MURRAY R. BARRICK AND MICHAEL K. MOUNT
Chapter 1 of this volume showed that selecting people with higher intelligence leads to better job performance. However, job performance is not only a function of an individual’s ability (i.e. what he or she can do); it is also a function of their motivation (i.e. what they will do). The two personality traits that best predict individuals’ long-term, dispositional motivation levels and subsequent work behaviors are conscientiousness and emotional stability. The universal principle that we advocate in this chapter is that organizations should always select on the personality dimensions of conscientiousness and emotional stability. A subprinciple of the chapter is that organizations should also select on other personality dimensions, but such practices should be dictated by the specific requirements of the job or the particular criterion.
What behaviors do employers perceive that employees need in order to succeed in the 21st century? A collaborative study of over 400 employers across the USA conducted by The Conference Board, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource Management (2006) examined the readiness of new entrants to the workforce. Although both basic and applied skills are important, survey responses revealed, when results were combined across education levels, that the two most important applied skills were professionalism/work ethic and teamwork/collaboration. These skills are influenced by “will do” factors and were viewed as more important than those skills associated with the “Three Rs.” Similar findings were reported in a large study conducted in a Midwestern state that asked employers which employee behaviors were most important for workplace success (Michigan Employability Study, 1990). The seven top ranked items were: be free from substance abuse; demonstrate honesty and integrity; pay attention to the person speaking; follow directions given verbally; show respect for others; show pride; and be punctual in attendance. Employers clearly value “will do” characteristics in applicants. Many of these essential workplace behaviors that employers desire are largely influenced by an individual’s motivation and are influenced less by general mental ability. In this chapter we discuss the benefits that accrue to organizations when they select employees on the personality traits of conscientiousness and emotional stability.
Personality can be defined as an individual’s relatively stable and enduring pattern of thoughts, feelings and actions. Although more than 15,000 trait terms in the English language can be used to describe personality, most researchers agree that the structure of personality consists of five broad dimensions, often called the Big Five or the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality: conscientiousness (i.e. dependable, industrious, efficient and achievement oriented), emotional stability (i.e. calm, steady, self-confident, and secure), extraversion (i.e. gregarious, sociable, ambitious, and active), agreeableness (i.e. courteous, helpful, trusting, cooperative, and considerate), and openness to experience (i.e. cultured, intellectual, imaginative, and analytical).
Performance
Of the five major personality dimensions, conscientiousness and emotional stability are the most valid predictors of performance outcomes (such as those listed above) across different occupations. Other things being equal, individuals high on conscientiousness and emotional stability perform better on the job and this improved job performance has a substantial economic impact on the firm. Conscientious individuals are achievement oriented, hard working, dependable, persistent, responsible, organized, careful, and reliable. Such traits are fundamentally related to motivation at work because they lead to increased effort and following rules. Similarly, neurotic individuals (emotional stability is often referred to by the low end traits) are nervous, highly strung, stress prone, moody, lack self-esteem, and are insecure. Not surprisingly, such traits tend to inhibit positive motivational tendencies at work. That is, individuals who spend time worrying about their performance, doubt their abilities, require assurance from others, are depressed and stress prone are unable to develop adequate coping strategies and cannot focus attention on the tasks at hand. In short, traits associated with the low end of emotional stability (neuroticism) lead to poor performance.
The general principles that we advocate in this chapter have a strong foundation in research. They are derived from the results of several large-scale, meta-analytic studies that have demonstrated the relationship between personality traits and job performance (e.g. Barrick and Mount, 1991; Barrick, Mount, and Judge, 2001; Hough, 1992; Hurtz and Donovan, 2000; Salgado, 1997, 1998). For example, Barrick et al. (2001) reviewed eight meta-analyses conducted since 1990 involving hundreds of studies and thousands of employees and reported that both conscientiousness and emotional stability predicted overall job performance across a wide variety of jobs. Furthermore, because conscientiousness and emotional stability are only moderately correlated with each other and have small correlations with intelligence, each can add unique information to the prediction of job performance. Thus, hiring applicants with higher conscientiousness, emotional stability and intelligence will result in an increase in the number of employees who perform assigned job tasks effectively, which in turn will have substantial economic benefits to organizations.
A major reason to select employees on conscientiousness and emotional stability is the remarkable breadth of work behaviors they predict. Importantly, many of these work behaviors relate to overall organizational effectiveness yet are not typically included in measures of overall job performance; moreover, they are not predicted as well by intelligence. In order to understand the behaviors that conscientiousness and emotional stability predict, it is useful to distinguish among the three major components of job performance: task behaviors, citizenship behaviors and counterproductive behaviors (Rotundo and Sackett, 2002). Task performance refers to the core behaviors of a job and includes those that (directly or indirectly) contribute to the production of a good or the provision of a service. These behaviors are usually captured by overall performance ratings or by objective measures of performance such as total sales during the quarter or number of new accounts opened. Organizational citizenship performance, also called contextual performance (Borman, Penner, Allen, and Motowidlo, 2001), refers to behavior that contributes to the goals of the organization by contributing to its social and psychological environment (such as providing assistance to co-workers who need help). Counterproductive work performance consists of a broad array of voluntary behaviors that harm the well-being of the organization or its employees and includes behaviors such as violence on the job, racial slurs, theft, unsafe behavior, and misuse of information, time, or resources (Berry, Ones, and Sackett, 2007).
