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Can becoming a leader change your personality? An investigation with two longitudinal studies from a role-based perspective
Abstract
Organizational research has predominantly adopted the classic dispositional perspective to understand the importance of personality traits in shaping work outcomes. However, the burgeoning literature in personality psychology has documented that personality traits, although relatively stable, are able to develop throughout one's whole adulthood. A crucial force driving adult personality development is transition into novel work roles. In this article, we introduce a dynamic, role-based perspective on the adaptive nature of personality during the transition from the role of employee to that of leader (i.e., leadership emergence). We argue that during such role transitions, individuals will experience increases in job role demands, a crucial manifestation of role expectations, which in turn may foster growth in conscientiousness and emotional stability. We tested these hypotheses in two 3-wave longitudinal studies using a quasi-experimental design. We compared the personality development of 2 groups of individuals (1 group promoted from employees into leadership roles and the other remaining as employees over time), matched via the propensity score matching approach. The convergent results of latent growth curve modeling from the 2 studies support our hypotheses regarding the relationship between becoming a leader and subsequent small, but substantial increases in conscientiousness over time and the mediating role of job role demands. The relationship between becoming a leader and change of emotional stability was not significant. This research showcases the prominence of examining and cultivating personality development for organizational research and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Supplementary resource (1)
... Looking at the impact of career transitions on self-concept, Reitz et al. (2020) showed that individuals' self-esteem increased upon starting a full-time job following graduation from university. Similarly, Li et al. (2021) found that transitions into leadership roles may heighten conscientiousness. Nicholson and West (1989) found that vertical job changers reported improved self-concept. ...
... Robins and Trzesniewski note that self-esteem, a critical aspect of self-concept, increases throughout adulthood, likely because "individuals increasingly occupy positions of power and status, which might promote feelings of self-worth" (2005, p. 159). Similarly, a recent study found that becoming a leader can change relatively stable personality traits over time (Li et al., 2021), so changes in traits associated with self-concept (e.g., locus of control, self-esteem) are also likely to occur over time following a transition. Further, because the self-concept is likely more stable than affect, it may be that the process of change to self-concept concept unfolds over a longer period of time following a role transition. ...
... Annual and bi-annual measurement is appropriate given that the process of transitioning into a new role is not a singular time point, but a process that unfolds over time (Ashforth, 2001). New roles have novel expectations, norms, and behaviors, which individuals adapt to, and internalize, over long periods of time to create lasting changes in wellbeing and individual identity (Caspi & Moffitt, 1993;Donnellan et al., 2015;Li et al., 2021). For example, Dunford et al. (2012) found that strains peaked around 12 months following a transition into a new position, and Li et al. (2021) found personality changes in response to leadership transitions over the course of 4-10 years. ...
Transitioning into leadership remains a distinct, common career experience that may have implications for employee health and wellbeing, yet these effects are not well understood. We draw upon role theory (role transitions and role expansion) to frame leadership as a dynamic career phenomenon with implications that change as individuals become socialized into their leadership role. This study adds clarity by focusing on changes over time and in response to the novel transition into leadership, and by exploring gender as a moderator of these relationships. We examine the impact of first-time leadership transitions on negative (tension, depression) and positive (emotional wellbeing, job satisfaction) indicators of wellbeing, and self-concept (self-esteem, locus of control). We used data collected every 1 to 2 years from 184 individuals (Youth Development Study Waves 12 through 19, Mortimer, 2011) to conduct two-level (time nested within person) discontinuous growth modeling. Results suggest taking on a leadership role is associated with tension at the time of transition, consistent with role theory and empirical data on macro role transitions. Over time, transitioning into a leadership role bolsters emotional wellbeing and self-esteem in a lasting way, consistent with role expansion propositions. Unexpectedly, men experienced a significant drop in self-esteem at the point of transition compared to women, but otherwise, there were no significant gender differences at the time of, or following, a leadership transition. We show transitioning into leadership is a time-sensitive double-edged sword, such that temporary tensions at the time of transition may pay off over following years in self-concept gains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... Previous research showed, among others, that work experiences in terms of job characteristics (e.g., autonomy, stimulation, stress; job role demands; e.g., Li et al., 2020;Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003;Wu, 2016), organizational climate (D. Spurk & Hirschi, 2018), entering paid employment (Denissen, Luhmann, Chung, & Bleidorn, 2019), or unemployment (Boyce, Wood, Daly, & Sedikides, 2015) can significantly affect personality traits (for reviews see Tasselli et al., 2018;Woods, Wille, & Wu, C.-h., Lievens, F., & De Fruyt, F., 2019). ...
... Empirically, longitudinal studies showed that financial security was related to an increase in one dimension of constraint (Roberts et al., 2003) and experiencing career success resulted in women becoming more norm adhering (Roberts, 1997), both constructs showing some overlap with conscientiousness. Li et al. (2020) found that becoming a leader was associated with small but significant increases in conscientiousness over time, mediated by increased job role demands. ...
Numerous studies established personality traits as predictors of career success. However, if and how career success can also trigger changes in personality has not received much attention. Drawing from the neosocioanalytic model of personality and its social investment and corresponsive principles, this paper investigated how the attainment of objective career success contributes to personality change in the Big Five traits of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. We conducted cross-lagged analyses with three measurement waves over eight years with a representative sample of 4′767 working adults from the German Socio-Economic Panel and examined if objective success (i.e., income and occupational prestige) predicted changes in personality. We also tested if effects differed across age groups or between men and women. Results showed that career success predicted changes in personality for neuroticism, extraversion, and openness. Higher income predicted a decrease in neuroticism and increase in openness. Higher prestige predicted a decrease in extraversion and an increase in openness. Results did not differ according to age group or for men or women. We discuss the results in light of the effects that career success can exert on personality development and the complexity inherent in observing personality change.
... Nor can reciprocal causality be ruled out. Recent research investigating reciprocal relationships between personality traits and leadership behavior underlines this point by indicating that the causal direction may flow not only from personality to work attitude and leadership behavior but also in the opposite direction (Li et al., 2020). Future research needs to use longitudinal designs to further validate the causal inferences suggested in the current study. ...
... lacking these instrumental traits can be trained to display boundary behaviors. Also, as new research acknowledges that some personality development can occur on the job (Li et al., 2020), the personalities of new principals can be reevaluated after several years to provide data for tailoring new professional development processes to narrow the potential existing gaps in principal development. ...
Purpose
Reorganizing schools and managing through teams is seen as a way to achieve school goals, especially in educational contexts that are highly focused on measurable student achievements. This shift to shared leadership requires principals to play a key role in promoting school management team (SMT) outcomes. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate how principals' personality traits and behavior complement each other and combine in an integrative model of SMT effectiveness. Specifically, the research aims to examine the mediating role of principals' internal and external boundary activities between principals' traits from the Big Five typology, namely, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience and neuroticism and SMT effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from two sources to minimize problems associated with same-source bias. In total, 92 SMTs and their principals from 92 public schools in Israel participated in the study. Overall, 295 SMT members and 92 principals were included in the sample. Data were aggregated at the school level of analysis. The theoretical model was tested with structural equation modeling. The bootstrapping procedure, to ascertain the presence of indirect effects, was employed.
Findings
The findings of structural equation modeling indicated that principal external activities partially mediated the relationship of conscientiousness and extraversion to SMT effectiveness, providing support for an integrated trait–behavioral model of leadership for SMT effectiveness.
