MGT 301 Saudi Electronic University Chapter 10 Cognitive and Emotional Abilities Essay

User Generated

Mnuennyq

Writing

MGT 301

Saudi electronic university

MGT

Description

Unformatted Attachment Preview

.‫المملكة العربية السعودية‬ ‫وزارة التعليم‬ ‫الجامعة السعودية اإللكترونية‬ College of Administrative and Financial Sciences Assignment 2 Deadline: 20/11/2021 @ 23:59 Course Name: Organizational Behavior Student’s Name: Course Code: MGT301 Student’s ID Number: Semester: 1st CRN: Academic Year: 2021/2022 G For Instructor’s Use only Instructor’s Name: Dr xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Students’ Grade: 00/ 05 Level of Marks: High/Middle/Low Instructions – PLEASE READ THEM CAREFULLY • The Assignment must be submitted on Blackboard (WORD format only) via allocated folder. • Assignments submitted through email will not be accepted. • Students are advised to make their work clear and well presented; marks may be reduced for poor presentation. This includes filling your information on the cover page. • Students must mention question number clearly in their answer. • Late submission will NOT be accepted. • Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or other resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions. • All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) font. No pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism). • Submissions without this cover page will NOT be accepted. Course Learning Outcomes-Covered 1 Evaluate ethical issues as related to organizational behavior and decision making from an individual and organization perspective. (CLO6). Assignment 2 Reference Source: Textbook:Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., & Wesson, M. J. (2019). Organizational behaviour: Improving performance and commitment in the workplace (6th ed). Burr Ridge, IL: McGraw-Hill Irwin. Case Study: - Case: FBI Please read the case “FBI” from Chapter 10 “ABILITY” Page: - 328 given in your textbook – Organizational behaviour: Improving performance and commitment in the workplace (6th ed). by Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., & Wesson, M. J. (2019) and Answer the following Questions: Assignment Question(s): 1. Which specific cognitive and emotional abilities are likely to be most important for FBI special agents? Explain. (1.25 Marks ) (Min words 150-200) 2. Identify the specific physical abilities that are assessed in the FBI’s annual physical fitness test. Describe the responsibilities of special agents for which these abilities are likely to be most important. (1.25 Marks ) (Min words 150-200) 3. How might the frequency of various special agent responsibilities make it important to test for physical abilities (but not cognitive or emotional abilities) on an annual basis? Explain. (1.25 Marks ) (Min words 200) Part:-2 Discussion question: - Please read Chapter 10 “ABILITY” Carefully and then give your answers on the basis of your understanding. 4. What combination of abilities is appropriate for the job of your dreams? Do you possess those abilities? If you fall short on any of these abilities, what could you do to improve? (1.25 Marks ) (Min words 200-300) Important Note: - Support your submission with course material concepts, principles, and theories from the textbook and at least two scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles. Due date for the submission of Assignment:- 2 • Assignment-2 should posted in the Black Board by end of Week-09. • The due date for the submission of Assignment-2 is end of Week-11. Answer: 1. 2. 3. . . 10 Ability ORGANIZATIONAL MECHANISMS Organizational Culture Organizational Structure INDIVIDUAL MECHANISMS Job Satisfaction GROUP MECHANISMS Leadership: Styles & Behaviors Stress Job Performance Leadership: Power & Negotiation Motivation Teams: Processes & Communication Teams: Characteristics & Diversity INDIVIDUAL OUTCOMES Trust, Justice, & Ethics Organizational Commitment Learning & Decision Making INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS Ability Personality & Cultural Values LEARNING GOALS After reading this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions: 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 What is ability? What are the various types of cognitive ability? What are the various types of emotional ability? What are the various types of physical ability? How does cognitive ability affect job performance and organizational commitment? What steps can organizations take to hire people with high levels of cognitive ability? ©Marmaduke St. John/Alamy FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION I f you go to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s home page, you’ll see links to lists of most wanted criminals, terrorists, and victims of kidnappings and other missing persons. You might also see an announcement regarding the filing of charges against computer hackers, or a warning to the public regarding a new type of investment fraud. In fact, it won’t take you long to realize that the scope of the FBI’s responsibilities is remarkably broad. The agency not only provides assistance to municipal, state, federal, and international law enforcement agencies, but it also conducts investigations into cybercrime, business crime, public corruption, and terrorism. If that’s not enough, the FBI also runs programs that provide assistance to crime victims and their families. With all these responsibilities, it should not be surprising to learn that there are many different types of jobs at the FBI. The first job that might come to mind is that of the special agent who does things like plan operations, interview suspects, and piece clues together to solve crimes. However, carrying out the agency’s mission also requires intelligence analysts, surveillance specialists, and linguists. Additionally, the FBI employs professionals involved in specialized fields such as accounting and finance, communications, counseling, engineering, law, mathematics, and medicine. So, what are the implications to the FBI of having employees involved in so many different types of jobs? Although the FBI seeks to hire personnel who have similar values and regard for the role of justice in society, the agency also needs people who possess the specific abilities required for the specific jobs that need to be filled. To accomplish this, the FBI conducts extensive testing of job-specific abilities during the hiring process. For example, when hiring intelligence analysts, the FBI tests for whether applicants possess strong reasoning abilities. This is because intelligence analysts need to be able to identify potential causes for a problem, critically evaluate hypotheses regarding potential causes in light of available information, and draw sound conclusions as to which hypothesis is most likely. As another example, the FBI tests for perceptual abilities of those interested in becoming surveillance specialists. This is because surveillance personnel need to pay attention to details and recognize patterns in observations of people and objects. The FBI’s hiring process is expensive and time-consuming; however, it believes that the safety of the United States and its citizens depends on having personnel with abilities that are tailored to the requirements of specific jobs. 306 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability ABILITY 10.1 What is ability? Few people have the physical abilities necessary to compete with professional golfers such as Annika Sorenstam, who is widely considered to be the top female golfer of all time. The topic of ability is probably already familiar to you. This is because “ability” is an everyday word in our language, and we’ve all developed a pretty good understanding of our own abilities. All of us have experience doing things that require different abilities, and we received feedback, in one form or another, as to how well we did. So knowing that you’re already familiar with the topic of ability, why would we write an entire chapter on it for this textbook? Well for one thing, there are many different abilities, some of which are important but might not be as familiar to you. Another reason we’ve included a chapter on ability is, although it might seem obvious that abilities are highly related to effectiveness in jobs, this relationship is truer in some circumstances than in others. Finally, it may be useful to understand how organizations use information about abilities to make good managerial decisions. Our chapter is organized around these three issues. Ability refers to the relatively stable capabilities people have to perform a particular range of different but related activities.1 In contrast to skills, which can be improved over time with training and experience, ability is relatively stable. Although abilities can change slowly over time with instruction, repeated practice, and repetition, the level of a given ability generally limits how much a person can improve, even with the best training in the world. One reason for this stability relates to the “nature vs. nurture” question, an issue that has been much debated in OB (see Chapter 9 on personality and cultural values for more discussion of such issues). So, are abilities a function of our genes, or are they something we develop as a function of our experiences and surroundings? As it turns out, abilities are a function of both genes and the environment, and the amount attributable to each source depends somewhat on the nature of the ability. Consider for a moment abilities that are physical in nature. Although training that involves weightlifting, dancing, and swimming can improve a person’s strength, equilibrium, and endurance, there are limits to how much improvement is possible. As an example, there are millions of people who take golf lessons and practice their swing for countless hours on a driving range, yet the vast majority of these people could never compete in a professional golf tournament because they just can’t manage to consistently hit that little white ball straight or far enough. As an example of abilities that are cognitive in nature, you likely know people who, even if they went to the best schools on earth, would have great difficulty doing well in jobs such as theoretical astrophysics that require a lot of brainpower. For abilities that are more cognitive in nature, such as those we mentioned in the chapter opening, it appears that genes and the environment play roughly equal roles.2 However, differences in cognitive abilities due to the environment become less apparent as people get older, and this may be especially true for the effect of the family environment.3 As an example, though neglect, abuse, and deprivation may have a negative impact on how children fare on standardized intelligence tests, that negative impact does not tend to carry over into adulthood. Beyond the family situation, there are some other factors in the environment that affect cognitive ability.4 For instance, the quantity of schooling may be important because it provides opportunities for people to develop knowledge and critical thinking skills.5 There’s also evi©John Gress/AP Images dence that our choice of occupations C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability 307 may influence our cognitive abilities. Complex work develops and exercises our minds, which promotes higher performance on intelligence tests.6 Finally, certain biological factors are known to affect cognitive abilities negatively during childhood. Examples include malnutrition, exposure to toxins such as lead, and prenatal exposure to alcohol. In fact, over the last century average scores on standardized intelligence tests have risen significantly in industrialized countries as the quality and availability of education and health factors have improved, and the complexity of life has increased.7 WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR AN EMPLOYEE TO BE “ABLE”? As the examples in the previous paragraphs imply, there are different types of ability. Whereas the golf example refers to physical ability, the theoretical astrophysics example refers to cognitive ability. In fact, there are many different facets of ability, and they can be grouped into subsets by considering similarities in the nature of the activities involved. As we’ll talk about in the sections to follow, abilities can be grouped into three general categories: cognitive, emotional, and physical. As our OB Internationally feature illustrates, there may be some abilities that do not fit neatly into one of these three categories. Nevertheless, all