The studies discussed above clearly demonstrate that conscientiousness and emotional stability predict overall job performance and the results are quite robust and generalize to nearly all jobs. In fact, Hurtz and Donovan (2000) reported that of the Big Five personality traits, conscientiousness and emotional stability have the highest relationship with task performance. Thus, whether predicting overall job performance or a narrower definition of task performance, conscientiousness and emotional stability emerge as the two critical personality traits that determine the employees’ technical proficiency and performance completing specific job duties.
Citizenship and (non-) counterproductive work behaviors
In addition to predicting the task performance component of jobs, conscientiousness and emotional stability also predict citizenship and counterproductive work behaviors. This represents a difference between intelligence on the one hand and conscientiousness and emotional stability on the other, as there is little evidence that intelligence predicts citizenship and counterproductive work behaviors. Citizenship behaviors include the willingness to pitch in and help during emergency or overload situations, to take on tasks no one else is willing to do, and to go beyond prescribed role requirements to get the job done. Borman et al. (2001) showed that conscientiousness (especially dependability) and to a lesser extent emotional stability predict citizenship behaviors and these correlations are higher than those typically reported for task behaviors. In another meta-analysis, Hurtz and Donovan (2000) found these same two traits relate to citizenship behavior through dedication to the job and interpersonal facilitation. Job dedication includes measures of persistence, reliability, and commitment to goals, while interpersonal facilitation refers to interpersonal relationships at work (e.g. in work teams), cooperation, being courteous and a team player. Thus conscientiousness and emotional stability influence citizenship behaviors at work through their relationship to job dedication and interpersonal facilitation.
There is considerable evidence that conscientiousness and emotional stability are also related to organizational citizenship behaviors through the broad set of helping behaviors associated with teamwork and customer service. For example, Mount, Barrick, and Stewart (1998) found conscientiousness and emotional stability were consistently related to being a team player across 11 different studies. Selecting on conscientiousness and emotional stability is also important to optimize team performance. Based on responses of employees in 51 work teams, Barrick, Stewart, Neubert, and Mount (1998) found that teams higher in conscientiousness and emotional stability (as well as general mental ability and extraversion) received higher supervisor ratings of team performance. Two recent meta-analyses (Bell, 2007; Peeters, Van Tujil, Rutte, and Reymen, 2006) of the relationship between Big Five traits and team performance found that higher team scores on conscientiousness and agreeableness were associated with high team performance. If the analyses were restricted to actual work settings, Peeters et al. (2006) also showed teams with higher mean levels of emotional stability obtained higher team performance. Furthermore, Frei and McDaniel (1998) reported that customer service measures are strong predictors of supervisory ratings of performance, and other research has shown that the two strongest personality correlates of customer service orientation are emotional stability and conscientiousness (Ones and Viswesvaran, 1996). These findings are noteworthy as they correspond to the survey results described earlier in the chapter that showed one of the two most important workplace skills that employers desire is teamwork/collaboration.
Another important reason to select on conscientiousness and emotional stability is they are centrally (and negatively) related to intentional harmful behaviors at work, i.e. counterproductive work behaviors. Evidence was presented at the beginning of the chapter that employers are very interested in hiring employees who are honest, demonstrate integrity, and follow workplace rules. Research demonstrates that personality-based integrity tests are valid predictors of such counterproductive behaviors (Ones, Viswesvaran, and Schmidt, 1993) as “badmouthing” the organization, being belligerent with customers or fellow co-workers, sabotaging equipment or products, stealing goods or money, and even engaging in excessive alcohol or drug abuse, as well as being able also to predict supervisory ratings of overall job performance. As noted above, integrity tests are related primarily to conscientiousness and emotional stability (along with agreeableness). Results of a study by Berry et al. (2007) clarified how emotional stability and conscientiousness predict counterproductive behavior: emotional stability predicts both interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance, whereas conscientiousness predicts organizational deviance. Consequently, the more conscientious and emotionally stable a firm’s employees are, the less likely they are to engage in counterproductive behaviors at work.
Low turnover and absenteeism
In addition to positive “citizenship” behaviors, individuals high on conscientiousness and emotional stability are more likely to stay with the organization. Turnover is a major cost to employers; consequently, many employers strive to hire employees who not only perform well but also stay on the job for a long period of time, particularly in tight labor markets. Conscientiousness and emotional stability have been found to consistently (negatively) predict an individual’s propensity to withdraw at work. For example, Barrick and Mount (1996) showed that voluntary turnover was predicted by both personality traits. A recent meta-analysis conducted by Zimmerman (2008) showed that personality traits impact individuals’ intentions to withdraw from work, as emotional stability best predicted (negatively) employees’ intentions to quit, whereas conscientiousness (and agreeableness) best predicted (negatively) actual turnover decisions. Similarly, a meta-analysis by Ones, Viswesvaran, and Schmidt (2003) showed that personality-based integrity tests predicted voluntary absenteeism and the validity generalized across various predictor scales, organizations, and jobs. Ones (1993) examined more than 100 studies reporting correlations between integrity tests and personality measures and found that integrity tests were related primarily to conscientiousness and emotional stability (along with agreeableness). Thus selecting on conscientiousness and emotional stability will reduce workforce instability due to excessive absenteeism, tardiness, even turnover.
