Individual Differences and Interpersonal Relationships — Page 234, Lesson 371

I want to walk you through the topic of individual differences and interpersonal relationships, starting with how we assess personality and the key dimensions that define it. Let's begin with a reality check about first impressions. Although we do make judgements of personality from a person's appearance, our assessments are often wrong. Here's the interesting part — irrespective of the number of times that we have been proved incorrect in our initial assessment, we still tend to stick to these preconceived images when meeting a stranger. That's a bias we need to be aware of, and you can see this illustrated in Figure 12.1, which shows the various biases at play. Now, personality may be assessed by various techniques. These include single or panel interviews, projective tests, and even role play. However, it has been proved that the written questionnaire is, on the whole, the most reliable form of personality assessment. So when you're looking at how airlines or training organisations evaluate personality, the written questionnaire carries the most weight in terms of reliability. Let's move to the dimensions of personality. Personality, attitudes and beliefs are intangible — in as much as they cannot be isolated or studied directly but only inferred from what a person says or does. We can't open someone up and see their personality; we have to deduce it from their behaviour and words. Personality may be classified in a number of dimensions. The major dimensions may be said to be extraversion and anxiety, but other major traits such as warmth and sociability, impulsiveness, tough-mindedness, dominance, stability and boldness will all contribute to the overall personality of the individual. So while extraversion and anxiety are the two big ones, there's a whole cluster of traits that shape who someone is. Let's break down extraversion and anxiety more closely. At the very basic level, extraversion may be associated with boldness, impulsive behaviour and sociability. So an extraverted person tends to be outgoing, takes risks, and seeks social interaction. Anxiety, on the other hand, is normally linked to emotional instability, tension and suspiciousness. An anxious person tends to be more on edge, emotionally reactive, and wary. Here's a critical point: as extraversion and anxiety are not related to one another, some people may be anxious and extraverted, others anxious and introverted. These are independent dimensions — you can have a highly anxious person who is also very outgoing, or a calm person who is introverted. They don't predict each other. The results from a series of tests or questionnaires may be plotted on a simple two-dimensional graph of personality with axes of extraversion and anxiety. You can see this in Figure 12.2. Most people will be about the average in both dimensions. So the majority of us cluster around the middle of that graph, neither extremely extraverted nor extremely anxious. That's the foundation of how we think about personality in aviation — it's not about labelling people as good or bad, but understanding where they sit on these independent dimensions, and recognising that our first impressions are often unreliable.