.
D)The Supreme Court found that leaders at Walmart failed to monitor pay and promotion practices at its 3400 stores.

Question 65

Which of the following results regarding impression management and employment interviews has not been supported by research?

A)Impression management is associated with higher interview performance.
B)Impression management is associated with increasing the probability of a site visit.
C)Impression management is associated with higher probabilities of getting hired.
D)Impression management is associated with higher starting salaries.

Question 66

Research shows that successful candidates make:

A)less attributions than unsuccessful candidates
B)more external attributions than unsuccessful candidates
C)more internal attributions for negative events
D)less internal attributions for negative events

Question 67

Achievement-oriented individuals attribute their success to:

A)a combination of hard work and ability
B)ability
C)hard work
D)hard work and task difficulty

Question 68

Attribution theory helps to __________ behavior in organizations.

A)measure
B)explain causes of
C)specify correct or appropriate
D)observe

Question 69

When you attribute the performance in this class to the type of exams and their relative difficulty, you are making what type of attribution?

A)internal
B)external
C)ability
D)luck

Question 70

Achievement-oriented individuals attribute their failures to:

A)bad luck
B)a combination of bad luck and a difficult task
C)lack of effort
D)lack of effort and a difficult task

Question 71

Attributional biases implies that managers must:

A)always be correct in their perceptions
B)be very wary of the cognitive process in decision making
C)know as much as possible about individual differences and determine the cause of behavior and perceived source of responsibility
D)take into account the fundamental tendency for people to make external attributions for their behavior

Question 72

Increasing workforce diversity is likely to reduce __________ as a barrier to social perception.

A)the primacy effect
B)first-impression error
C)selective perception
D)stereotyping

Question 73

The primacy effect is also known as:

A)selective perception
B)self-fulfilling prophecy
C)first-impression error
D)a stereotype

Question 74

When a female softball player is given more applause for a home run hit than a male teammate, the reason would most likely be due to:

A)first impression error
B)projection
C)selective perception
D)contrast against a stereotype

Question 75

Assume you are an employment interviewer.An applicant's physical appearance could cause you to commit an incorrect hiring decision because of all of the following except:

A)stereotype
B)selective perception
C)first impression error
D)self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 76

Projection occurs most often when you:

A)surround yourself with others similar to you
B)attempt to control the impressions others have of you
C)let your expectations affect your interaction with others in a way that we get what we wish for
D)surround yourself with others dis-similar to you

Question 77

In which of the following organizational situations is impression management more likely to occur?

A)a supervisor disciplining an employee
B)a job interview
C)a meeting of the top management team
D)an exit interview when an employee retires

Question 78

An achievement-oriented sales representative might attribute his failure to meet a monthly sales quota to:

A)changing economic conditions
B)a short list of prospects provided by the company
C)a lack of effort
D)a cutback in product advertising

Question 79

When a manager makes the attribution that an employee's lack of effort or ability is the basis for poor performance, they are probably making an error called:

A)fundamental attribution
B)self-serving bias
C)discounting attribution
D)consistency attributions

Question 80

Individuals who make external attributions will be more likely to:

A)achieve higher levels of performance
B)rarely quit because they do not feel responsible
C)develop feelings of incompetence which may lead to depression
D)provide a supporting environment for followers