Leadership and entrepreneurship
In addition to predicting task, citizenship, and counterproductive behaviors, emotional stability and conscientiousness also predict many other important work outcomes that cannot be neatly categorized into one of these three performance categories. For example, Judge, Bono, Ilies, and Gerhardt (2002) conducted a meta-analysis of the relationship between the personality traits and leadership (using a criterion that consisted of both leader emergence and leader effectiveness). Their results showed that both conscientiousness and emotional stability were generalizable predictors of leadership (as were extraversion and openness to experience). Further, both conscientiousness and emotional stability have been shown to predict entrepreneurial status (Zhao and Seibert, 2005). Although entrepreneurial activity involves leadership, it is “unique” as the context differs by involving a start-up or rapidly growing firm.
Expatriate success
These two traits are also related to other aspects of work performance that affect organizational productivity and profits. For example, organizations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars preparing and transferring employees overseas for work assignments. Research shows that individuals who are higher on both conscientiousness and emotional stability perform better as expatriates (Mol, Orn, Willemsen, and Van Der Moler, 2005). Moreover, organizations spend billions of dollars each year on training-related activities. One trend is to select employees to participate in training programs who are likely to benefit most from the training. Research has shown that individuals who are higher on conscientiousness are not only more motivated to learn (Major, Turner, and Fletcher, 2006), but also perform better in the training program, although other traits like openness to experience, extraversion, and proactive personality also predict training performance (e.g. Barrick et al., 2001; Salgado, 1997).
Earnings
Higher conscientiousness and emotional stability is also rewarded in the labor market. Using a large Dutch sample, Nyhus and Pons (2005) showed that emotional stability was positively associated with wages among both men and women and conscientiousness is most highly rewarded at the beginning of the employment relationship. Mueller and Plug (2006) found that among a large group of high school graduates in 1957 all of the Big Five traits significantly predicted earnings and collectively their effects are comparable to those reported for GMA. Further, Roberts, Caspi, and Moffitt (2003) found that people who were more conscientious in terms of being more controlled and industrious at the age of 18 tended to be on higher status work paths at 26 years of age, to feel more involved in their work, and to feel more financially secure.
Safety
A meta-analysis by Clarke and Robertson (2005) showed that low conscientiousness and low agreeableness were valid and generalizable predictors of accident involvement. Two other traits, openness to experience and emotional stability, were also found to be (negatively) correlated to accidents, though there was more variance in these estimates across studies. Given the high costs associated with accidents and the potential harm to human lives, this shows another way selecting employees on conscientiousness and emotional stability can benefit organizations. Taken together, all of these results convincingly reveal that employees with higher levels of these two traits are likely to be successful in a myriad of ways at work, including by being a higher performer, a better citizen, a more effective team player or leader, with greater integrity and a propensity to be committed to and stay with the firm.
Compliance
Another benefit to organizations when employees are selected on conscientiousness and emotional stability is compliance with existing laws and legal precedents. A key question all employers face in their hiring practice is whether a predictor unintentionally discriminates by screening out a disproportionate number of minorities and women. To the extent this happens, the predictor has adverse impact, which may trigger legal action. Research consistently demonstrates a large mean difference of approximately one standard deviation (d-values of 1) between African Americans and whites on intelligence (Ployhart and Holtz, 2008). In contrast, there are relatively small subgroup differences on conscientiousness and emotional stability. For example, recent meta-analyses (Hough, 1995; Foldes, Duehr, and Ones, 2008; Ployhart and Holtz, 2008) report that differences between African American, Asian, and Hispanic subgroups versus white subgroups are quite small (d-values around zero). Similar non-significant differences have also been found for gender (Feingold, 1994; Ployhart and Holtz, 2008). Thus, from a legal perspective, selecting on conscientiousness and emotional stability (and other contextually valid personality dimensions) is advantageous because it does not appear to result in adverse impact.
Healthy behaviors and longevity
Conscientiousness and emotional stability also predict a number of important life outcomes. Certainly, one of the most consequential outcomes in life is how long a person lives. Simply stated - conscientious and emotionally stable people live longer (Friedman, Tucker, Tomlinson-Keasey, Schwartz, Wingard, and Criqui, 1993; Ozer and Benet-Martinez, 2006). For example, Roberts, Walton, and Bogg (2005) cite evidence that people tend to live longer if, as eight-year-olds, they were rated as more conscientious by parents and teachers. To put this finding in context, the impact of conscientiousness on longevity has been shown to be equivalent to the effect (inversely) of cardiovascular disease on longevity (Bogg and Roberts, 2004). Although the evidence is not as compelling, emotional stability is also associated with longevity. For example, in a study of 285 centenarians, Martin, da Rosa, and Siegler (2006) found that higher levels of emotional stability, high competence (conscientiousness) and high extraversion were associated with longevity. It makes sense that emotional stability should matter for longevity as well, because high levels of neuroticism have been associated with increased probability of illness and behavior leading to more illness (Ozer and Benet-Martinez, 2006). Smith and MacKenzie (2006) showed that neuroticism is associated with physical health problems, such as cardiovascular disease, which in turn results in less longevity. Furthermore, neurotic individuals have been shown to have lower resistance to stress and spend more time ruminating about illnesses (Ozer and Benet-Martinez, 2006). In essence, those with lower levels of emotional stability experience higher rates of actual illness and are more vulnerable to illness due to how the trait shapes the person’s reaction to illness. Goodwin and Friedman (2006) extended these findings by reporting both conscientiousness and emotional stability are related to significant reductions in the likelihood of a wide range of mental and physical disorders among adults in the general population.
