Page 49 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Unit 3: Personality

laboratory and was implicated in a mail bomb letter that was sent to her former mentor at Notes
Harvard. All three incidents involved obstacles to Dr. Bishop’s goals. She wanted primary credit
for her research, she was afraid the grad students would mess up her research, and she was also
scared that her former mentor would speak negatively about her performance at Harvard
(Dewanet, et al., 2010).
A study by Carver and Glass (1978) revealed that Type A personalities were more aggressive
than Type Bs but only when provoked. It seems that Dr. Bishop saw the people that she worked
with as provocative and impediments to her goals. Dr. Bishop was denied tenure because her
research and publication record were not strong, she had been advised to look for another job
and had been given the chance to improve on her performance before being denied. Instead of
seeking to improve herself, Dr. Bishop wondered when the idiots in her department were going
to wise up, she filed a grievance against the Biology department for discrimination, and had
begun practicing at a shooting range. The final straw came on the morning of February 12, 2010
when she brought a loaded hand gun into the faculty meeting and began shooting those closest
to her including the head of the department (Dewanet, et. al., 2010).

Dr. Bishop displayed typical Type A personality characteristics, she was driven and displayed
high levels of aggression and hostility. However, she must have been in more deteriorated
neurotic mental state where she solely blamed the faculty for her problems in order to go
through such a violent pre-conceived plan. Combining neuroticism and a Type A personality
seems to have only exacerbated her problems. A study by Pickering (2009) suggests that cognitive
behavioral therapy would be a good start to retrain Type A’s thinking processes. Cognitive
behavioral therapy would teach Type As to distance themselves from negative thought processes
such as the externalized senses of self worth, and the false beliefs that resources are scarce and
they are not getting their just rewards (Price, 1982). Another technique that may help Type As is
stress-relieving exercises such as physical exercise or yoga. This would be potentially life saving
since so many Type As suffer from coronary heart disease.

Notes Current Research Suggests that there are Five Core Personality Traits
In the past, researchers have debated exactly how many personality traits exist. Early
researchers such as Allport suggested that there were as many as 4,000 distinct personality
traits, while others such as Raymond Cattell proposed that there were 16. Today, many
personality researchers support the five-factor theory of personality, which describes five
broad personality dimensions that compose human personality:
1. Extraversion
2. Agreeableness
3. Conscientiousness
4. Neuroticism
5. Openness

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or False:
6. Type “B” Personality – Represents highly extroverted people who love the spotlight.
7. A Five-Man Band specializes by role to the team.

8. Introverted and task-oriented. Exhibits leadership, dominance, ambition, charisma, passion.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 43