Originality/value
As schools involve increasingly interconnected professional networks based on relationships, acknowledging that SMT effectiveness may be influenced by principals' personality traits that translate into leadership behavior may clarify the implications of principals' traits for educational teams. Importantly, the proposed integrative model points to possible mechanisms linking principal traits, behaviors and effectiveness by positioning principals' boundary activities as one possible mechanism through which principal traits facilitate SMT effectiveness. The findings can help deepen our understanding of which kinds of principals engage in boundary activities, contributing to the discussion of what factors influence principals' practices with implications for school managers' selection practices.
... Future research should investigate the relation of polychronicity with contextual variables using naturalistic designs that can capture real-world changes and casual effects (e.g., intensive longitudinal designs). Notably, authors are increasingly using daily diary studies that can assess daily changes and lagged effects (Howard & Hoffman, 2018), and some researchers have conducted studies with multiple measurement occasions over the course of months to observe changes in individual differences typically believed to be stable (e.g., personality) (Li et al., 2021;Wu et al., 2020). Via these designs, researchers can determine whether polychronicity is indeed a stable individual difference or mutable response to the environment, wherein people may alter their preferences after being repeatedly exposed to environments that call for multitasking as they learn the benefits of the behavioral approach. ...
We apply modern theory on multitasking and person-environment fit to holistically explain the relations of polychronicity as well as provide justifications for disparate results found in prior studies, such as undetected differences regarding task-switching and dual-tasking. We then conduct a meta-analysis of polychronicity's relations. We show that the nomological net surrounding polychronicity matches our proposed fit perspective. We likewise demonstrate that differences in task-switching and dual-tasking indeed influence the observed results of polychronicity, and the growing complexity of businesses may have caused the association of polychronicity and job performance to strengthen over time. Our discussion highlights that polychronicity plays an important role in personal well-being and employee performance, which can be understood by our person-environment fit perspective.
Plain Language Summary
We apply modern theory on multitasking and person-environment fit to holistically explain the relations of polychronicity as well as provide justifications for disparate results found in prior studies, such as undetected differences regarding task-switching and dual-tasking. We then conduct a meta-analysis of polychronicity's relations. We show that the nomological net surrounding polychronicity matches our proposed fit perspective. We likewise demonstrate that differences in task-switching and dual-tasking indeed influence the observed results of polychronicity, and the growing complexity of businesses may have caused the association of polychronicity and job performance to strengthen over time. Our discussion highlights that polychronicity plays an important role in personal well-being and employee performance, which can be understood by our person-environment fit perspective.
... Additionally, managers should create an organizational environment that fosters the future orientation of followers over the long term. 58 Employees should be encouraged to focus on the future and make plans for future development through cultivating corporate culture and availing themselves of internal and external training to develop proactive behaviors that support visionary leadership. ...
Purpose:
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between visionary leadership and taking charge. The authors also aim to test the mediating effects of employee inclusion of leader in self and the moderating effects of future orientation.
Methods:
This paper tests the theoretical model across a multisource, time-lagged field study with 234 leader-follower dyads as data. SPSS 25.0, PROCESS 3.4 macro and Mplus8.3 were used to test the theoretical hypotheses.
Results:
We found that visionary leadership stimulates followers to include leaders in self, which in turn enhances their taking charge. Additionally, the relationship between visionary leadership and follower include of leader in self is strengthened by followers' future orientation. Furthermore, the mediation effect of follower include leader in self between visionary leadership and followers' taking charge is established only when followers' future orientation is high.
Conclusion:
Based on self-expansion theory, this study explained how and when the effectiveness of visionary leadership may be optimized from a follower-centric perspective. These results contribute to the visionary leadership and self-expansion literature by introducing inclusion of leader in self as an underlying mechanism and future orientation as a boundary condition.
... Leadership position refers to whether one person holds a supervisory position (21), which is a widely used indicator of leadership (38,40). Previous leadership research has assessed leadership position according to whether participants occupy supervisory roles (6,15,68). Accordingly, in the UKB sample, we measured the leadership position based on whether the occupations require managing subordinates. The measure of leadership position was derived from participants' occupational codes according to the UK SOC version 2000 system. ...
Significance
Our study presents the largest whole-genome investigation of leadership phenotypes to date. We identified genome-wide significant loci for leadership phenotypes, which are overlapped with top hits for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and intelligence. Our study demonstrated the polygenetic nature of leadership, the positive genetic correlations between leadership traits and a broad range of well-being indicators, and the unique association of leadership with well-being after accounting for genetic influences related to other socioeconomic status measures. Our findings offer insights into the biological underpinnings of leadership.
... There is a lack of studies that analyze the complex relationship between perfectionism, self-efficacy and AL skills. There are studies that analyze these psychological variables separately and not as a complex [16][17][18]29]. ...
(1) Background: Shaping leadership skills is a complex process, which may be modified by psychological factors such as self-efficacy and perfectionism. The aim of the study was to determine whether perfectionism can be a mediator between self-efficacy, and authentic leadership skills in nursing students; (2) Methods: The cross-sectional study included 615 Polish nursing students (women = 96.3%) was carried out at Medical University of Warsaw in 2019. The following research tools were used: Authentic Leadership Questionnaire, Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R), and General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES); (3) Results: The level of perfectionism is a significant mediator of relations between self-efficacy as measured by the GSES and the level of authentic leadership (Sobel test: t = 6.958; p < 0.000). The relation, without a mediating factor, is positive, and the standardized beta coefficient for the feeling of self-efficacy totals beta = 0.470 (p < 0.000), while in the presence of a mediator the strength of the correlation is smaller and amounts to beta = 0.366 (p < 0.000); (4) Conclusions: Personality factors such as self-efficacy and perfectionism play an important role in shaping AL skills of nursing students. Therefore, academic teachers should pay special attention to strengthening students’ self-efficacy and adaptive perfectionism. In this context, adequate feedback and reflection may be important.
... Kada opisuju vođu čijim su vođenjem zadovoljni ili vođu kakvog trebaju i žele, ljudi obično koriste pridjeve koji se mogu povezati s konkretnim, objektivno vidljivim ponašanjem. Bez obzira da li opisuju demokratski, harizmatični, transformacijski ili neki drugi pozitivni stil vođenja, upotrijebit će termine poput prijatan, posvećen, odgovoran, disciplinovan (Li et al., 2020). ...
O osobinama ličnosti češće se govori kada je potrebno odlučiti o profesionalnoj budućnosti radnika, odrediti da li zaslužuje napredovanje ili ne, da li je vrijedan ulaganja na temelju kapaciteta kojima raspolaže i slično. U praksi, kao i u stručnoj literaturi, nalazimo vidljivo manji broj ispitivanja ličnosti lidera, odnosno rukovodilaca ili vođa neke organizacije ili grupe. Iako se naglašavaju kompetencije koje dobar vođa treba imati, obično su te kompetencije vidljive tek nakon što neko zauzme poziciju vođe. U ovom radu polazimo od problema detekcije osobina ličnosti koje ima dobar vođa, bilo da je riječ o političkom lideru, kapitenu sportskog tima, rukovodiocu radne organizacije ili predstavniku neke neformalne grupe. Prikazom i analizom pregleda radova o osobinama vođe, ispituje se koje osobine ličnosti ukazuju da će pojedinac biti dobar vođa, ili da će – unatoč svim drugim kompetencijama, znanjima i vještinama – biti vođen od strane drugih.
... Negative inequity evokes envy toward power-holders, leading to damaging behaviors, while positive inequity causes guilt and motivates cooperation [5]. Moreover, changes in power status can have a significant impact on an individual's personality and their performance in an organization [17]. Sometimes, self-interested behavior brings unintended outcomes. ...