Terracciano, Lockenhoff, Crum, Bienvenu, and Costa (2008) examined the relationship between the Big Five and drug use in a large community sample. Compared to a sample of “never” smokers, current cigarette smokers were lower on conscientiousness and higher on neuroticism; similar but more extreme results were obtained for cocaine/heroin users. In addition, marijuana users scored low on conscientiousness. Bogg and Roberts (2004) conducted a meta-analysis of conscientiousness-related traits and the leading behavioral contributors to mortality in the USA including tobacco use, diet and activity patterns, excessive alcohol use, violence, risky sexual behavior, risky driving, suicide, and drug use. Based on 194 studies, results showed that conscientiousness-related traits were negatively related to all risky health-related behaviors and positively related to all beneficial health-related behaviors. Conscientious people avoid potentially harmful/risky behaviors such as fighting or other violent activities, as well as tobacco and drug consumption; instead, they engage in activities that promote good health (e.g. exercise regularly, eat healthy diets, schedule regular medical check-ups), and invest in work, family, and community in ways that are known to contribute to longevity.
Collectively, these results demonstrate that conscientiousness and emotional stability play important roles in a person’s physical condition, even how long they live, by predicting social environmental factors and health behaviors that have meaningful effects on longevity. Although these behaviors are not directly related to work performance, how one feels and how long one lives will have important indirect effects. By leading healthy lifestyles, people high on conscientiousness and emotional stability, collectively, save organizations billions of dollars because of increased productivity associated with lower absenteeism rates due to fewer sick days and being healthier when they are at work. People high on conscientiousness and emotional stability also have substantially lower health care costs due to fewer visits to the doctor and fewer and shorter hospital stays. Given the emphasis in most organizations on reducing health care costs, one relatively inexpensive practice that will help accomplish this is to select employees high on conscientiousness and emotional stability.
Motivation
Clearly, there are numerous advantages to organizations when they select applicants based on conscientiousness and emotional stability. Another way to view their impact is to consider the likely negative consequences to organizations that do not select employees based on conscientiousness and emotional stability - but all of their competitors do. Many of the applicants that remain in the applicant pool have already been screened on these two traits and have been found undesirable. That is, the remaining applicants are more likely to describe themselves as lazy, irresponsible, undependable, careless, moody, lacking confidence, stress-prone, anxious, and depressed. Clearly, this is no way to build a productive workforce.
But how do conscientiousness and emotional stability affect performance? Earlier we made the distinction that personality traits influence what people will do whereas intelligence influences what they can do. Research clearly demonstrates that motivational or will-do factors play a central role in predicting job performance (e.g. Mitchell and Daniels, 2003). Although there are many ways to conceptualize motivation, the three most commonly studied approaches are goal-setting theory, expectancy theory, and self-efficacy theory. According to goal-setting theory, the process of setting goals leads to greater performance because it directs effort and attention, increases time on task, leads to greater persistence, and provides feedback about one’s performance. It also helps people devise strategies for attaining the goals; and once the goals are achieved, people feel more satisfied due to a greater sense of accomplishment. Thousands of laboratory and field studies conducted in a wide variety of settings using many different tasks demonstrate that the effects of goal setting on performance are positive, potent, and robust (Locke and Latham, 2005; see Chapter 9, this volume). With respect to expectancy theory, higher performance will result when people believe that their effort leads to better performance and when they believe higher performance leads to rewards they value. Self-efficacy theory posits that individuals who see themselves as competent, worthy, and confident interpret their environment in positive ways that influence work performance. These positive perceptions influence a person’s beliefs that he or she can successfully cope with work’s (and life’s) exigencies.
Judge and Ilies (2002) conducted a meta-analysis to investigate the relationships among the Big Five personality dimensions and these three central theories of motivation. They found that the two strongest and most consistent correlates of performance motivation across the three motivation approaches were emotional stability and conscientiousness (extraversion was also a consistent predictor but the relationships were weaker). These results are important because they show that conscientiousness and emotional stability predict performance by increasing individuals’ motivation levels. These findings are consistent with what we would expect from findings pertaining to the validity of the two traits in predicting performance. Conscientiousness and emotional stability are the best predictors of performance and because motivation is a major determinant of performance, it would be expected that these two traits are also the best predictors of motivation. Thus conscientiousness and emotional stability affect performance directly and indirectly through their effects on motivation processes.
Results from other studies support these findings. For example, meta-analytic research conducted by Mount and Barrick (1995) showed that conscientiousness correlates highly with the amount of effort exerted. Although the amount of effort expended is related to high levels of motivation, they are not identical concepts. Effort is multifaceted and includes both the amount of time as well as the intensity of the time spent on the task, i.e. the cognitive effort expended to focus and concentrate on the task at hand. Conscientious people spend more time on task, which leads to greater quantity of output and higher performance (Barrick, Mount, and Strauss, 1993). Greater time on task also provides more opportunities to practice and provides more exposure to a wider variety of problems. Both of these increase job knowledge, which in turn increases performance because, as discussed in the previous chapter, job knowledge is highly correlated with job performance.
