Deck 2: Individual Behavior, Personality, and Values

Question 1

Ability is the most important factor in the MARS model to explain why people quit their jobs.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

Intensity refers to the fact that motivation is goal-directed, not random.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Conscientiousness refers to the extent that people are sensitive, flexible, creative, and curious.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

The MARS model identifies the four main factors that influence individual behavior: motivation, ability, role perceptions, and situational factors.

Question 5

Agreeableness, extroversion, and conscientiousness are three of the 'Big Five' personality dimensions.

Question 6

The 'Big Five' personality dimensions represent five clusters that represent most personality traits.

Question 7

According to the MARS model of individual behavior and performance, employee performance will remain high even if one of the four factors significantly weakens.

Question 8

Learned capabilities refer to the skills and knowledge that you have actually acquired.

Question 9

Companies can improve employee role perceptions by describing the employee's assigned tasks clearly and providing meaningful performance feedback.

Question 10

Personality traits are more evident in situations where social norms and reward systems constrain behavior.

Question 11

Personality is a relatively stable pattern of behaviors and internal states that explains a person's behavioral tendencies.

Question 12

Motivation is an external force on the person that causes him or her to engage in specific behaviors.

Question 13

People with a high score on the neuroticism personality dimension tend to be more relaxed, secure and calm.

Question 14

Competencies refer to the complete set of motivations, abilities, role perceptions and situational factors that contribute to job performance.

Question 15

Situational factors are working conditions within the employee's control.

Question 16

One person-job matching strategy is to select applicants whose existing competencies best fit the required task.

Question 17

Competencies refer to goal-directed behaviors under the individual's control that support organizational objectives.

Question 18

The forces within a person affect the employee's motivation.

Question 19

Research has found that absenteeism is rarely, if ever, caused by situational factors.

Question 20

Aptitudes are natural talents that help individuals to learn specific tasks more quickly and perform them better than other people.

Question 21

Self-verification stabilizes our self-concept.

Question 22

People arrange values into a needs hierarchy.

Question 23

The ideal situation in organizations is to have employees whose values are perfectly congruent with the organization's values.

Question 24

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator measures the personality traits described by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung.

Question 25

Conscientiousness is one of the best personality traits for predicting job performance in most job groups.

Question 26

In the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, 'judging' types have a strong desire for order and want to resolve problems quickly.

Question 27

The three structural dimensions of self-concept are: complexity, consistency and clarity.

Question 28

Espoused values represent the values that you and your spouse have in common.

Question 29

According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, some people are 'sensing-thinking' types whereas others may be 'intuitive-feeling' types.

Question 30

Mature adults tend to have a single unitary self-concept that remains relatively stable.

Question 31

One dimension of Schwartz's values model has openness to change at one extreme and conservation at the other extreme.

Question 32

Evidence regarding the effectiveness of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Jung's psychological types is inconclusive.

Question 33

Self-enhancement can result in bad decisions.

Question 34

Our habitual behavior tends to be consistent with our values, but our everyday conscious decisions and actions apply our values much less consistently.

Question 35

Personality is completely determined by heredity.

Question 36

Corporate leaders have a strong influence on the moral conduct of employees in that organization.

Question 37

People perform better in most employment situations when they have a strong external locus of control.

Question 38

Sensing, feeling, and judging are three of the 'Big Five' personality traits.

Question 39

Values are stable, evaluative beliefs about what is important in a variety of situations.

Question 40

Perfect person-organization value congruence is possible but not desirable.

Question 41

______ is the amount of effort allocated to the goal.

A)Persistence
B)Direction
C)Intensity
D)Aptitude
E)Competencies

Question 42

Cultures with high collectivism must also have low individualism.

Question 43

Ethically sensitive people recognize the presence and determine the relative importance of an ethical issue.

Question 44

All of these factors directly influence an employee's voluntary behavior and performance EXCEPT:

A)motivation.
B)role perceptions.
C)situational factors.
D)moral intensity.
E)ability.

Question 45

Utilitarianism judges morality by the consequences of our actions, not the means to attaining those consequences.

Question 46

_______ represents the forces within a person that affect the direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior.

A)Motivation
B)Personality
C)Values
D)Ethics
E)Ability

Question 47

Two countries with low collectivism are Japan and the United States.

Question 48

Three personality traits are care, utilitarianism, and distributive justice.

Question 49

Which of these factors directly influences an employee's voluntary behavior and performance?

A)Motivation
B)Role perceptions
C)Uncertainty avoidance
D)All of the above
E)Only 'A' and 'B'

Question 50

One problem with applying the individual rights principle of ethical decision making is that one individual right may conflict with another.

Question 51

Motivation affects a person's ______ of voluntary behavior.

A)direction, intensity, and persistence
B)antecedents, consequences and reinforcers
C)size, shape and weight
D)aptitudes, abilities, and competencies
E)agreeableness, locus of control, and ethical sensitivity

Question 52

One limitation with information about cross-cultural values is that it incorrectly assumes that everyone within a specific country holds similar values.

Question 53

People with high power distance expect relatively equal power sharing.

Question 54

Ethical sensitivity is the degree to which an issue demands the application of ethical principles.

Question 55

Which of the following identifies the four factors that directly influence individual behavior and performance?

A)Utilitarianism
B)MARS model
C)Schwartz's model
D)Holland's model
E)Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Question 56

The distributive justice principle of ethical decision making people who are similar in relevant ways should receive dissimilar benefits and burdens based on their individual rights.

Question 57

Which of the following refers to the fact that motivation is goal-directed, not random?

