Chapter 11 Managing Individual Differences and Behavior: Supervising
People as People Answer Key
True / False Questions
1.
Values are abstract ideals—global beliefs and feelings—that are directed toward all objects,
people, events, or activities.
2.
Fundamental attribution bias, for example, is when Europeans blamed Wall Street for the 2010
economic collapse in Greece.
3.
People with low levels of emotional stability are prone to anxiety and tend to view the world
negatively, whereas people with high levels tend to show better job performance.
4.
Promotional decisions are no longer affected by sex-role stereotyping.
5.
Personality is defined as the stable psychological traits and behavioral attributes that give a
person his or her identity.
6.
One of the Big Five personality dimensions is introversion.
7.
Extroversion is one of the Big Five personality traits and is a measure of how outgoing,
talkative, sociable, and assertive a person is.
8.
Emotional stability is the Big Five personality trait that refers to how dependable, responsible,
achievement-oriented, and persistent one is.
9.
Extroversion is a stronger predictor of job performance than agreeableness.
10.
The personality trait of openness to experience has the strongest positive correlation with job
performance.
11.
Personality test data should be supplemented with information from reference checks,
personal interviews, ability tests, and job performance records when hiring.
12.
Integrity tests are ineffective because dishonest people are able to fake conscientiousness,
even on a paper–and-pencil test.
13.
Type A behavior pattern indicates that people have the personality characteristic that involves
them in a chronic, determined struggle to accomplish more in less time.
14.
Internals likely would prefer and respond more productively to incentives such as merit pay or
sales commissions.
15.
If you have a personal belief that you have ability to do a task and that you have what it takes
to succeed, you would be best described as having self–efficacy.
16.
Self-efficacy is the debilitating lack of faith in one’s ability to control one’s environment.
17.
Employees with high self-efficacy need lots of constructive pointers and positive feedback.
18.
People with high self-esteem take fewer risks and handle failure worse than those with low
self-esteem.
19.
Low self-esteem can be raised more by having the persons think of desirable characteristics
they possess, rather than focusing on undesirable characteristics they do not have.
20.
Individuals with an external locus of control tend to display greater work motivation, which
leads to higher salaries.
Topic: Internal Locus of Control
21.
Extroversion is the most essential trait of emotional intelligence.
22.
As an emotional intelligence trait, relationship management refers to the ability to
communicate clearly, disarm conflicts, and build strong personal bonds.
23.
EI is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to better understanding and management of people at
work.
24.
Lifelong behavior patterns are dictated by values that are fairly well set by age six.
25.
Status is not a common value held in the workplace.
26.
An attitude is a learned predisposition toward a specific object.
27.
Values are abstract ideals that are directed toward all objects, people, or events consistently
over time and related situations.
28.
The intentional component of an attitude consists of the feelings or emotions one has about a
situation.
29.
The behavioral component of an attitude refers to how one intends or expects to behave
toward a situation.
30.
“I don’t like socializing with my coworkers outside of work” is an example of the affective
component of an attitude.
31.
Cognitive dissonance, according to Leon Festinger, describes the psychological discomfort a
person experiences between his or her cognitive attitude and incompatible behavior.
32.
Belittling the importance of one’s inconsistent behavior is a way to increase cognitive
dissonance.
33.
A smoker who claims that the habit is not as dangerous as antismoking messages suggest,
saying “My grandmother smokes and she’s in her 80s,” is attempting to increase cognitive
dissonance.
34.
When Jodi was pregnant with her first child, she drank a beer at lunch despite reading the
label that said consumption of alcohol during pregnancy has been linked to birth defects. Jodi
could have experienced cognitive dissonance because she knows about the warning, but still
drank the beer.
35.
Perception is the process of interpreting and understanding one’s environment.
36.
The last step of the perception process is selective attention in which you ask, “Did I notice
something?”
37.
Both the halo effect and the recency effect are types of distortion in perception.
38.
Stereotyping is the tendency to attribute to an individual the characteristics one believes are
typical of the group to which that individual belongs.
39.
People tend to prefer male bosses and generally view women leaders as being less effective
than men, an example of sex-role stereotyping.
40.
As employees’ age increases, their job involvement, motivation, organizational commitment,
and satisfaction decrease.
41.
The halo effect is also called the horn-and-halo effect because not only can a single positive
trait be generalized into an array of positive traits, but the reverse is also true.
42.
Lee has hired two new employees for her team, Jim and Judy. Jim is outgoing and attractive,
while Judy is very bright but seems quiet and unsure. Lee immediately expects Jim to
outperform Judy at the job. Lee is likely experiencing the halo effect.
43.
“Joe drinks too much because he has no willpower; but I need a few drinks after work because
I’m under a lot of pressure” is an example of an attribution statement.
44.
In self-serving bias, people tend to take more personal responsibility for success than for
failure.
45.
The way students typically analyze their performance on exams shows self-serving bias, with
students earning Ds blaming factors such as bad luck, unclear lectures, and unfair testing.
46.
As a manager, when you expect employees to perform badly, they probably will, and when
you expect them to perform well, they probably will perform badly too.
47.
One of the ways to create a Pygmalion effect is to encourage employees to visualize failing at
executing tasks and use their fear of failure to motivate them.
48.
Research has shown that by raising managers’ expectations for individuals performing a wide
variety of tasks, higher levels of achievement and productivity can be achieved.
49.
An example of a self-fulfilling prophecy is a server who expects some poorly dressed
customers to be stingy tippers, who therefore gives them poor service and so gets the result
he or she expected—a much lower tip than usual.
50.
Key correlates of job satisfaction are stronger motivation, job involvement, organizational
commitment, and life satisfaction and less absenteeism, tardiness, turnover, and perceived
stress.
51.
Employee job satisfaction is a key work attitude managers should consider when trying to
increase performance.
52.
Job satisfaction reflects the extent to which an employee identifies with an organization and is
dedicated to its goals.
53.
Studies show a correlation between organizational commitment and job satisfaction and job
performance.
54.
Absenteeism is when an employee does not show up for work every day.
55.
Investors who are more likely to buy a stock if they see something about it in the news or if it
has a high one-day return are an example of the recency effect.
56.
Tracy exhibited organizational citizenship when she asked her colleagues from other
departments about their projects and what they were trying to accomplish with genuine
interest.
57.
Turnover helps employees integrate and transition to new jobs by making them familiar with
corporate policies, procedures, culture, and politics by clarifying work-role expectations and
responsibilities.
58.
Applicants scoring higher on cognitive ability (intelligence) tests are less likely to be involved in
violence and property damage after they are hired.
59.
Diversity encompasses both differences and similarities in age, gender, race, religion,
ethnicity, sexual orientation, capabilities, and socioeconomic background.
60.
Race is one of the four layers of diversity on Gardenswartz and Rowe’s diversity wheel.
61.
Internal dimensions, such as age, gender, and race, are at the center of Gardenswartz and
Rowe’s diversity wheel.
62.
On Gardenswartz and Rowe’s diversity wheel, internal dimensions of diversity such as gender,
age, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and physical abilities strongly influence our attitudes
and expectations and assumptions about other people, which in turn influence our own
behavior.
63.
On Gardenswartz and Rowe’s diversity wheel, external dimensions of diversity consist of the
personal characteristics that people acquire, discard, or modify throughout their lives.
64.
Illegal immigrants dramatically impact the U.S. economy.