Conscientious people are also more dependable and this leads to higher performance. They plan and organize their work and are careful, thorough, and detail oriented. Conscientious individuals are more likely to perform tasks correctly the first time and are more likely to spot problems and errors in processes and output. This leads to fewer errors and enables highly conscientious employees to produce better quality work (Mount and Barrick, 1995). These findings are especially relevant as they are consistent with the survey findings of 400 employers discussed earlier, which showed one of the two most important workplace skills that employers desire is work ethic/professionalism.
Generally speaking, similar motivational mechanisms apply to emotional stability. Viewed from the negative pole, neurotic people are not able to control their emotions and moods; consequently, they cannot maintain focus and concentration on the task at hand especially under stress or in crisis situations (e.g. Kanfer and Heggestad, 1997). This lack of attention can lead to less productivity, more errors, and hence lower performance. Those prone to greater anxiety and insecurity (low on emotional stability) tend to be fearful of novel situations, be more concerned about failure, and are more susceptible to feelings of dependence and helplessness ( Judge and Ilies, 2002). Those who experience greater and more frequent negative emotions may choose to withhold effort rather than risk the potential affective consequences of failure. Researchers label this phenomenon the “self-handicapping” paradox (Rhodewalt, 1994). In addition, the tendency of people to behave in this way, particularly within the context of achievement (i.e. job) settings, is fundamental to the learned helplessness theory of depression (Seligman, 1978). Taken together, these findings suggest that the inability of neurotics to cope with fear of failure substantively impacts job performance through the inhibitory effects on motivational levels. In contrast, employees scoring high on emotional stability are likely to be steady, calm, and predictable, which helps them obtain more commendations and recognition at work. In turn, commendations along with fewer disciplinary actions and reprimands have been linked to higher performance ratings (Borman, White, Pulakos, and Oppler, 1991).
Job satisfaction
Motivation is only part of the explanation as to why these two traits lead to more successful behavior at work. Another reason to select on conscientiousness and emotional stability is that they are related to work-related attitudes, which in turn have been shown to affect performance. For example, conscientiousness and emotional stability are positively related to job and career satisfaction (Judge, Heller, and Mount, 2002; Ng, Eby, Sorensen, and Feldman, 2005). Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, and Barrick (1999) found that conscientiousness and emotional stability assessed at an early age (12-14) were strong predictors of overall job satisfaction in late adulthood, even after controlling for clinicians’ ratings of extraversion, openness to experience, and agreeableness. Furthermore, Judge et al. (2002) conducted a meta-analysis of the relationship of traits from the FFM model of personality to overall job satisfaction. The two personality traits that correlated highest with job satisfaction were neuroticism (negatively) and conscientiousness. In turn, job satisfaction has been shown to be positively related to job performance, which shows that another way these two traits relate to performance is through their relationship to job satisfaction.
Commitment
Another attitudinal variable that is closely related to job satisfaction is organizational commitment, which is of interest to organizations because it predicts who is likely to leave the organization rather than help the organization reach its objectives. Organizational commitment refers to a person’s involvement with the organization, feelings of obligation toward the organization and perceived costs associated with leaving the organization. One meta-analysis of the influence of affect on job attitudes reports results between organizational commitment and only two personality traits, extraversion and emotional stability (Thoresen, Kaplan, Barsley, Warren, and De Chermont, 2003). This study shows neurotic individuals are less satisfied, less committed to the organization, and have higher turnover intentions. Erdheim, Wang, and Zichar (2006) found that conscientiousness is also related to one component of organizational commitment, continuance commitment. They reasoned that conscientiousness relates to continuance commitment because it represents a general work-involvement tendency that provides increased opportunity for an employee to obtain formal (e.g. pay, promotion) and informal work rewards (e.g. recognition, respect). Conscientious employees earn more of these rewards, which leads to heightened levels of continuance commitment because of the costs of leaving an organization. Zimmerman (2008) supports this conclusion by showing that these two traits are the best predictors of intent to quit.
Life satisfaction
Conscientiousness and emotional stability are also among the strongest personality-based predictors of subjective well-being or life satisfaction (DeNeve and Cooper, 1998; Steel, Schmidt, and Schulz, 2008). It has been argued that conscientiousness plays a major role in both job and life satisfaction because conscientious behavior is instrumental in attaining outcomes such as career success that achievement-oriented people value (McCrae and Costa, 1991). Schmutte and Ryff (1997) concluded that those high in conscientiousness are more satisfied because they achieve a heightened sense of control and competence through their diligent and responsible behavior. Thus conscientiousness is instrumental in attaining desired outcomes and fostering control, which leads to greater life satisfaction.
The effects of emotional stability on satisfaction are complex and are best viewed from the negative pole (i.e. neuroticism). People who suffer from low emotional stability experience greater distress and reduced job and life satisfaction because they experience more adverse events, and react negatively and more strongly when such problems occur. Neurotic individuals are unable to effectively cope with stress due to their reliance on emotion-and avoidance-oriented coping styles. Higher levels of emotional stability result in greater satisfaction because stable people have more confidence to approach stressful work, have a more positive view of themselves, others, and the world around them, and do not let negative emotions and dysfunctional thought processes distract them from the task at hand. Overall, these results show that conscientiousness and emotional stability are fundamentally important to success at work, but are also important to satisfaction and commitment at work as well as one’s overall satisfaction in life. It is not an exaggeration to say that conscientiousness and emotional stability are fundamentally important to overall life success.
