Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review.

This article provides a qualitative review of the trait perspective in leadership research, followed by a meta-analysis. The authors used the 5-factor model as an organizing framework and meta-analyzed 222 correlations from 73 samples. Overall, the correlations with leadership were Neuroticism=-.24, Extraversion=.31, Openness to Experience=.24, Agreeableness=.08, and Conscientiousness=.28. Results indicated that the relations of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness with leadership generalized in that more than 90% of the individual correlations were greater than 0. Extraversion was the most consistent correlate of leadership across study settings and leadership criteria (leader emergence and leadership effectiveness). Overall, the 5-factor model had a multiple correlation of .48 with leadership, indicating strong support for the leader trait perspective when traits are organized according to the 5-factor model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis.

This study reports results of a meta-analysis linking traits from the 5-factor model of personality to overall job satisfaction. Using the model as an organizing framework, 334 correlations from 163 independent samples were classified according to the model. The estimated true score correlations with job satisfaction were -.29 for Neuroticism, .25 for Extraversion, .02 for Openness to Experience, .17 for Agreeableness, and .26 for Conscientiousness. Results further indicated that only the relations of Neuroticism and Extraversion with job satisfaction generalized across studies. As a set, the Big Five traits had a multiple correlation of .41 with job satisfaction, indicating support for the validity of the dispositional source of job satisfaction when traits are organized according to the 5-factor model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cohort differences in Big Five personality factors over a period of 25 years.

The notion of personality traits implies a certain degree of stability in the life span of an individual. But what about generational effects? Are there generational changes in the distribution or structure of personality traits? This article examines cohort changes on the Big Five personality factors Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience, among first-year psychology students in the Netherlands, ages 18 to 25 years, between 1982 and 2007. Because measurement invariance of a personality test is essential for a sound interpretation of cohort differences in personality, we first assessed measurement invariance with respect to cohort for males and females separately on the Big Five personality factors, as measured by the Dutch instrument Five Personality Factors Test. Results identified 11 (females) and 2 (males) biased items with respect to cohort, out of a total of 70 items. Analyzing the unbiased items, results indicated small linear increases over time in Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness and small linear decreases over time in Neuroticism. No clear patterns were found on the Openness to Experience factor. Secondary analyses on students from 1971 to 2007 of females and males of different ages together revealed linear trends comparable to those in the main analyses among young adults between 1982 onward. The results imply that the broad sociocultural context may affect personality factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality and cognitive ability predictors of performance in graduate business school.

A cross-validation study is reported in which both personality variables and cognitive ability variables were evaluated as predictors of 2 separate performance criteria in a sample of 450 Master of Business Administration students. Whereas verbal and quantitative aptitudes of the students were found to be strong predictors of performance at written work, they were weak predictors of an in-class performance criterion. The opposite was true when specific personality trait variables were used as predictors. The personality characteristics of the students predicted classroom performance better than they predicted written performance. The Big Five factors of personality (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience) did not predict either criterion consistently. In conclusion, personality variables are related to academic success when characteristic modes of behavior play a role in academic performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Externalizing behavior and the higher order factors of the Big Five.

The comorbidity of various externalizing behaviors stems from a broad predisposition that is strongly genetically determined (R. F. Krueger, B. M. Hicks, C. J. Patrick, S. R. Carlson, W. G. Iacono, & M. McGue, 2002). This finding raises the question of how externalizing behavior is related to broad personality traits that have been identified in normal populations and that also have a genetic component. Using structural equation modeling, the authors applied a hierarchical personality model based on the Big Five and their two higher order factors, Stability (Neuroticism reversed, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) and Plasticity (Extraversion and Openness). Cognitive ability was included to separate variance in Openness associated with Extraversion (hypothesized to be positively related to externalizing behavior) from variance in Openness associated with cognitive ability (negatively related to externalizing behavior). This model was used to predict a latent externalizing behavior variable in an adolescent male sample (N = 140) assessed through self- and teacher reports. As hypothesized, externalizing behavior was characterized by low Stability, high Plasticity, and low cognitive ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in the big five across the life span: Evidence from two national samples.

Cross-sectional age differences in the Big Five personality traits were investigated using 2 large datasets from Great Britain and Germany: the British Household Panel Study (BHPS; N ≥ 14,039) and the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSEOP; N ≥ 20,852). Participants, who ranged in age from 16 to the mid-80s, completed a 15-item version of the Big Five Inventory (e.g., John & Srivastava, 1999) in either 2005 or 2006. The observed age trends were generally consistent across both datasets. Extraversion and Openness were negatively associated with age, whereas Agreeableness was positively associated with age. Average levels of Conscientiousness were highest for participants in middle age. The only exception was Neuroticism, which was slightly negatively associated with age in the BHPS and slightly positively associated with age in the GSEOP. Neither gender nor education level were consistent moderators of age differences in the Big Five. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality trait development from age 12 to age 18: Longitudinal, cross-sectional and cross-cultural analyses.

