David Fontana. Personality in the Workplace. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan Press, Ltd, 2000, 239 pages, $14.99.

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1 David Fontana. Personality in the Workplace. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan Press, Ltd, 2000, 239 pages, $ Reviewed by Donald Fischer, Professor, Department of Psychology, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, MO. This is the third edition of a book originally published in 1977, one which I think has been attractively priced and renamed (from Personality and Education in the first edition and Teaching and Personality in the second edition). In accord with the new title, Fontana describes the aim of this edition as to discuss those psychological insights into personality that are of most relevance in the workplace. He suggests that by the end of the book we should know something about the origins, development, and functioning of personality... something of the most popular devices for measuring personality... [and] the implications of these for the work of managers, teachers, and all those responsible for the work of others. Fontana says his target audience (like his aim) is large: students of personality, organisational (sic) psychology, counseling and education, as well as teachers, managers and all those responsible for the work and development of others. I think Fontana ultimately fails in some important ways to achieve his objectives and I have had some difficulty deciding who (if any) represents an appropriate audience for this edition. Contrary to Fontana s claim to have expanded the scope of this new edition, to have included new developments... and incorporated much fresh material, within a few pages of the first chapter it appeared to me that this was an edition that had been minimally revised and updated, and that the price, new title and refocused aim were window dressing designed to attract a different (and larger) audience than the earlier editions. For example, in the first chapter Fontana presents a cursory review of the genetic and experiential factors that influence personality. In a disproportionately long section devoted to Sheldon s body-type theory (2 of the 14 pages), he describes work done over a quarter of a century ago (a true statement in 1977 when the first 1

2 edition was published, but not so today). Of greater concern to me is the lack of any discussion of the relevance of these theories and research findings for the target audience -- managers and those responsible for the work of others. The closest Fontana comes to offering any workplace application in this chapter is a quote from an inscription on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi ( know thyself ), suggesting that self-knowledge is the basis of all wisdom. This platitude left me cold; I think his intended audience would appreciate more useful implications and specific applications. In Chapter 2 Fontana describes personality development and, again, I was struck by the prevalence of antiquated adages that reflect an understanding supported by behavioral science circa When talking about brain size/structure and the effects of deprived environments upon development, he suggests that because we seem to use only a small percentage of our brain s potential, small deficits may not have measurable effects upon later performance. The mass-action theories about the association cortex proposed by Lashley in the mid-twentieth century are simply not supported by modern neuroscience; brain plasticity aside, we don t have an excess of neural tissue and we don t use only a small percentage of our brains. And again, I was disappointed by the lack of applications that are relevant for those of us interested in workplace behavior. Eighteen of the chapter s 30 pages are devoted to descriptions of Erikson s life-span stages and implications for parenting; nine pages are spent describing Allport s mature personality and Maslow s self-actualised (sic) personality, and exploring some of the implications of these characteristics in the workplace. Although Fontana mentions a current interest in emotional intelligence in this chapter and appropriately links this construct to aspects of the healthy personalities described by Allport and Maslow, he appears to be unaware of recent work in this area. For example, the single Goleman reference is Emotional Intelligence and there is no mention of the more recent Working with Emotional Intelligence. The workplace implications 2

3 of emotional intelligence (and related concepts) which Fontana offers in this chapter pale by comparison to those one might obtain from reading even the dust jacket of Goleman s more recent book. I was also disturbed by Fontana s apparent failure to appreciate the importance of large within-group variance relative to small between-group variance in his discussion of gender differences in emotional intelligence and related concepts (openness to intimacy), as he pondered the implications regarding who is better qualified for management/leadership positions in organizations. Fontana devotes subsequent chapters to summary descriptions of classic psychodynamic theories of personality (Freud, Adler, Jung), humanistic approaches (Rogers), trait-based models (Eysenck, Cattell, big-five), social-psychological models (Lewin), state-based (Kelly, Apter) and behavioristic approaches (Watson, Skinner, Bandura). In each of these chapters I was usually favorably impressed by the clarity and readability of Fontana s summary descriptions of the classic theories -- so much so that I found myself musing about how I would have appreciated his work during my graduate school days when I was wading through the original works he summarizes (a Cliff Notes of sorts for the classic theories). However, I was also impressed by how uninformed his evaluations of these theories tend to be and how his views often seem unenlightened by much of the work done in the last half of the twentieth century. For example, he suggests there is strong experimental support for classic Freudian theory as it pertains to the operation of ego defense mechanisms; contemporary cognitive science suggests otherwise (Myers, 2001). Another example of how Fontana seems trapped in a time warp can be found in his chapter on trait-based approaches, where he devotes nearly half of the space to a description of Eysenck s theory and work (13 of 27 pages) while devoting barely one page to five-factor theory and its 3

4 implications/applications in the workplace. The lack of major updating and revision is also evident in Fontana s descriptions of common trait-based measurement instruments. For example, he describes Costa & McCrae s NEO-PI which had 181 items rather than the current version (published in 1985) which has 240 items and he describes the original (1957) version of Gough s CPI, which had 480 items and 18 basic scales rather than the more recent 1987 version which has 432 items and 20 basic scales. Furthermore, he spends considerable time discussing the problem of social acceptability or faking on trait-based personality measurement instruments, apparently unaware of the many studies suggesting that base rates are low and criterion-related validities are not moderated by lie-scale measures (Hough, 1990; Barrick & Mount, 1996). I was continually disappointed by the lack of applications or insight for the workplace in the later chapters. For example, in the psychodynamic chapter where Fontana describes Jungian theory and in the trait-based chapter where he describes the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, he fails to describe the many insights, applications, and widespread use that this theory and measurement instrument have had over the past 25 years in the areas of training and development (e.g., Hirsh & Kummerow, 1990). Another major oversight, in my opinion, is his failure to talk about goal-setting and self-efficacy in the social learning section of the behaviorism chapter and the many implications/applications for the workplace that have emanated from this body of work. Virtually all of the implications/applications in this chapter involve children and parenting. In summary, I think Fontana s book represents a weak attempt to repackage and recycle earlier work in a way that panders to a different audience -- students of organizational behavior and managers/hr professionals. The failure to incorporate important research makes it unsuitable for the serious student and I think a serious manager would be frustrated by the paucity of implications/applications. If it fails in this regard, is there an appropriate audience? Even that 4

5 which I think Fontana does best -- the summary descriptions of classical theories -- is not sufficient to distinguish this book from some others which I might recommend for the not-so-serious student of personality and its implications (e.g., Schultz, 1977; Simons et al, 1994). REFERENCES Barrick, MR & Mount, MK. (1996). Effects of Impression Management and Self-Deception on the Predictive Validity of Personality Constructs. J. of Applied Psychology, 81(3), Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Press. Goleman, D. (1998). Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Press. Hough, LM, Eaton, NK, Dunnette, MD, Kamp, JD, McCloy, RA. (1990). Criterion-Related Validities of Personality Constructs and the Effects of Response Distortion on Those Validities. J. of Applied Psychology, 75(5), Hirsh, SK & Kummerow, JM. (1990). Introduction to Type in Organizations, 2 nd ed. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc. Myers, DG. (2001). Psychology, 6 th ed. New York, NY: Worth Publishers. Schultz, D. (1977). Growth Psychology. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Co. Simons, JA, Kalichman, S, Santrock, JW. (1994). Human Adjustment. Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark Publishers. 5