What is the personality trait with the strongest positive relationship with job performance?

People have often studied what makes us behave the way we do and the relationship between job performance and personality has become a frequently studied topic. Job performance is affected by situational factors, which may be coworkers or characteristics of the job, and dispositional factors such as personality characteristics, needs, and motives. The dispositional factors lead to a tendency to react to situations in a predetermined manner.

The Big Five Personality Model (OCEAN) is a theory that underlines five main personality traits these are Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness to experience which are the driving factors behind organizational behavior.

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Personality in the Workplace

Conscientiousness is proposed to be the major personality trait, which leads to success. Research has shown that conscientiousness is the strongest predictor of job performance and here are some of the reasons why: When it comes to goals, people high in conscientiousness are good at setting them, working towards achieving them, and working around challenges that may arise. As a result, they tend to achieve the employers' desired goals. Conscientious people have a high tendency to organize their lives well and they tend to follow rules and norms. A conscientious person is most likely to be a highly productive worker. However, this trait may not result in positive results in all trades, as highly conscientious individuals tend to lack innovation, creativity, and spontaneity.

Neuroticism is the dimension of personality indicating the tendency to experience negative affect, the opposite being emotional stability. Neuroticism is a predictor of job performance in certain circumstances; a person who is high in neuroticism is prone to irrational ideas, copes badly with stress, and is less able to control impulses. Employees that are low in neuroticism are even-tempered and are more able to cope with stressful situations. Those with emotional stability have a higher chance of dealing with workplace demands.

Extroverts are typically people who take charge of situations and show high levels of leadership ability. Extraversion traits include sociability, and assertiveness and are most often energetic and optimistic. On the other hand, introverts are more reserved and independent. Research shows extroversion is a strong predictor of job performance in jobs characterized by social interaction.

Agreeable people are more liked by those around, they follow the rules, are sympathetic to others, and eager to help. They demonstrate higher levels of job satisfaction. Contrary to this, those who score low in agreeableness are egocentric, competitive, and engage in counterproductive work behavior, which may cripple career success. Agreeableness is a significant predictor of job performance as the cooperative nature of agreeable people leads to organizational success where teamwork and customer service are relevant.

Openness to experience includes creativity, a preference for variety, intellectual curiosity, and independence of judgment. Those who score low in openness tend to be more conservative. Research shows openness leads to higher success in adapting to change. Openness as a predictor of job performance is subject to the type of job in question as different jobs have different requirements.

Instead of looking at cognitive abilities and experience alone, personality traits allow you to look at how well an individual fits into your organization through their predisposed traits, which will most often affect their day-to-day work behavior.

Related: 9 Cognitive ability facts everyone needs to know and why

Munodiwa Zvemhara is a consultant at Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting firm.

Phone +263 4 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number +263 783168453 or email: [email protected] or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com 


What is the personality trait with the strongest positive relationship with job performance?

     

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Personality psychologists tend to divide personality into five core dimensions: openness to experiences, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.

Any guesses as to which dimension might be most predictive of occupational performance? If you guessed extraversion, you’d be wrong. If you guessed emotional stability, you’d be wrong again.

The truth is that 100+ years of psychological research has shown conscientiousness – that is, the tendency toward self-efficacy, orderliness, achievement, and self-discipline – to be the best predictor of job performance. New research forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers an in-depth examination of why this is the case, and when it might not be true.

A team of scientists led by Michael Wilmot of the University of Toronto conducted a meta-analysis of 92 studies to explore the relationship between conscientiousness and various occupational variables (for example, on-the-job competence, procrastination, leadership, organizational commitment, adaptability, job satisfaction, and burnout, to name a few).

Across variables, the researchers found strong evidence to support the view that conscientiousness is highly predictive of job performance.

“Conscientiousness refers to individual differences in the tendency to be hard- working, orderly, responsible to others, self-controlled, and rule abiding,” state Wilmot and his team. “We present the most comprehensive, quantitative review and synthesis of the occupational effects of conscientiousness available in the literature. Results show conscientiousness has effects in a desirable direction for 98% of variables [...], indicative of a potent, pervasive influence across occupational variables.”

Although the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance is robust, the researchers identified some interesting caveats and boundary conditions. For example, they found that conscientiousness is a weaker predictor of job performance in “high-complexity” occupations (think, for instance, of professions that require a high degree of brain power such as an analyst or lawyer). It is the low- to moderate-complexity occupations – for example, customer service jobs – that are particularly well suited to the conscientious personality.

Furthermore, the researchers found that individuals high in conscientiousness do better in Health Care than, say, Law Enforcement (although conscientious individuals show above average job performance in both occupational sectors). The graph below reveals the job sectors in which conscientious individuals are most likely to excel, with Health Care leading the pack.

"Summary of meta-analyses of conscientiousness and occupational performance [...]. Diamonds ... [+] represent estimated population correlations corrected for unreliability. Horizontal bars are 80% credibility intervals around each population correlation."

Wilmot & Ones (2019)

The researchers suggest that organizations should do more to harness conscientious workers’ aptitudes and motivations. According to their analysis, conscientious individuals are motivated by status, acceptance, and predictability. Building organizational frameworks that allow conscientious individuals to pursue these needs is critical to maximizing their occupational potential.

The authors conclude, “Few individual differences variables have occupational effects as potent and pervasive as conscientiousness. Based on evidence from more than a century of occupational research, the vast treasure trove of findings [...] should motivate every individual, organizational, and societal decision maker to better understand, develop, and apply the valuable human capital resource that is conscientiousness.”

In the analysis, conscientiousness was the trait most closely associated with overall job performance, with agreeableness coming in second.

Which personality trait has the strongest positive correlation with job and training performance?

Research reveals that of the Big Five personality dimensions, conscientiousness has the strongest positive correlation with job performance.

Which personality trait has the strongest and most positive effect on performance multiple choice question conscientiousness extraversion openness agreeableness?

The truth is that 100+ years of psychological research has shown conscientiousness – that is, the tendency toward self-efficacy, orderliness, achievement, and self-discipline – to be the best predictor of job performance.
*Research indicates that conscientiousness is the personality characteristic that is most related to job performance across a variety of jobs.