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Running head: PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 1
A forgotten antecedent of career adaptability: A study on the predictive role of
within-person variability in personality
Word count
4960 Words
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 2
Abstract
Several studies have focused on stable personality traits as antecedents of career
adaptability, but few have investigated more dynamic aspects of personality in relation to
career adaptability. Recent theories on personality such as Whole Trait Theory (Fleeson &
Jayawickreme, 2015) recognize that traits are often aroused in one situation but not in
another (Allport, 1937), and that individuals are more or less flexible in responding to
different situations. This flexibility is defined as within-person variability in personality. In
the present paper we integrate Whole Trait Theory and Career Construction Theory (CCT,
Savickas, 2005) – the latter stating that flexibility is a key antecedent of career-adaptability
– and hypothesize that career-adaptability can be predicted by within-person variability in
personality descriptions (Lang, Lievens, De Fruyt, Zettler, & Tackett, 2019). In a sample of
business administration students (N = 452) we found that, over and beyond effects of
average trait levels, within-person variability in personality descriptions positively predicted
career adaptability. Our findings have important theoretical and practical implications.
Keywords: Within-person variability; Personality; Career adaptability; Trait
variability tree model
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 3
A forgotten antecedent of career adaptability: A study on the predictive role of
within-person variability in personality
Contemporary career challenges require a high level of adaptation from individuals
(Savickas, 2005; Savickas & Porfeli, 2012). It is therefore not surprising that the career
adaptability construct (Savickas, 2005) has gained in popularity in the recent vocational
psychology literature (Rudolph, Lavigne, & Zacher, 2017). Several studies have focused on
personality as an antecedent of career adaptability and have uncovered links between
dimensions of the five-factor model (McCrae, 2009) and career adaptability (Rudolph et al.,
2017). However, it is noteworthy that almost all of these studies adopted a non-dynamic
approach to personality, overlooking stable within-person variability in personality. In
what follows, we argue that taking into account within-person variability in personality as
an antecedent of career adaptability is in line with Career Construction Theory (CCT,
Savickas, 2005). Indeed, the latter states that flexibility is a key underlying characteristic
of individuals with high career adaptability. We then present an empirical study testing
the link between within-person variability in personality and career adaptability.
Personality and career adaptability
Career adaptability as a concept is defined as a psychological resource for managing
career challenges. It is one the cornerstones of Career Construction Theory (CCT,
Savickas, 2005). CCT describes four central resources of an individual’s career adaptability.
First, control is the extent to which one feels he/she has an impact on his/her career.
Concern refers to the motivation to tackle career challenges. Curiosity is defined as the
tendency to explore and find relevant career-related information. Finally, confidence refers
to the feeling of being able to overcome career-related challenges. These resources have
been shown to be important antecedents of career success (Rudolph et al., 2017).
CCT posits that underlying career adaptability are traits that reflect a willingness
and flexibility to adapt to various contextual demands and constraints – referred to as
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 4
adaptivity by Savickas (2005). The idea is that specific behavioral tendencies like
self-discipline, need for achievement, curiosity, or persistence can enhance individuals’
adaptivity with regard to career challenges, and can facilitate the career adaptation process
(Zacher, 2014). As indicators of these behavioral tendencies, many researchers have turned
to the five-factor model of personality (Rudolph et al., 2017). Their findings have
confirmed that all five personality traits underlie adaptivity (Rudolph et al., 2017).
Especially, conscientiousness and openness have been found to have the strongest positive
correlations with career adaptability (Zacher, 2014, 2016). One way to interpret this is that
the challenges that individuals face in managing their career typically require behaviors
associated with consciensciousness and openness, such as respectively persistence
exploration (Zacher, 2014). Therefore, individuals scoring higher on these traits than other
individuals adapt and cope better with career challenges.
However, in the current literature, an important but overlooked aspect of career
adaptation is that individuals should also be able to distinguish the specificity of
situational demands and adapt their behavioral response accordingly. For example, in
terms of conscientiousness, while previous research implies that adopting overall a more
conscientious attitude is beneficial, CCT suggests that being selectively conscientious could
be an additional advantage. In line with CCT that ascribes a crucial role to individual
flexibility, we argue that viewing personality as a dynamic system is essential to
understanding and deepening the career adaptation process and thus deserves systematic
investigation. In the current paper we aim to fill this gap in the literature.
