Big Five personality factors and individual performance /

Abstract

Personality provides a measure of how an individuals thinks, communicates with other people, reacts to different situations, deals with stress, sets goals, works to achieve those goals as well as how he/she analyzes information and handles situations. During the past century numerous researchers have attempted to identify the role of personality in several indicators of career success (such as job performance and satisfaction) and occupation matching. Psychological researchers have regrouped a number of major personality traits that can affect and predict the global performance of individuals. One of the most important models of personality that has generated a considerable amount of interest is the Big Five factor model or FFM which classifies human personality into five broad factors or dimensions; conscientiousness, neuroticism (or emotional stability), extraversion, openness to experience, and agreeableness. Our study based on this model as a framework for measuring personality and focuses on the three most powerful and influential factors (conscientiousness, extraversion, and emotional stability) that have been shown in previous studies to be most consistently correlated with global individuals performance (whether academic or job performance). Our purpose is to investigate whether there is a relationship between these super factors of personality and an individual's performance, in order to identify which personality trait(s) can play a role and to what extent they can predict in individuals' performance.Academic performance has been assessed in the present study as an example of global individual performance with the purpose of studying the possibility of predicting global individual performance including academic or job performance by personality traits. This is because personality traits which can predict and lead to academic success and achievement can also predict somewhat high job performance and success.We assessed the academic performance through exam grades of two groups of 209 undergraduate students from two different academic courses: Marketing and Accounting in the Department of Administration Sciences at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi. As well, we evaluated personality factors through a home-questionnaire of Page 2 of 97 37 questions based on Big Five factors and some other personality traits not included in FFM such as locus of control, self-esteem and life and job (academic) satisfaction. We had addressed the questionnaire to the participants of each course in the beginning of the academic year and then they took several written examinations at the end of their academic year. We designed each item of the questionnaire to evaluate a particular factor of personality and each factor of personality was evaluated by a set of items or questions -9 to 10 questions in average-in the questionnaire. Then we conducted correlation and regression analyses to examine the correlation and the predictive ability of each item of the three selected factors and the exam grades of the participant...

Organizational Stressors and Job Stress Among Malaysian Managers: The Moderating Role of Personality Traits

“…As found in previous studies, extraverted personality tend to be happier in their jobs and suffer lower levels of job stress (Attia, 2013). Birch & Kamali (2001) concluded that extroversion dimension of personality had a negative relationship with job stress, anxiety and depression, that directly supports the finding in this study.…”

“…This finding is supported by previous researches that states job stress have high magnitude of influence by conflict (Hendrix, 1989, as cited in Roberts et al,. 1997), work environment (Quick et al, 1997), neuroticism (Watson & Pennebaker, 1989;Birch & Kamali, 2001) and negatively in relationship with extraversion (Birch & Kamali, 2001;Attia, 2013).…”

“…Another study by Birch & Kamali (2001) discovered that job stress and depression were positively correlated with neuroticism trait. An elevated neuroticism score points out that the person tends to have a nervous and irritable character, to be less able to control anxiety and to deal poorly with stress (Attia, 2013).…”

“…People with a high score in openness are more creative, more productive and efficient in art and science, and they tend to be less rules-constrained, thus will not be influenced to experience job stress (Attia, 2013). Innes & Kitto (1989) assessed the relationship between personality characteristics that resulted in openness trait having no clear correlation to job stress.…”

Student performance is linked to connecting effectively with teachers

“…Conscientiousness and agreeableness (intrinsic qualities) are most highly related to GPA (Komarraju et al , 2011). Conscientiousness correlated with grades most consistently; obversely, extraversion (an extrinsic characteristic) showed negative correlation with grades (Attia, 2013).…”