Skills and experience clearly relate to occupational performance. But researchers
have also noted that our personality traits are key assets at work. Researchers use the Big Five trait model– Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism
(OCEAN) – when they measure personality traits because it has been empirically developed
and measurements tend to be stable over a person’s adulthood.
The Big Five traits are fairly descriptive in what they measure: openness measures
a person’s willingness to engage with novel ideas and experiences; conscientiousness
measures goal setting and completion; extraversion means what you think it means,
though it captures both dominance and sociability; agreeableness measures a person’s
inclination towards cooperation; and high scores in neuroticism reflect a person’s
propensity for negative emotions. The components of the Big Five have been developed
over decades of empirical studies, and they are still undergoing refinement, especially as psychologists adjust their models to encompass more than white, educated,
industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) subjects.
In his recent meta-analysis, Michael Wilmot, assistant professor of management at the University of Arkansas, uncovers conclusions
about personality and occupational performance through industrial psychology’s body
of research. Wilmot and his coauthor, Deniz Ones, found that prior research supports the conclusion that worker personality traits predict performance in their profession.
Wilmot and Ones had professional career analysts rate which Big Five personality traits
would best predict job performance. They then compared these responses to the work
styles and job complexity defined by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*Net), a governmental database that collects information on occupations and their
requirements. Their findings demonstrate that conscientiousness supports success in
most occupations and second order traits tend to help specialize that success to the
needs of the career.
Pairing Personality Traits and Jobs
Researchers have measured the effect of personality traits on job performance, in
general, but there isn’t a good comparison across different occupations. Wilmot and Ones collected the findings of the body of existing
research on relations of personality and performance in nine different occupations,
as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Standard Occupational Classifications (SOC). Ultimately, their analysis drew on data from nearly 90,000 workers across
539 studies, which makes their study the largest of its kind.
After they compiled their database, the researchers found that conscientiousness had the strongest mean relation to job performance, across all occupations,
whereas agreeableness and openness had the weakest. However, the more interesting findings
had to do with which traits predicted better/worse in different occupations.
Generally, the traits that career analysts rate as relevant for career fields (e.g.,
noting that extroversion is important for sales, etc.) agree with the empirical findings
of industrial psychology research. Notably, however, experts identified agreeableness
as the most critical trait for healthcare workers to possess, emotional stability
as being crucial for military and police work, and extraversion for managerial careers.
Wilmot and Ones note that in each case those traits are in fact relevant for the work,
but they were not the primary trait that predicted job performance. Rather, they were secondary or complementary. Conscientiousness predicted performance more strongly.
The researchers argue that experts tend to base their ratings on more externally visible
traits for a career. For example, in healthcare, they overemphasize the role agreeableness
– relating directly to patient interaction – plays in job performance. As the researchers
say, every job has tasks that need to be completed, and conscientious workers are more likely to accomplish their tasks successfully.
The most interesting finding from Wilmot and Ones’s meta-analysis is that personality
traits correlate most strongly with performance at moderate levels of complexity.
Complexity generally refers to the cognitive demands associated with the job. The
researchers categorized occupations using a measure of complexity based on the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, which notes each profession’s complexity numerically. Skilled and semiskilled labor
professions are measurably less complex than, say, healthcare and customer service
occupations, which are in turn less complex than professional and managerial occupations.
Wilmot and Ones call this middle range of complexity a possible ‘goldilocks’ zone’
of performance prediction. That is, the research suggests we could better predict
a teacher’s job performance with their personality than we might predict a superintendent’s
(highly complex) or a tutor’s (less complex). Wilmot and Ones, however, call for further
study and replication of this relationship between job complexity and predicting performance
using personality.
Implications
This study confirms earlier research by the pair, which concluded that the goal-directed nature of conscientiousness meshes well with the expectations of most careers. Conscientiousness
and its goal orientation’s stronger correlation with occupation success reflects similar
research Angela Duckworth conducted on grit, which is the capacity to persevere in order to achieve goals. The reason is that
grit is a lower-order traits, or component, of the broader conscientiousness trait.
Duckworth found that grit was a better predictor of whether cadets would drop out
of West Point’s orientation-cum-basic training than any other metric, largely because
cadets are a highly self-selecting bunch. That is, workers already do some of the
sorting between career fields. People-oriented folks are going to tend towards caring
professions, for example, so it is not their agreeableness that sets them apart from
their colleagues.
The other four traits predicted performance when they were closely aligned with the
goals of the occupation. Agreeableness correlated to job performance in healthcare.
Emotional stability predicted performance in skilled/semiskilled, military, and law
enforcement jobs. Performance in managerial and sales occupations was related to workers’
extraversion. And openness predicted job performance in the problem-solving environment
of professional occupations.
The other traits of the Big Five are important contributors to prediction, but they
represent a profile of the kind of workers that would fit best in a particular occupation
– a disagreeable person is probably not going to become a nurse, and someone who lacks
openness will probably not be attracted to the professorate. The researchers therefore
suggest the best way then to predict job performance is to pair conscientiousness with the secondary
trait that correlates most strongly with performance in that occupational group.
Wilmot and Ones recommend that O*Net could expand their work styles to better incorporate
extraversion in their occupational typing. While O*Net’s work styles provided sufficient
data for the researchers to compare against, their analysis highlights the poor representation of extraversion in O*Net’s work styles, although features typically associated with extraverted people are often desirable
in certain work environments.
Wilmot and Ones’s research is motived by the observation that society benefits when people perform their jobs well. Their meta-analysis is the largest collation
of occupational performance and worker personality, suggesting that the two metrics are closely related especially at moderate levels of complexity. Their findings suggest that vocational counselors should provide individuals with
their own profile of personality traits, and compare it with the profile that best
predicts performance in each occupation, which could help clarify vocational choice and career satisfaction.
