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Human Resource Development (HRM-627)

Lesson 4

INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

Abstract: This theoretical paper studies and proposes to explore further the dispositional causes of intrinsic

motivation and, therefore, contributes to both personality as well as motivational literature. Because of its

relatively longer history, during which it has endured many tests, Big Five Framework is proposed to map the

construct personality. The paper probes into the etiology of one of the most powerful forms of motivation, the

intrinsic motivation (IM) or engaging in a task for its engagement value. Three elements, cognition; affect and,

values are identified as the basis of an intrinsically motivated behavior. These three elements are used in

developing the dynamics of link between personality and intrinsic motivation. On the basis of theoretical

discussions and various empirical evidences provided, five propositions, linking the five factors of Big Five

Model with propensity for intrinsic motivation, are suggested. The need for developing more reliable,

generalize-able and, valid measures of intrinsic motivation is stressed for future researchers so that the two

constructs of personality and intrinsic motivation are studied more objectively with more empirical evidence at

hand.

DISPOSITIONAL CAUSES OF INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

Introduction

In the past ten to fifteen years extensive work has been carried out in exploring the link of construct personality

with other constructs like job performance, job satisfaction, work values, psychological contracts, emotions

and, cognition. Link of personality with intrinsic motivation exists, but there is paucity of literature exploring

the link from a multi faceted perspective. This theoretical paper is an attempt to review the literature for

exploring the relationship between personality and operational zed forms of intrinsic motivation, such as job

satisfaction and emotions, at individual levels, and to synthesize and integrate these explorations and to

formulate a comprehensive model providing a mechanism through which these different facets of motivation

link up with personality providing deeper insights into the anatomy of overall relation between the two

constructs.

Raja et al. (2002), in presenting their model considering how personality affects the formation of psychological

contracts, find it "surprising to note that although the distinctly personal nature of psychological contracts

suggest a pivotal role for personality, most research has looked at situational, rather than personal determinants

of contract formation, breach and, violation." Intrinsic motivation also has a distinctive personal and inherent

nature and as such the role of personality in its development and sustainability cannot be overlooked.

This paper explores the basis of the constructs personality (from the perspective of Big Five Model) and

intrinsic motivation and suggests a link-up through theoretical and empirical evidence presented step by step

and presenting specific arguments for the five suggested propositions.

The Construct: PERSONALITY

In our day-to-day life almost all of us make a conscious or at least subconscious assessment about other fellow

human beings: everyone is different. And different in nearly all conceivable ways, different in appearance, voice,

body language, habits, attitudes, behaviors, preferences and, the list goes on and on. These differences are

boundless and whether they remain insignificant and unnoticeable by others (Goldberg, 1990), they still are

there and with the changing global work practices, the impact of these differences or diversity is assuming all

the more importance. Whatever the history and outcome of these personal differences may be, one common

element accountable for these differences is our personality.

Personality theory has been an integral part of psychology and is basically concerned with framing and

evaluating models of human nature (Hogan, 1991) and for the past 25 years or so many theories and

frameworks of personality have been put forward. In this paper I will be following personality from the context

of Big Five Model or the Five Factor Model (FFM). But before coming to the FFM, let's first come to terms

with the concept of personality and the traits on which it is based.

Hogan (1991) defines personality at two levels; one which is open to others or public aspect and another,

internal or private level, where personality is referred to as "structures, dynamics, processes, and propensities

inside a person that explain why he or she behaves in a characteristic way." Personality, therefore, encompasses

both the public and private aspects of our behavior.

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Human Resource Development (HRM-627)

Traits, corresponding to two aspects of personality, also operate at two levels; on the one hand trait refers to

recurring regularities or trends in a person's behavior and on the other hand, trait also denotes psychological

features, attitudes, emotions, and ways of perceiving and thinking, the ways that exist inside a person and

explain the recurring tendencies in a person's behavior (Hogan, 1991). In short, traits are the stylistic

consistencies exhibited by individuals in their social behaviors or broadly referring to stable and consistent ways

of thinking, feeling, or acting exhibited by individuals (Judge, Locke & Durham, 1997). It is, however,

important to note that researchers acknowledge the major value of traits lying not in their usefulness in

predicting specific behaviors, but in their value as predictors of aggregated behavior, that is, of behavior in the

longer run averaged over many situations, occasions, and responses (Epstein & O'Brien, 1985).