Three studies were conducted to assess mean level changes in personality traits during adolescence. Versions of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T. Costa, Jr., & R. R. McCrae, 1992a) were used to assess the 5 major personality factors. A 4-year longitudinal study of intellectually gifted students (N = 230) was supplemented by cross-sectional studies of nonselected American (N = 1,959) and Flemish (N = 789) adolescents. Personality factors were reasonably invariant across ages, although rank-order stability of individual differences was low. Neuroticism appeared to increase in girls, and Openness to Experience increased in both boys and girls; mean levels of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were stable. Results extend knowledge of the developmental curve of penalty traits backward from adulthood and help bridge the gap with child temperament studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relating the Tellegen and five-factor models of personality structure.

With 575 college students, the relationship between A. Tellegen's (1985) personality model, assessed with the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), and the Big Five model, operationalized by P. T. Costa and R. R. McCrae's (1985) NEO Personality Inventory, was investigated. Correlations and joint factor analyses indicated that the MPQ constructs could be well-organized under the Big Five model, and the NEO constructs could be well-organized under the Tellegen higher-order dimensions (plus Absorption). Tellegen's higher-order dimensions relate to components of the Big Five hierarchically: Negative Emotionality encompasses Big Five Neuroticism and Agreeableness, Positive Emotionality encompasses Extraversion and the surgent aspect of Conscientiousness, and Constraint encompasses the controlled aspect of Conscientiousness and much of Openness to Experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identity, self, and personality: II. Glimpses through the autophotographic eye.

Ss were 201 college students, who used R. C. Ziller's (1990) autophotographic method to answer the question who are you? Richness of self-depiction (i.e., creative and self-expressive vs prosaic photo essays) and interpersonal connectedness of the self were examined. As expected, Openness to Experience from the 5-factor model predicted richness of photo essays. Among women, Neuroticism and Introversion also predicted richness. As expected, Extraversion and Agreeableness related to interpersonal orientations in photo essays. Intergenerational photos had especially salient meaning for personality. Three other predictions received support, bearing on such identity-relevant categories as alcohol use, religiosity, self-exhibition in bathing attire, and identification with one's school. Results are integrated with literature on interpersonal connectedness and the relation of creativity to personality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impressions of Personality in Parkinson's Disease: Can Rehabilitation Practitioners See Beyond the Symptoms?

Objective: To explore rehabilitation practitioners' use of observable cues of personality to form accurate impressions of persons with Parkinson's disease. Participants: Ninety-nine practitioners from disciplines of occupational, physical, and speech therapy and nursing and medicine. Procedure: Participants viewed excerpts of videotaped interviews of 6 men and 6 women with mild-to-moderate Parkinson's disease and formed impressions of the targets' personality. Main Outcome Measure: NEO Five Factor Inventory personality test. Analysis: Brunswik lens model correlational analysis of the associations between expressive behavior and personality judgments. Results: Practitioners were accurate in judging Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness but were unable to detect interparticipant differences in levels of Extraversion and Neuroticism. Conclusion: Accuracy in judging some traits suggests that future research may identify interventions, such as sensitizing practitioners to valid behavioral cues or modifying contextual features, to maximize a practitioner's ability to understand a client's personality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A longitudinal study of emotion expression and personality relations in early development.

To investigate emotion expression and personality relations, the authors coded infants' full-face and component positive and negative expressions during Episodes 4 through 8 of the strange situation procedure at age 18 months and obtained maternal ratings of the 5-factor model of personality when children were 3.5 years old. Full-face negative expression was directly related to Neuroticism and inversely related to Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. By contrast, component positive expression showed the exact opposite pattern of relations. Full-face positive expression was positively correlated with Extraversion and Openness to Experience. These findings indicate that full-face and component expressions may index different intensities of emotions. Emotion expression and personality relations were not mediated by the security of attachment continuum or the emotional reactivity dichotomy derived from the attachment subclassifications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Big Five personality dimensions and entrepreneurial status: A meta-analytical review.

In this study, the authors used meta-analytical techniques to examine the relationship between personality and entrepreneurial status. Personality variables used in previous studies were categorized according to the five-factor model of personality. Results indicate significant differences between entrepreneurs and managers on 4 personality dimensions such that entrepreneurs scored higher on Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience and lower on Neuroticism and Agreeableness. No difference was found for Extraversion. Effect sizes for each personality dimension were small, although the multivariate relationship for the full set of personality variables was moderate (R = .37). Considerable heterogeneity existed for all of the personality variables except Agreeableness, suggesting that future research should explore possible moderators of the personality-entrepreneurial status relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the temporal stability of personality: Evidence for differential stability and the role of life experiences.

The authors investigated the stability of personality and trait affect in young adults. In Studies 1 and 2, young adults were retested on a Big Five personality measure and a trait affect inventory over a 2.5-year and a 2-month period, respectively. Results from Study 1 point to positive mean-level changes; participants scored higher on Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness at Time 2. Affectively, participants experienced less negative affect and more positive affect at Time 2. Results from both retests provide clear evidence of differential stability. Affective traits were consistently less stable than the Big Five. Other analyses suggest that life events influence the stability of affective traits more than the Big Five. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality development across the life span: Longitudinal analyses with a national sample from Germany.