Within-person variability in personality
Previous research suggests that having flexible rather than rigid behavioral
tendencies is generally adaptive. For example, displaying openness-related behaviors can be
adaptive or maladaptive depending on the context. Curiosity, for example, has been linked
to adaptive behaviors such as innovative behaviors at work, but also to maladaptive
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 5
behaviors such as substance abuse (Celik, Storme, Davila, & Myszkowski, 2016). This
suggests that beyond the average level of openness, flexibility in openness could be an even
better indicator of adaptive behaviors. In line with this reasoning Lievens et al. (2018)
have shown that flexibility in extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness is
positively associated with job performance. Likewise, research on emotional reactions to
negative feedback at work suggests that flexibility in emotional reactions to the feedback
aids in making a positive impression on managers (Celik, Storme, & Myszkowski, 2016).
Flexibility in personality is a relatively old idea that can be traced back to the
observation of patients who had symptoms that were more variable than those of other
patients, or participants in experiments who were more responsive to manipulations than
other participants (Lang et al., 2019). Personality theorists have long pointed out that a
trait implies a certain consistency of behavior between situations, but that perfect
consistency is not possible because behaviors are also influenced by characteristics of
situations (Allport, 1937). Hence, some personality theorists have started to consider that
the degree of behavioral consistency of an individual across situations could be a
personality trait in itself, and thus independent of average trait levels. This idea
culminates in the Whole Trait Theory (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015), which suggests
that personality should no longer be considered only as a set of stable and invariable traits
across situations, but as a set of dynamic traits that can be expressed differently depending
on the characteristics of situations (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015). An individual can be
characterized by both consistent cross-situational behavioral tendencies (e.g., John is more
extraverted than most people across different contexts) and a stable tendency to vary his
or her behaviors across situations (e.g., John’s level of extraversion depends on the context
more than for most people).
Taken together, in Whole Trait Theory, within-person variability in personality is not
considered a mere internal consistency issue, but is seen as a new personality trait in its
own right (Lang et al., 2019). In the literature several methods have been reported to
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 6
capture this trait. One way is to ask individuals to report their personality states at several
randomly chosen time points in their daily routines (Sosnowska, Kuppens, De Fruyt, &
Hofmans, 2019). This method makes it likely that individuals are in different situations
when they report their personality states (Lang et al., 2019). Variability in personality
states can then be seen as an indication of the extent to which the expression of the
personality of an individual is influenced by contextual factors. However, this method is
time consuming. Another, slightly less time consuming way is to use situational judgment
tests (Lievens et al., 2018). However, a disadvantage of this method is that it requires
tailor made tests depending on the area of interest. A third and final method, is to derive
within-person variability scores from one-shot self-reports on items of traditional
personality questionnaires as introduced recently by Lang et al. (2019). The researchers
demonstrated that this method is a reliable proxy for variability scores obtained with more
time consuming methods. Therefore, in the current paper we also rely on this method.
Career adaptability and within-person variability in personality
Career adaptability, being a form of adaptive functioning in the career management
domain, could be expected to correlate with within-person variability in each one of the
five traits of the five-factor model. The career adaptation process typically involves various
activities (Savickas, 2005) – for example, exploring information about career paths, making
career decisions, dealing with career failures, etc.. This means that individuals face
qualitatively different situations that are very likely to require specifically adapted
behavioral responses, and the behavioral tendencies associated with a given personality
trait that are adaptive in one situation, may not be adaptive in another situation.
Therefore, an individual who has flexible behavioral tendencies – that is, an individual
whose behavior changes depending on the situation – could be expected to handle better
the career adaptation process than an individual with rigid behavioral tendencies.
We know from meta-analyses that average trait levels of extraversion, agreeableness,
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 7
conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness are all positively correlated to career
adaptability (Rudolph et al., 2017). This suggests that most activities involved in the
career adaptation process require the behavioral tendencies associated to these five traits.