abilities refer to what people can do. That’s in contrast to personality (the subject of Chapter 9), which refers to what people are like or what people will likely do. As with personality, organizational personnel and hiring systems focus on finding applicants who possess abilities that match the requirements of a given job. COGNITIVE ABILITY Cognitive ability refers to capabilities related to the acquisition and application of knowledge in problem solving.8 Cognitive abilities are very relevant in the jobs most of you will be involved with—that is, work involving the use of information to make decisions and solve problems. Chances are good that your cognitive abilities have been tested several times throughout your life. In fact, each year millions of children in the United States take standardized tests of intelligence at some point during elementary school, middle school, or high school.9 Although you might not remember taking one of these, you probably remember taking the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT). And though you probably thought about the SAT as a test that would have a major impact only on where you could and could not go to college, the SAT is actually a test of cognitive ability. You might also remember that the SAT included a variety of different questions; some tested your ability to do math problems, whereas other questions assessed your ability to complete sentences and make analogies. In fact, the different types of questions reflect specific types of cognitive ability that contribute to effectiveness on intellectual tasks. Table 10-1 lists many of these cognitive ability types, along with their specific facets and some jobs in which they’re thought to be important. The definitions and information in this table, as well as that discussed in the following sections, comes from research that produced a public database called O*NET, which outlines requirements of employees in different types of jobs and occupations.10 VERBAL ABILITY Verbal ability refers to various capabilities associated with understanding and expressing oral and written communication. Oral comprehension is the ability to understand spoken words and sentences, and written comprehension is the ability to understand written words and sentences. Although these two aspects of verbal ability would seem highly related—that is, people who have high oral comprehension would tend to have high written comprehension, and vice versa—it’s not difficult to think of people who might be high on one ability but low on the other. As an example, it’s been reported that as a result of his dyslexia, actor Tom Cruise has poor written comprehension and can learn his lines only after listening to them on tape.11 10.2 What are the various types of cognitive ability? 308 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability OB INTERNATIONALLY What makes some people more or less effective in culturally diverse organizational contexts? According to some, the answer to this question is cultural intelligence, or the ability to discern differences among people that are due to culture and to understand what these differences mean in terms of the way people tend to think and behave in different situations. There are three sources of cultural intelligence that correspond to the “head,” “body,” and “heart.” The source of cultural intelligence that corresponds to the head is called cognitive cultural intelligence. This concept refers to the ability to sense differences among people due to culture and to use this knowledge in planning how to interact with others in anticipation of a cross-cultural encounter. The source of cultural intelligence that corresponds to the body is called physical cultural intelligence, which refers to the ability to adapt one’s behavior when a cultural encounter requires it. Finally, the source of cultural intelligence that corresponds to the heart is called emotional cultural intelligence. This concept refers to the level of effort and persistence an individual exerts when trying to understand and adapt to new cultures. Understanding cultural intelligence may be useful because it’s an ability that can be improved through training. A training program could begin with an assessment to identify sources of cultural intelligence that may be weak. Consider, for example, an individual who is very knowledgeable about the customs and norms of another culture and is very willing to learn more, but who just can’t alter her body language and eye contact so that it’s appropriate for the other culture. In this particular case, the aim of the training would be to improve physical cultural intelligence. The individual might be asked to study video that contrasts correct and incorrect body language and eye contact. The individual might also be asked to engage in role-playing exercises to model the appropriate behavior and receive feedback from an expert. Finally, the individual might be asked to take acting classes. Although an organization may rely on improvements in employee cultural intelligence that result from exposure to new cultures and cross-cultural experiences, the costs of poor performance in cross-cultural contexts can be significant for both the employee and the organization, and therefore, training on cultural intelligence may have great utility. Sources: P.C. Earley and S. Ang, Cultural Intelligence: Individual Interactions across Cultures (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); P.C. Earley and E. Mosakowski, “Cultural Intelligence,” Harvard Business Review 82 (2004), pp. 139–46; L. Imai and M.J. Gelfand, “The Culturally Intelligent Negotiator: The Impact of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) on Negotiation Sequences and Outcomes,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 112 (2010), pp. 83–98; and M.M. Chao, R. Takeuchi, and J.L. Farh. “Enhancing Cultural Intelligence: The Roles of Implicit Culture Beliefs and Adjustment.” Personnel Psychology 70 (2017), pp. 257–92. Two other verbal abilities are oral expression, which refers to the ability to communicate ideas by speaking, and written expression, which refers to the ability to communicate ideas in writing. Again, though it might seem that these abilities should be highly related, this is not necessarily so. You may have taken a class with a professor who had authored several well-regarded books and articles, but at the same time, had a very difficult time expressing concepts and theories to students. Although there could be many reasons this might happen, one explanation is that the professor had high ability in terms of written expression but low ability in terms of oral expression. Generally speaking, verbal abilities are most important in jobs in which effectiveness depends on understanding and communicating ideas and information to others. As an example, the effectiveness of business executives depends on their ability to consider information from reports and other executives and staff, as well as their ability to articulate a vision and strategy that promotes employee understanding. As another example, consider how important the verbal abilities of a C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability TABLE 10-1 TYPE 309 Types and Facets of Cognitive Ability MORE SPECIFIC FACET JOBS WHERE RELEVANT Verbal Oral and Written Comprehension: Understanding written and spoken words and sentences Oral and Written Expression: Communicating ideas by speaking or writing so that others can understand Business executives; police, fire, and ambulance dispatchers; clinical psychologists Quantitative Number Facility: Performing basic math operations quickly and correctly Mathematical Reasoning: Selecting the right method or formula to solve a problem Treasurers; financial managers; mathematical technicians; statisticians Reasoning Problem Sensitivity: Understanding when there is a problem or when something may go wrong Deductive Reasoning: Applying general rules to specific problems Inductive Reasoning: Combining specific information to form general conclusions Originality: Developing new ideas Anesthesiologists; surgeons; business executives; fire inspectors; judges; police detectives; forensic scientists; cartoonists; designers Spatial Spatial Orientation: Knowing where one is relative to objects in the environment Visualization: Imagining how something will look after it has been rearranged Pilots; drivers; boat captains; photographers; set designers; sketch artists Perceptual Speed and Flexibility of Closure: Making sense of information and finding patterns Perceptual Speed: Comparing information or objects with remembered information or objects Musicians; firefighters; police officers; pilots; mail clerks; inspectors Sources: Adapted from E.A. Fleishman, D.P. Costanza, and J. Marshall-Mies, “Abilities,” in An Occupational Information System for the 21st Century: The Development of O*NET, ed. N.G. Peterson, M.D. Mumford, W.C. Borman, P.R. Jeanneret, and E.A. Fleishman (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1999), pp. 175–95; and O*NET Website, The O*NET Content Model: Detailed Outline With Descriptions, http://www.onetcenter.org/content.html/1.a?d=1#cm_1.a (accessed May 20, 2009). 9-1-1 dispatcher might be if a loved one suddenly became ill and stopped breathing. QUANTITATIVE ABILITY Quantitative ability refers to two types of mathematical capabilities. The first is number facility, which is the capability to do simple math operations (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing). The second is mathematical reasoning, which refers to the ability to choose and apply formulas to solve problems that involve numbers. If you think back to the SAT,  ©Universal Pictures/Photofest Tom Cruise has dyslexia, and he struggles with written comprehension. He learns the lines for his movies by listening to them on tape. 310 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability you can probably remember problems such as the following: “There were two trains 800 miles apart, and they were traveling toward each other on the same track. The first train began traveling at noon and averaged 45 miles per hour. The second train started off two hours later. What speed did the second train average if the two trains smashed into each other at 10:00 p.m. of the same day?” Although number facility may be necessary to solve this problem, mathematical reasoning is crucial because the test taker needs to know which formulas to apply. Although most of us wish that problems like this would be limited to test-taking contexts (especially this particular problem), there are countless situations in which quantitative abilities are important. For example, consider the importance of quantitative ability in jobs involving statistics, accounting, and engineering. Quantitative abilities may be important in less complex, lower-level jobs as well. Have you ever been at a fast-food restaurant or convenience store when the cash register wasn’t working and the clerk couldn’t manage to count out change correctly or quickly? If you have, you witnessed a very good example of low quantitative ability, and perhaps some very annoyed customers as well. As another example of a job that requires high quantitative ability, see our OB on Screen feature. REASONING ABILITY Reasoning ability is actually a diverse set of abilities associated with sensing and solving problems using insight, rules, and logic. The first reasoning ability, problem sensitivity, is the ability to sense that there’s a problem right now or likely to be one in the near future. In essence, problem sensitivity is the ability to sense that things just aren’t right, or are not tracking correctly or as expected. Anesthesiology is a great example of a job for which problem sensitivity is crucial. Before surgeries, anesthesiologists give drugs to patients so that surgical procedures can take place without the patients experiencing pain. However, during the surgery, patients can have negative reactions to the drugs that might result in the loss of life. So the ability of the anesthesiologist to sense when something is wrong even before the problem is fully apparent can be a life-or-death matter. A second type of reasoning ability is called deductive reasoning. This ability refers to the use of general rules or hypotheses as a starting point to solve a problem. Individuals who possess high deductive reasoning ability are able reach effective conclusions by comparing how available information fits with an existing rule or hypothesis. When information is consistent with the rule or hypothesis, the solution follows accordingly. When information is not consistent with a rule or hypothesis, then the information is considered in light of a different rule or hypothesis, and the process begins anew. Judges need to have strong deductive reasoning abilities because their job involves the consideration of facts in light of existing rules of law to reach verdicts. In contrast, inductive reasoning refers to the ability to consider several specific pieces of information to generate a hypothesis and a plausible solution. Individuals with high inductive reasoning ability are able to produce solutions to problems by synthesizing available data and information. Inductive reasoning is required of police detectives and crime scene investigators who must consider things like tire tracks, blood spatter, fibers, and fingerprints to reach conclusions about likely perpetrators of crimes and causes of death. Finally, originality refers to the ability to develop clever and novel ways to solve problems. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two founders of Google, provide good examples of originality. They not only developed the Internet search software that gave Google a competitive advantage, and created the first completely new advertising medium in nearly half a century, but they also refuse to follow conventional wisdom when it comes to managerial practices and business decisions.12 Clearly, originality is important in a wide variety of occupations, but in some jobs, originality is the most critical ability. For example, a cartoonist, designer, writer, or advertising executive without originality would find it difficult to be successful. SPATIAL ABILITY There are two main types of spatial ability, or capabilities associated with visual and mental representation and manipulation of objects in space. The first is called spatial orientation, which refers to a good understanding of where one is relative to other things in the environment. A tourist with high spatial organization would have no trouble finding her way back to her hotel on foot after a long day of sightseeing, even without a map or help from anyone on the street. The second spatial ability is called visualization, which is the ability to imagine how separate things will look if they were put together in a particular way. If you’re good at imagining how a room would look if it were rearranged, or if your friends are impressed that you can buy things that go together well, chances are that you would score high on visualization. C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability OB ON SCREEN HIDDEN FIGURES What I’m asking you to do, what I’m asking everyone in that room, all my geniuses, is to look beyond the numbers, to look around them, through them, to ask the questions we don’t even know how to ask, at math that doesn’t yet exist, because without it, we’re not going anywhere. With those words, head of NASA’s Space Task Group, Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) tries to convey a sense of urgency to his group of mathematicians, in the movie Hidden Figures (Dir. Theodore Melfi, Levantine Films, 2017). In 1961 the United States was in a race with the Soviet Union to establish supremacy in space. The Soviets had beaten the United States in getting the first satellite and human to orbit the earth, and in order to avoid falling further behind, Harrison needed his mathematicians to figure out how to calculate the trajectory of a spacecraft that’s subject to changing forces of gravity. Electronic computers were in their infancy, so NASA relied upon on a team of math gurus to apply mathematical theories and formulas, and to perform large numbers of calculations by hand. Fortunately, Katherine Johnson (Taraji Henson), an extraordinarily gifted NASA employee, had just joined Harrison’s group of human “computers.” ©Moviestore collection Ltd/Alamy Throughout the film, there are examples of Katherine’s quantitative abilities. In one scene, for example, Katherine is invited by Harrison to a meeting of high-level NASA employees who were trying to solve problems related to the launch and recovery of Friendship 7. Astronaut John Glenn, who was slated to orbit the earth in this spacecraft, was particularly impressed when Katherine stepped up to a blackboard with a piece of chalk and worked through a long series of equations to produce the latitude and longitude where he would land. Glenn’s trust in Katherine’s quantitative abilities was evident later in the film when he refused to launch in Friendship 7 until she double checked calculations performed by others and a new IBM computer. What makes this true story even more remarkable is that Katherine Johnson is an African American who worked in an era of racial segregation and male dominance in the sciences and mathematics. Her accomplishments at NASA not only speak to her remarkable quantitative abilities, but also her amazing determination and perseverance. PERCEPTUAL ABILITY Perceptual ability refers to being able to perceive, understand, and recall patterns of information. More specifically, speed and flexibility of closure refers to being able to pick out a pattern of information quickly in the presence of distracting information, even without all the information present. People who work for the Central Intelligence Agency likely need speed and flexibility of closure to break secret codes. Related to this ability is perceptual speed, which refers to being able to 311 312 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability Pilots flying in conditions where there’s poor visibility have to rely on various instruments and their spatial ability to visualize their absolute position and, just as important, their position relative to other objects, some of which are also moving. examine and compare numbers, letters, and objects quickly. If you can go into the produce section of a supermarket and choose the best tomatoes faster than the people around you, chances are you have high perceptual speed. Effectiveness in jobs in which people need to proofread documents, sort things, or categorize objects depends a lot on perceptual speed. GENERAL COGNITIVE ABILITY  If you’ve read the preceding sections carefully, you probably thought about where you stand on the different types of cognitive abilities. In doing so, you may have also reached the conclusion that you’re higher on some of these abilities and lower on others. Maybe ©Steve Bloom/Getty Images you think of yourself as being smart in verbal abilities but not as smart in quantitative abilities. In fact, most people score more similarly across their cognitive abilities than they realize. People who are higher than average on verbal abilities also tend to be higher than average on reasoning, quantitative, spatial, and perceptual abilities, and people who are lower than average on verbal abilities tend to be lower than average on the other abilities. Although this consistency might not apply to everyone, it applies often enough that researchers have been trying to understand why this occurs for well over 100 years.13 The most popular explanation for the consistency in the levels of different cognitive abilities within people is that there’s a general cognitive ability—sometimes called the g-factor or simply g— that underlies or causes all of the more specific cognitive abilities we’ve discussed so far.14 To understand what this means more clearly, consider the diagram in Figure 10-1 that depicts general cognitive ability as the area in common across the more specific cognitive abilities that we’ve discussed. This overlap exists because each of the specific abilities depends somewhat on the brain’s ability to process information effectively. So, because some brains are capable of processing information more effectively than others, some people tend to score higher across the specific abilities, whereas others tend to score lower. You’re probably familiar with the intelligence quotient, which is known as IQ. Well, IQ was something originally used in educational contexts to diagnose learning disabilities, and accordingly, tests to measure IQ were developed using questions with which students with learning disabilities might struggle. IQ tests were then scaled as a percentage that indicated a person’s mental age relative to his or her chronological age. IQ scores lower than 100 were interpreted as indicating a potential learning or educational deficiency, whereas scores higher than 100 were interpreted as indicating that someone was particularly bright for his or her age. However, it turns out that IQ tests and tests of general cognitive ability are often quite similar in terms of the types of questions included, and more importantly, scores on the two types of tests say pretty much the same thing about the people who take them.15 Does a high IQ boost effectiveness of people in work contexts? We’ll discuss this matter in some detail later, but it’s worth pointing out here that IQ is associated with outcomes that are very relevant to you, your employer, and perhaps society in general.16 For example, researchers have shown that individuals with higher IQ tend to be healthier and economically better off, and as a consequence of these two factors, they tend to feel happier and more satisfied with their lives.17 They also tend to have fewer accidents that cause injury, less cardiovascular disease, and not surprisingly given the first two associations, they also tend to live longer.18 Although the explanation for these relationships is not altogether clear, it’s likely that people with higher IQ become more knowledgeable about the prevention and management of injury and disease, and in addition, may have advantages with respect to the availability of health care and knowledge that helps them adapt to challenging circumstances.19 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability FIGURE 10-1 The “g-factor” Verbal Quantitative Spatial g Perceptual Reasoning Source: Adapted from J.J. Johnson and J.B. Cullen, “Trust in Cross-Cultural Relationships,” in Blackwell Handbook of Cross-Cultural Management, ed. M.J. Gannon and K.L. Newman (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 335–60. EMOTIONAL ABILITY Consider the case of Dick Snyder, who headed the publishing firm Simon & Schuster. He seemed unable to control or perceive his emotions, and he regularly blew up at and humiliated his subordinates.20 To make matters worse, he didn’t understand that his lack of emotional control and understanding was having a negative impact on his team, and he eventually was fired, despite leading his company to higher levels of earnings. In this section of the chapter, we describe the concept of emotional ability—precisely the type of ability that Dick Snyder appears to lack. So how is emotional ability different than cognitive ability? Most of us know someone who is very smart from a “cognitive ability” or IQ standpoint, but at the same time, the person just can’t manage to be effective in real-world situations that involve other people. As an example, you may have played Trivial Pursuit with a group of friends and found someone at the table who could not only answer the majority of the questions correctly but also managed to say odd or inappropriate things throughout the game. You may also know someone who doesn’t seem very “book smart” but always seems able to get things done and says the right things at the right time. In the context of the same Trivial Pursuit game, such a person might have answered most of the game questions incorrectly but, sensing how uncomfortable and angry people were becoming with the annoying player, made jokes to lighten things up. In fact, for several decades now, researchers have been investigating whether there’s a type of ability that influences the degree to which people tend to be effective in social situations, regardless of their level of cognitive abilities.21 Although there has been some debate among these researchers,22 many believe now that there’s a human ability that affects social functioning, called emotional intelligence.23 Emotional intelligence is defined in terms of a set of distinct but related abilities, which we describe next.24 SELF-AWARENESS The first type of emotional intelligence is self-awareness, or the appraisal and expression of emotions in oneself. This facet refers to the ability of an individual to understand the types of emotions he or she is experiencing, the willingness to acknowledge them, and the capability to express them naturally.25 As an example, someone who is low in this aspect of