This study examines experimental evidence showing how ethics power allocation mechanisms affect an individual’s in-organization resource division and ethical behavior. We used two two-stage lab experiments to explore power seeking and usage; the experiments contained two stages of power contending and power usage. Stage one used two different power-seeking mechanisms in the honesty game. Stage two was based on the dictator game and the ultimatum game to measure an individual’s power usage. The results show that the decisions taken by power-holders could influence the optimization of collective resources, and power-holders who gain power with unethical methods could result in collective resource allocation inequities. With more balanced in-organization power, members tend to be more honest. Subjects also adjust their unethical behavior to adapt to the environment, which could cause the diffusion of unethical behavior. This paper re-designed the dictator game and the ultimatum game by adding an ethically vulnerable power acquisition mechanism. For organizations to prevent the disproportionate dispersion of resources and achieve more public benefits, it is meaningful for managers to create a proper in-organization ethical power allocation mechanism.
... Psychologists have examined the relative roles of individual characteristics including personality and cognitive ability versus situational factors for decades (Bleidorn et al., 2018;Mischel and Shoda, 1995). Although personality is a fairly stable trait, recent research has shown that assuming a leadership role can create small changes in some Big Five personality traits (Li et al., 2021). That is, while individual attitudes, personalities and abilities are primary determinants of career behaviors, different working conditions enhance or limit career behaviors and, if possible, need to be accounted for, or at least clarified to the reader when describing the sample. ...
Purpose
This article aims to provide prospective authors guidelines that will hopefully enable them to submit more competitive manuscripts to journals publishing careers research.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on their experience as an author, reviewer and editorial team member, the authors identify the main criteria that a quantitative study must meet to be considered for publication in international peer-reviewed journals covering career-related topics. They emphasize the importance of contributing to the careers literature and of designing the study in accordance with the research question.
Findings
Manuscripts are rejected because they are insufficiently innovative, and/or because sample, instruments and design are not appropriate to answer the research question at hand. Cross-sectional designs cannot be used to answer questions of mediation but should not be discarded automatically since they can be used to address other types of questions, including questions about nesting, clustering of individuals into subgroups, and to some extent, even causality.
Originality/value
The manuscript provides an insight into the decision-making process of reviewers and editorial board members and includes recommendations on the use of cross-sectional data.
... Their knowledge of this self-concept can be elaborated through an informal and interpersonal relationship that serves as a strong indicator about their expected role. For example, research has found that employees enhance their conscientious personality when transitioning toward a managerial role to manifest the job demands of their new role (Li et al., 2020). This suggests that organizations have an equal role to play by ensuring that an employee's contractual obligation is upholding to the highest standard when transitioning to a managerial role. ...
The importance of value-based leadership such as authentic, ethical, and servant leadership is inconspicuous. However, the benefits of these leadership approaches are often only explained through the behaviors of their followers. As such, limited research has communicated the leader’s motivation for pursuing such leadership behavior, resulting in such discourse to escape theorizing. We draw upon role theory and paid attention to the role of higher-level management (leadership) through the trickle-down model to underline their importance in the organization. We then expand this role theory framework by synthesizing research to explain the emergence of value-based leadership behavior at the frontline of management. In doing so, we aim to provide a stronger explanation of the emergence of value-based leadership in organizations. We conclude this analysis by guiding future research in the form of propositions to investigate the psychological process and organizational factors to empirically examine the proposed role framework.
... A dynamic perspective on personality offers great potential for work and organizational psychologists (Beckmann & Wood, 2020) and has been applied to study, for example, job satisfaction (Ilies & Judge, 2002), work motivation (Judge, Simon, Hurst, & Kelley, 2014), emotions at work (Fisher, Minbashian, Beckmann, & Wood, 2013;Thapa et al., 2020), or the influence of work experiences on personality trait change (Li et al., 2020;Wille & De Fruit, 2014). Here, we illustrate the utility of dynamic approaches by focusing on the personality-performance link. ...
Personality psychology has long focused on structural trait models, but it can also offer a rich understanding of the dynamics, processes, mechanisms, and functioning of individual differences or entire persons. The field of personality dynamics, which works towards such an understanding, has experienced a renaissance in the last two decades. This review article seeks to act as a primer of that field. It covers its historical roots, summarizes current research strands – along with their theoretical backbones and methodologies – in an accessible way, and sketches some considerations for the future. In doing so, we introduce relevant concepts, give an overview of different topics and phenomena subsumed under the broad umbrella term “dynamics”, and highlight the interdisciplinarity as well as applied relevance of the field. We hope this article can serve as a useful overview for scholars within and outside of personality psychology who are interested in the dynamic nature of human behavior and experience.
In psychology, the idea that personality predicts behaviour in weak situations and situations as the determinant of behaviour in strong situations is considered a truism. Extant literature supports strong situation hypothesis, and studies on the role of situation strength theory in assessing human behaviour under various organisational settings and contexts have remained ongoing. Intrapreneurial behaviour as a vital human behaviour for organisational rejuvenation has yet not exhaustive theoretical explanation by serving as a laboratory in the field of entrepreneurship by theoreticians. Addressing that, the present study attempted to remedy the state of affairs by extending the epistemology of situation strength theory to explain intrapreneurial behaviour emanation from empowering leadership by developing a theoretical framework. The predictability of empowering leadership in explaining intrapreneurial behaviour under the strong situation effect of job autonomy and perceived organisational support was assessed.
The automotive industry of Pakistan has faced various challenges of global competitiveness and inadequate human resources, resulting in constrained quality standards, higher imports, and negligible exports. Policy reforms, specifically the Automotive Development Policy 2016–2021, have positive impact on the establishment of more assembly plants by renewed automotive brands. However, long-term measures in the automotive industry, particularly in terms of organisational culture and human resource systems, are necessary to ensure the sustainability of these impacts. Alongside from the technological advancements in the global automotive industry, one way to address the competitiveness in automotive manufacturing and assembling involves nurturing employees’ intrapreneurial behaviour through the existing organisational practices. Employees, particularly engineering employees, serve as the backbone of the automotive industry, and nurturing their intrapreneurial behaviour can address the longstanding competitiveness in the automotive industry.
The present study has proposed a theoretical model of moderated mediation relationships to assess intrapreneurial behaviour emanation from empowering leadership. The theoretical model incorporates job autonomy and perceived organisational support as strong situations using situation strength theory to assess the dampening of personality traits for intrapreneurial behavioural outcomes. The present study operates under the overall philosophical paradigm of positivism and uses a cross-sectional design to answer the research questions quantitatively. A structured questionnaire has been used by formulating a stratified random sampling technique to select the engineers as respondents. The proposed theoretical framework was assessed using survey data from 407 engineers employed in Pakistan’s automotive firms. The survey data were then subjected to the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) using the Partial Least Square (PLS) approach for statistical analysis. Measurement model assessment was done to assess the reliability and validity of the measures, while the structural model was assessed for hypotheses testing (direct and indirect relationships).
The obtained results revealed the positive relationships of empowering leadership with innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. Innovativeness and proactiveness were also found to be positively and significantly related to intrapreneurial behaviour. Furthermore, innovativeness and proactiveness significantly mediated the relationship between empowering leadership and intrapreneurial behaviour. Drawing from the conceptualisation of the situational strength theory, both job autonomy and perceived organisational support were found to significantly moderate the mediated relationship between empowering leadership and intrapreneurial behaviour through innovativeness and proactiveness. Thus, job autonomy and perceived organisational support were established as strong situations. Under the influence of strong situations (job autonomy and perceived organisational support), the influence of personality traits on intrapreneurial behaviour was dampened, as shown by the low variance. Therefore, the application of the situational strength theory in assessing the nexus of empowering leadership and intrapreneurial behaviour under strong organisational situations was deemed appropriate.