In some situations, however, the same behavioral tendencies could become a handicap. For
example, previous research suggests that extraverts are less able to focus their attention
and can be more easily distracted than introverts (Blumenthal, 2001). This could be a
handicap during for example career exploration days, where the behavioral tendencies of
extraversion – that is, chatting, flirting – could distract the individual from taking in
important information and instead focus efforts on irrelevant issues, such as entertaining
other participants with stories about one’s latest vacation. In the same vein, while high
levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness are positively related to overall levels of career
adptability, they are also known to sometimes hinder creativity (Feist, 1998; Reiter-Palmon,
Illies, & Kobe-Cross, 2009). Creativity being an important ingredient of career adaptation
(Peiperl, Arthur, Goffee, & Anand, 2002), behaviors associated with agreeableness or
conscientiousness could be detrimental to career adaptability in situations requiring
creative thinking. Regarding emotional stability, research suggests that there might be
career relevant situations in which not high emotional stability, but low(er) emotional
stability is adaptive. Notably, research has shown that, while in a negative mood, cognitive
processing is actually improved by lower levels of emotional stability, due to congruency
effects (Tamir & Robinson, 2004). Thus in situations in which individuals feel bad – for
example after a recent rejection for a job – allowing some level of neuroticism might be
beneficial to persisting in looking for alternatives, even though lower average trait levels of
neuroticism are usually more efficient. Finally, openness has been shown to be associated
with tendencies to engage in unethical behaviors at work (Bolton, Becker, & Barber, 2010),
which can be detrimental to the career adaptation process. In situations in which behaving
unethically is tempting, such as overly exaggerating one’s professional experiences, toning
down tendencies towards openness could be more beneficial to career adaptability.
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 8
Altogether, average trait levels of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,
emotional stability, and openness can all be expected to be positively correlated to career
adaptability, because in most situations, these five traits are associated with behavioral
tendencies that facilitate career adaptation. In addition, within-person variability in these
traits can be expected to be positively associated with career adaptability as well. This is
because some situations could call for different behavioral tendencies than the ones that
are usually adaptive.
Study aims and hypotheses
In this research, we aim to investigate the relationship between career adaptability
and within-person variability in personality. We hypothesize that career adaptability is
positively predicted by within-person variability in personality, over and beyond average
trait levels. In our study, within-person variability in personality is operationalized as the
intra-individual variability across personality descriptions in a traditional personality
questionnaire. Within-person variability personality descriptions is estimated with the
Trait Variability Tree Model (TVTM, Lang et al., 2019). This model has been introduced
to overcome a number of psychometric challenges (see Lang et al. (2019) for a
comprehensive review of these challenges) and has been successfully applied to personality
self-reports to model within-person variability in personality descriptions.
We also consider the possibility that career adaptability might be more strongly
linked to within-person variability in particular traits, such as conscientiousness or
openness, seeing that previous literature has shown that these two traits are more strongly
associated with career adaptability than the other personality traits (Zacher, 2014, 2016).
Therefore, as a preamble, we investigate the factor structure of within-person variability in
personality descriptions. It may be indeed that different dimensions of personality are
charactarized by different levels of within-person variability. The issue is an empirical
question, as the only study using the most recent operationalization of the concept, on
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 9
which we also rely (Lang et al., 2019), did not report the factor structure of within-person
variability. Based on older work however, we expect to find a unidimensional structure
(Fleeson, 2001; Baird, Le, & Lucas, 2006). Moreover, inspection of the correlation matrix
reported in the Lang et al. (2019) study suggests a single-factor structure as well, meaning
that when individuals have a relatively high level of within-person variability in one trait,
it is likely that they would have relatively high levels of within-person variability in the
other traits as well. If this is true, then career adaptability should be positively correlated
with within-person variability in all five personality traits with equal strength.
Method
Participants
We recruited 452 third year French (from Paris area) business administration
undergraduate students (Mage = 20.71, SDag e = 0.97, ranging from from 18 to 25 years;
57.30% of the participants were female). Business administration students are an
interesting population because they have professional experience, notably because of the
internships that are part of their education. These students tend to be concerned about
their career development, and they are likely to have jobs in which career adaptability
plays an important role (Tolentino, Sedoglavich, Lu, Garcia, & Restubog, 2014). The
respondents participated on a voluntary basis. All responses were collected on computer.
Measures
Big Five Inventory (BFI, John & Srivastava, 1999). We used the French
version of the 44-item Big Five Inventory (BFI, John & Srivastava, 1999; Plaisant,
Courtois, Réveillère, Mendelsohn, & John, 2010) to measure personality. We used 5-point
Likert scale ranging from 1 (Totally disagree) to 5 (Totally agree). The BFI exhibited
acceptable scale-score reliability: Cronbach’s αranged between .70 and .84.