emotional intelligence might not admit to himself or show anyone else that he’s feeling somewhat anxious during the first few days of a new job. These types of emotions are perfectly natural in a new job context, and ignoring them might increase the stress of the situation. Ignoring those emotions might also send the wrong signal to new colleagues, who might wonder, “Why isn’t the new hire more excited about working for us?” 313 314 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability 10.3 What are the various types of emotional ability? OTHER AWARENESS The second facet of emotional intelligence is called other awareness, or the appraisal and recognition of emotion in others.26 As the name of this facet implies, it refers to a person’s ability to recognize and understand the emotions that other people are feeling. People who are high in this aspect of emotional intelligence are not only sensitive to the feelings of others but also can anticipate the emotions that people will experience in different situations. In contrast, people who are low in this aspect of emotional intelligence do not effectively sense the emotions that others are experiencing, and if the emotions are negative, this inability could result in the person doing something that worsens the situation. As an example, have you ever had a professor who couldn’t sense that students in class didn’t understand the material being presented in a lecture? When that professor continued to press on with the slides, oblivious to the fact that the students were becoming even more confused, it was poor other awareness in action. As another example, an accountant at Chemical Bank in New York recalls that his boss asked him to refine his skills in this aspect of emotional intelligence.27 Although he was a good accountant, he needed help showing interest in other people’s emotions so that discussions with clients were less contentious. As a final example, the CEO of Forte Hotels, a chain of luxury hotels in Europe, prizes employees who have the ability to understand the customer’s emotions so they can react accordingly. “I know the most amazing waitress,” he says. “She can look at a counterful of people eating breakfast and tell immediately who wants chatting up, who wants to be left alone. Uncanny. Just uncanny.”28 EMOTION REGULATION The third facet of emotional intelligence, emotion regulation, refers to being able to recover quickly from emotional experiences.29 As an example of this aspect of emotional intelligence, consider the possible responses of someone on his way to work, who is driving just below the speed limit in his brand new Toyota Prius who gets cut off by an aggressive driver who, as she passes by, throws a half-filled plastic bottle of Mountain Dew out the window and shouts an obscenity. If the Prius driver can regulate his emotions effectively, he recovers quickly from the initial anger and shock of the encounter. He would be able to get back to whatever he was listening to on the radio, and by the time he got to work, the incident would likely be all but forgotten. However, if this person were not able to regulate his emotions effectively, he might lose his temper, tailgate the aggressive driver, and then ram his new Prius into her vehicle at the next stoplight. We hope it’s obvious to you that the former response is much more appropriate than the latter, which could prove quite costly to the individual. Although this example highlights the importance of regulating negative emotions, we should also point out that this aspect of emotional intelligence also applies to positive emotions. Consider, for example, the response of someone who is told that he’s about to receive a significant pay raise. If this person is unable to regulate his own emotions effectively, he might feel joyous and giddy the rest of the day, flashing jazz hands to his coworkers. As a consequence, he’s not able to accomplish any more work that day, never mind alienating everyone around him. “Other awareness” is one aspect of emotional intelligence that allows us to empathize with others and understand their feelings. USE OF EMOTIONS The fourth aspect of emotional intelligence is the use of emotions.30 This capability reflects the degree to which people can harness emotions and employ them to improve their chances of being successful in whatever they’re seeking to do. For example, researchers have shown that when employees who face novel circumstances harness their positive emotions, they can produce solutions that are more creative.31 To understand this facet of emotional intelligence more clearly, consider a writer who’s struggling to finish a book but is under a serious time crunch because of the contract with the publisher. If the writer were high in this aspect of emotional intelligence, she would likely psych herself up for the challenge and encourage herself to work hard through any bouts of writer’s block. In contrast, if the writer were low in this aspect of emotional intelligence, she might ©Digital Vision/Getty Images begin to doubt her competence as a C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability writer and think about different things she could do with her life. Because these behaviors will slow progress on the book even further, the number and intensity of self-defeating thoughts might increase, and ultimately, the writer might withdraw from the task entirely. APPLYING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Although you may appreciate how emotional intelligence can be relevant to effectiveness in a variety of interpersonal situations, you might be wondering whether knowledge of emotional intelligence can be useful to managers in their quest to make their organizations more effective. It turns out there’s growing evidence that the answer to this question is “yes,” albeit with a few caveats.32 As one example of the usefulness of emotional intelligence, the U.S. Air Force found that recruiters who were high in some aspects of emotional intelligence were three times more likely to meet recruiting quotas than recruiters who scored lower in the same aspects of emotional intelligence.33 Recruiters with high emotional intelligence were more effective because they projected positive emotions and could quickly sense and appropriately respond to recruits’ concerns. Because these capabilities made recruiting easier, there was less pressure to meet performance quotas, which translated into fewer hours at the office, higher satisfaction, and ultimately higher retention. In fact, after the Air Force began requiring new recruiters to pass an emotional intelligence test, turnover among new recruiters dropped from 25 percent to 2 percent. Given that, on average, it costs about $30,000 to train a new recruiter, this lower turnover translated into about $2.75 million in savings a year. As a second example of the usefulness of emotional intelligence, Paris–based L’Oréal, the world’s largest manufacturer of cosmetics and beauty products, was interested in the use of emotional intelligence in the hiring of sales agents who could perform their jobs more effectively.34 How well did this idea work out for the company? The sales agents who were hired based mainly on their emotional intelligence scores had sales that were $91,370 greater than agents who were hired on the basis of other information. The company also found that the agents who were selected on the basis of their emotional intelligence scores were 63 percent less likely to quit during their first year as compared to the other agents. Sales agents with high emotional intelligence were able to better understand client needs, and because this results in higher performance and less frustration, these agents tend to stay with the company longer. The two previous examples illustrate the usefulness of staffing and training practices based on emotional intelligence. In fact, there’s growing evidence from researchers that emotional intelligence may have an important impact on employee job performance across a wide variety of settings.35 There’s also evidence that emotional intelligence may have a significantly stronger impact on the job performance of some employees more than others. One recent study, for example, found that emotional intelligence is a more important determinant of job performance for employees with lower levels of cognitive ability.36 The explanation for this relationship is easy to understand if you consider that, in many circumstances, high emotional intelligence can compensate somewhat for low cognitive intelligence. In other words, exceptional “people smarts” can, to some extent, make up for deficiencies in “book smarts.” See our OB at the Bookstore feature for another perspective on how and why emotional intelligence may be crucial for job performance.    Although the picture of emotional intelligence we’ve painted so far is very upbeat, it’s important to mention that there may be a “dark side” to this ability. Specifically, there’s some evidence that emotional intelligence is correlated positively with behaviors at work that are more counterproductive in nature.37 That is, certain individuals with higher levels of emotional intelligence may tend to engage in more counterproductive behaviors such as gossiping, harassment, and even theft. This might come as some surprise to you given all the positives of emotional intelligence we mentioned in the previous paragraphs. However, consider that the ability to understand and influence others’ emotions can be used to achieve personal goals that are not necessarily compatible with the goals and values of the organization or society.38 In essence, emotional intelligence may provide individuals with a gift of being able to influence how other people feel, and unfortunately, that gift can be abused if the individual is inclined toward questionable ends.39 ASSESSING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE As we discussed previously, cognitive abilities are typically assessed using measures with questions such as those included in SAT or IQ tests. So how is emotional intelligence assessed? One type of emotional intelligence assessment is similar 315 316 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability OB AT THE BOOKSTORE HUMILITY IS THE NEW SMART by Edward D. Hess & Katherine Ludwig (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2017). Society is on the leading edge of a technology tsunami. Advances in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, virtual reality, robotics, nanotechnology, deep learning, mapping the human brain, and biomedical, genetic, and cyborg engineering will revolutionize how most of us live and work. With those words, authors Hess and Ludwig provide the backdrop for their assertion that in order to maintain our relevance in light of machines that can think and learn, humans will have to fundamentally adapt how we think and learn. Machines can process, remember, pattern match, explain variance and synthesize data faster than anyone who ever lived, and as machines continue to improve in their capabilities, there will be fewer and fewer jobs that require humans. What will be left for us to do will require high-level critical thinking, creativity, and effectively engaging with others. Unfortunately, the authors claim that these are precisely the abilities that run counter to human nature. That is, we process information quickly using mental shortcuts, we’re emotional and defensive about our ideas, and we’re self-centered. So how are we to develop the abilities we need to be successful in the “smart machine age?” ©Roberts Publishing Services According to Hess and Ludwig, we first need to rethink what smart means. Current definitions refer to how much one knows and can apply to solve problems relative to others. Smart in the smart machine age, or “NewSmart,” is more about quality than quantity. It involves quieting one’s ego, managing one’s emotions, thinking and listening reflectively, and connecting emotionally with others. The authors suggest that the key to unlocking NewSmart is to develop humility, an orientation that is open-minded about possibilities, accurate in self-perceptions and acceptance of one’s strengths and weaknesses, and an appreciation for the value of others. When we possess this type of humility, we can think more creativity, admit when we might not have the right answer, learn iteratively, and build relationships that allow for true collaboration to occur. Although some of the arguments in the book may seem a little abstract, the underlying problem is nevertheless