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New issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
On November 3, 2005 by Jamie Madigan
The new issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology is out and available for perusal. While children of all ages may love it, this isn't necessarily one of my favorite journals given that it doesn't usually have a whole lot related to selection and assessment. But given that it deals largely with personality research there's usually one or two pieces that wander into that territory. Such is the case this month.
In fact, one article entitled "Personality profiles of cultures: Aggregate personality traits" one sounds kind of interesting, but ultimately not that useful:
Personality profiles of cultures can be operationalized as the mean trait levels of culture members. College students from 51 cultures rated an individual from their country whom they knew well (N=12,156). Aggregate scores on Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) scales generalized across age and sex groups, approximated the individual-level 5-factor model, and correlated with aggregate self-report personality scores and other culture-level variables. Results were not attributable to national differences in economic development or to acquiescence. Geographical differences in scale variances and mean levels were replicated, with Europeans and Americans generally scoring higher in Extraversion than Asians and Africans. Findings support the rough scalar equivalence of NEO-PI-R factors and facets across cultures and suggest that aggregate personality profiles provide insight into cultural differences.
There may be something interesting going on here from a research methods point of view and it may be valuable in contexts outside of selection, but ultimately the knowledge of a culture's "average" personality profile is about as useful as knowing the average shoe size for an army. I'm not hiring a culture, I'm hiring an individual.
There was also an article entitled "Don't worry, be happy? Neuroticism, trait-consistent affect regulation, and performance" (hey, a descriptive and relatively simple title, go figure) that deals with one of the personality variables that has been found to have some generalizable validity for work performance:
People regulate their affect either to feel good or to achieve instrumental success. The present experiments show that when driven by performance goals, people can be motivated to experience unpleasant affect when it is trait-consistent, because of its instrumental benefits (e.g., M. Tamir & M. D. Robinson, 2004). In 4 studies, individuals high in neuroticism were more likely than those low in neuroticism to choose to increase their level of worry, as indicated by self-reported preferences (Study 1) and by behavioral choices in experimental settings (Studies 2-4). As predicted, such preferences were evident when expecting to perform demanding tasks but not when expecting an undemanding task (Study 2). Study 4 suggests that such preferences for short-term unpleasant affect may be beneficial to performance.
Interesting, as it suggests one of the reasons why this trait may relate to job performance and contextual performance. I love that kind of construct-oriented research.
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