The present study made conclusions by deliberating the theoretical and practical implications of findings alongside debating the limitations of study and future research directions. The study contributes by establishing the requirement of strong organisational situations for nurturing intrapreneurial behaviour in organisations. The interaction of organisational situations in the nexus of empowering leadership and intrapreneurial behaviour opens avenues for studying various strong situations to dampen the personality characteristics of employees for intrapreneurial behavioural outcomes. The presented results and findings of the study are expected to benefit the academia, practitioners, and industry in their efforts to identifying strong situations for employees’ organisational behavioural outcomes like intrapreneurial behaviour which can dampen the influence of employees’ personality on the organisational processes. Hence, this study offered a major shift or an alternative in the existing human resource practices, from personality assessments to creating cues from strong situations to foster human behaviours. These practices can impact organisational human resource management scope during the processes related to talent management, selection, promotion, and employment.
The topic of dark side personality at work has received considerable research attention over the past decade, and both qualitative and quantitative reviews of this field have already been published. To show the relevance of dark personality in the work context, existing reviews have typically focused on systematically discussing the different criteria that have been linked to dark traits (e.g., job performance, work attitudes, leadership emergence, etc.). In contrast, and complementing this earlier work, the current review paper summarizes the available literature on this topic by structuring it in terms of the nature of the relationships studied rather than in terms of the types of outcome variables. Doing so, the focus shifts from “What are the outcomes of dark traits?” to “How are dark traits related to work outcomes?” Scrutinizing the nature of these relationships, we specifically focus on four types of effects (i.e., nonlinear, interactive, differential, and reciprocal) that highlight the complexity of how dark side traits operate in the work context. Structured this way, this review first provides a conceptual underpinning of each of these complex effects, followed by a summary of the empirical literature published over the past 10 years. To conclude, we present an integration of this field, provide suggestions for future research, and highlight concrete assessment challenges. Dark side traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) predict a range of undesirable work outcomes. To better understand these effects, we propose paying closer attention to nonlinear, interactive, differential, and reciprocal effects. This requires fine‐grained assessments, repeated measurements, and knowledge of the job context. Specific assessment guidelines are provided which can be used in the context of employee screening and coaching. Dark side traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) predict a range of undesirable work outcomes. To better understand these effects, we propose paying closer attention to nonlinear, interactive, differential, and reciprocal effects. This requires fine‐grained assessments, repeated measurements, and knowledge of the job context. Specific assessment guidelines are provided which can be used in the context of employee screening and coaching.
Abstract This study presents an environmentally contingent view of CEO core self‐evaluations (CSE) and the effects on strategic risk taking. Drawing on upper echelons theory and approach‐avoidance theory, we propose that high CSE CEOs are responsive to rather than disregard environmental cues and pursue strategic risks that enable the firm to capitalize on competitive opportunities while refraining from risks not suited to the external environment. Focusing on two forms of strategic risk—resource allocation risk taking and strategic nonconformity—we develop hypotheses examining the contingencies across levels of environmental concentration, dynamism, and munificence. We test our hypotheses on a panel of 106 CEOs from publicly traded US companies over 1998‐2004 using historiometric analyses. Supporting our hypotheses, findings indicate that the effects of CEO CSE on resource allocation risk taking and strategic nonconformity are contingent on industry concentration and environmental dynamism. Findings advance the understanding of CEO’s positive self‐regard.
Recent developments of behavioral genetics in organizational research and broader social sciences point to the possibility of an emerging field of organizational genomics. In this chapter, we first review theory and research looking at how genetic factors influence constructs in social sciences that are related to organizations. We include both twin studies and recent molecular genetics research. We then outline a few directions for future organizational research that may capitalize on recent developments in molecular genetics research driven by the big data revolution. We conclude with reflecting on crucial issues related to ethics, genetic determinism, and practical implications of organizational genomics to employees, organizations, and the society at large.
Nowadays, there are now more women on the management team. In the past, only men could participate in certain roles, board meetings, and decision making. However, the number of women in leadership positions remains low, making it difficult for women to advance in the firm. Leadership is very broad concept which various theories and styles is exist; where women leadership behaviour just one part of the leadership and can be defined in different ways. Furthermore, the research of women leadership behaviour has a restricted number of sources. Thus, the primary goal of the study is to identify the elements that contribute to women leadership behaviour, specifically the association between Work Life Balance (WLB), Personality, and Emotional Intelligence (EI) toward Women Leadership Behaviour among Malaysian engineers. This study employed a basic random sample strategy to obtain data from 391 Malaysian engineers. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23, was used to test the data. All hypotheses were accepted as a result of the test. This research is important because it can assist practitioners and organisations prioritise workforce diversity toward women leaders and the capacity to persuade Human Resources Specialists to properly organised a diverse workforce. Furthermore, the number of women leaders may be expanded in the future, and the diversity problem in our society can be improved, allowing Malaysia to meet the SDGs.
Objective:
Leaders differ in their personalities from non-leaders. However, when do these differences emerge? Are leaders "born to be leaders" or does their personality change in preparation for a leadership role and due to increasing leadership experience?
Method:
Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we examined personality differences between leaders (N = 2683 leaders, women: n = 967; 36.04%) and non-leaders (N = 33,663) as well as personality changes before and after becoming a leader.
Results:
Already in the years before starting a leadership position, leaders-to-be were more extraverted, open, emotionally stable, conscientious, and willing to take risks, felt to have greater control, and trusted others more than non-leaders. Moreover, personality changed in emergent leaders: While approaching a leadership position, leaders-to-be (especially men) became gradually more extraverted, open, and willing to take risks and felt to have more control over their life. After becoming a leader, they became less extraverted, less willing to take risks, and less conscientious but gained self-esteem.
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that people are not simply "born to be leaders" but that their personalities change considerably in preparation for a leadership role and due to leadership experience. Some changes are transient, but others last for a long time.
All jobs, managerial or entry-level, inevitably require unpleasant tasks. Traditional research on power’s corrupting tendencies might suggest that powerholders, given their reduced constraints and greater self-focus, would put minimal effort into undesirable work. Yet drawing on theorizing and evidence regarding power as wielded in organizations, we posit that structural power will instead yield feelings of task responsibility, fostering increased engagement with unpleasant tasks. In two correlational field studies, employees’ structural power predicted responsibility for and, in turn, engagement with, a real-life work task. This indirect effect was stronger for unpleasant than pleasant tasks. In two experiments using a vivid virtual team context, a team-leader role increased participants’ felt responsibility for and, in turn, their engagement with, an unpleasant task. These findings illuminate the tendency of workplace power to promote the pursuit of shared goals and therefore engagement in tasks that are important for organizations, yet undesirable to complete.
I review the empirical literature on leadership, focusing on papers published since 2010. To do so, I introduce a framework composed of two features: whether theories ( a) involve the study of leaders or leading (i.e., the person versus the process) and ( b) conceptualize leadership as a cause or a consequence (i.e., an independent versus dependent variable). This framework can enable future research to accumulate in a more programmatic fashion and help scholars determine where their own studies are located within the landscape of leadership research. I end the review by critically evaluating existing work, arguing that the most popular subcategory of leadership research—lumped conceptualizations of leading, in which scholars examine multiple leader behaviors within a single construct—has significant limitations and may need to be replaced by a greater focus on split conceptualizations of leading, wherein scholars isolate single leader behaviors.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, Volume 9 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
The current study addresses the potentially dynamic relationship between employees’ personality and their working conditions. A six-year full-panel longitudinal study of employed individuals was used to test whether (I) task-related, (II) social and (III) organizational work factors contribute to change Big-Five personality traits over time and whether personalities change working conditions. Bivariate latent change score analyses were conducted on repeated-measures data (four waves) from 2356 Norwegian employees. The results showed that specific work factors pertaining to task-related and social characteristics (i.e. leadership) were associated with personality trait changes. Contrary to our expectations, none of the work factors predicted change in neuroticism and extraversion, and we offer several possible explanations for these findings. The results also showed that all personality traits may play an active role in shaping specific attributes of the work environment over time and thereby shed light on how employees’ working conditions emerge.