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 10
Career adaptability (CAAS, Savickas & Porfeli, 2012). To measure career
adaptability, we relied on the French version of the 24-item Career Adapt-Abilities Scale
(CAAS, Savickas & Porfeli, 2012; Johnston et al., 2013). The scale assesses four
dimensions of career adaptability: Concern, control, curiosity, and confidence – as
previously defined in the introduction section. We used 5-point Likert scales ranging from
1 (Not strong) to 5 (Very strong). Cronbach’s αranged between .79 and .84, indicating
satisfactory internal consistency.
Procedure
To reduce the common method bias (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003),
we collected the data in two phases separated by 2 weeks. Participants filled in the BFI in
a first session, and the CAAS in a second session. Participants who did not fill in one of
the questionnaires were removed from the analyses (the drop-out rate was 3.21%).
Statistical analyses
To estimate average trait levels and within-person variability in personality (referred
to as "IRT variability" from here on) we relied on the trait variability tree model (TVTM,
Lang et al., 2019). As indicators of the average Big Five trait levels we used the direction
estimates as measured by the person estimates of Pseudoitem II. Person estimates for
Pseudoitems I and III were used to measure within-person variability. Two models were
fitted: One in which IRT variability scores are estimated for each personality content
domain, and one in which a single IRT variability score across personality content domains
is estimated. To assess the internal consistency of the IRT variability estimate, we relied on
the split-half approach to reliability (Lang et al., 2019). See the article of Lang et al.
(2019) for more information on the TVTM. The correlation matrix of the estimates of the
first model were then subjected to an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) in order to
investigate the factor structure of within-person variability in personality.
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 11
For the main analyses we used bivariate correlations, as well as a series of hierarchical
multiple linear regressions to test our main hypothesis regarding the relationship between
within-person variability in personality and career adaptability. To test whether
within-person variability in personality has incremental predictive power over and beyond
average trait levels when predicting career adaptability, we relied on hierarchical
regressions. More specifically, we regressed in a first step each one of the career
adaptability scores on the five personality traits (direction), and, in a second step, we
added the IRT variability score to the predictor variables.
Results
Internal structure of IRT variability
Correlations between all measures are reported in Table 1. We found that IRT
variability scores across personality dimensions were highly correlated (ranging between .44
and .66), which is in line with previous empirical studies (Lievens et al., 2018; Lang et al.,
2019). We then ran an Exploratory Factor Analyses (EFA) to investigate more thoroughly
the factor structure of within-person variability in personality. The scree plot is reported in
Figure 1. Both the Kaiser criterion and a parallel analysis indicated that one factor should
be retained. Our findings suggest that within-person variability in personality is
independent of personality dimensions. Consequently, in line with previous literature
(Lievens et al., 2018; Lang et al., 2019) we estimated an overall IRT variability score.
Insert Table 1 about here
Finally, regarding the internal consistency of IRT variability, we found that the
correlation between the IRT variability estimated on the first half of the BFI was strongly
correlated with the IRT variability estimated on the second half of the BFI (r = .70),
suggesting satisfactory reliability of the measure.
Insert Figure 1 about here
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 12
Main analyses
Because we found a single factor structure for the IRT variability scores, all analyses
were conducted with the overal IRT variability scores as predictors of career adaptability.
Bivariate correlation analyses showed that overall career adaptability scores were positively
correlated with IRT variability, with correlation coefficients ranging between .16 and .34.
Furthermore, each of the four dimensions of career adaptability were also positively
correlated with IRT variability, with correlation coefficients ranging between .21 and .34.
The magnitudes of correlations with career adaptability were overall similar to those of the
average trait levels (see Table 1).
We then conducted 5 separate hierarchical regressions, to test whether IRT variability
has incremental predictive power over and beyond average trait levels when predicting the
four dimensions career adaptability, and the overall level of career adaptability. The results
of the 5 hierarchical regressions are reported in Table 2. We found that IRT variability has
increased predictive value for concern, F(1,445) = 8.39, p < .01, control,
F(1,445) = 13.14, p < .01, curiosity, F(1,445) = 14.69, p < .01, and confidence,
F(1,445) = 31.50, p < .01, and also for overall levels of career adaptability,
F(1,445) = 24.21, p < .01, over and beyond average trait levels.