Why Choose Big Five Framework?

Big Five Framework has a reasonably long history to its credit and has endured many a tests imposed on it by

personality researchers, and the recent verdict on FFM by Funder (2001) is that it is," "latitude and longitude"

along which any new personality construct should be routinely mapped.

Sir Francis Galton was probably among the first scientists to recognize explicitly the fundamental lexical

hypothesis, meaning that most important individual differences in human behavior can be encoded as single

terms in some or all of the world's languages (Goldberg, 1990). Galton (1884) is known to have come up with

full one thousand words expressing human character. Thurstone, a pioneer in the development of factor

analysis, later on in 1934, developed a list of sixty adjectives for describing people. It was the application of

factor analysis on these sixty adjectives that identified five factors as we know them today. By1936, the

personality taxonomy of Raymond B. Cattell. Allport and Odbert, catalogued about 18,000 such terms.

Personality researchers have utilized two prominent systems for naming the five factors, one derived from the

lexical tradition and one from the questionnaire tradition (McCrae & John, 1992). Many writers take Norman's

(1963) annunciation of an "adequate taxonomy of personality attributes" derived from Cattell's reduction of

natural language trait terms as the formal beginning of the FFM, and the factor numbers and names Norman

chose I: Extraversion or Surgency; II: Agreeableness; III: Conscientiousness; IV: Emotional Stability; and V:

Culture are often used to this day. Peabody and Goldberg (1989) have noted that the order in which these

factors emerged roughly parallels their representation among English language trait items in the dictionary.

The second tradition that led to the modern FFM comes from the analysis of questionnaires, and particularly

from the work of H.J. Eysenck, who identified Extraversion (E) and Neuroticism (N) as major components of

psychological tests.

The five factor model so obtained was later reaffirmed by Fiske (1949) and Tupes and Christal (1961). It was

later corroborated in four subsequent studies by Borgatta (1964), Hakel (1974), Norman (1963) and, Smith

(1967). Borgatta's findings are considered especially noteworthy because he obtained five stable factors across

five methods of data gathering. Norman's work is also especially significant because his labels (Extraversion,

Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Culture) are used commonly in the literature and

have been referred to, subsequently, as "Norman's Big Five" or simply as the "Big Five" (Barrick & Mount,

1991).

This nomenclature and taxonomy development is a major achievement of the FFM as one of the difficulties

with personality studies previously conducted is that they lacked a coherent and uniform taxonomy resulting in

a wide variety of personality traits being measured, utilizing a mixture of different types of methodologies. The

emergence of the Big Five personality model has been widely accepted as a valid and reasonably generalized

taxonomy for personality structure and has been used by numerous researchers as a framework to explore the

criterion-related validity of personality in relation to job performance and other industrial settings (Clarke &

Robertson, 2005). Research in the recent years has demonstrated the generalizability of FFM and the Big Five

personality marker studies conducted in New Zealand showed great similarity with US findings in terms of

their relation to job satisfaction and contextual performance criteria (Guenole & Chernyshenko, 2005). This is a

major advantage of using the FFM as it provides the opportunity for integrating commonalities among diverse

approaches to personality, and hence making the Big Five particularly useful for cumulating results across

studies (Bono & Judge, 2004).

Digman reported in 1990 that, "in the past 10 years, the views of many personality psychologists have

converged regarding the structure and concepts of personality. Generally, researchers agree that there are five

robust factors of personality which can serve as a meaningful taxonomy for classifying personality attributes".

There are many work area and fields in industrial and organizational psychology where FFM has been put to

rigorous tests. One such area is job performance and job satisfaction where numerous studies and meta-

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Human Resource Development (HRM-627)

analyses during the past 15 years (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Judge, Locke & Durham, 1997; Witt, Burke, Barrick

& Mount, 2002; Judge & Mount, 2002; Barrick, Stewart & Piotroweski, 2002; Judge, Heller & Mount, 2002;

Judge & Llies, 2003; Thoresen, Bradley, Bliese & Thoresen, 2004) have not only confirmed the dispositional

impact on performance and satisfaction, but have also, repeatedly confirmed the validity and applicability of the

FFM across different occupations, job situations and with varying samples.