Organizational scholarship has recently begun to treat personality as malleable in workplace settings and has called for personality change to be incorporated into current research. The lack of a comprehensive, theoretical model of organizational personality change is a critical impediment to this research. We integrate recent advances in biological and epigenetic fields with the cognitive appraisal, personality, and stress literatures to introduce a comprehensive model of short- and long-term organizational personality change. This model explains when, how, and why appraisal of workplace stress alters employee personality through three important neurochemical systems and the mechanisms through which changes in these systems differentially impact dimensions of the Five Factor personality framework. By examining epigenetic changes affecting neurochemical systems, we explain how appraisal of chronic workplace stress can lead to long-term changes in various personality traits—a relationship with substantial implications for both practice and research. This model further provides a roadmap to understand how short- and long-term employee personality change influences workplace outcomes at the individual, team, and organizational levels and how interventions at these levels can mitigate or reverse deleterious effects of workplace stressors on employee personality change. We outline the processes necessary for organizational scholars to test the propositions described here and more robustly incorporate personality change into organizational scholarship.
Personality psychology has long focused on structural trait models, but it can also offer a rich understanding of the dynamics, processes, mechanisms, and functioning of individual differences or entire persons. The field of personality dynamics, which works towards such an understanding, has experienced a renaissance in the last two decades. This review article seeks to act as a primer of that field. It covers its historical roots, summarizes current research strands – along with their theoretical backbones and methodologies – in an accessible way, and sketches some considerations for the future. In doing so, we introduce relevant concepts, give an overview of different topics and phenomena subsumed under the broad umbrella term “dynamics”, and highlight the interdisciplinarity as well as applied relevance of the field. We hope this article can serve as a useful overview for scholars within and outside of personality psychology who are interested in the dynamic nature of human behavior and experience.
Drawing on Cybernetic Big Five Theory, we propose that chronic job insecurity is associated with an increase in neuroticism and decreases in agreeableness and conscientiousness (the three traits that reflect stability). Data collected from 1,046 employees participating in the Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey over a nine-year period were analyzed. Job insecurity and the other job-related variables (ie, job control, time demand and job stress) were measured in all years, and personality was measured at the first, fifth and ninth years. We applied latent trait-state-occasion (TSO) modelling and specified models using variables across two timeframes (from Time 1 to Time 4 and from Time 5 to Time 9). Results showed that chronic job insecurity over four or five preceding years predicted a small increase in neuroticism and a small decrease in agreeableness in both timeframes, and a small decrease in conscientiousness in the first timeframe. We also found that chronic job stress explained the association between chronic job insecurity and the increase in neuroticism, but not changes in other personality traits, in the first timeframe. Similar results were obtained when the entire nine-year timeframe was examined. The results generally showed null effects of chronic job insecurity with regard to extraversion and openness (the traits that reflect plasticity). This study suggests that job insecurity has important implications for one’s personality when experienced over a long-term period.
Previous research on dispositional optimism has predominantly concentrated on the selection effect of dispositional optimism on predicting work outcomes. Recent research, however, has started to examine the socialization effect of life experiences on fostering dispositional optimism development. Extrapolating primarily from the TESSERA framework of personality development (Wrzus & Roberts, 2017) and the literature on dispositional optimism, the current study represents a first attempt to reconcile the two seemingly contrasting perspectives. We proposed and examined change-related reciprocal relationships between dispositional optimism and work experience variables including income, job insecurity, coworker support, and supervisor support. Latent change score modeling of data from a five-wave longitudinal study demonstrated that dispositional optimism resulted in decreases in job insecurity, and the decreased job insecurity in turn promoted further increases in dispositional optimism later on. Furthermore, income gave rise to increases in dispositional optimism at a later point in time, but not vice versa. No significant relationships were observed between dispositional optimism and coworker and supervisor support. The findings provide a cautionary note to the majority of previous research based on cross-sectional and lagged designs that assumes causal effects of dispositional optimism on work outcomes. They also showcase the importance of examining personality change in organizational research and enrich our understanding of a more nuanced dynamic interplay between the optimistic employee and the work environment.
Although personality is typically conceptualized in industrial, organizational, and vocational psychology as enduring and stable, an increasing volume of research now shows that personality changes throughout the lifespan, with work being a potentially important influence of trait development. This paper reviews and integrates the emergent literature in this area, and in doing so proposes a new Demands-Affordances TrAnsactional (DATA) model of personality development at work, against which research is evaluated. This DATA model clarifies how personality-related behavior at work is called upon by work demands at four different levels (vocation, job, group and organization) and proposes Person-Environment (PE) fit as the main guiding mechanism for personality trait change at work. Drawing on this model, we develop a predictive framework of work demands that influence personality and outline eight core questions to advance this field.
Trait stability and maturation are fundamental principles of contemporary personality psychology and have been shown to hold across many cultures. However, it has proven difficult to move beyond these general findings to a detailed account of trait development. There are pervasive and unexplained inconsistencies across studies that may be due to (a) insufficient attention to measurement error, (b) subtle but age-sensitive differences in alternative measures of the same trait, or (c) different perspectives reflected in self-reports and observer ratings. Multiscale, multimethod-and ideally multinational-studies are needed. Several hypotheses have been proposed to account for trait stability and change, but supporting evidence is currently weak or indirect; trait development is a fertile if sometimes frustrating field for theory and research. Beyond traits, there are approaches to personality development that are of interest to students of adult development, and these may be fruitfully addressed from a trait perspective. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 70 is January 4, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Recent leadership research has drawn greater attention to how the well-being of leaders influences leadership behaviors, follower performance and well-being, and overall leadership effectiveness. Yet little attention has been paid to the relationship between occupying leadership positions and job incumbents' well-being. This research addresses this question by developing and testing a dual-pathway model. Our model proposes that incumbency in leadership positions is positively related to high levels of both job demands and job control, whereas job demands and job control have offsetting effects on well-being. Results based on a longitudinal sample revealed that employees who transitioned from nonleadership positions to leadership roles showed trajec-tories of increasing job demands and job control, whereas such trends were weaker among those who remained in nonleadership positions. Findings from three additional samples generally demonstrated that leadership role occupancy was indirectly related to various indices of psychological and physiological well-being through job demands and job control. Because the signs of the indirect effects through job demands and job control differed in expected ways, the overall relationship between leadership role occupancy and the well-being outcomes was generally small and nonsignificant. We discuss research and practical implications of our framework and findings for organizations, employees, and leaders.
This article surveys 100 years of research on career management and retirement, with a primary focus on work published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Research on career management took off in the 1920s, with most attention devoted to the development and validation of career interest inventories. Over time, research expanded to attend to broader issues such as the predictors and outcomes of career interests and choice; the nature of career success and who achieves it; career transitions and adaptability to change; retirement decision making and adjustment; and bridge employment. In this article, we provide a timeline for the evolution of the career management and retirement literature, review major theoretical perspectives and findings on career management and retirement, and discuss important future research directions.
