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WGU C484 Questions and Answers
Personality Traits
Ans: enduring characteristics that describe individual's behavior.
Heredity
Ans: factors determined at conception; one's biological, physiological
and inherent psychological makeup
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Ans: a personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies
people into 1 of 16 personality types
Problem with Myers-Briggs
Ans: it forces you into one or another personality type, there is no in-
between
Big Five Personality Model
Ans: A personality assessment model that taps five basic dimensions:
Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and
Openness to Experience
Extraversion
Ans: extraverts tend to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable, while
introverts tend to be reserved, timid and quiet
Agreeableness
Ans: highly agreeable people are cooperative, warm and trusting. people
who score low on agreeableness are cold, disagreeable and antagonistic
Conscientiousness
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Ans: A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized,
dependable and persistent. Those who score low on this dimension are
easily distracted, disorganized and unreliable.
Emotional Stability
Ans: People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-
confident, and secure. Those with high negative scores tend to be
nervous, anxious, depressed and insecure.
Openness to Experience
Ans: Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically
sensitive. Those at the other end of the category are conventional and
find comfort in the familiar.
Core self-evaluation
Ans: bottom-line conclusions individuals have about their capabilities,
competence, and worth as a person
Machiavellianism
Ans: the degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains
emotional distance and believes the ends justify the means
narcissism
Ans: the tendency to be arrogant, have a grandiose sense of self-
importance, require excessive admiration, and have a sense of
entitlement.
Self-monitoring
Ans: a personality trait that measures an individual's ability to adjust
his or her behavior to external, situational factors.
Proactive personality
Ans: people who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action and
persevere until meaningful change occurs
Other orientation
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Ans: employees high in other-orientation also exert especially high
levels of effort when engaged in helping work or prosocial behavior
Values
Ans: basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of
existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse
mode of conduct or end-state of existence.
Value System
Ans: a hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual's values in terms of
their intensity
Rokeach Value Survey
Ans: consists of two sets of values, terminal values and instrumental
values
Terminal Values
Ans: desirable end-states of existence, the goals a person would like to
achieve during his or her lifetime
Instrumental Values
Ans: preferable modes of behavior or means of acheiving one's terminal
values
Personality-job fit theory
Ans: a theory that identifies six personality types and proposes that the
fit between personality type and occupational environment determines
satisfaction and turnover.
Person-organization fit
Ans: people are attracted to and selected by organizations that match
their values and they leave organizations that are not compatible with
their personalities
Power distance
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Ans: a national cultural attribute that describes the extent to which a
society accepts that power in institutions and organizations is
distributed unequally
Individualism
Ans: the degree to which people prefer to act as individuals rather than
as members of groups
Collectivism
Ans: a tight social framework in which people expect others in groups of
which they are a part to look after them and protect them
Masculinity
Ans: favors traditional work roles of achievement, power and control.
Societal values are characterized by assertiveness and materialism
Femininity
Ans: indicates little differentiation between male and female roles. A
high rating indicates that women are treated as the equals of men in all
aspects of society
Uncertainty Avoidance
Ans: the extent to which a society feels threatened by uncertain and
ambigious situations and tries to avoid them
Long-term Orientation
Ans: emphasizes the future, thrift, and persistence
Short-term Orientation
Ans: emphasizes the past and present, respect for traditions, and
fulfillment and social obligations
Holland's Personality job fit types
© 2025 All rights reserved
WGU C484 Questions and Answers
Personality Traits
Ans: enduring characteristics that describe individual's behavior.
Heredity
Ans: factors determined at conception; one's biological, physiological
and inherent psychological makeup
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Ans: a personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies
people into 1 of 16 personality types
Problem with Myers-Briggs
Ans: it forces you into one or another personality type, there is no in-
between
Big Five Personality Model
Ans: A personality assessment model that taps five basic dimensions:
Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and
Openness to Experience
Extraversion
Ans: extraverts tend to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable, while
introverts tend to be reserved, timid and quiet
Agreeableness
Ans: highly agreeable people are cooperative, warm and trusting. people
who score low on agreeableness are cold, disagreeable and antagonistic
Conscientiousness
© 2025 All rights reserved
, 2 | Page
Ans: A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized,
dependable and persistent. Those who score low on this dimension are
easily distracted, disorganized and unreliable.
Emotional Stability
Ans: People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-
confident, and secure. Those with high negative scores tend to be
nervous, anxious, depressed and insecure.
Openness to Experience
Ans: Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically
sensitive. Those at the other end of the category are conventional and
find comfort in the familiar.
Core self-evaluation
Ans: bottom-line conclusions individuals have about their capabilities,
competence, and worth as a person
Machiavellianism
Ans: the degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains
emotional distance and believes the ends justify the means
narcissism
Ans: the tendency to be arrogant, have a grandiose sense of self-
importance, require excessive admiration, and have a sense of
entitlement.
Self-monitoring
Ans: a personality trait that measures an individual's ability to adjust
his or her behavior to external, situational factors.
Proactive personality
Ans: people who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action and
persevere until meaningful change occurs
Other orientation
© 2025 All rights reserved
, 3 | Page
Ans: employees high in other-orientation also exert especially high
levels of effort when engaged in helping work or prosocial behavior
Values
Ans: basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of
existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse
mode of conduct or end-state of existence.
Value System
Ans: a hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual's values in terms of
their intensity
Rokeach Value Survey
Ans: consists of two sets of values, terminal values and instrumental
values
Terminal Values
Ans: desirable end-states of existence, the goals a person would like to
achieve during his or her lifetime
Instrumental Values
Ans: preferable modes of behavior or means of acheiving one's terminal
values
Personality-job fit theory
Ans: a theory that identifies six personality types and proposes that the
fit between personality type and occupational environment determines
satisfaction and turnover.
Person-organization fit
Ans: people are attracted to and selected by organizations that match
their values and they leave organizations that are not compatible with
their personalities
Power distance
© 2025 All rights reserved
, 4 | Page
Ans: a national cultural attribute that describes the extent to which a
society accepts that power in institutions and organizations is
distributed unequally
Individualism
Ans: the degree to which people prefer to act as individuals rather than
as members of groups
Collectivism
Ans: a tight social framework in which people expect others in groups of
which they are a part to look after them and protect them
Masculinity
Ans: favors traditional work roles of achievement, power and control.
Societal values are characterized by assertiveness and materialism
Femininity
Ans: indicates little differentiation between male and female roles. A
high rating indicates that women are treated as the equals of men in all
aspects of society
Uncertainty Avoidance
Ans: the extent to which a society feels threatened by uncertain and
ambigious situations and tries to avoid them
Long-term Orientation
Ans: emphasizes the future, thrift, and persistence
Short-term Orientation
Ans: emphasizes the past and present, respect for traditions, and
fulfillment and social obligations
Holland's Personality job fit types
© 2025 All rights reserved