Djurre Holtrop

What Is Engagement? Proactivity as the Missing Link in the HEXACO Model of Personality

We tested the hypothesis that proactivity represents the engagement vector in the HEXACO model of personality. Questionnaire data were obtained in five studies, three of which consisted (mostly) of students: Study 1 (N = 188, Mage  = 20.0, 89.4% women), Study 3 (N = 315, Mage  = 20.4, 80.6% women), and Study 4 (N = 309 self-ratings, Mage  = 20.0, 78.3% women; N = 307 other-ratings, Mage  = 24.5, 62.2% women). Participants in the other two studies came from an ISO-certified representative community panel: Study 2 (N = 525, Mage  = 51.2, 52.0% women) and Study 5 (N = 736, Mage  = 42.2, 48.0% women). Proactive Personality and Proactivity were positively related to Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience, but only weakly related or unrelated to Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and Agreeableness, supporting the alignment of Proactive Personality/Proactivity with the hypothesized HEXACO engagement vector. Additionally, Proactivity explained incremental variance in self-rated job performance on top of the HEXACO facets that were most closely associated with Proactive Personality/Proactivity, that is, Social Boldness (an Extraversion facet), Diligence (a Conscientiousness facet), and Creativity (an Openness to Experience facet), but not in entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. Proactivity is the missing engagement link in the HEXACO model of personality. The results are discussed in light of higher-order factors (e.g., general factor of personality and Alpha and Beta) of personality and bandwidth-fidelity controversies.

Predicting Performance with Contextualized Inventories, No Frame-of-reference Effect?

A recent meta‐analysis showed that contextualized personality inventories have incremental predictive validity over generic personality inventories when predicting job performance. This study aimed to investigate the differences between two types of contextualization of items: Adding an ‘at work’ tag versus completely modifying items. One hundred thirty‐nine pharmacy assistants from 29 pharmacies filled out a generic, a tagged, and a completely modified personality inventory. The assistants also provided participant reactions for each of the personality inventories. Performance ratings were collected from the supervising pharmacists. We expected to find incremental criterion validity for both the tagged inventory and the completely modified inventory for predicting job performance. However, the results showed an unexpected decrease in predictive validity for the contextualized inventories. Contextualized inventories were liked less than the generic inventory, but were considered somewhat more face valid and predictive by the participants.

Honest People Tend to Use Less—Not More—Profanity: Comment on Feldman et al.’s (2017) Study 1

This article shows that the conclusion of Feldman et al.’s (2017) Study 1 that profane individuals tend to be honest is most likely incorrect. We argue that Feldman et al.’s conclusion is based on a commonly held but erroneous assumption that higher scores on Impression Management Scales, such as the Lie Scale, are associated with trait dishonesty. Based on evidence from studies that have investigated (1) self-other agreement on Impression Management Scales, (2) the relation of Impression Management Scales with personality variables, and (3) the relation of Impression Management Scales with objective measures of cheating, we show that high scores on Impression Management Scales are associated with high—instead of low—trait honesty when measured in low-stakes conditions. Furthermore, using two data sets that included an “I never swear” item, we show that profanity use is negatively related to other reports of HEXACO honesty-humility and positively related to actual cheating.

Perceptions of vocational interest: Self- and other-reports in student-parent dyads

The current study investigated how self- and other-ratings of vocational interests converge among student–parent dyads. Using the Personal Globe Inventory–Short, we obtained data from a pooled sample of 271 (high school senior and university) student–parent dyads. Participants rated their own vocational interests and those of the other dyad member. First, profile correlations revealed high levels of self-other agreement, moderate levels of assumed similarity, and low levels of similarity and reciprocity in vocational interests. These correlations are highly similar to those found in personality research. Second, profile elevation showed a reversed pattern compared to interest perceptions, with high levels of self-other agreement and moderate levels of assumed similarity, indicating that profile elevation may mostly be an artifact/rater bias and not a substantive factor. Ipsatization of the vocational interest scales somewhat reduced profile elevation bias. Third, same-gender dyads overestimated their similarity in vocational interests more than different-gender dyads.