Most previous research has focused on the relationships between specific personality traits and specific facets of mental health. However, in reality most of the Big Five are associated at non-trivial levels with mental health. To account for this broad correlation, we proposed the ‘barometer hypothesis’, positing that behind both ratings of mental health and personality lies a barometer that indicates one's general feelings of positivity or negativity. To the extent that both the general factors of personality and mental health reflect this same barometer, we would expect them to be correlated. We tested alternative models using data from a large longitudinal panel study that includes two cohorts of participants who were assessed every two years, resulting in parallel 4-year longitudinal studies. Similar results were obtained across both studies. Supporting the ‘barometer hypothesis’, findings revealed that the optimal model included general latent factors for both personality traits and mental health. Compared to the broad raw pairwise correlations, the bi-factor latent change models revealed that the relation among levels and changes in the specific factors were substantially reduced when controlling for the general factors. Still, some relations remained relatively unaffected by the inclusion of the general factor. We discuss implications of these findings. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology
Extensive research on leadership behavior during the past half century has yielded many different behavior taxonomies and a lack of clear results about effective behaviors. One purpose of this article is to describe what has been learned about effective leadership behavior in organizations. A hierarchical taxonomy with four meta-categories and 15 specific component behaviors was used to interpret results in the diverse and extensive literature and to identify conditions that influence the effectiveness of these behaviors. Limitations and potential extensions of the hierarchical taxonomy are discussed, and suggestions for improving research on effective leadership behavior are provided.
Cross-lagged regression coefficients are frequently used to test hypotheses in panel designs. However, these coefficients have particular properties making them difficult to interpret. In particular, cross-lagged regression coefficients may vary, depending on the respective time lags between different sets of measurement occasions. This article introduces the concept of an optimal time lag. Further, it is demonstrated that optimal time lags in panel studies are related to the stabilities of the variables investigated, and that in unidirectional systems, they may be unrelated to the size of possible true effects. The results presented also suggest that optimal time lags for panel designs are usually quite short. Implications are (a) that interpreting cross-lagged regression coefficients requires taking the time lag between measurement occasions into account, and (b) that in much research, far shorter time lags than those frequently found in the literature are justifiable, and we call for more "shortitudinal" studies in the future. (PsycINFO Database Record
(c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
Praise for the First Edition of Statistical Analysis with Missing Data “An important contribution to the applied statistics literature.... I give the book high marks for unifying and making accessible much of the past and current work in this important area.”—William E. Strawderman, Rutgers University “This book...provide[s] interesting real-life examples, stimulating end-of-chapter exercises, and up-to-date references. It should be on every applied statistician’s bookshelf.”—The Statistician “The book should be studied in the statistical methods department in every statistical agency.”—Journal of Official Statistics Statistical analysis of data sets with missing values is a pervasive problem for which standard methods are of limited value. The first edition of Statistical Analysis with Missing Data has been a standard reference on missing-data methods. Now, reflecting extensive developments in Bayesian methods for simulating posterior distributions, this Second Edition by two acknowledged experts on the subject offers a thoroughly up-to-date, reorganized survey of current methodology for handling missing-data problems. Blending theory and application, authors Roderick Little and Donald Rubin review historical approaches to the subject and describe rigorous yet simple methods for multivariate analysis with missing values. They then provide a coherent theory for analysis of problems based on likelihoods derived from statistical models for the data and the missing-data mechanism and apply the theory to a wide range of important missing-data problems. The new edition now enlarges its coverage to include: Expanded coverage of Bayesian methodology, both theoretical and computational, and of multiple imputation Analysis of data with missing values where inferences are based on likelihoods derived from formal statistical models for the data-generating and missing-data mechanisms Applications of the approach in a variety of contexts including regression, factor analysis, contingency table analysis, time series, and sample survey inference Extensive references, examples, and exercises Amstat News asked three review editors to rate their top five favorite books in the September 2003 issue. Statistical Analysis With Missing Data was among those chosen.
We study how the cognitive complexity of chief executive officers (CEOs) changes during their tenures. Drawing from prior theory and research, we argue that CEOs attain gradually greater role-specific knowledge, or expertise, as their tenures advance, which yields more complex thinking. Beyond examining the main effect of CEO tenure on cognitive complexity, we consider three moderators of this relationship, each of which is expected to influence the accumulation of expertise over a CEO’s time in office: industry dynamism, industry jolts, and CEO positional power. We conduct our tests on a sample of 684 CEOs of public corporations. The analytic centerpiece of our study is a novel index of CEO cognitive complexity based on CEOs’ language patterns in the question-and-answer portions of quarterly conference calls. As part of our extensive theory of measurement, we provide evidence of the reliability and validity of our index. Our results indicate that CEOs, in general, experience substantial increases in cognitive complexity over their time in office. Examined moderators somewhat, but modestly, alter this general trajectory, and nonlinearities are not observed. We discuss the implications of our findings.
Personality traits are powerful predictors of outcomes in the domains of education, work, relationships, health, and well-being. The recognized importance of personality traits has raised questions about their policy relevance, that is, their potential to inform policy actions designed to improve human welfare. Traditionally, the use of personality traits in applied settings has been predicated on their ability to predict valued outcomes, typically under the assumption that traits are functionally unchanging. This assumption, however, is both untrue and a limiting factor on using personality traits more widely in applied settings. In this article, we present the case that traits can serve both as relatively stable predictors of success and actionable targets for policy changes and interventions. Though trait change will likely prove a more difficult target than typical targets in applied interventions, it also may be a more fruitful one given the variety of life domains affected by personality traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
We begin by charting the evolution of the dominant perspective on job performance from one that viewed performance as static to one that viewed it as dynamic over long timeframes (e.g., months, years, decades) to one that views it as dynamic over not just long but also short timeframes (e.g., minutes, hours, days, weeks)—and that accordingly emphasizes the within-person level of analysis. The remainder of the article is devoted to the newer, short-timeframe research on within-person variability in job performance. We emphasize personality states and affective states as motivational antecedents. We provide accessible reviews of relevant theories and highlight the convergence of theorizing across the personality and affect antecedent domains. We then focus on several major avenues for future research. Finally, we discuss the implications of these perspectives for personnel selection and performance management in organizations as well as for employees aiming to optimize their job performance.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, Volume 7 is January 21, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
A central idea in the feedback seeking literature is that there should be a positive relationship between self-efficacy and the likelihood of seeking feedback. Yet empirical findings have not always matched this theoretical claim. Departing from current theorizing, we argue that high self-efficacy may sometimes decrease feedback seeking by making people undervalue feedback and that perspective taking is an important factor in determining whether or not this occurs. Results from 5 studies, utilizing diverse methodologies and samples, support our hypothesis that the relationship between self-efficacy and feedback seeking depends on the extent to which one engages in perspective taking. In the absence of perspective taking, self-efficacy tends to be more negatively related to feedback seeking. However, when perspective taking occurs, this relationship tends to be more positive. We also provide evidence that this interaction effect is mediated by perceptions of the value of feedback. We discuss the implications of our theory and findings for the feedback seeking literature and more broadly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Engagement is widely viewed as a motivational state that captures the degree to which individuals apply their physical, cognitive, and emotional energies to their jobs, and ultimately improves job performance. However, this job-level view overlooks the possibility that engagement may vary across the different tasks within a job and that engagement in one task may influence engagement and performance in a subsequent task. In this article, we develop and test hypotheses based on a task-level view of engagement and the general notion that there is "residual engagement" from a task that carries forward to a subsequent task. We propose that although task engagement (engagement in a specific task that comprises a broader role) positively spills over to influence task engagement and performance in a subsequent task, in part because of the transmission of positive affect, task engagement simultaneously engenders attention residue, which in turn impedes subsequent task engagement and performance. These predictions were supported in a study of 477 task transitions made by 20 crew members aboard The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Human Exploration Research Analog (Study 1) and in a laboratory study of 346 participants who transitioned between a firefighting task and an assembly task (Study 2). Our investigation explains how engagement flows across tasks, illuminates a negative implication of engagement that has been masked by the predominant job-level perspective, and identifies completeness as a task attribute that reduces this negative consequence of engagement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Research on workplace recovery recognizes that employees must restore lost resources after work to improve their subsequent well-being and performance. Scholars have noted that employees' recovery experiences-psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control-vary day-to-day, yielding crucial implications for the aforementioned outcomes. Yet, despite these important theoretical and empirical insights, researchers to date have not comprehensively examined multiple daily recovery experiences in conjunction, instead studying the unique effects of only 1 or 2 experiences in isolation. Using a person-centric view of employees' recovery experiences, the current study examines whether profiles of daily recovery experiences occur for employees, and how these profiles (a) vary in membership from one day to the next, (b) are differentiated by daily job demands and resources experienced at work, and (c) predict employee well-being and discretionary behaviors during the subsequent workday. Using experience sampling data from 207 full-time employees, results revealed 5 profiles of daily recovery experiences that exhibited distinct relations with within-person antecedents and outcomes. As such, the current investigation represents a necessary first step in understanding how employees jointly experience recovery in relation to their daily work and well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
The attention paid to intraindividual phenomena in applied psychology has rapidly increased during the last two decades. However, the design characteristics of studies using daily experience sampling methods and the proportion of within-person variance in the measures employed in these studies vary substantially. This raises a critical question yet to be addressed: are differences in the proportion of variance attributable to within- versus between-person factors dependent on construct-, measure-, design-, and/or sample-related characteristics? A multilevel analysis based on 1,051,808 within-person observations reported in 222 intraindividual empirical studies indicated that decisions about what to study (construct type), how to study it (measurement and design characteristics), and from whom to obtain the data (sample characteristics) predicted the proportion of variance attributable to within-person factors. We conclude with implications and recommendations for those conducting and reviewing applied intraindividual research.