compelling. Moreover, there are tools and assessments in the book that explain how the ideas can be put into practice. to a SAT-style test, because questions are scored as correct or incorrect. Test takers are asked to describe the emotions of people depicted in pictures, predict emotional responses to different situations, and identify appropriate and inappropriate emotional responses. After a person takes the test, it gets sent back to the test publisher to be scored. Another type of assessment asks people about behaviors and preferences that are thought to reflect emotional intelligence. One of the first tests of this type, the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i),40 includes 133 such questions. Although the EQ-i has been used by many organizations in an attempt to improve managerial practices and organizational effectiveness, it has been criticized for measuring personality traits more than actual abilities.41 More recently, a group of researchers published a very short and easy-to-score measure specifically designed to assess each of the four facets of emotional intelligence described in this section.42 Although this assessment is similar in format to the EQ-i, the items don’t appear to overlap as much with items that measure different aspects of personality. You can take the test yourself in our OB Assessments feature to see where you stand in terms of emotional intelligence. C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability OB ASSESSMENTS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE How high is your emotional intelligence? This assessment will tell you where you stand on the four facets of emotional intelligence discussed in this chapter—self-awareness, other awareness, emotion regulation, and emotion use. Answer each question using the response scale provided. Then follow the instructions below to score yourself. (Instructors: Assessments on job ability preferences and tolerance for emotional labor can be found in the PowerPoints in the Connect Library’s Instructor Resources and in the Connect assignments for this chapter.) 1 TOTALLY DISAGREE 2 DISAGREE 3 SOMEWHAT DISAGREE 4 NEUTRAL 5 SOMEWHAT AGREE 6 AGREE 7 TOTALLY AGREE 1. I have a good sense of why I have certain feelings most of the time.        2. I have a good understanding of my own emotions.        3. I really understand what I feel.        4. I always know whether or not I am happy.        5. I am a good observer of others’ emotions.        6. I always know my friends’ emotions from their behavior.        7. I am sensitive to the feelings and emotions of others.        8. I have a good understanding of the emotions of people around me.        9. I always set goals for myself and then try my best to achieve them.        10. I always tell myself I am a competent person.        11. I am a self-motivating person.        12. I would always encourage myself to try my best.        13. I am able to control my temper so that I can handle difficulties rationally.        14. I am quite capable of controlling my own emotions.        15. I can always calm down quickly when I am very angry.        16. I have good control over my own emotions.        SCORING AND INTERPRETATION: • Self-Awareness: Sum up items 1–4. _________ • Other Awareness: Sum up items 5–8. _________ • Emotion Use: Sum up items 9–12. _________ • Emotion Regulation: Sum up items 13–16. _________ If you scored 19 or above, then you are above average on a particular dimension. If you scored 18 or below, then you are below average on a particular dimension. Sources: K.S. Law, C.S. Wong, and L.J. Song, “The Construct and Criterion Validity of Emotional Intelligence and Its Potential Utility for Management Studies,” Journal of Applied Psychology 89 (2004), pp. 483–96; and C.S. Wong and K.S. Law, “The Effects of Leader and Follower Emotional Intelligence on Performance and Attitude,” The Leadership Quarterly 13 (2002), pp. 243–74. 317 318 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability PHYSICAL ABILITY Physical abilities are likely very familiar to you because many of you took physical education classes early in your school career. Maybe you were evaluated on whether you could climb a rope to the ceiling of a gymnasium, run around a track several times, or kick a ball to a teammate who was running full stride. Or maybe you’ve applied for a job and had to take a test that assessed your ability to manipulate and assemble small mechanical parts. As a final example, and the one likely to be most familiar, you’ve probably been subject to tests that measure the quality of your vision and hearing. Although these examples may not seem to be related, each refers to a different type of physical ability. In this section, we review a few important types of physical abilities, which are summarized in Table 10-2. We note that the definitions and information in this table (and in the following sections) come from O*NET, which as we mentioned previously, outlines requirements of employees in different types of jobs and occupations.43 STRENGTH Although strength generally refers to the degree to which the body is capable of exerting force, there are actually several different types of strength that are important, depending on the job. Static strength refers to the ability to lift, push, or pull very heavy objects using the hands, arms, legs, shoulders, or back. Static strength is involved in jobs in which people need to lift objects like boxes, equipment, machine parts, and heavy tools. With explosive strength, people exert short bursts of energy to move the body or an object. Employees who are required to run, jump, or throw things at work depend on their explosive strength to be effective. The final type of strength, dynamic strength, refers to the ability to exert force for a prolonged period of time without becoming overly fatigued and giving out. Dynamic strength is involved in jobs in which employees have to climb ropes or ladders or pull themselves up onto platforms. Although jobs requiring physical strength may vary as to which category is important, there are also many jobs that require all three categories. Firefighters, for example, must typically pass grueling tests of strength before being hired. In Dublin, California, one part of the firefighter strength test involves climbing a long flight of stairs under time constraints without touching the rails while wearing a 50-pound vest and carrying another 25 pounds of equipment. Another part of the test involves safely moving a 165-pound dummy out of harm’s way.44 10.4 What are the various types of physical ability? STAMINA Stamina refers to the ability of a person’s lungs and circulatory system to work efficiently while he or she is engaging in prolonged physical activity. Stamina may be important in jobs that require running, swimming, and climbing. In fact, stamina is involved whenever the nature of the physical activity causes the heart rate to climb and the depth and rate of breathing to increase for prolonged periods of time. As you can imagine, the firefighter test described in the previous paragraph assesses stamina as well as strength. FLEXIBILITY AND COORDINATION Generally speaking, flexibility refers to the ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach. When a job requires extreme ranges of motion—for example, when people need to work in a cramped compartment or an awkward position—the type of flexibility involved is called extent flexibility. If you’ve ever watched a person working inside the trunk of a car installing speakers, you’ve seen extent flexibility. When a job requires repeated and somewhat quick bends, stretches, twists, or reaches, the type of flexibility involved is called dynamic flexibility. To understand what dynamic flexibility involves, picture a house painter on a ladder trying to paint some trim just barely within reach. In addition to flexibility, coordination, or the quality of physical movement, may be important in some jobs. Gross body coordination refers to the ability to synchronize the movements of the body, arms, and legs to do something while the whole body is in motion. In contrast, gross body equilibrium involves the ability to maintain the balance of the body in unstable contexts or when the person has to change directions. Jumping rope effectively requires gross body coordination; walking on a balance beam requires gross body equilibrium. Both types of coordination are important in contexts that involve quick movements. However, gross body equilibrium is more important when the work environment is artificially elevated and inherently unstable. PSYCHOMOTOR ABILITIES There are several different examples of psychomotor abilities, which generally refer to the capacity to manipulate and control objects. Fine manipulative abilities refer to the ability to keep the arms and hands steady while using the hands to do precise work, generally on C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability TABLE 10-2 TYPE Physical Abilities MORE SPECIFIC FACET JOBS WHERE RELEVANT Strength Static: Lifting, pushing, pulling heavy objects Explosive: Exerting a short burst of muscular force to move oneself or objects Dynamic: Exerting muscular force repeatedly or continuously Structural iron and steel workers; tractor trailer and heavy truck drivers; farm workers; firefighters Stamina Exerting oneself over a period of time without circulatory system giving out Athletes; dancers; commercial divers; firefighters Flexibility and Coordination Extent Flexibility: Degree of bending, stretching, twisting of body, arms, legs Dynamic Flexibility: Speed of bending, stretching, twisting of body, arms, legs Gross Body Coordination: Coordinating movement of body, arms, and legs in activities that involve all three together Gross Body Equilibrium: Ability to regain balance in contexts where balance is upset Athletes; dancers; riggers; industrial machinery mechanics; choreographers; commercial divers; structural iron and steel workers Psychomotor Fine Manipulative Abilities: Keeping hand and arm steady while grasping, manipulating, and assembling small objects Control Movement Abilities: Making quick, precise adjustments to a machine while operating it Response Orientation: Quickly choosing among appropriate alternative movements Response Time: Quickly responding to signals with body movements Fabric menders; potters; timing device assemblers; jewelers; construction drillers; agricultural equipment operators; photographers; highway patrol pilots; athletes Sensory Near and Far Vision: Seeing details of an object up close or at a distance Night Vision: Seeing well in low light Visual Color Discrimination: Detecting differences in colors and shades Depth Perception: Judging relative distances Hearing Sensitivity: Hearing differences in sounds that vary in terms of pitch and loudness Auditory Attention: Focusing on a source of sound in the presence of other sources Speech Recognition: Identifying and understanding the speech of others Electronic testers and inspectors; highway patrol pilots; tractor trailer, truck, and bus drivers; airline pilots; photographers; musicians and composers; industrial machine mechanics; speech pathologists Sources: Adapted from E.A. Fleishman, D.P. Costanza, and J. Marshall-Mies, “Abilities,” in An Occupational Information System for the 21st Century: The Development of O*NET, ed. N.G. Peterson, M.D. Mumford, W.C. Borman, P.R. Jeanneret, and E.A. Fleishman (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1999), pp. 175–95; and O*NET Website, The O*NET Content Model: Detailed Outline with Descriptions, http://www.onet center.org/content.html/1.A?D=1#Cm_1.A (accessed May 20, 2009). 