Conceptual, Historical and Contemporary Issues in Psychology

Evaluate the use of the Construct of Personality in Modern Life

Broadly speaking personality can be defined as patterns of behaviour, thoughts and feelings. Accordingly a person’s behaviour allows us to infer future behaviour and describe how we differ from each other (Pervin & John, 2001). Today the use of personality is widespread and can be seen in many areas of modern life such as clinical, health, educational, occupational and forensic settings. For this reason, in the western world personality is viewed as an important aspect or characteristic of a person, which people are forever seeking advice on how to change and improve (Brody & Ehrlichman, 1998).

The use of psychological tests attempting to measure individual differences related to occupational behaviours have been used for over 60 years (Furnham, 1992). Frequently, they are used for selection and appraisal due to the vast number of applicants, the high costs of interviewing and the necessity for objective, comparative data (Hogan, Hogan & Roberts, 1996). Recent research in personnel psychology has relied on meta- analysis to develop generalizations about personality characteristics that are characteristic of success in job- related contexts. Accordingly, relating measures of the Big Five to job performance measures suggest that conscientiousness is the personality trait that is consistently related to measures of work- related performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991) and people who obtain high scores tend to be rated highly by supervisors and to be viewed as being more competent employees than those who obtain a low score on conscientiousness.

While the use of such measures is fair, eliminating corruption and favouritism, it is evident how personality measures can prove useful within organisations, but with the disadvantages in mind