HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE - Fichier PDF

Characteristics of people ❚ 241IntelligenceIntelligence has been defined as:● ‘the capacity to solve problems, apply principles, make inferences and perceiverelationships’ (Argyle, 1989);● ‘the capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning with a range of differentcontents and media’ (Toplis et al 1991);● ‘the capacity to process information’ (Makin et al, 1996);● ‘what is measured by intelligence tests’ (Wright and Taylor, 1970).The last, tautological definition is not facetious. As an operational definition, it can berelated to the specific aspects of reasoning, inference, cognition (ie knowing,conceiving) and perception (ie understanding, recognition) that intelligence testsattempt to measure.General intelligence, as noted above, consists of a number of mental abilities thatenable a person to succeed at a wide variety of intellectual tasks that use the facultiesof knowing and reasoning. The mathematical technique of factor analysis has beenused to identify the constituents of intelligence, such as Thurstone’s (1940) multiplefactors listed above. But there is no general agreement among psychologists as towhat these factors are or, indeed, whether there is such a thing as general intelligence.An alternative approach to the analysis of intelligence was put forward by Guilford(1967), who distinguished five types of mental operation: thinking, remembering,divergent production (problem-solving which leads to unexpected and original solutions),convergent production (problem-solving which leads to the one, correct solution)and evaluating.PersonalityDefinitionAs defined by Toplis et al (1991), the term personality is all-embracing in terms of theindividual’s behaviour and the way it is organized and coordinated when he or sheinteracts with the environment. Personality can be described in terms of traits ortypes.The trait concept of personalityPersonality can be defined as the relatively stable and enduring aspects of individualsthat distinguish them from other people. This is the ‘trait‘ concept, traits being predis-