319 320 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability small or delicate objects such as arteries, nerves, gems, and watches. Control movement abilities are important in tasks for which people have to make different precise adjustments, using machinery to complete the work effectively. Anyone who drills things for a living, whether it be wood, concrete, or teeth, needs this type of ability. The ability to choose the right action quickly in response to several different signals is called response orientation. It shouldn’t be too difficult to imagine the importance of response orientation for an airline pilot who responds to the flashing lights, buzzers, and verbal information triggered during an in-flight emergency. The final psychomotor ability we describe is called response time. This ability reflects how quickly an individual responds to signaling information after it occurs. Returning to the previous example, most of us would feel more secure if our airline pilot had both a fast response orientation and a quick response time. After all, making the right decision may not be useful in this context if the decision is made too late! Noel Lee founded Monster Cable after using his extraordinary auditory ability to identify which type of speaker wire sounds best. SENSORY ABILITIES Sensory abilities refers to capabilities associated with vision and hearing. Examples of important visual abilities include the ability to see things up close and at a distance (near and far vision) or in low light contexts (night vision), as well as the ability to perceive colors and judge relative distances between things accurately (visual color discrimination and depth perception). There are many different jobs that emphasize only one or two of these visual abilities. For example, whereas effectiveness as a watch repairer depends on good near vision, effectiveness as an interior designer depends on visual color discrimination. However, there are other jobs in which effectiveness might depend on almost all categories of visual abilities. A fighter pilot needs near vision to read instruments and checklists, far vision and depth perception to see enemy targets and landmarks, night vision to conduct operations in low light, and visual color discrimination to interpret information from warning lights and computer readouts correctly. Abilities related to hearing, also referred to as auditory abilities, include the capability to hear and discriminate sounds that vary in terms of loudness and pitch (hearing sensitivity), being able to focus on a single sound in the presence of many other sounds (auditory attention), and the ability to identify and understand the speech of another person (speech recognition). Perhaps the most obvious jobs for which auditory abilities would be important are musicians and composers (yes, we are going to ignore exceptions like Beethoven, who was deaf at the time he wrote his Ninth Symphony). However, with these jobs, the emphasis would likely be on hearing sensitivity and auditory attention rather than speech recognition (who listens to lyrics these days?). Another job for which auditory abilities might be crucially important is a restaurant server, especially if the restaurant is crowded and noisy. In this context, a server needs auditory attention and speech recognition to be able to isolate and understand the words of a single patron against the backdrop of the loud chatter. As an example of a company that exists because of auditory ability, consider the case of Monster Cable, the Brisbane, California– based manufacturer of audiovisual cables and accessories. Noel Lee, the company’s founder, started out by comparing the sound of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and Michael Jackson’s “Liberian Girl” using different types of speaker wire.45 He listened to the music over and over again and carefully considered the dynamics, loudness, bass response, and high frequencies of the music to determine which combination of wire thickness, composition, and braiding pattern sounded best. SUMMARY: WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR AN EMPLOYEE TO BE “ABLE”? ©Richard Shotwell/AP Images Thus far in the chapter, we’ve presented you with a fairly detailed description of the domain of human abilities, which are summarized in Figure 10-2. Although the list of abilities included in the figure may seem somewhat C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability FIGURE 10-2 321 What Does It Mean for an Employee to Be “Able”? OVERALL ABILITY Cognitive Ability Emotional Ability Physical Ability • Verbal • Self-Awareness • Strength • Quantitative • Other Awareness • Stamina • Reasoning • Emotion Regulation • Flexibility & • Spatial • Use of Emotions • Perceptual Coordination • Psychomotor • Sensory Source: Adapted from J.J. Johnson and J.B. Cullen, “Trust in Cross-Cultural Relationships,” in Blackwell Handbook of Cross-Cultural Management, ed. M.J. Gannon and K.L. Newman (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 335–60. daunting, we hope that you can appreciate that this set of abilities describes each and every one of us. Moreover, as we have alluded to throughout the chapter, these abilities play an important role in determining how effective we can be at different tasks and jobs. HOW IMPORTANT IS AB ILITY? So, now that you know what ability is and where it comes from, let’s turn to the next important question: Does ability really matter? That is, does ability have a significant impact on job performance and organizational commitment—the two primary outcomes in our integrative model of OB? The answer to this question depends on what type of ability you are referring to—cognitive, emotional, or physical. We focus our discussion on general cognitive ability because it’s the most relevant form of ability across all jobs and is likely to be important in the kinds of positions that students in an OB course will be pursuing. As it turns out, there’s a huge body of research linking general cognitive ability to job performance, as summarized in Figure 10-3.46 The figure reveals that general cognitive ability is a strong predictor of job performance—in particular, the task performance aspect. Across all jobs, smarter employees fulfill the requirements of their job descriptions more effectively than do less smart employees.47 In fact, of all the variables discussed in this book, none has a stronger correlation with task performance than general cognitive ability. Thousands of organizations, many of which are quite well known, assess cognitive ability in efforts to select the best candidates available for specific jobs.48 The use of cognitive ability 10.5 How does cognitive ability affect job performance and organizational commitment? 322 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability FIGURE 10-3 Effects of General Cognitive Ability on Performance and Commitment Cognitive Ability Job Performance General cognitive ability has a strong positive effect on Task Performance. However, the correlation is higher for jobs that are more complex than average and lower for jobs that are less complex than average. The effects of general cognitive ability are near zero for Citizenship Behavior and Counterproductive Behavior. Cognitive Ability Organizational Commitment General cognitive ability has a weak effect on Affective Commitment, Continuance Commitment, and Normative Commitment. The desire to remain a member of the organization is not influenced much by cognitive ability. Represents a strong correlation (around .50 in magnitude). Represents a moderate correlation (around .30 in magnitude). Represents a weak correlation (around .10 in magnitude). Sources: J.W. Boudreau, W.R. Boswell, T.A. Judge, and R.D Bretz, “Personality and Cognitive Ability as Predictors of Job Searc among Employed Managers,” Personnel Psychology 54 (2001), pp. 25–50; S.M. Colarelli, R.A. Dean, and C. Konstans, “Comparative Effects of Personal and Situational Influences on Job Outcomes of New Professionals,” Journal of Applied Psychology 72 (1987), pp. 558–66; D.N. Dickter, M. Roznowski, and D.A. Harrison, “Temporal Tempering: An Event History Analysis of the Process of Voluntary Turnover,” Journal of Applied Psychology 81 (1996), pp. 705–16; and F.L. Schmidt and J. Hunter, “General Mental Ability in the World of Work: Occupational Attainment and Job Performance,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86 (2004), pp. 162–73. tests for this purpose appears to be quite reasonable, given that scores on such tests have a strong positive correlation with measures of performance across different types of jobs.49 In fact, this relationship holds even for performance in academic contexts. We mentioned the Scholastic Assessment Test, or the SAT, several times in this chapter because it’s likely to be quite familiar to you and because it largely reflects general cognitive ability.50 Most colleges and universities in the United States take these scores into account when deciding which students to admit because they believe that higher scores increase the chances that students will be successful in college. But does the SAT really relate to how well someone does in college? Many of you are likely to be skeptical because you probably know someone who did extremely well on the SAT but performed poorly as a college student. Similarly, you probably know someone who didn’t do that well on the SAT but who performed well as a college student. Indeed, it is true that certain tendencies (such as working hard, setting high personal goals, and staying organized) and choices (such as which courses to take) play a nontrivial role in the grades earned in college.51 However, as it turns out, the SAT is actually good at predicting college performance above and beyond these factors. Students with higher SAT scores tend to perform much better in their first year of college, end up with a higher cumulative grade point average, and have a higher likelihood of graduating.52 The same finding applies to predicting success in graduate level school as well. The Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, is similar to the SAT in structure and content, and students who score higher on this test prior to admission to graduate school tend to achieve better grade point averages over the course of their graduate program.53 So what explains why general cognitive ability relates to task performance? People who have higher general cognitive ability tend to be better at learning and decision making (which we C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability covered in detail in Chapter 8). They’re able to gain more knowledge from their experiences at a faster rate, and as a result, they develop a bigger pool of knowledge regarding how to do their jobs effectively.54 There are, however, three important caveats that we should mention. First, cognitive ability tends to be much more strongly correlated with task performance than with citizenship behavior, and the relationship between cognitive ability and counterproductive behavior is essentially zero.55 An increased amount of job knowledge helps an employee complete job tasks, but it doesn’t necessarily affect the choice to help a coworker or refrain from breaking an important rule. Second, the positive correlation between cognitive ability and performance is even stronger in jobs that are complex or situations that demand adaptability.56 Third, people may do poorly on a test of general cognitive ability for reasons other than a lack of cognitive ability. As an example, people who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds may do poorly on such tests, not because they lack the underlying cognitive ability but because they may not have had the learning opportunities needed to provide the appropriate responses. In contrast to relationships with job performance, research has not supported a significant linkage between cognitive ability and organizational commitment.57 On the one hand, we might expect a positive relationship with commitment because people with higher cognitive ability tend to perform more effectively, and therefore, they might feel they fit well with their job. On the other hand, we might expect to see a negative relationship with commitment because people with higher cognitive ability possess more job knowledge, which increases their value on the job market, and in turn the likelihood that they would leave for another job.58 In the end, knowing how smart an employee is tells us very little about the likelihood that he or she will remain a member of the organization. A PPLICATION: SELE CTING HIGH COGNITIVE A BI LI TY EMPLOYEE S Given the strong relationship between general cognitive ability and job performance, it isn’t surprising that many organizations apply the content of this chapter to hire new employees. As an example, consider how Google goes about hiring employees whom it believes are the best and the brightest. To attract intelligent people to apply for a job, the company placed billboards in Silicon Valley and Harvard Square with the brainteaser, “first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e.com.” (The “e” in the question refers to the transcendental number used as the basis for natural logarithms, and the first 10-digit prime number in this string turns out to be 7427466391.) People who solved the brainteaser went to the website where there was a more difficult brainteaser. Solving that one resulted in Google asking for the