Organizational Behavior - Pursuit of Happiness

Introduction

The Pursuit of Happyness is a film revolving around Chris Gardner. We will be analyzing Chris’s personality in terms of the Big Five Model. Furthermore, his values and attributes concerning his terminal values, and his motivations in the movie.

Personality

The Big Five model relates to a model that has 5 different personality factors. The 5 factors are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Openness to experience relates to an individual’s variety of collection and curiosity for art, emotion and adventure. High vs low openness contrasts some ones pursuit of self-actualization. It refers to one’s imaginative and independent abilities. Conscientiousness relates to a trend in an individual’s organization, self-discipline, and dependableness. High vs low conscientiousness contrasts some ones flexibility and their spontaneity. Extraversion characterizes an individual’s sociability. It involves the amount of some ones excitability, talkativeness, and energy. High vs low extraverts contrasts ones positive emotions. Agreeableness refers to some ones compassionate and cooperative tendencies. It measures one’s ability to be trusting, or helpful in nature. Neuroticism contrasts extraversion. It is the tendencies that someone shows for unpleasant emotions such as, anger, anxiety, depression, and vulnerability.

As it pertains to Openness to new experience, Chris Gardner would rate in the middle of the scale. His behaviour in the movie showed him to be a very creative, curious, and complex character. Although, he does not pursue self-actualization in high active experiences, but gains his fulfillment through his perseverance. Chris exhibited these attributes by his collection of knowledge and skills for his internship. Furthermore, he reveals his intellectual curiosity early in the movie when his son has the rubix cube, then completing it in the cab.

In terms of Conscientiousness, Chris fluctuates on the scale throughout the movie. The start of the movie shows him to be dis-organized, negligent, and unreliable. For example, he has a mountain of unpaid parking tickets and gets his car towed at the start of the movie. Moreover, his unreliability is shown in him committing to pick up his son but having to rely Linda to get him on multiple occasions. Later on in the movie he begins to move up the scale of conscientiousness. With the internship, he begins to become more self-disciplined and organized. Chris creates a high conscious system in getting the most out of his internship while still being the best father he could.

Chris Gardner rates high on the scale of Extraversion. His sociability and friendliness is on display when he is trying to sell his bone scanners to doctors. In addition, to gain what he wants he uses his extraversion to get his