In more recent times researchers have linked up FFM with more diverse fields. FFM has been linked with

accident propensities in occupational and non occupational settings (Clarke & Robertson, 2005), longevity and

health behavior in a study involving US presidents, from Washington to Nixon (McCaan, 2005), cross-cultural

investigation of work values (Furnham, Petrides, Tsaousis, Pappas & Garrod, 2005; Aluja & Garcia, 2004),

adult attachment and job mobility (Van Vianen, Feij, Krauz & Taris, 2003), general mental ability and career

success (Judge & Higgins, 1999), formation and violation of psychological contracts (Raja, Ntalianis & Johns,

2002), transformational and transactional leadership (Bono & Judge, 2004) etc. FFM has also withstood the

demands imposed on it through testing its measuring instruments and their validity and reliability. Guenole and

Chernyshenko (2005) found FFM to be generalizable across cultures in their study on Big Five personality

markers and evaluation of its criterion validity. Similarly Bernard, Walsh & Mills (2005) reported their findings

in Counseling & Clinical Psychology Journal about the comparative validity of various measures of five factors.

In short the empirical status of FFM shows evidence of comprehensiveness. In the words of McCrae & John

(1992),"Amelang and Borkenau (1982) collected both self-reports and peer ratings on a set of German

adjective trait rating scales, and self-reports on a diverse set of personality inventories. Five factors were found

in each data set which showed some similarities to the standard five." McCrae and Costa (1985 & 1987)

showed convergence for all five factors across both observers and instruments. McCrae & John (1992) also

report similar findings by Goldberg (1989), Ostendorf (1990), and Trapnell and Wiggins (1990). Similarly, the

subsequent research on questionnaire measures, such as, Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) and NEO

Personality Inventory confirm the comprehensiveness of the FFM.

THE OUTCOME OF FIVE FACTOR MODEL

I will now turn to the heart of this paper by formulating profiles of the five components of the FFM. I will use

Goldberg's (1990) approach of developing two poles for each of the component so that a clear picture of the

whole continuum emerges.

Extraversion

According Raja, Ntalianis & John (2002), "extraversion is one of the most widely researched personality traits

from the Big Five personality taxonomy" (Borgatta, 1964; Goldberg, 1990; Hakel, 1974, McCrae & Costa,

1989; Norman, 1963). They also assert that, "according to Hogan (1983) ambition and sociability are the two

primary components that synthesize extraversion. However, more recent research has illustrated that

extraversion is a multifaceted dimension synthesized by several other components" (Watson & Clark, 1997).

Bono & Judge (2004) point out the other components formulating extraversion when they report Depue and

Collins (1999) arguing that, "extraversion is composed of two central components, affiliation (having and

valuing warm personal relationships) and agency (being socially dominant, assertive, and influential). Positive

emotionality is at the core of extraversion extraverts experience and express positive emotions."

The following bipolar list of narrow or specific traits provides a description of extraversion: (The traits under

positive pole are those which are exhibited by individuals high on extraversion whereas those under negative

pole are the ones shown by individuals low on extraversion, not the traditional connotations associated with

the words positive and negative).

Positive Pole of Extraversion

Sociable

High sensation seekers

Vanity

Gregarious

Experiencing

positive

Sensuality

emotions (PA)

Assertive

Lower level of vigilance

Spirit

Talkative

More liable to be involved in

Spontaneity

accidents

Active

Boisterousness

Decrement in performance

Energetic

under monotonous conditions

Conceit

Enthusiastic

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Human Resource Development (HRM-627)

Negative Pole of Extraversion

Unfriendliness

Un aggressive

Lethargy

Reserved

Passive

Aloofness

Shy

Pessimist

Silence

Inhibited

Modesty

II.

