Big Five Personality Traits and Ambiguity Management in Career Decision-Making

Although ambiguity aversion has been found to impede the process and outcome of career decision-making, knowledge regarding the association between personality characteristics and ambiguity aversion is limited. Thus, the author examined the prediction of the Big Five personality traits for ambiguity aversion and the mediation of tolerance and confidence in ambiguity management. The results obtained with a U.S. sample (N = 239) revealed the following: (a) neuroticism positively predicted ambiguity aversion; (b) extraversion did not predict ambiguity aversion; (c) agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness negatively predicted ambiguity aversion; and (d) confidence in ambiguity management mediated the relationships between agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness and ambiguity aversion. These findings highlight the differential roles of the Big Five personality traits in ambiguity management and the importance of confidence in ambiguity management. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed along with the study's limitations and suggestions for future research.     

The Big Five personality traits and earnings: A meta-analysis

The past two decades have witnessed increased interest in the relationship between personality and labor market outcomes, as well as the emergence of the Five-Factor Model as the key reference framework for the study of personality. In this paper, we provide the first meta-analytical review of the empirical literature on the association between personal earnings and the Big Five personality traits. The analysis combines the results of 62 peer-reviewed articles published from 2001–2020, from which we retrieved 896 partial effect sizes. Overall, the primary literature provides robust support for a positive association between personal earnings and the traits of Openness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion, while simultaneously revealing a negative and significant association between earnings and the traits of Agreeableness and Neuroticism. We find no evidence of a substantial publication bias. Meta-regression estimates suggest that Openness and Conscientiousness are positively associated with earnings even when primary researchers control for individual cognitive abilities and educational attainments. Similarly, the studies that include labor market control variables exhibit weaker associations between earnings and Extraversion and Agreeableness. The results of the primary studies seem unaffected by the time at which the Big Five are measured, as well as by the scale and number of inventory items. Meta-regression estimates suggest that the results of the primary literature are not stable across cultures and gender, and that the ranking and academic field of the journal matter.     

The Relationship Between Aggression and the Big Five Personality Factors in Predicting Academic Success

The focus of this study was to determine whether aggression adds incremental validity above and beyond the Big Five personality factors in predicting grades. An archival data analysis was used in this study. The data consisted of a sample of eighth grade students. The students completed the Personal Style Inventory Adolescent (PSI-A), which is a 120-item survey instrument designed to measure the Big Five personality factors and aggression. Results indicated that aggression does add incremental validity above and beyond the Big Five. The results also indicated that the Big Five were significantly correlated with academic performance. When aggression was added into the statistical model, conscientiousness, openness and aggression were significantly correlated with grades.     

Household finances and the ‘Big Five’ personality traits

Using data drawn from the British Household Panel Survey, we analyse the relationship between personality traits and financial decision-making focusing on unsecured debt and financial assets. Personality traits are classified according to the ‘Big Five’ taxonomy: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. We explore personality traits at the individual level and also within couples, specifically the personality traits of the head of household and personality traits averaged across the couple. We find that certain personality traits such as extraversion are generally significantly associated with household finances in terms of the levels of debt and assets held and the correlation is often relatively large. The results also suggest that the magnitude and statistical significance of the association between personality traits and household finances differs across the various types of debt and assets held in the household portfolio.     

Toward a Neuropsychology of Personality in Sex Offenders Against Children: An Exploratory Psychometric Study

Little is known about the relationship between neuropsychological functioning and normal personality in sex offenders. The aim of this study was to examine the relations between personality traits and executive functioning in child molesters. The NEO-Five Factor Inventory was used to assess personality, and the Trail Making Test (parts A and B) was used to assess executive functioning in a sample of child molesters (n?=?33). We found the time required to complete Trail Making Test part A significantly predicted Extraversion scores, whereas the time to complete Trail Making Test part B significantly predicted Openness scores. Brief measures of executive functioning can thus predict the score in Extraversion and Openness in child molesters. These personality traits may be related to the functioning of brain areas implicated in having to complete the Trail Making Test.     

Explaining Entrepreneurial Behavior: Dispositional Personality Traits,Growth of Personal Entrepreneurial Resources,and Business Idea Generation

Applying a life‐span approach of human development and using the example of science‐based business idea generation, the authors used structural equation modeling to test a mediation model for predicting entrepreneurial behavior in a sample of German scientists (2 measurement occasions; Time 1, N= 488). It was found that recalled early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence predicted business idea generation. This link was mediated by entrepreneurial human and social capital. Moreover, an entrepreneurial Big Five profile was associated with early entrepreneurial competence and predicted entrepreneurial human and social capital. Results underscore the relevance of the long‐neglected developmental approach to entrepreneurship.     

Influence of personality traits on Facebook engagement and their effects on socialization behavior and satisfaction with university life

Several factors influence Facebook users’ engagement. This study investigates the correlations between Facebook engagement and users’ personality traits. This study also analyses the impact of Facebook engagement on students’ socialization behavior and their satisfaction with their university life. A dataset of 994 Malaysian students was collected and used for analysis. The outcome of the analysis illustrates that students’ personality traits have a positive influence on Facebook engagement. Subsequently, Facebook engagement was found to have an influence over students’ socialization behavior and their satisfaction with university life. The results can be used by educators as a guide for their curriculum development, i.e., consideration of wider usage of Facebook in conducting courses.     