The general principle in this chapter is that individuals should be selected on their level of conscientiousness and emotional stability. However, this does not mean that these are the only valid personality dimensions that predict performance. A subprinciple of this chapter is that individuals should be selected on other personality dimensions according to the specific requirements of the job and/or the nature of the criterion. Research has shown that the other three personality dimensions in the FFM model (agreeableness, extraversion, and openness to experience) are relevant in some jobs or for some specific types of criteria. To clearly identify when these relationships are likely to be non-zero, practitioners need to focus more on job requirements, demands, or what now are labeled competencies. This does not imply an extensive, time-consuming, content-specific job analysis. Rather, it suggests that the relevance of these personality traits depends on the requirements and competencies generally demanded by the job to achieve successful job performance. For example, if the job requires extensive interpersonal interaction of a cooperative nature, agreeableness would be expected to be an important predictor. In fact, recent research demonstrates that agreeableness is the single best predictor of teamwork and is also related to service orientation (Bell, 2007; Mount et al., 1998; Peeters et al., 2006). Those employees who are more cooperative, caring, tolerant, flexible, and trusting (i.e. high in agreeableness) are likely to be more successful in teams.
In contrast, in jobs where the nature of the interpersonal interaction is competitive or requires persuasion or negotiation, being assertive, ambitious, energetic, and gregarious (i.e. highly extraverted) is expected to be a highly relevant set of personality traits. Thus, extraversion has been found to be a valid predictor of success in sales and management jobs (Barrick et al., 2001). Hogan and Holland (2003) reported extraversion (measured using ambition) was an important predictor for criteria where “getting ahead” of others was an important outcome in the job. Finally, it would be expected that companies who are seeking employees who are flexible and highly adaptive to the rapid changes frequently encountered at work would select on openness to experience. There is some limited evidence to support this. For example, Pulakos, Schmitt, Dorsey, Arand, Hedge, and Borman (2002) and LePine, Colquitt, and Erez (2000) found that openness to experience is positively correlated with adaptive performance. Further, as one would expect, employees higher on openness to experience tend to have higher training performance than those low in openness (Barrick et al., 2001; Salgado, 1997). Thus, being imaginative, innovative, curious, intellectual, with broad interests (i.e. high on openness to experience) appears to make one “training ready,” which is relevant for training success. It should also be noted that trainees scoring higher on extraversion have been found to be more successful during training. This has been attributed to extraverts’ increased and more active participation during training.
Although we advocate that organizations should always select employees on conscientiousness and emotional stability, there are some circumstances where this general principle oversimplifies the relationships between these two personality traits and job performance. In reality, our behavior is influenced by a constellation of personality traits represented by the Big Five traits and these traits (and other attributes of individuals) may interact to predict performance. For example, in four different samples Witt and Ferris (2003) found that the relationship between conscientiousness and interpersonal job performance depended on workers’ social skills. The relationship was stronger among workers who are higher rather than lower in social skill. Further, Witt, Burke, Barrick, and Mount (2002) found that in jobs with frequent, cooperative interpersonal interactions, the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance depended on the level of agreeableness. The relationship was stronger for persons high in agreeableness than for those low in agreeableness. Similarly, Barrick, Parks, and Mount (2005) found that among high self-monitors (i.e. individuals who monitor, adjust, and control their behavior to make a favorable impression on others), the relationships between emotional stability and supervisory ratings of interpersonal performance decreased, and these effects were replicated using peer ratings of interpersonal performance. Collectively, these results illustrate that the relationship of personality traits to performance can be influenced by other attributes of the individual. Thus, although conscientiousness and emotional stability predict job performance across jobs, the magnitude of the relationship may vary depending on other personality traits as well as the specific component of job performance being predicted. Accounting for interactions between personality variables may further enhance prediction from these personality variables.
The general principle that we have discussed is that employers should select applicants who are hardworking, dependable, achievement striving (i.e. conscientious) as well as calm, tolerant of stress, able to handle anxiety, and avoid excessively worrying or ruminating (i.e. emotionally stable). This is not a particularly surprising statement; however, a necessary first step before a principle can be implemented is that it must be well understood. In this vein, much progress has been made in the past decade in understanding how conscientiousness and emotional stability relate to job performance. Equally important to the implementation of these principles has been the contribution of industrial-organizational psychologists to the development of reliable and valid measures of these constructs.
The use of personality assessment to select applicants requires collecting “personal” data. To make sure that accurate data are collected in a fair manner, attention must be given to the relevance of various personality traits and some consideration of the “demands” of the applicant setting. Implementation requires that the organization accurately identifies and measures applicant qualifications relative to job requirements. Thus, before assessing personality traits, a job analysis should be conducted to identify critical competencies and job requirements. By understanding the critical requirements of the job, one will recognize which personality traits are relevant predictors, in addition to conscientiousness and emotional stability. However, some consideration must be given to the “job” itself. Today, organizations are moving away from the use of narrow, well-defined jobs and towards broader, less well-defined, more amorphous jobs, with constantly changing content. The changing structure of jobs implies there will be greater emphasis on those traits and qualities that are valid for all jobs (intelligence, conscientiousness, and emotional stability). Nevertheless, it will be desirable to select on the other three personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience) when those traits are valid predictors of requirements for critical tasks likely to be encountered by people being hired.
