Business Psychology

SOURCE: Costa & McCrae 1992, p. 2.

• Eysenck’s typology – His concept embraces the view that an individual inherits a particular type of nervous system that predisposes him or her to develop in a particular way. According to Eysenck there are three basic personality dimensions: extraverted (sociable) – introverted (quiet), neurotic (emotional instability), and psychotic (obsessed, hysteric, schizophrenic).

• Jung typology – Junk identified two types of attitudes: extroversion and introversion. An extravert is a person who is outward-looking, responds better to facts, and is more scientific than philosophical. Introvert is a person who is subjective, philosophical, a day-dreamer, an artistic type. Jung recognized that there are more than two types of people in the world. So he observed the relationship between a person’s consciousness and experience – that is hoe we perceive and make sense of the world. Jung identifies the four basic functions: sensation, thinking, feeling and intuition. Sensing is processing information through the senses. Thinking is the understanding what a ‘think’ is and puts a name to what is sensed. Feeling is reacting to things emotionally and defining them as acceptable or unacceptable. Intuition is having hunches about past or future events in the absence of real information.  So Jung characterized four types of persons:

• A type 1 person is cold, analytical, lives for present, interested in facts, practical.
• A type 2 person is rational, analytical, takes broad view, sociable.
• A type 3 person is factual, wishes to grasp tangible thinks, emotional, opposite of type 2.
• A type 4 person is emotional, sociable, takes broad view, more prone to hypothesizing, opposite of type 1

• Personality and Career and John Holland’s personality types – People of the same personality type working together in a business create a work environment that fits their type. According to Holland’s theory there are six type of personalities:

• Realistic – includes outdoor-type people or physically strong, who works like an engineer or carpenter etc.
• Investigative- people interested in concepts, logic work like doctors, vets or biologists or etc.
• Artistic- includes people who are expressive, intuitive, imaginative and working like writers, designers or artists etc.
• Social- people who are helpful, sensitive to other’s needs, likes company, they are working like nurses, teachers or librarians etc.
• Enterprising- people who are adventurous or persuasive working like lawyers, travel agents or reporters or etc.
• Conventional – people who are structured, accurate working like accountants, cashiers or secretaries or etc.

1. Intelligence- is the ability to learn from experience, think in abstract terms and deal effectively with one’s environment. Nowadays a lot of companies measure their employee’s intelligence with IQ and EQ tests. There are three theoretical approaches to intelligence: general capacity view, ‘factorial’ view and information processing model.

• General capacity- According to Wechsler intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment.
• ‘Factorial’ view- According the Spearman’s view everyone has a g factor or general intelligence in different amount. It depends on the g factor to tell if a person is stupid or very smart. We can understand the quantity of the g factor from intelligence tests. Spearman also talked about s factors which are related to some of people’s abilities. This is the Spearman’s hierarchical model of intelligence:

                                           

                                      General Intelligence

Verbal education                                                           Spatial/mechanical

Verbal                      Numerical                            Spatial           Mechanical

Specific                     Specific                               Specific            Specific

            Skills                       Skills                                    Skills                Skills

Thurstone felt that intelligence can be segmented into a seven of primary abilities revealed by intelligence tests:

• Verbal comprehension – the skill to understand other’s words.
• Word fluency- the ability to think of words quickly.
• Number- the ability to work with numbers and perform computations
• Space- the ability to visualise space-form relationship.
• Memory- the ability to recall verbal stimuli
• Perceptual speed- the ability to grasp details and to see similarities and differences between pictured objects
• Reasoning- the ability to find a general rule on the basis of presented instances.

• Information processing models- is the attempt to understand intelligence in terms of the cognitive process that operates when individuals engage in intellectual activities, such as problem solving.

 The information processing approach is reflected in Sternberg’s work: he creates the triarchic theory. The triarchic theory involves that the individual functioning intellectually in three ways:

• Componential- refers to analytical thinking like recognising, defining, and representing problems and it is connected with success in taking tests.
• Experiential- refers to creative thinking and characterises the individual who can dissect experience into various parts, and then combine them in an insightful way.
• Contextual- refers to real-world contextual functions of intelligence, it is reflected in the person who can play the game and manipulate the environment.

Another famous view of intelligence is propounded by Gardner.                                    According to Gardner’s theory there is no such thing as singular intelligence. He states that there are six distinct types of intelligence and they are independent from each other. Every type operates in a different part in the brain and has its own rules. The six intelligences are:

• Linguistic- this area works with words spoken and written.
• Logical-mathematical- This area works with logic, abstractions, reasoning, and numbers.
• Spatial- This area works with vision and spatial judgment
• Musical- This area works with , music, and hearing.
• Bodily-kinaesthetic- this area operates with bodily movement and physiology.
• Personal- This area works with interaction with others.

2. Perception – is a cognitive process that gives as the opportunity to process and understand our surroundings. There are two types of perception:

• Object perception is the human’s ability to recognize a subject.                                 People recognise an object within a fraction of second, even there is no clues about what kind of object might be.
• Social perception is how people understand other people and themselves, it helps us to form an impression from others. Sometimes people make a perceptual errors like:

• Stereotyping is a fixed, over generalised belief about a particular group or class of people. Some examples of  stereotypes prevailing worldwide are:

Ex. Blondes are less wise!!!