Whole Trait Theory (WTT) was developed as an integrative model of traits that incorporates mechanisms of differential reaction to situations. Providing an explanatory account to the Big 5 (defined in terms of density distributions of personality states) creates two parts to traits, an explanatory part and a descriptive part. WTT proposes that the explanatory side of traits consists of social-cognitive mechanisms. These two parts of traits should be recognized as distinct entities that are nevertheless joined into whole traits. This review provides an overview of WTT, discusses new directions for considering WTT in personality development, the possible application of WTT to non-Big 5 traits, and possibilities for interventions based on insights from WTT.
This longitudinal study provides an analysis of the relationship between personality traits and work experiences with a special focus on the relationship between changes in personality and work experiences in young adulthood. Longitudinal analyses uncovered 3 findings. First, measures of personality taken at age 18 predicted both objective and subjective work experiences at age 26. Second, work experiences were related to changes in personality traits from age 18 to 26. Third, the predictive and change relations between personality traits and work experiences were corresponsive: Traits that "selected" people into specific work experiences were the same traits that changed in response to those same work experiences. The relevance of the findings to theories of personality development is discussed.
Three experience-sampling studies explored the distributions of Big-Five-relevant states (behavior) across 2 to 3 weeks of everyday life. Within-person variability was high, such that the typical individual regularly and routinely manifested nearly all levels of all traits in his or her everyday behavior. Second, individual differences in central tendencies of behavioral distributions were almost perfectly stable. Third, amount of behavioral variability (and skew and kurtosis) were revealed as stable individual differences. Finally, amount of within-person variability in extraversion was shown to reflect individual differences in reactivity to extraversion-relevant situational cues. Thus, decontextualized and noncontingent Big-Five content is highly useful for descriptions of individuals' density distributions as wholes. Simultaneously, contextualized and contingent personality units (e.g., conditional traits, goals) are needed for describing the considerable within-person variation.
The importance of genetic influences for the Five Factor/Big Five Model (BFM) traits is well established. Relatively understudied, however, are the presence and magnitude of sex differences in genetic and environmental variance of these traits. The current study tested if men and women differ 1) qualitatively in the genetic mechanisms, or 2) quantitatively, on the genetic and environmental variance, contributing to BFM personality domains. Results from a nationally representative U.S. adult twin sample (N=973 pairs) supported phenotypic (i.e., mean level) sex differences in three of five personality traits (i.e., Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness) but did not support genetic or environmental sex differences in any trait.
This article focuses on an emergent debate in organizational behavior concerning personality stability and change. We introduce foundational psychological research concerning whether individual personality, in terms of traits, needs, and personal constructs, is fixed or changeable. Based on this background, we review recent research evidence on the antecedents and outcomes associated with personality change. We build on this review of personality change to introduce new directions for personality research in organizational behavior. Specifically, we discuss how a view of personality as changeable contributes to key topics for organizational behavior research and how this new approach can help broaden and deepen the scope of personality theory and measurement. The study of personality change offers a range of new ideas and research opportunities for the study of organizational behavior.
In this study, we examined trajectories of Big Five personality development in the 5 years before and after retirement. Our sample was composed of 690 retirees (ages 51–81) and a propensity-score matched comparison group of 532 nonretirees drawn from a nationally representative longitudinal study of the Netherlands. Participants contributed data across a maximum of 6 measurement waves over a period of 7 years. In the month after retirement, participants experienced sudden increases in openness and agreeableness followed by gradual declines in these traits over the next 5 years. Emotional stability increased before and after retirement. The transition to retirement was not associated with changes in conscientiousness or extraversion. Further, we found significant individual differences in development across the transition to retirement for each personality trait but could not identify any moderators that accounted for these individual differences. These results contribute to our understanding of personality development in older adulthood as well as the temporal dynamics of personality change in response to major life events.
Objective:
A precise and comprehensive description of personality continuity and change across the lifespan is the bedrock upon which theories of personality development are built. Little research has quantified the degree to which individuals deviate from mean-level developmental trends. In this study, we addressed this gap by examining individual differences in personality trait change across the life span.
Method:
Data came from a nationally representative sample of 9,636 Dutch participants who provided Big Five self-reports at five assessment waves across 7 years. We divided our sample into fourteen age groups (ages 16-84 at initial measurement) and estimated latent growth curve models to describe individual differences in personality change across the study period for each trait and age group.
Results:
Across the adult lifespan, individual differences in personality change were small but significant until old age. For openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness, individual differences in change were most pronounced in emerging adulthood and decreased throughout midlife and old age. For emotional stability, individual differences in change were relatively consistent across the lifespan.
Conclusions:
These results inform theories of lifespan development and provide future directions for research on the causes and conditions of personality change. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
As part of the resurgence of interest in personality development, we wrote several theoretical pieces outlining the Neo-Socioanalytic Model of Personality Development. In this chapter, we clarify why we developed this framework and how it differs from other personality frameworks. We also discuss how well components of the framework, such as the principles of personality development, have held up over time. We conclude with recommendations on improving the model and for future research to better test predictions from the model.
This article reviews 100 years of research on individual differences and their measurement, with a focus on research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. We focus on 3 major individual differences domains: (a) knowledge, skill, and ability, including both the cognitive and physical domains; (b) personality, including integrity, emotional intelligence, stable motivational attributes (e.g., achievement motivation, core self-evaluations), and creativity; and (c) vocational interests. For each domain, we describe the evolution of the domain across the years and highlight major theoretical, empirical, and methodological developments, including relationships between individual differences and variables such as job performance, job satisfaction, and career development. We conclude by discussing future directions for individual differences research. Trends in the literature include a growing focus on substantive issues rather than on the measurement of individual differences, a differentiation between constructs and measurement methods, and the use of innovative ways of assessing individual differences, such as simulations, other-reports, and implicit measures.