Once it is known which specific traits will be assessed, consideration must also be given to the best means for assessing personality. Research illustrates that co-workers, customers, and supervisors at work can rate a person’s personality, and those assessments have been found to predict job performance better than self-reports of personality. For example, Mount, Barrick, and Strauss (1994) found that the validity of co-worker and customer ratings of conscientiousness were nearly twice as large as self-ratings when predicting supervisor ratings of performance. These predictive validities have since been replicated by others (Small and Diefendorff, 2006; McCarthy and Goffin, 2001; Taylor, Pajo, Cheung, and Stringfield, 2004). Huffcutt, Conway, Roth, and Stone (2001) report that interviewers often assess basic personality during the employment interview and found interviewer ratings of traits, including conscientiousness and emotional stability, are meaningfully related to later job performance. Thus, observer ratings of personality, even after a relatively short interview, predict later job performance and are larger than those we have historically found with self-reports. The magnitude of these relationships approaches the predictive validity of general intelligence. Zimmerman, Triana, and Barrick (2007) found that when candidates are asked to nominate up to three referents during the application process, these observer ratings of conscientiousness and emotional stability significantly predict job performance and team performance. Hence, there is even evidence that observer ratings from referents can be used for hiring.
Nevertheless, the most common means of assessing personality is through self-report personality tests. There are several construct valid measures of the Big Five traits. For example, the Personal Characteristics Inventory (PCI by Mount, Barrick, Laffitte, and Callans, 1999) is a self-report measure of the Big Five that asks applicants to report their agreement or disagreement with 150 sentences. The measure takes about 30 minutes to complete and has a 5th- to 6th-grade reading level. Another commonly used measure of the Big Five is the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI by Hogan and Hogan, 1995). Responses to the HPI can be scored to yield measures of occupational success as well as employee reliability and service orientation. A third alternative is the NEO Personality Inventory, which is also based on the Big Five typology (Costa and McCrae, 1992). There are several versions of the NEO and it has been translated into multiple languages.
An implementation concern in the use of personality inventories is that job applicants may inflate their personality scores, due to the “demands” of the applicant setting. This concern becomes apparent when one considers the nature of some personality items. For example, few applicants would agree with the statement that “others would describe me as lazy or irresponsible at work,” if they desperately wanted the job. Given the near impossibility of verifying responses to some of these questions, the possibility that impression management influences responses is quite real. In fact, research suggests applicants do manage impressions, as scores are higher by one-half standard deviation between applicants versus non-applicant settings. Given that a job is on the line when applicants complete a personality test, the tendency to enhance their impression is undeniable. Nevertheless, research clearly shows (Barrick and Mount, 1996; Ellingson, Sackett, and Connelly, 2007; Hogan, Barrett, and Hogan, 2007; Ones, Dilchert, Viswesvaran, and Judge, 2007; Schmitt and Oswald, 2006) that impression management does not significantly detract from the predictive validity of the tests in actual applicant settings. However, both criterion-related validity and construct validity are affected in those studies where participants (mostly students) are instructed to fake good. These findings create a paradox. With respect to employment decisions, the biggest problem is that the rank order of applicants on personality traits such as conscientiousness and emotional stability may change due to differences in faking; at the same time, faking does not substantially change the validity of the traits in predicting performance. Thus, even though it has yet to be shown that faking undermines the predictive validity of personality tests in selection, there continues to be considerable debate about this issue in the literature. One important implication from these findings is that practitioners should not rely on norms based on incumbent samples, as they will tend to be one-half standard deviation lower than norms derived from incumbent samples.
In sum, significant progress has been made in understanding the magnitude of the relationship between conscientiousness and emotional stability to job performance and the processes by which these constructs affect performance. Successful implementation of the principles we advocate requires reliable and valid measure of both conscientiousness and emotional stability. Over the past decade several construct valid measures of the five factor taxonomy of personality have been developed. Nonetheless, additional research is needed to further develop and refine these measures to overcome potential problems associated with impression management and socially desirable responding.
Relationship of conscientiousness and emotional stability to career success
A recent study (Judge et al., 1999) investigated the relationship between traits from the Big Five model of personality to success in careers spanning over 50 years. The ability to predict success 50 years after assessing personality provides a rigorous test of the utility of selecting applicants using conscientiousness and emotional stability. The data for this study were obtained from the Intergenerational Studies, administered by the Institute of Human Development, University of California at Berkeley. The sample was derived from children born in Berkeley, California, in 1928 and 1929. Many measurements were collected from participants over the 60-year course of the study. For example, there were two studies during later childhood (11-13 and again 16-18), as well as three major follow-up studies conducted when participants were in early adulthood (30-38), middle age (41-50), and in late adulthood (53-62). In addition to collecting personality and intelligence test data, the subject’s job satisfaction, income, and occupational status were collected during each of these studies. Thus, the records were rich with personality and career data, and comparisons were made across data collected at five different points in time (ranging from childhood to late adulthood).
Both childhood and early adulthood assessments of personality revealed enduring relationships between personality traits and later career success. For example, childhood assessments of conscientiousness and emotional stability predicted job satisfaction, income, and occupational status, even in late adulthood. These results show that conscientiousness and emotional stability measured early in life were effective predictors of satisfaction and success in one’s later career, even over a 50-year time span. Results also demonstrated that these two personality traits explained significant incremental variance in these measures of career success, even after controlling for the influence of intelligence. Taken together, these results show that highly conscientious and emotionally stable children earned higher salaries, were more satisfied with their work, and attained higher positions in the social hierarchy later in life. Obviously, organizations will be better off selecting individuals who are conscientious and emotionally adjusted, as they will be rewarded by those decisions with higher performance and more committed employees for years to come.