A)Persistence
B)Direction
C)Intensity
D)Aptitude
E)Competencies

Question 58

Ethics experts say that the most effective way to ensure that employees engage in ethical behavior is to introduce ethical codes of conduct.

Question 59

In terms of cross-cultural values, Americans tend to have relatively high individualism with an achievement orientation and low power distance.

Question 60

People from cultures with a short-term orientation tend to value assertiveness, competitiveness and materialism.

Question 61

Aptitudes, skills, and competencies all fall under which of the following concepts?

A)Motivation
B)Personality
C)Values
D)Ethics
E)Ability

Question 62

Competencies include:

A)a person's aptitudes.
B)a person's learned abilities.
C)a person's skills.
D)all of the above.
E)none of the above.

Question 63

Being good-natured, empathetic, caring, and courteous are characteristic of people with which personality trait?

A)Openness to experience
B)Agreeableness
C)Locus of control
D)Emotional stability
E)Extroversion

Question 64

Travel Happy Corp.gives simple accounts to newly hired employees, and then adds more challenging accounts as employees master the simple tasks.This practice mainly:

A)improves role perceptions.
B)increases person-job matching.
C)reduces employee motivation.
D)provides more resources to accomplish the assigned task.
E)improves employee aptitudes.

Question 65

The MARS model explicitly identifies which of the following factors?

A)Money
B)Recreational activities
C)Neuroticism
D)Situational factors
E)All of the above

Question 66

According to the MARS model of individual behavior, which of the following is NOT a role perception problem?

A)The employee lacks the proper tools to perform the job.
B)The employee knows two different ways to perform a particular task, but unknowingly chooses the method that the organization does not want its employees to use.
C)The employee doesn't realize that a particular task is part of his or her job.
D)The employee places more emphasis on the quantity of work whereas the organization wants more emphasis placed on the quality of work.
E)The employee believes that the company wants him or her to spend more time with clients, whereas the company really wants client requests processed more quickly.

Question 67

The relatively stable pattern of behaviors and consistent internal states that explain a person's behavioral tendencies refers to

A)personality.
B)values.
C)motivation.
D)locus of control.
E)job satisfaction.

Question 68

Which of the following ensures that job incumbents have appropriate aptitudes to perform the job?

A)Hire applicants with appropriate aptitudes.
B)Train employees so they develop appropriate aptitudes.
C)Motivate employees to have appropriate aptitudes.
D)Provide resources that allow employees to perform their jobs.
E)All of the above.

Question 69

All technical employees at a paper mill take a course on how to operate a new paper-rolling machine.This course will improve job performance mainly by altering employee:

A)aptitudes
B)role perceptions
C)motivation
D)organizational citizenship
E)learned capabilities

Question 70

To reduce the amount of non-recyclable waste that employees throw out each day, a major computer company removed containers for non-recyclable rubbish from each office and workstation.This altered employee behavior mainly by:

A)increasing employee motivation to be less wasteful.
B)helping employees to learn how to be less wasteful.
C)altering situational factors so that employees have more difficulty practicing wasteful behavior.
D)increasing aptitudes that make employees less wasteful.
E)increasing organizational citizenship so that employees will be less wasteful.

Question 71

You have just hired several new employees who are motivated, able to perform their jobs, and have adequate resources.However, they aren't sure what tasks are included in their job.According to the MARS model, these new employees will likely:

A)emphasize the utilitarianism principle in their decision making.
B)have lower job performance due to poor role perceptions.
C)have high job performance because they are motivated and able to perform the work.
D)have above average organizational citizenship.
E)have a high degree of differentiation according to Holland's classification of occupations.

Question 72

The 'Big Five' personality dimensions are identified by the acronym:

A)MBTIA
B)CANOE
C)VALUE
D)MARSE
E)HAPPY

Question 73

The 'Big Five' personality dimensions represent:

A)all of the personality traits found in an ideal job applicant.
B)the aggregated clusters representing most known personality traits.
C)the personality traits caused by the environment rather than heredity.
D)all of the above.
E)only 'B' and 'C'.

Question 74

Conscientiousness is one dimension of:

A) the MARS model.
B) Schwartz's values model.
C) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
D) all of the above.
E) none of the above.

Question 75

An individual's personality:

A)changes several times throughout the year.
B)is formed only from childhood socialization and the environment.
C)is less evident in situations where social norms, reward systems, and other conditions constrain behavior.
D)is all of the above.
E)is only 'B' and 'C'

Question 76

______ are the natural talents that help employees learn specific tasks more quickly and perform them better.

A)Persistence
B)Direction
C)Intensity
D)Aptitude
E)Competencies

Question 77

Which of these refers to a person's beliefs about what behaviors are appropriate or necessary in a particular situation?

A)Natural aptitudes
B)Role perceptions
C)Competencies
D)Locus of control
E)Situational factors

Question 78

Ability includes which of these?

A)Aptitudes and learned skills
B)Natural aptitude and intensity
C)Persistence and direction
D)Intensity and learned capabilities
E)Direction and intensity

Question 79

Companies can improve employee performance through situational factors by:

A)asking employees about the things that motivate them.
B)testing employee skills and knowledge before they are hired.
C)providing training so employees learn the required competencies.
D)redesigning the job so employees are only given tasks within their capabilities.
E)asking employees to identify problems they experience with time and resources, then removing those obstacles to job performance.

Question 80

Competencies relate most closely to which element in the MARS model of behavior and performance?

A)Motivation
B)Situational factors
C)Role perceptions
D)Ability
E)Competencies are not related at all to any element of the MARS model