Longitudinal data from a national sample of Germans (N = 20,434) were used to evaluate stability and change in the Big Five personality traits. Participants completed a brief measure of personality twice, 4 years apart. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to establish measurement invariance over time and across age groups. Substantive questions about differential (or rank-order) and mean-level stability and change were then evaluated. Results showed that differential stability was relatively strong among all age groups but that it increased among young adults, peaked in later life, and then declined among the oldest old. Patterns of mean-level change showed that Extraversion and Openness declined over the life span, whereas Agreeableness increased. Mean levels of Conscientiousness increased among young adults and then decreased among older adults. Trajectories for Neuroticism were relatively flat, with slight increases during middle age and a slight decline in late life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the dynamic covariation between interpersonal behavior and affect: prediction from neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness

It was posited that the traits of Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Agreeableness are predictors of dynamic intraindividual processes involving interpersonal behavior and affect. Hypotheses derived from the behavioral concordance model that individuals with high scores on a trait would experience more positively valenced affect when engaging in behavior concordant with that trait than individuals with low scores on the trait were tested. Participants completed a questionnaire measure of the traits and reported on behavior and affect during interpersonal interactions using event-contingent sampling forms approximately 6 times a day for 20 days. Trait scores were related to indexes of the association between each dimension of interpersonal behavior and affect calculated for each individual. Previous findings concerning the trait of Agreeableness were replicated, and results strongly supported the behavioral concordance model for the trait of Neuroticism. Thus, at least some traits can provide information about intraindividual processes that vary over time.     

An alternative to the search for single polymorphisms: Toward molecular personality scales for the five-factor model.

There is growing evidence that personality traits are affected by many genes, all of which have very small effects. As an alternative to the largely unsuccessful search for individual polymorphisms associated with personality traits, the authors identified large sets of potentially related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and summed them to form molecular personality scales (MPSs) with from 4 to 2,497 SNPs. Scales were derived from two thirds of a large (N = 3,972) sample of individuals from Sardinia who completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T. Costa, Jr., & R. R. McCrae, 1992) and were assessed in a genomewide association scan. When MPSs were correlated with the phenotype in the remaining one third of the sample, very small but significant associations were found for 4 of the 5e personality factors when the longest scales were examined. These data suggest that MPSs for Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness (but not Extraversion) contain genetic information that can be refined in future studies, and the procedures described here should be applicable to other quantitative traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extending the search for folk personality constructs: The dimensionality of the personality-relevant proverb domain.

College students (95 men and 264 women) rated how well 211 familiar proverbs described their behavior and beliefs. A factor analysis of these data yielded 7 major dimensions; many of the factors were similar to recognized lexical personality factors. Big Five Conscientiousness and Neuroticism were each strongly associated with a single proverb dimension (interpreted as Restraint and Enjoys Life, respectively). Big Five Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Intellect/Imagination were all associated with several proverb dimensions. Agreeableness was most strongly associated with proverb dimensions representing Machiavellian behavior and strong Group Ties, and both Extraversion and Intellect showed particularly notable associations with an Achievement Striving dimension. The 2 remaining proverb dimensions, which represented a belief that Life is Fair and an attitude of Cynicism, could not be accounted for by the Big Five. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parents' Personality and Infants' Temperament as Contributors to Their Emerging Relationship.

The authors examined the contributions of infant's temperament and parent's personality to their relationship. In Study 1, 102 infants, mothers, and fathers were studied when infants were 7 months; in Study 2, 112 infants and mothers were followed from 9 to 45 months. Infants' temperament (joy, fear, anger, and attention) was observed in standard temperament paradigms. Parents' personality measures encompassed the Big Five traits and Empathy in Study 1 and Mistrust, Manipulativeness, Aggression, Dependency, Entitlement, and Workaholism in Study 2. Parent-child relationship (shared positive affect and parental responsiveness in Studies 1 and 2 and parental tracking of the infant in Study 1) was observed in naturalistic contexts. In Study 1, mothers' Neuroticism, Empathy, and Conscientiousness and fathers' Agreeableness, Openness, and Extraversion related to the relationship with the infants. All measures of infant temperament also related to the emerging relationship. In Study 2, maternal Mistrust, Manipulativeness, Dependency, and Workaholism predicted the relationship with the child. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Can Children Provide Coherent, Stable, and Valid Self-Reports on the Big Five Dimensions? A Longitudinal Study From Ages 5 to 7.

Research on early childhood personality has been scarce. Self-reports of Big Five personality traits were measured longitudinally with the Berkeley Puppet Interview when children were 5, 6, and 7 years of age. For comparative purposes, Big Five self-reports were collected in a sample of college students. The children's self-reports showed levels of consistency and differentiation that approached those of the college age sample. Children's personality self-reports demonstrated significant correlations across the 1- and 2-year longitudinal intervals. Substantial and increasing convergence was found between children's self-reports of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness and conceptually relevant behavior ratings provided by mothers, fathers, and teachers. Children's self-reports of Neuroticism were unrelated to adults' reports but did predict sadness and anxious behavior observed in the laboratory. The results provide the beginnings of an account of how the Big Five dimensions begin to be salient and emerge as coherent, stable, and valid self-perceptions in childhood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)