Ex. Men are too careless in relationships and are more oriented at physical relationship rather than emotional relationships!!!

Ex. Aliens are stereotyped for being killers!!!

• Halo effect is the idea that because someone has a particular trait he or she automatically has other trait. An example for Halo effect is if a person dressed like a pop star that means that he or she can sing but actually it does not mean that.
• Leniency is a very positive look for the world.

3. Learning style Attitudes- people learn in a different way, some learn faster than the others, some learn easily with examples others do not need, it depends on practice or experience or intelligence. According to Kolb’s theory the learning cycle can begin at any four points:

• Experiencing- have an experience.
• Reflecting- understand what happened in this instance.
• Theorising- generalising over a range of instances.
• Testing- test learning in a new circumstances.

Directly derived from the Kolb’s theory is the Honey and Mumford learning styles theory. Honey and Mumford made a questionnaire which determines people’s preferred learning style.

According to them there are four types of learning styles:

•  Activist- are open-minded people, they act before think about the consequences, enthusiastic. Their motto is “ I’ll try anything once”
•  Reflector- these people like to observe before making their point, they are cautious, tends to postpone decisions. Their motto is “I’d like time to think about this”
•  Theorist- these people like to think about problems in a logical manner, disciplined, likes analysis and synthesis. Their motto is “How does this fit in with that; does it make sense?”
•  Pragmatist- likes to try ideas and theories in practice to see if they work, impatient with endless decisions. Their motto is: “How can I apply this in practise?”

4. Gender- Women and men differ on the constructs and traits being used. Men and Woman differ in the kind of characters they dream about, the way they approach achievement tasks, how they express emotions, what they look for in a romantic partner, and how much they self-disclose.  Researches suggest that females and males do not differ in their general abilities to memorise and recall information.
5. Physical attributes- People look different. We do not only differ by sex but also by body structure, hair, eyes, skin colour and etc.  
6. Motivation- People can be motivated in a different ways, too. Motives consist of inner states that energise, active, and direct the behaviour of the person as she or he strives to attain a goal or acquire an incentive. Motivators can be power, recognition, respect, money, achievement, feedback, status and many others. Ed Locke’s goal-setting theory states that a goal is what an individual is trying to accomplish, it is the object or aim of an action.

Source: Adapted from Work Behaviour by F. Landy. Copyright 1989, 1985, 1980, 1976 Brooks/Cole. Publishing Company, a division of International Thomson Publishing Inc.

 Important conclusions from this theory are that difficult goals lead to higher performance than easy goals, specific goals lead to higher performance than general ‘do your best’ goals, knowledge of results is essential if the full performance benefits of setting difficult and specific goals are to be achieved, beneficial effects of goal setting depend partly on a person’s goal commitment if she or he is determined to try to achieve.

7. Previous experience- People differ in previous experiences, too. It matters if you grow-up in a rich family or in a poor, or if you already worked in a call centre or you did not. It is very important because it will be very easy for your company if you hire people who already worked in these sphere. They already have an experience so you will not pay for training these people.
8. Culture – Culture plays an essential role in understanding personality.  According to the psychologist there are two types of cultures:

• Individualistic culture – includes Northern European countries and the United States, place big emphasis on individual needs and accomplishment. People in these cultures think about themselves as independent and special.
• Collectivist cultures – includes many Asian, African, Central American and South American countries. People in these cultures are more concerned about belonging to a larger group, such as than from individual accomplishments.

9. Importance of work- People differ in the way how they think about their job. Some people depend on their jobs because they have family so they think that their job is very important. Some wants to have a great career so again think that their job is very essential. Some people work because they need to so they do not think that they have very important job.  
10.  I think that the best method for assessing candidate’s suitability to work in the Call centre is with Psychological tests.  There are three uses of tests: educational, occupational and clinical. We are interested in occupational tests they measure:

• General Intelligence
• Attainment ( measures what the person can do)
• Ability ( used to predict what people will be able to do in future, for example driving tests)
• Aptitude- (specific ability)
• Personality
• Interest
• Values
• Attitudes

I think that the best tests which you should give to your future employees are tests which measure the general intelligence and personality. Possible personality tests:

• Eysenck’s personality inventory

REFERENCE:

1. Arnold, J. Cooper, C & Robertson, I., 1998 Work Psychology: Understanding Behavior in the Workplace. 3rd ed. Great Britain: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
2. McKenna, E., 2006. Business Psychology and Organisational Behavior.4th ed. Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press.
3. Burger, M, J., 2000. PERSONALITY. 4th ed. United States of America: Wadsworth.
4. Pervin, A., 2005. Personality- theory and research. 9th ed. United States of America: John Wiley & Sous, Inc.
5. Shavick, A., 2007. Passing psychometric tests :this book gives you the 3 things you need to pass a psychometric test - information, confidence and plenty of practice. 2nd ed. Oxford: How To Books.