The generalizability of conscientiousness and emotional stability as predictors
The Army conducted a large-scale study spanning seven years (the Selection and Classification Project or Project A) to investigate how the contributions of selection could maximize performance within the constraints of one of the largest operational personnel systems in the world. The Army personnel system includes over 276 jobs and hires, almost exclusively, inexperienced and untrained persons to fill them. A major goal of Project A was to develop a battery of predictor measures that would best serve the needs of all the jobs in the entire selection system for entry-level enlisted personnel. Thus, this project examined all of the major domains of individual differences that had potential for generating useful predictor variables. Several versions of the test battery were developed and examined in an iterative sequence, with each round of testing involving thousands of recruits or enlisted personnel. Rather than review the extensive list of predictors examined, interested readers are referred to Peterson, Hough, Dunnette, Rosse, Houston, Toquam, and Wing (1990). Suffice it to say that the range of individual differences was extraordinarily comprehensive, ranging from administrative/archival records to training achievement tests.
The study also rigorously modeled job performance to better understand what these individual differences were predicting. Given the large number of jobs examined, Project A determined whether a single model of performance would be stable across these jobs. Multiple methods were used to generate over 200 performance indicators of a subsample of jobs. An iterative procedure resulted in the identification of five broad performance dimensions that were found in all jobs. Two of these performance measures focus on specific technical competence called core technical proficiency and general soldiering proficiency. While the former dimension appears to be a basic performance component for any job (core task proficiency), the latter dimension would almost surely be specific to the military. The analysis also identified three non-job-specific performance dimensions that are more under motivational control. These are called effort/leadership, maintaining personal discipline, and physical fitness/military bearing. Again, while military bearing is unique to the military, the other two dimensions are quite likely basic performance components of almost any job. Although job performance was found to be multidimensional, an overall decision could scale each performance measure by its relative importance for a particular personnel decision or job.
The findings (McHenry, Hough, Toquam, Hanson, and Ashworth, 1990) from this large-scale project were that intelligence tests provided the best prediction of job-specific and general task proficiency (core technical proficiency and general soldiering proficiency), whereas the personality composites, particularly those traits measuring conscientiousness and emotional stability, were the best predictors of giving extra effort and leadership, exhibiting personal discipline, and physical fitness and military bearing. The study also illustrated the incremental validity contributed by other predictors over intelligence. The greatest amount of incremental validity over intelligence was generated by the personality measures, especially when predicting effort and leadership, personal discipline, and physical fitness and military bearing. These results show the generalizable value of using conscientiousness and emotional stability for purposes of selection.
CONCLUSION
The general principle in this chapter is that organizations should select employees based on their conscientiousness and emotional stability. A subprinciple is that organizations should also select on agreeableness, extraversion, or openness to experience when they have been shown to be relevant for specific criteria or requirements of the job. Hiring applicants who are more intelligent (see Chapter 1) will result in employees who are capable of acquiring more work-related facts and principles as well as greater procedural knowledge and skill. This contributes to job success, particularly on the core substantive or technical tasks central to the job. But hiring smart people is not enough. Hiring applicants who are more conscientious and emotionally stable will result in employees who have a stronger work ethic - they are predisposed to exert greater effort at work, to persist at work for a longer period of time, and to cope more effectively. In addition, these employees are likely to be better team players and are more collaborative - they are better citizens, and are more responsible and helpful to others at work. Further, they are less likely to engage in counterproductive behaviors at work. They also have more positive attitudes about work and life in general and lead healthier lifestyles, which leads to increased work productivity and reduced health care costs. In conclusion, hiring people who work smarter (select on intelligence), and who work harder and cope better (select on conscientiousness and emotional stability), will lead to increased individual productivity which in turn will lead to increased organizational effectiveness every single day the person (reliably) shows up to work.
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Selecting applicants for entry level bank teller positions
You are the human resource manager for a large financial institution. You have been asked to recommend methods for selecting applicants for entry level bank teller positions. It is especially important that tellers have a strong work ethic, display integrity, interact well with others and are accurate in their work. Consequently, you recommend that the foundation of the selection program should be the personality traits of conscientiousness and emotional stability. List and discuss five desirable employee behaviors that will likely result from selecting employees on conscientiousness and emotional stability. Here are some questions you may want to address in your answer:a. What skills do all new entrants to the workforce need in order to be successful in the workplace?
b. Which of these skills are especially important for bank tellers to be successful?
c. How do conscientiousness and emotional stability influence these critical behaviors?
d. Are there personality traits other than conscientiousness and emotional stability (e.g., agreeableness, extraversion or openness) that may be useful when selecting for the entry level bank teller positions?
Convincing a high level executive
You are the human resources director at a large firm and you have been asked to design a system for selecting managers. An integral part of your recommended hiring plan is the use of personality tests. A high level executive in the firm hears about your plan and expresses concerns about the use of personality tests. He took a personality test once and he believes it did not accurately describe his personality. He also says that personality tests can’t be accurate because “everybody knows you can fake these things.” What would you tell him? What is the basis for your answer?