Review of the effects of Five Factor Model personality traits on network structures and perceptions of structure

We review recent research on Five Factor Model personality and social network analysis to assess how structures develop and are perceived. Extraversion and agreeableness relate consistently to personal but not workplace networks. Extraverts are more likely to seek connections, whereas agreeable individuals receive connections from others. Openness predicts network diversity and is marginally related to position when groups pursue collective goals. Conscientiousness is associated with maintaining certain personal relationships, but is strongly related to central positions in workplace networks. Neuroticism has no consistent relationship with network size or composition, and is differentially related to network positions, depending on the context.     

Personality traits and knowledge sharing

In this paper, we describe an empirical study that relates three personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness) to knowledge sharing. In the existing literature considerable attention has been paid to managerial influences on knowledge sharing, technological support through information and communication systems, or individual characteristics like motivation or the perception of conflict of interest or vulnerability. Instead we concentrate on the role that personal dispositions play in individual’s knowledge sharing behavior. By means of structural equation modeling with PLS, we discover significant correlations between the personality traits and knowledge sharing within teams of an engineering company. Our results clearly contribute to the existing literature, as they offer empirical evidence of the impact of enduring individual characteristics on knowledge sharing.     

Gender Differences in the Effects of Personality Traits on Party Identification in the United States

This study examines whether the Big Five personality traits have different effects on male and female party identification in the United States. Research has found associations between personality traits and partisanship in the United States. However, there is solid evidence of gender differences in personality traits, and past studies have not yet considered whether personality-partisanship relationship might be gender-differentiated. This study finds that with the increase of agreeableness, women tend to be Republicans, but men tend to be Democrats. Furthermore, as openness to experience increases, women are more likely to be strong partisans, but men are more likely to be independents or leaning partisans. To sum up, this study provides evidence that the effects of the Big Five personality traits on party identification vary by gender and suggests that it is wrong to assume that the Big Five personality traits have the same impacts on male and female party identification.     

Personality and psychographics of three types of gamblers in the United States

Using the results of the Experian Marketing Services' Simmons^® National Consumer Study (NCS) (N₀ = 24,581), this paper studies the characteristics of three types of US. gamblers: regular lottery players (N₁ = 1100), heavy casino gamblers (N₂ = 636) and online gamblers (N₃ = 291). We explore each type of gambler using measures of several personality and psychographic variables: impulsiveness, desire for control, materialism, risk taking, self-centredness, introversion, sensation seeking and financial prudence. We find that while all three groups have elevated levels of impulsiveness and materialism relative to non-gamblers (p < 0.01), most noteworthy are the online gamblers, who have higher levels of risk taking, desire for control, self-centredness and sensation seeking compared to casino gamblers, lottery players and non-gamblers (p < 0.01). This study additionally emphasizes the importance of considering demographics when investigating psychographics, as some of the psychographics related to gambling are conditioned on age. In addition, we find that online gamblers who also engage in other forms of gambling may be distinct from those who do not, suggesting they are not a homogeneous group.     

Sexual and physical child abuse and the developtnent of dissociative personality traits. Canadian and British evidence from adolescent child welfare and child care populations

An attempt was made to construct a measure of dissociative personality traits from file review of 61 Canadian adolescents with a known history of sexual abuse before the age of six. The study was then extended to 55 British adolescents in residential care and therapy centres. Between 18 and 29% of adolescents displayed several features of dissociative personality, implying the possibility of multiple personality disorder. Those with two or more indicators of dissociative personality style tended to have more problematic behavioural histories, including a particularly high prevalence of deliberate self-harm. In the UK group the Dissociative Experiences Scale (Bernstein and Putnam, 1986) completed by 55 adolescents correlated 0.67 with the dissociative personality trait index constructed from case file review. Implications for treatment of abused children are discussed.     

Personality traits and strategic behavior: Anxiousness and aggressiveness in entry games

We demonstrate that personality has a systematic effect on strategic behavior. We focus on two personality traits: anxiousness and aggressiveness, and consider a 2-player entry game, where each player can guarantee a payoff by staying out, a higher payoff if she is the only player to enter, but a lower payoff if both players enter. We find that: anxious players enter less; aggressive players enter more; players are more likely to enter against anxious than non-anxious players; and players are less likely to enter against aggressive than non-aggressive players. We discuss the possible mechanism through which personality affects strategic behavior.     