Insert Table 2 about here
Discussion
Our aim with the present work was to explore the relationship between career
adaptability and meaningful within-person variability in personality descriptions. Our
findings not only replicated findings of previous studies – that is, that all five personality
dimensions predict career adaptability, with conscientiousness as one of the main predictors
(Rudolph et al., 2017) –, we also found that individuals with higher levels of within-person
variability in personality descriptions tend to report higher levels of career adaptability.
Consistent with our expectations, we found positive correlations between within-person
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 13
variability in personality in each personality trait and overall levels of career adaptability.
We also found that all four career adaptability dimensions were positively predicted by
overall within-person variability in personality descriptions. Importantly, this was true over
and beyond the average trait levels. These results enrich Career Construction Theory
(Savickas, 2005) by providing evidence for the predictive role of meaningful within-person
variability in personality descriptions.
Implications
Our findings suggest that not only average trait levels contribute to adaptability, but
also the flexibility in the expression of these traits. Our study thus confirms Savickas’
(2005) intuition that the flexibility aspect of career adaptivity is an important antecedent
of career adaptability. These findings open a new research agenda for the investigation of
the contribution of personality to career adaptability. The fact that behavioral flexibility is
associated with career adaptability invites us to think about the process of career
adaptation in a more complex way. Indeed, our results imply that the career adaptation
process encompasses different types of situations that require different kinds of behavior.
We therefore invite researchers to take a closer look at the different types of situations in
the process of career adaptation – for example, exploring, making decisions, or dealing with
negative feedback. Researchers could analyse more finely the contribution of personality to
the career adaptation process, by trying to better understand in which situations a trait is
an asset and in which situations it is a handicap.
Furthermore, our study also proposes a new tool – the Trait Variability Tree Model
(TVTM, Lang et al., 2019) – to advance the resolution of a practical problem, namely
predicting career adaptability. Indeed, an important practical implication of our research is
that career counsellors can extract – in addition to the classical personality traits of the
five-factor model – a sixth trait capturing within-person variability in personality. This
trait has incremental predictive power over and beyond the five personality traits. In fact,
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 14
this additional trait was even a better predictor than most of the traits of the five-factor
model of personality for each the four facets of career adaptability. Our research shows
that career counsellors who use personality measures can access a new source of
information without adding new questionnaires to their protocols.
Finally, our study also advances the field of personality research by providing new
evidence for the predictive validity of within-person variability in personality. It should
invite future researchers to investigate this promising new construct in new domains.
Limitations and future research
Our study has limitations. First, our results do not allow conclusions to be drawn in
terms of causality. In our model, we have implied that within-person varability causes
career adaptability. However, it is also possible to imagine a reciprocal causality between
within-person variability in personality and career adaptability. Behavioral flexibility could
strengthen the confidence in one’s ability to manage career challenges, which in turn could
strengthen behavioral flexibility. In future research, it might be interesting to conduct a
cross-lagged panel analysis on longitudinal data to determine the direction of the causality
in order to understand more precisely the nature of the relationship between within-person
variability in personality and career adapatibility.
Our study found a relationship between within-person variability in personality and
career adaptability, but does not provide empirical evidence on the "how" nor on the
boundary conditions of this relationship. As shortly mentioned before, one way to study
the mechanisms underlying this relationship, would be to break down the career adaptation
process into activities (or situations) and then examine the extent to which each
personality trait can contribute to success in each activity (or situation). Because previous
research suggests that within-person variability in personality is linked to functional
flexibility (Lievens et al., 2018), we predict that it will be associated with adaptive
behaviors in the different activities of the career adaptation process.
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 15
With respect to moderators, it would be interesting to investigate whether the
particular method used to measure within-person variability in personality could have an
impact on the magnitude of the relationship between within-person variability in
personality and career adaptability. As mentioned in the introduction there are alternative
approaches to measuring within-person variability in personality (Sosnowska et al., 2019;
Lievens et al., 2018; Lang et al., 2019), but in our study we only used one of them.
Potential differences in the predictive power of these instruments would have important
implications for theory as well as practice, that our current work does not address.
Nonetheless, our study makes an important first step in bringing together the most recent
personality theories and the literature on career adaptability.
PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 16
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PERSONALITY AND CAREER ADAPTABILITY 19
Figure 1 . Scree plot for the exploration of the factor structure of within-person variability
in personality. The solid line at y=1 represents the Kaiser criterion and the dashed curve
shows the parallel analysis reference eigenvalues.