person’s résumé.59 The company also developed something called the Google Labs Aptitude Test (GLAT for short) and published it in magazines that smart techies might read. The GLAT is similar to the SAT and includes questions such as, “How many different ways can you color an icosahedron with one of three colors on each face?” Google used the GLAT to attract people who are smart and who are interested in the types of problems in the test. The people who are ultimately brought in for a job interview typically face 10-person interview panels and are confronted with very difficult questions. People who apply for a technical job might be asked to solve math algorithms and answer technical questions about software and computer networking.60 It’s also likely that they’ll be asked brainteaser questions that rely upon both general intelligence and the originality facet of reasoning ability. For example, “How many golf balls fit in a school bus?” and “You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?”61 Although you might not look forward to the prospect of having to answer these types of questions in an already stressful job interview, other companies such as Microsoft use a similar approach to hire highly intelligent employees, so it’s something for which you might want to be prepared.62 Of course, companies outside the high-technology sector are also interested in hiring employees who have high cognitive ability, and applicants for jobs in many of these companies are given a cognitive ability test as part of the selection process. One of the most widely used tests is the Wonderlic 323 324 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability FIGURE 10-4 Sample Wonderlic Questions 1. Which of the following is the earliest date? A) Jan. 16, 1898   B) Feb. 21, 1889   C) Feb. 2, 1898   D) Jan. 7, 1898   E) Jan. 30, 1889 2. LOW is to HIGH as EASY is to ?. A) SUCCESSFUL  B) PURE  C) TALL  D) INTERESTING  E) DIFFICULT 3. A featured product from an Internet retailer generated 27, 99, 80, 115 and 213 orders over a 5-hour period. Which graph below best represents this trend? A B C D E 4. What is the next number in the series? 29 41 53 65 77 ? A) 75  B) 88  C) 89  D) 98  E) 99 5.  One word below appears in color. What is the OPPOSITE of that word? She gave a complex answer to the question and we all agreed with her. A) long  B) better  C) simple  D) wrong  E) kind 6. Jose’s monthly parking fee for April was $150; for May it was $10 more than April; and for June $40 more than May. His average monthly parking fee was? for these 3 months. A) $66  B) $160  C) $166   D) $170  E) $200 7. If the first two statements are true, is the final statement true? Sandra is responsible for ordering all office supplies. Notebooks are office supplies. Sandra is responsible for ordering notebooks. A) yes  B) no  C) uncertain 8. Which THREE choices are needed to create the figure on the left? Only pieces of the same color may overlap. A B C D E 9. Which THREE of the following words have similar meanings? A) observable  B) manifest  C) hypothetical  D) indefinite  E) theoretical 10. Last year, 12 out of 600 employees at a service organization were rewarded for their excellence in customer service, which was ? of the employees. A) 1%  B) 2%  C) 3%  D) 4%  E) 6% Answers: 1. E, 2. E, 3. D, 4. C, 5. C, 6. D, 7. A, 8. BCD, 9. CDE, 10. B Source: Wonderlic WPT—Sample Questions. Reprinted with permission of Wonderlic, Inc. Copyright 2007 Wonderlic, Inc with permission. C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability Cognitive Ability Test, a 12-minute test of general cognitive ability that consists of 50 questions. It’s been in use for several decades now and has been given to more than 120 million people by thousands of organizations.63 From the example items that appear in Figure 10-4, you should be able to see how the items correspond with many of the cognitive abilities that we’ve described previously. People who take the test receive one point for each correct response, and those points are summed to give a total score that can be used as a basis for selecting people for different jobs. The Wonderlic User’s Manual offers recommendations for minimum passing scores for different job families, some of which are included in Table 10-3. For example, a score of 17 is the minimum suggested score for an unskilled laborer, a score of 21—which is the average for high school graduates and corresponds to an IQ of approximately 100—is the minimum suggested score for a firefighter. A score of 28 is the minimum suggested score for upper-level managerial and executive work and around the average for all college graduates. Chances are you’ll hear about the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test every March and April. This is because the National Football League (NFL) administers the test to players who enter the draft, and teams consider the scores when selecting players. One question that people always debate during this time is whether scores on a test of cognitive ability are relevant to a football player’s performance on the field. Although supporters of the Wonderlic’s use in the NFL argue that cognitive ability is necessary to remember plays and learn complex offensive and defensive systems, many people wonder how the ability to answer questions like those listed in Figure 10-4 relates to a player’s ability to complete a pass, run for a touchdown, tackle an opponent, or kick a field goal. Moreover, detractors of the Wonderlic wonder why a poor score should overshadow a record of superior accomplishments on the playing field. So who’s right? Well, the results of at least one study indicate that a player’s Wonderlic score does not predict subsequent performance in the NFL and that this effect is not influenced much by the position of the player being considered.64 TABLE 10-3 Suggested Minimum Wonderlic Scores for Various Jobs JOB MINIMUM SCORES Mechanical Engineer 30 Attorney 29 Executive 28 Teacher 27 Nurse 26 Office Manager 25 Advertising Sales 24 Manager/Supervisor 23 Police Officer 22 Firefighter 21 Cashier 20 Hospital Orderly 19 Machine Operator 18 Unskilled Laborer 17 Maid-Matron 16 Source: Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test and Scholastic Level Exam: User’s Manual (Vernon Hills, IL: Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test, Inc., 1992), pp. 28–29. Reprinted with permission. 325 10.6 What steps can organizations take to hire people with high levels of cognitive ability? 326 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability Before closing, we should mention here that the use of cognitive ability tests for hiring purposes may unintentionally discriminate against groups of individuals who, for a variety of reasons that we discussed earlier in this chapter, tend to score lower.65 A great deal of research has examined this issue, and has concluded that although these tests are not technically biased because they do not underpredict the job performance of disadvantaged groups, they should be used cautiously, especially in situations in which a diverse workforce is desired.66 One way of accomplishing this is to use a combination of hiring tests. In addition to, or instead of, a test of general cognitive ability, a company could use a battery of tests that measure narrower cognitive abilities and noncognitive traits such as emotional intelligence and personality.67 It may also be possible that organizations could deemphasize cognitive ability when hiring, and instead, train employees in the cognitive skills needed for the job. Although this type of training isn’t something that boosts IQ scores, it has been shown to enhance important mental skills, as well as increasing  confidence and performance in a variety of tasks.68 TA K EAWAYS 10.1 Ability refers to the relatively stable capabilities of people to perform a particular range of different but related activities. Differences in ability are a function of both genes and the environment. 10.2 Cognitive abilities include verbal ability, quantitative ability, reasoning ability, spatial ability, and perceptual ability. General cognitive ability, or g, underlies all of these more specific cognitive abilities. 10.3 Emotional intelligence includes four specific kinds of emotional skills: self-awareness, other awareness, emotion regulation, and use of emotions. 10.4 Physical abilities include strength, stamina, flexibility and coordination, psychomotor abili- ties, and sensory abilities. 10.5 General cognitive ability has a strong positive relationship with job performance, due primarily to its effects on task performance. In contrast, general cognitive ability is only weakly related to organizational commitment. 10.6 Many organizations use cognitive ability tests to hire applicants with high levels of general cognitive ability. One of the most commonly used tests is the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test. K EY TERMS • • • • • • • • • • • Ability Cognitive ability Verbal ability Quantitative ability Reasoning ability Spatial ability Perceptual ability General cognitive ability Emotional intelligence Self-awareness Other awareness p. 306 p. 307 p. 307 p. 309 p. 310 p. 310 p. 311 p. 312 p. 313 p. 313 p. 314 • • • • • • • • • Emotion regulation Use of emotions Strength Stamina Flexibility Coordination Psychomotor ability Sensory abilities Wonderlic Cognitive  Ability Test p. 314 p. 314 p. 318 p. 318 p. 318 p. 318 p. 318 p. 320 p. 325 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability DIS C USSI ON QUESTION S 10.1 What roles do learning, education, and other experiences play in determining a person’s abilities? For which type of ability—cognitive, emotional, or physical—do these factors play the largest role? 10.2 Think of a job that requires very high levels of certain cognitive abilities. Can you think of a way to redesign that job so that people who lack those abilities could still perform the job effectively? Now respond to the same question with regard to emotional and physical abilities. 10.3 Consider your responses to the previous questions. Are cognitive, emotional, and physical abilities different in the degree to which jobs can be redesigned to accommodate people who lack relevant abilities? What are the implications of this difference, if there is one? 10.4 Think of experiences you’ve had with people who demonstrated unusually high or low levels of emotional intelligence. Then consider how you would rate them in terms of their cognitive abilities. Do you think that emotional intelligence “bleeds over” to affect people’s perceptions of cognitive ability? 10.5 What combination of abilities is appropriate for the job of your dreams? Do you  possess those abilities? If you fall short on any of these abilities, what could you do  to improve? CASE: FBI The FBI’s website provides a vivid description of the job of a special agent. One day a special agent may be focused on recruiting a human source of information from a foreign country to avert a terrorist attack. Another day may involve several different activities; testifying in court in the morning, planning a sting operation over lunch, chasing down a suspect on a Most Wanted list in the afternoon, and speaking at a community event in the evening. To be effective at these tasks, special agents not only need to be physically fit, but they also need to be able to work independently, be adaptable to changing and sometimes very dangerous situations, make logical decisions based on all available facts, and communicate effectively and articulately, both orally and in writing. To make sure new hires possess these abilities, the FBI requires that special agent applicants go through a series of examinations, which include a three-hour session consisting of cognitive, behavioral, and logical reasoning tests, a 90-minute written test that measures problem solving abilities, a one-hour panel interview intended to supplement the information gathered in the other testing, physical fitness tests, and a medical exam which, among other things, tests vision and hearing. One of the assumptions behind this testing is that new hires will possess the  abilities necessary to have an effective and long career as an FBI special agent. But is this assumption valid? On the one hand, many of the abilities that are tested during the hiring process remain relatively stable over time. So, for example, an agent who scored high on the logical reasoning ability test when hired will have high logical reasoning ability years later. On the other hand, some abilities change over time, and not for the better! Most notably, physical abilities tend to erode due to the process of aging and coping with the demands of work and life. In recognition of this specific issue, the FBI recently instituted annual physical fitness testing. The test includes the number of sit-ups in one minute, a timed 300-meter sprint, the maximum number of pushups (untimed), and a timed 1.5 mile run. The scoring system is based on an agent’s age and sex, and those who 327 328 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability score below standard (or who do not take the test without a medical excuse) are given a rating of no higher than “Minimally Successful” on the “Maintaining High Professional Standards” dimension of their annual performance review. 