The stability of personality traits in adolescence and young adulthood

Models of economic decision-making usually assume that personality is stable over time. We assess the validity of this assumption over an eight-year time frame in adolescence and young adulthood using nationally representative panel data from Australia. Our study shows that unconditional mean-level changes in personality traits are small—with the exception of conscientiousness which increases by 0.38 SD—because most individuals do not change their scores in a statistically reliable way during adolescence and young adulthood, or changes occur in equal proportions in opposite directions. Controlling for systematic panel attrition and multiple hypothesis testing, we demonstrate that personality traits do not systematically respond to the majority of common one-off family-, income-, and health-related shocks. However, a small number of life events—marriage, family members detained in jail, leaving the workforce and long-term health problems—are associated with subsequent changes in personality. In particular, youth who experience long-term health problems including bodily pain increase their external locus of control by 0.5–0.9 SD, an economically meaningful change when expressed in terms of hourly wage penalty.     

Boundary Ambiguity and Borderline Personality Traits: Implications for Treatment for Adolescent Girls in Foster Care

This article explores the relationship between boundary ambiguity and borderline personality traits in adolescent girls in foster care. Boundary ambiguity is a family systems concept: family members are uncertain about who is in or out of the family—in either psychological or physical presence or absence. In foster care, it can be assumed that an adolescent girl has experienced trauma significant enough to be removed from her family. The connection between early childhood trauma and attachment disruption in addition to the connection between insecure/disorganized attachment and borderline personality disorder leads to the conclusion that these same adolescents are at high risk for developing borderline personality traits. The sample consists of 40 caseworkers from New England’s child protection departments and therapists from residential programs working with adolescent girls. They completed the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure for Adolescents to determine the presence of personality disruption as well as a variation of Pauline Boss’s Boundary Ambiguity Scale #1, and demographic questionnaires. The results find a significant correlation between boundary ambiguity and borderline personality traits. These findings provide directions for future research in clinical treatment and child welfare policy making.     

Gambling among Croatian young people: an exploratory study of the relationship between psychopathic traits,risk-taking tendencies and gambling-related problems

The present study investigated the relationship between psychopathic traits, risk-taking tendencies and gambling problem severity and if these associations varied by gender in a community sample of Croatian adolescents (N = 282; 148 males). Results of the regression analyses showed that the Impulsive-Irresponsible behavioural style (YPI-II) and the Grandiose-Manipulative interpersonal style (YPI-GM) were the strongest postdictors of gambling-related problems. Surprisingly, independently of the YPI-II dimension, the Callous-Unemotional traits were negatively associated to gambling-related problems. By, contrast, independently of the psychopathic traits, risk-tendencies were not significant postdictors of gambling problem severity. With respect to gender differences, higher levels of the YPI-II and YPI-GM dimensions were related to more severe gambling-related problems only in males, not in females. Furthermore, while the CU traits exhibited protective features against gambling-related problems in both genders, the effect was stronger for males than for females.     

Personality in those entering social work training in England: comparing women and men

The ‘person of the social worker’ has long been considered a crucial aspect of social work. Such terms as ‘the person of the worker’ are complemented by an emphasis on both client/service user and worker as conscious subjects, the ‘use of self’, and the overarching importance ascribed by many to the relationship. Surprisingly, in view of this emphasis, there has been little attempt to look at the personality of those entering social work, or social work education. This is further emphasised by the gender imbalance internationally characteristic of social work and social care, in which women predominate. This study, carried out in two diverse English Universities, whose provision nevertheless reflected the undergraduate and postgraduate expectations of the Bologna Declaration, compares systematically the personality of men and women recruited to their social work programmes. Considerable differences between the sexes are found in certain key areas, with a tendency towards what is termed ‘robustness’ in men and ‘responsiveness’ in women. While the characteristics associated with both tendencies have appropriateness for social work, and results are highly nuanced, this does raise issues about characteristics, selection and possible gender biases. These are discussed.     

Challenges in research on preferences and personality traits: Measurement,stability, and inference

This paper reviews several traditions in economic research on preferences as well as research on personality traits in personality psychology and lists challenges in both fields. We discuss challenges regarding the measurement of preferences and personality traits, challenges regarding the stability of preferences and traits, and challenges when inferring causality. Additionally, we highlight areas in which we see potential benefits from taking into account methodological approaches or insights from the respective other discipline.     

Involuntary job loss and changes in personality traits

Economists consider personality traits to be stable, particularly throughout adulthood. However, evidence from psychological studies suggests that the stability assumption may not always be valid, as personality traits can respond to certain life events. Our paper analyzes whether and to what extent personality traits are malleable over a time span of eight years for a sample of working individuals. Furthermore, we specifically look at changes in personality traits after a major adverse life event: involuntary job loss. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) from 2004 to 2014 – a period over which individuals’ Big Five personality inventory was measured three times. Our dataset allows us to exploit detailed employment information, particularly reasons for job termination and unemployment spells. We focus solely on plant closures as a reason for job termination. Job loss due to plant closure is widely used as a relatively exogenous event to identify causal effects. Our results suggest that personality traits are indeed malleable during adulthood. Although the Big Five measures are relatively stable within the overall population of workers, we find an increase in openness, that is, the willingness to seek new experiences, for the average displaced worker. This increase, however, is fully driven by individuals with high educational attainment and by those who find a new job immediately after dismissal. The other dimensions of the Big Five personality inventory remain nearly unchanged after an involuntary job loss. Our findings hold for a number of robustness checks and are supported by the results of a falsification test using a placebo treatment.