10 Ability

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Copyright © 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2011 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Learning Goals
 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?

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 Ability
 Ability refers to the relatively stable
capabilities people have to perform a
particular range of different but related
activities.
Abilities are a function of both genes and the
environment.
 Cognitive abilities are capabilities related to
the acquisition and application of knowledge
in problem solving.
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Types and Facets of Cognitive Ability
Table 10-1

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 Cognitive Ability, Cont’d
 People who are high on verbal abilities also tend to
be high on reasoning, quantitative, spatial, and
perceptual abilities.
 The most popular explanation for the similarity in the
levels of different cognitive abilities within people is
that there is a general mental ability —sometimes
called g or the g factor —that underlies or causes all
of the more specific cognitive abilities discussed so
far.

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 The “g-factor”
Figure 10-1

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 Emotional Ability
 Emotional intelligence is a human ability that
affects social functioning.
Self-awareness is the appraisal and expression of
emotions in oneself.
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.
Other awareness is the appraisal and recognition
of emotion in others.
Person’s ability to recognize and understand the
emotions that other people are feeling. Slide
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 Emotional Ability, Cont’d
 Emotional intelligence, continued
Emotion regulation refers to being able to recover
quickly from emotional experiences.
Use of emotions reflects the degree to which
people can harness emotions and employ them to
improve their chances of being successful in
whatever they are seeking to do.

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 Emotional Ability, Cont’d
 It is an important determinant
for jobs that involve emotional
labor
 A situation in which an employee
expresses organizationally desired
emotions during interpersonal
transactions.
 It is a more important
determinant of job
performance for people with
lower levels of cognitive
intelligence.
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 Sample Items
from the
Mayer-
Salovey-Caruso
Emotional
Intelligence
Figure 10-2

Test

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Emotional Intelligence

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Source: Joseph & Newman, 2010

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 Physical Abilities, Cont’d
 Psychomotor abilities 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.
 Control movement abilities are important in tasks for
which people have to make different precise adjustments
using machinery to complete the work effectively.
 Response orientation refers to the ability to choose the
right action quickly in response to several different signals.
 Response time reflects how quickly an individual responds
to signaling information after it occurs.

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 Physical Abilities, Cont’d
 Sensory abilities refer to capabilities associated
with vision and hearing.
Near and far vision is the ability to see things up
close and at a distance or in low light contexts
(night vision).
Visual color discrimination and depth perception is
the ability to perceive colors and judge relative
distances between things accurately.

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 Physical Abilities, Cont’d
 Sensory abilities, continued
Hearing sensitivity is the capability to hear and
discriminate sounds that vary in terms of loudness
and pitch.
Auditory attention is being able to focus on a
single sound in the presence of many other
sounds.
Speech recognition is the ability to identify and
understand the speech of another person.

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What Does It Mean for an Employee to Be
Figure 10-3 “Able?”

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 Discussion Questions
 What combination of abilities is appropriate
for the job of your dreams? Do you possess
those abilities?

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 The Ability-Job Fit

Ability-Job
Employee’s Fit Job’s Ability
Abilities Requirements

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Effects of General Cognitive Ability on
Performance and Commitment
Figure 10-4

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 How Important Is Ability
 Cognitive ability is a strong predictor of job performance
— in particular, the task performance aspect.
 People who have higher general cognitive ability tend to
be better at learning and decision making.
 Cognitive ability tends to be more strongly correlated
with task performance than citizenship behavior or
counterproductive behavior.
 Research has not supported a significant linkage
between cognitive ability and organizational
commitment.

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