10.1 Which specific cognitive and emotional abilities are likely to be most important for FBI special agents? Explain. 10.2 Identify the specific physical abilities that are assessed in the FBI’s annual physical fitness test. Describe the responsibilities of special agents for which these abilities are likely to be most important. 10.3 How might the frequency of various special agent responsibilities make it important to  test for physical abilities (but not cognitive or emotional abilities) on an annual basis? Explain. Sources: FBI, “News and Features,” https://www.fbi.gov (accessed March 20, 2017); FBI, “Jobs: Career Paths,” https:// www.fbijobs.gov/career-paths (accessed March 20, 2017); M.S. Schmidt, “Battling Crime and Calories at F.B.I. (Fit Bureau of Investigation),” The New York Times, April 4, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/us/battling-crime -and-calories-at-fbi-fit-bureau-of-investigation.html?emc=edit_th_20150406&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=71709239&_r=1. EX ERC ISE: E MOTION AL IN TE LLIG E N C E The purpose of this exercise is to help you become more aware of your emotions and the emotions of others, as well as to see how emotions can be regulated and used in your daily life. This exercise uses groups, so your instructor will either assign you to a group or ask you to create your own group. The exercise has the following steps: 10.1 Think about situations in which you’ve experienced each of the following four emotions: • • • • Joy Anxiety Sadness Anger 10.2 In writing or in discussion with your group, answer the following questions about each situation: a. What, exactly, triggered your emotion in this situation? b. What impact did your emotions have on the outcome of the situation? Consider how your emotions affected you, others, and the general outcome of the situation. (Was it positive or negative?) c. What strategies did you use to deal with the emotion? d. What other strategies could you have used to deal with the emotion? For example, one student noted: “I always get anxious when I take tests. Last week, I was supposed to have a midterm in Accounting, and sure enough, the upcoming test triggered my anxiety. Because I was anxious, I put off studying, and I tried to get some friends to go out to a club with me. We all had a good time that night, but the next day I got a D on my Accounting test, and two of my friends failed their Management midterms. I was using procrastination and avoidance as strategies for dealing with my anxiety. Another strategy I could have used was to face the anxiety head-on by talking to my professor to get a better understanding of the material that was going to be on the test, or by getting a group of my friends together to form a study group for Accounting.” C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability 10.3 Compare your responses with the responses of your fellow group members. As a group, answer the following questions: a. What emotional triggers do you share? In what ways are your emotional triggers different? b. Are there some strategies for dealing with emotions that seem especially helpful? Unhelpful? c. According to the stories told by the group, are there times when emotions actually help get a task done or a goal accomplished? How might you harness your emotions to help you achieve specific outcomes in the future? Source: Adapted from M.A. Brackett and N.A. Katulak. “Emotional Intelligence in the Classroom: Skill-Based Training for Teachers and Students.” Improving Emotional Intelligence: A Practitioner’s Guide, ed. J. Ciarrochi and J.D. Mayer. New York: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis, 2006, pp. 1–27. EN DN OTES 10.1 Fleishman, E.A.; D.P. Costanza; and J.  Marshall-Mies.  “Abilities.” In  An Occupational Information System for the 21st Century: The Development of O*NET, ed. N.G. Peterson, M.D. Mumford, W.C. Borman, P.R. Jeanneret, and E.A. Fleishman. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1999, pp. 175–95. 10.2 Neisser, U.; G. Boo- doo; T.J. Bouchard; A.W. Boykin; N. Brody; S.J. Ceci; D.F. Halpern; J.C. Loehlin; R. Perloff; R.J. Sternberg; and S. Urbina. “Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns.” American Psychologist 51 (1996), pp. 77–101. 10.3 McCartney, K.; M.J. Harris; and F. Bernieri. “Growing Up and Growing Apart: A Developmental Meta-Analysis of Twin Studies.” Psychological Bulletin 107 (1990),  pp. 226–37. 10.4 Cottrell, J.M.; D.A. Newman; and G.I. Roisman. “Explaining the Black-White Gap in Cognitive Test Scores: Toward a Theory of Adverse Impact.”  Journal of Applied Psychology 100 (2015), pp. 1713–36. 10.5 Ceci, S.J. “How Much Does Schooling Influence General Intelligence and  Its Cognitive Components? A Reassessment of the Evidence.” Developmental Psychology 27 (1991), pp. 703–22. 10.6 Kohn, M.L., and C. Schooler. “Occupational Experience and Psychological Functioning: An Assessment of Reciprocal Effects.” American Sociological Review 38 (1973),  pp. 97–118; Kohn, M.L., and C. Schooler. Work and Personality: An Inquiry into the Impact of Social Stratification. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1983;  and Neisser  et al., “Intelligence.” 10.7 Winerman, L. “Smarter Than Ever?” Monitor on Psychology, March 2013, pp. 30–33. 10.8 O*NET Online, http://online.onet center.org/find/ descriptor/browse/ Abilities/#cur (accessed June 5, 2006). 10.9 Keiser, H.N.; P.R. Sackett; N.R. Kuncel; and T. Brothen. “Why Women Perform Better in College Than Admission Scores Would Predict: Exploring the Roles of Conscientiousness and Course-Taking 329 330 C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability Patterns.”  Journal of Applied Psychology 101 (2016), pp. 569–81. 10.10 Fleishman et al., “Abilities”; and O*NET Website. The O*NET Content Model: Detailed Outline with Descriptions (n.d.), http://www.onetcenter .org/content.html/ 1.A?d=1#cm_1.A. 10.11 Disability Fact Sheet Handbook, University of California, Irvine. http://www.disability .uci.edu/disability_ handbook/famous_ people.htm (accessed June 9, 2006). 10.12 Vogelstein, F. “Google @ $165: Are These Guys for Real?” Fortune, December 13, 2004, p. 98, ProQuest database (accessed May 14, 2007). 10.13 Carroll, J.B. Human Cognitive Abilities: A Survey of FactorAnalytic Studies.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993; Cattell, R.B. “The Measurement of Adult Intelligence.” Psychological Bulletin 40 (1943), pp. 153–93; Galton, F. Inquire into Human Faculty and Its Development. London: Macmillan, 1883; Spearman, C. “General Intelligence, Objectively Determined and Measured.” American Journal of Psychology 15 (1904),  pp. 201–93; Thurstone, L.L. “Primary Mental Abilities.” Psychometric Monographs (Whole No. 1, 1938); and Vernon, P.E. The Structure of Human Abilities. London: Methuen, 1950. 10.14 Spearman, “General Intelligence”; and Spearman, C. The Abilities of Man: Their Nature and Measurement. New York: Macmillan, 1927. 10.15 Neisser et al., “Intelligence.” 10.16 Rindermann, H., and J. Thompson. “Cognitive Capitalism: The Effect of Cognitive Ability on Wealth, as Mediated through Scientific Achievement and Economic Freedom.” Psychological Science 22 (2011), pp. 754–63. 10.17 Judge, T.A.; R. Ilies; and N. Dimotakis. “Are Health and Happiness the Product of Wisdom? The Relationship of General Mental Ability to Educational and Occupational Attainment, Health, and Well-Being.” Journal of Applied Psychology 95 (2010), pp. 454–68. 10.18 Deary, I.J.; A. Weiss; and G.D. Batty. “Intelligence, Personality, and Health Outcomes.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 11 (2010), pp. 53–79. 10.19 Batty, G.D.; I.J. Deary; and L.S. Gottfedson. “Premorbid (Early Life) IQ and Later Mortality Risk: Systematic Review.” Annals of Epidemiology 17 (2007), pp. 278–88. 10.20 Farnham, A. “Are You Smart Enough to Keep Your Job? In an Age of Teamwork and Fluid Careers, IQ Alone Doesn’t Cut It Anymore.” CNNMoney .com, January 15,  1996, http://money .cnn.com/ magazines/ fortune/fortune_ archive/1996/01/ 15/207155/index.htm. 10.21 Bar-On, R. Develop- ment of the Bar-On EQ-i: A Measure of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems, 1997; Gardner, H. The Shattered Mind. New York: Knopf, 1975; Goleman, D. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. New York: Bantam Books, 1995; and Thorndike, R.K. “Intelligence and Its Uses.” Harper’s Magazine 140 (1920), pp. 227–335. 10.22 Matthews, G.; A.K. Emo; R.D. Roberts; and M. Zeidner. “What Is This Thing Called Emotional Intelligence?” In A Critique of Emotional Intelligence: What Are the Problems and How Can They Be Fixed?, ed. K.R. Murphy. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2006, pp. 3–36; and Mayer, J.D.; P. Salovey; and D.R. Caruso. “Emotional Intelligence: New Ability or Eclectic C H A P T E R 1 0   Ability Traits?” American Psychologist 63 (2008), pp. 503–17. 10.23 Salovey, P., and J.D. Mayer. “Emotional Intelligence.” Imagination, Cognition, and Personality 9 (1990), pp. 185–211; and Mayer, J.D.; R.D. Roberts; and S.G. Barside. “Human Abilities: Emotional Intelligence.” Annual Review of Psychology 59 (2008),  pp. 507–36. 10.24 Davies, M.; L. Stankov; and R.D. Roberts. “Emotional Intelligence: In Search of an Elusive Construct.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75 (1998), pp. 989–1015. 10.25 Law, K.S.; C.S. Wong; and L.J. Song. “The Construct and Criterion Validity of Emotional Intelligence and Its Potential Utility for Management Studies.” Journal of Applied Psychology 89 (2004), pp. 483–96. 10.26 Ibid. 10.27 Farnham, “Are You Smart Enough to Keep Your Job?” 10.28 Ibid. 10.29 Davies et al., “Emo- tional Intelligence”; and Law et al., “The Construct and Criterion Validity of Emotional Intelligence.” 10.30 Ibid. 10.31 Parke, M.R., M.G. Seo; and E.N. Sherf. "Regulating and Facilitating: The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Maintaining and Using Positive Affect for Creativity." Journal of Applied Psychology 100 (2015), pp. 917–34. 10.32 Cherniss, C. “The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence.” Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, 2004, http:// www.eiconsortium. org/research/business_ case_for_ei.htm; Cote, S., and C.T.H. Miners. “Emotional Intelligence, Cognitive Intelligence, and Job Performance.” Administrative Science Qu...
Purchase answer to see full attachment
User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

View attached explanation and answer. Let me know if you have any questions.

1

Critical Thinking - Assignment 2

Student’s name
Institution
Course
Instructor’s name
Date

2

Critical Thinking - Assignment 2
Part 1
Specific cognitive and emotional abilities likely to be most important for FBI special
agents
Cognitive abilities are those related to reasoning, mental focus, and all the working of
the memory, while emotional abilities are those that display how people manage and express
feelings to themselves and others. The first cognitive ability that is most important for the
FBI special agents includes the ability to communicate effectively, either orally or in writing
form (Jones et al., 2015). Secondly, the cognitive abilities tested in the FBI agents are the
problem-solving skills. This is the ability to identify the problem, reason out, and come up
with how to solve them. Finally, the perceptual ability is also checked in an FBI agent. This
includes the ability to compare information or use the available facts to make an informed
decision about a situation. The emotional abilities include the ability to be self-awareness
where they are able to separate what they are feeling with work and be effective in their
demanding tasks
The specific physical abilities that are assessed in the FBI’s annual physical fitness test
and the related responsibilities
Phys...

Similar Content

Related Tags