5 Theories of motivation
Andrew Tree
Organizational Behavior II
Objective essay 1
9/19/12
Constructs of personality in terms of consistency and distinctiveness
To begin it is important to define the key objectives; personality, consistency and distinctiveness. Personality is “the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment.” For the purpose of this essay we can think of personality as the sum of total ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others. Consistency in terms of personality is the regularity in how an individual reacts to and interacts with others. As an example if someone is continually late for work or events, then you can connect that consistency with his personality. Lastly we have distinctiveness which refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations. When attempt to explain why we behave certain ways we understand attribution theory. Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an individual’s behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused. Internally caused behaviors are those we believe to be under personal control of the individual. Externally caused behavior is what we imagine the situation forced the individual to do. So going back to the example about an individual being late for work, often times we attribute this to certain factors some internal and some external. An internal attribution us attribution his tardiness to him partying into the early parts of the morning and not being able to get up in time. An external attribution would be his arriving late because of an accident that tied up traffic on his way to work. To go further into the examples above we must further discuss the distinctiveness and consistency behind our internal and external attributions. As we continue to look at distinctiveness we must look at the overall picture or situation. As we discussed
Organizational Behavior II
Objective essay 1
9/19/12
Constructs of personality in terms of consistency and distinctiveness
To begin it is important to define the key objectives; personality, consistency and distinctiveness. Personality is “the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment.” For the purpose of this essay we can think of personality as the sum of total ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others. Consistency in terms of personality is the regularity in how an individual reacts to and interacts with others. As an example if someone is continually late for work or events, then you can connect that consistency with his personality. Lastly we have distinctiveness which refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations. When attempt to explain why we behave certain ways we understand attribution theory. Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an individual’s behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused. Internally caused behaviors are those we believe to be under personal control of the individual. Externally caused behavior is what we imagine the situation forced the individual to do. So going back to the example about an individual being late for work, often times we attribute this to certain factors some internal and some external. An internal attribution us attribution his tardiness to him partying into the early parts of the morning and not being able to get up in time. An external attribution would be his arriving late because of an accident that tied up traffic on his way to work. To go further into the examples above we must further discuss the distinctiveness and consistency behind our internal and external attributions. As we continue to look at distinctiveness we must look at the overall picture or situation. As we discussed