Agreeableness

Individuals high in agreeableness basically value affiliation and avoid conflict (Bono & Judge, 2004). As the

name of the factor suggests, these individuals are generally easy to get along and are quite friendly. One of their

basic trait is flexibility; their ability to adapt and adjust in different situations and circumstances. That is

probably the reason why agreeableness has also been named as friendliness, social conformity and more

recently as likeability (Noller, Law & Comrey, 1987). According to Raja et al. agreeableness, in the context of

psychological contract formation, "refers to preference for interpersonal relationships and social interactions

that are socially desirable. In contrast to extraverts, agreeables are flexible and generous and do not have a high

desire for economic rewards and status (Costa & McCrae, 1992; Goldberg, 1990). They are adept at problem

solving and uninclined to engage in conflict and acts of hostility. Agreeables themselves feel more secure when

they act as team rather than individual players (Antonioni, 1998). They are ready to give up their personal

interests to satisfy the concerns of other parties (Rahim, 1992). Its high levels are associated with dependency,

passivity, and symptoms of excessive conformity. Less vigilant, will have lower expectations, greater desire for

stability, security and relationships".

Positive Pole of Agreeableness

Trust, compliance & altruism

Courteous

Appreciative

Flexible

Generous

Friendly compliance

Trusting

Kind

Having Humane aspect of

humanity

Sympathetic

Good natured

Amiability

Pleasant

Cooperative

Moral

Not defensive

Forgiving

Warm

Soft hearted

Easy to get along

Natural

Tolerant

Tactful

Negative Pole of Agreeableness

Stubborn

Hostility

Over critical

Indifference to others

Antagonist

Distrusting

Self-centered

Dogmatic

Selfish

Spiteful

Belligerent

Callous

Cunning

Jealous

Bossy

Hostile noncompliance

Rude

Prejudiced

Vindictive

Cruel

Unfriendly

Volatile

Ill humor

Pompous

Stinging

Disdainful

Irritable

Thoughtless

III.

Conscientiousness

Conscientious people are described as organized, reliable, hardworking, determined, self-disciplined and

achievement oriented (Barrick, Stewart & Piotroweski, 2002). Along with extraversion, Conscientiousness is

also one of the extensively studied factors of the Big Five model.

At its roots, conscientiousness relates to a desire to exercise self-control and autonomy and thereby to follow

the dictates of one's conscience (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Therefore most of the conscientious employees' main

focus is task accomplishment and fulfillment of obligations and are high on accomplishment striving, which

reflects an individual's intentions to accomplish tasks and is characterized by a high task orientation (Barrick et

al, 2002).

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Human Resource Development (HRM-627)

Raja et al. (2002) denotes conscientiousness as related with two major facets of achievement and dependability

while Bono & Judge (2004) credit these individuals with a tendency to have a strong sense of direction and

working hard to achieve their goals. In a unique study on the health behavior of US presidents, McCaan (2005),

associate conscientiousness with a feeling of general well being and having perception of good health. Since

conscientiousness is related with task achievement and accomplishment, it is no surprise when people high on

it are also linked with higher educational achievements (Smith, 1967; Wiggens et al, 1969; Digman, 1972). As a

matter of fact the will to achieve, accomplish, organize and order is so basic to the theme of conscientiousness

that Digman (1990) has used it interchangeably with the word "will".

In their constellation approach to examine personality's influence on work behavior, (cross-dimensional effects

of personality traits), Witt, Barrick, Burke & Mount (2002) identify the existence of, "a particularly relevant

interaction effect between conscientiousness and agreeableness in explaining job performance." This seems

quite plausible as one can easily foresee as to what can the combined effect of will (conscientiousness) and

flexibility (agreeableness) could do to job performance!

Positive Pole of Conscientiousness

Thoroughness in decision making

Mature

Organized

Feeling of well being

Passionless

Achievement oriented

Perception of good health

Logical

Persevering

Will

Conventional

Efficient

Link with educational achievements

Punctual

Planners

Dependable

Decisive

Reliable

Careful

Dignified

Industrious

Thorough

Precise

Evangelists (zealous)

Responsible

Graceful

Negative Pole of Conscientiousness

Negligent

Forgetful

Rebellious

Reckless

Irreverent (profane)

Aimless

Provincial (awkward, unrefined)

Sloth

Self-indulgent (excessive)

Frivolous

Disorganized

Non conforming

Inconsistent