Orgnaization Behavior
Personality Traits in the Devil Wears Prada The Devil Wears Prada is a 2006 Twentieth Century Fox film, Directed by David Frankel. This story takes place in downtown New York; it is a story of a girl, a girl named Andrea Sachs. Andy, as she’s most commonly referred to, is a fresh out of college, armed with a Journalism degree, and ready to make it big in New York. However, New York doesn’t exactly give her the job she expected, and she ends up working as an assistant for the monstrous Miranda Priestly. Miranda Priestly is editor in chief for one of the biggest fashion magazines in New York, Runway. When Andy begins her job, she has no idea how challenging it will be, or how challenging her boss, Miranda Priestly will be, for that matter. One of the primary ways Miranda and Andy differ/clash is in their personalities. In this paper, I will analyze the very different personality traits of Miranda and Andy. The personality traits I will focus on are, Machiavellianism, communication style, verbal aggressiveness, and the results of verbal aggressiveness, stress. The first personality trait, Machiavellianism, is a term coined from the book, The Prince, by Niccolo Maciavelli (1469-1527). Machiavelli wrote the book as a handbook for the success of royalty. His basic piece of advice was to do whatever it took to be successful, the term Machiavellianism, simply means that “the end justifies the means” (Avtgis, 2010, p. 135). A person with high “mach” simply means that person will lie, steal, cheat and do whatever else it takes to get what they want. Miranda Priestly is an excellent example of someone that is very high on the mach scale. For example, when she finds out her job is threatened by a younger woman, she blackmails Irv, the owner of Runway, to keep her in her position as editor in chief, at the expense of her friend, Nigel, who thought he was getting a promotion as well. When confronted about this by Andy she says, “You want this life, those choices are