Although in the early years of the Journal leadership research was rare and focused primarily on traits differentiating leaders from nonleaders, subsequent to World War II the research area developed in 3 major waves of conceptual, empirical, and methodological advances: (a) behavioral and attitude research; (b) behavioral, social-cognitive, and contingency research; and (c) transformational, social exchange, team, and gender-related research. Our review of this work shows dramatic increases in sophistication from early research focusing on personnel issues associated with World War I to contemporary multilevel models and meta-analyses on teams, shared leadership, leader-member exchange, gender, ethical, abusive, charismatic, and transformational leadership. Yet, many of the themes that characterize contemporary leadership research were also present in earlier research.
Objective:
Findings from multilevel and latent growth modeling analysis (GMA) need to be included in literature reviews, and this article explicates 4 rarely discussed approaches for using GMA studies in meta-analysis.
Method:
Extant and new equations are presented for calculating the effect size (d) and its variance (v) from reported statistics from GMA studies with each method, and a fixed effects meta-analysis of results from 5 randomized clinical trials was conducted to demonstrate their applications.
Results:
Two common problematic practices--one that introduces bias in effect sizes because of attrition, measurement errors, and probable violations of assumptions for classical analysis, and the other that confounds the treatment effect with the intraclass correlation--were both found to yield smaller effect sizes from retrieved studies than were obtained with a newer model-based framework and its associated GMA d statistic.
Conclusions:
The optimal strategy for including a GMA study in a meta-analysis is to use GMA d and its v calculated with the standard error of the unstandardized coefficient for the treatment effect. When that standard error is unknown, the use of GMA d and its v estimated with an alternative equation that requires only GMA d and sample size is recommended. (PsycINFO Database Record
Objective:
Theory and research have emphasized the impact of life events on personality trait change. In this article, we review prospective research on personality trait change in response to nine major life events in the broader domains of love and work.
Method:
We expected to find that life events lead to personality trait change to the extent that they have a lasting influence on individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Moreover, we predicted that love-related life events such as marriage or parenthood would be more strongly related to changes in traits that emphasize affective content, whereas work-related life events would be more likely to lead to change in traits that reflect behavioral or cognitive content.
Results:
The current state of research provided some evidence that life events can lead to changes in personality traits and that different life events may be differently related to specific trait domains.
Conclusions:
A more general conclusion emerging from this review is that the evidence for the nature, shape, and timing of personality trait change in response to life events is still preliminary. We discuss the implications of the results for theory and research and provide directions for future studies on life events and personality trait change.
It has been argued that facets do not represent the bottom of the personality hierarchy—even more specific personality characteristics, nuances, could be useful for describing and understanding individuals and their differences. Combining two samples of German twins, we assessed the consensual validity (correlations across different observers), rank-order stability, and heritability of nuances. Personality nuances were operationalized as the 240 items of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). Their attributes were examined by analyzing item residuals, controlling for the variance of the facet the item had been assigned to and all other facets. Most nuances demonstrated significant (p < .0002) cross-method agreement and rank-order stability. A substantial proportion of them (48% in self-reports, 20% in informant ratings, and 50% in combined ratings) demonstrated a significant (p < .0002) component of additive genetic variance, whereas evidence for environmental influences shared by twins was modest. Applying a procedure to estimate stability and heritability of true scores of item residuals yielded estimates comparable to those of higher-order personality traits, with median estimates of rank-order stability and heritability being .77 and .52, respectively. Few nuances demonstrated robust associations with age and gender, but many showed incremental, conceptually meaningful, and replicable (across methods and/or samples) predictive validity for a range of interest domains and body mass index. We argue that these narrow personality characteristics constitute a valid level of the personality hierarchy. They may be especially useful for providing a deep and contextualized description of the individual, but also for the prediction of specific outcomes.
Age stereotypes as social role expectations for older adults were hypothesized to influence personality development in later life for specific stereotype domain x personality trait combinations. N = 965 participants aged 50-60 from the Midlife Development in the U.S. (MIDUS) study provided ratings about “people in their late sixties” in four domains at T1 and completed a personality questionnaire at T1 and at T2 ten years later. Personality at T2 was regressed on age stereotypes and personality at baseline. Age stereotypes in the domains Family/Relationships and Wisdom were related to changes in both Agreeableness and Extraversion over ten years. The findings provide tentative support for the role of positive age stereotypes in personality development in older age.
Hambrick, Finkelstein, and Mooney advance propositions concerning the effects of job demands on executive leadership and decision-making behaviors. I aim to encourage further thinking in this area, with comments flowing from a consideration of the stress and decision-making literature and the positive affect and problem-solving behavior literature. This perspective suggests both a finer-grained conceptualization of the executive job demands construct informed by specific characteristics of decision problems and a finer-grained conceptualization of executive decision behaviors focused on elements reflecting correspondence and coherence outcomes of decisions.
Interest in the problem of method biases has a long history in the behavioral sciences. Despite this, a comprehensive summary of the potential sources of method biases and how to control for them does not exist. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which method biases influence behavioral research results, identify potential sources of method biases, discuss the cognitive processes through which method biases influence responses to measures, evaluate the many different procedural and statistical techniques that can be used to control method biases, and provide recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.
Executive jobs vary widely in the difficulty they pose for their incumbents, yet research on top executives and strategic decision making has largely ignored this reality. We build on work in industrial/organizational psychology to develop the construct of executive job demands; discuss its major determinants; propose some of its key implications for strategic choices and leadership behaviors; and propose the usefulness of this construct in advancing research on numerous fronts, including agency theory, executive compensation, and upper echelons.
Time is an important concern in organizational science, yet we lack a systematic review of research on time within individual-level studies. Following a brief introduction, we consider conceptual ideas about time and elaborate on why temporal factors are important for micro-organizational studies. Then, in two sections-one devoted to time-related constructs and the other to the experience of time as a within-person phenomenon-we selectively review both theoretical and empirical studies. On the basis of this review, we note which topics have received more or less attention to inform our evaluation of the current state of research on time. Finally, we develop an agenda for future research to help move micro-organizational research to a completely temporal view.
Unemployment has a strongly negative influence on well-being, but it is unclear whether it also alters basic personality traits. Whether personality changes arise through natural maturation processes or contextual/environmental factors is still a matter of debate. Unemployment, a relatively unexpected and commonly occurring life event, may shed light on the relevance of context for personality change. We examined, using a latent change model, the influence of unemployment on the five-factor model of personality in a sample of 6,769 German adults, who completed personality measures at 2 time points 4 years apart. All participants were employed at the first time point, and a subset became unemployed over the course of the study. By the second time point, participants had either remained in employment, been unemployed from 1 to 4 years, or had experienced some unemployment but become reemployed. Compared with those who had remained in employment, unemployed men and women experienced significant patterns of change in their mean levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness, whereas reemployed individuals experienced limited change. The results indicate that unemployment has wider psychological implications than previously thought. In addition, the results are consistent with the view that personality changes as a function of contextual and environmental factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
Contemporary organizations face critical challenges associated with possessing and leveraging leadership capabilities. Researchers studying leadership development have responded to this practical imperative, although research on the topic is still in the early stages of scientific development. In assessing the state of the science in leadership development, we review an array of theoretical and research approaches with the goal of stimulating thoughtful intellectual discourse regarding fundamental questions, such as, what is leadership, and what is development. We highlight the breadth of this phenomenon by reviewing theory and research that has considered the development of leadership in individuals, dyads, and teams/organizations. Additionally, we describe a set of proximal and distal signs that indicate leadership may be developing, and we promote experiences, interventions, and interactions as factors that enhance the leadership development process.