Murray R. Barrick

Personality and Performance at the Beginning of the New Millennium: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go Next?

As we begin the new millennium, it is an appropriate time to examine what we have learned about personality-performance relationships over the past century and to embark on new directions for research. In this study we quantitatively summarize the results of 15 prior meta-analytic studies that have investigated the relationship between the Five Factor Model (FFM) personality traits and job performance. Results support the previous findings that conscientiousness is a valid predictor across performance measures in all occupations studied. Emotional stability was also found to be a generalizable predictor when overall work performance was the criterion, but its relationship to specific performance criteria and occupations was less consistent than was conscientiousness. Though the other three Big Five traits (extraversion, openness and agreeableness) did not predict overall work performance, they did predict success in specific occupations or relate to specific criteria. The studies upon which these results are based comprise most of the research that has been conducted on this topic in the past century. Consequently, we call for a moratorium on meta-analytic studies of the type reviewed in our study and recommend that researchers embark on a new research agenda designed to further our understanding of personalityperformance linkages.

Autonomy as a moderator of the relationships between the Big Five personality dimensions and job performance.

In this study we investigated the moderating role of autonomy on the relationships between the Big Five personality dimensions and supervisor ratings of job performance. On the basis of data from 146 managers, results indicated that two dimensions of personality, Conscientiousness (r =.25) and Extraversion (r =.14), were significantly related to job performance. Consistent with our expectations, the validity of Conscientiousness and Extraversion was greater for managers in jobs high in autonomy compared with those in jobs low in autonomy. The validity of Agreeableness was also higher in high-autonomy jobs compared with low-autonomy ones, but the correlation was negative

Conscientiousness and performance of sales representatives: Test of the mediating effects of goal setting.

The authors used 91 sales representatives to test a process model that assessed the relationship of conscientiousness to job performance through mediating motivational (goal-setting) variables. Linear structural equation modeling showed that sales representatives high in conscientiousness are more likely to set goals and are more likely to be committed to goals, which in turn is associated with greater sales volume and higher supervisory ratings of job performance. Results also showed that conscientiousness is directly related to supervisory ratings. Consistent with previous research, results showed that ability was also related to supervisory ratings of job performance and, to a lesser extent, sales volume

Team Structure and Performance: Assessing the Mediating Role of Intrateam Process and the Moderating Role of Task Type

The authors used data from 45 production teams (626 individuals) and their supervisors to test hypotheses related to team structure. For teams engaged primarily in conceptual tasks, interdependence...

Five-Factor Model of personality and Performance in Jobs Involving Interpersonal Interactions

In this article, the results of a meta-analysis that investigates the degree to which dimensions of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality are related to performance in jobs involving interpersonal interactions are reported. The article also investigates whether the nature of the interactions with others moderates the personality-performance relations. The meta-analysis was based on 11 studies (total N = 1,586). each of which assessed the FFM at the construct level using the Personal Characteristics Inventory. Results support the hypothesis that Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability are positively related to performance in jobs involving interpersonal interactions. Results also support the hypothesis that Emotional Stability and Agreeableness are more strongly related to performance in jobs that involve team- work (where employees interact interdependently with coworkers), than in those that involve dyadic interactions with others (where employees provide a direct service to custom...

Yes, Personality Matters: Moving on to More Important Matters

Over the years, personality has had at best a checkered reputation as a predictor of work outcomes. From Guion and Gottier (1965) and Mischel (1968) to Davis-Blake and Pfeffer (1989), personality has been roundly criticized as an ineffective predictor of performance. In recent years, however, researchers have acknowledged and documented the fact that we all have personalities (e.g., Goldberg, 1993), and that personality matters because it predicts and explains behavior at work. This research, based on a construct-oriented approach primarily using the “Big Five” traits, has consistently shown that personality predicts job performance across a wide variety of outcomes that organizations value, in jobs ranging from skilled and semiskilled (e.g., baggage handlers, production employees) to executives. Yet the magnitude of these effects, as reported in the Murphy and Dzieweczynski (this issue) article, can be characterized as modest, at best. If this is true, why should we care about personality? We begin this article with a review of what researchers have learned about the role of personality at work, and conclude with a discussion about personality’s future. Later, we discuss the findings from seven divergent research streams that, when taken together, demonstrate why we should care about personality. The first reason is that managers care about personality. Research has shown that managers weight individual personality characteristics as if they were nearly as important as general mental ability, during the hiring decision (Dunn, Mount, Barrick, & Ones, 1995). In fact, it is hard to find a manager who says they would prefer to hire someone who is careless, irresponsible, lazy, impulsive, and low in achievement striving (low in Conscientiousness). Similarly, not many managers seek to hire individuals who are anxious, hostile, personally insecure, and deHUMAN PERFORMANCE, 18(4), 359–372 Copyright

The interactive effects of conscientiousness and agreeableness on job performance.

The authors hypothesized that the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance would be stronger for persons high in agreeableness than for those low in agreeableness. Results of hierarchical moderated regression analyses for 7 independent samples of employees across diverse occupations provided support for the hypothesis in 5 of the samples. In samples supporting the hypothesis, among the highly conscientious workers, those low in agreeableness were found to receive lower ratings of job performance than workers high in agreeableness. One explanation for lack of an interaction between conscientiousness and agreeableness in the other 2 samples is that those jobs were not characterized by frequent, cooperative interactions with others. Overall, the results show that highly conscientious workers who lack interpersonal sensitivity may be ineffective, particularly in jobs requiring cooperative interchange with others.

Validity of observer ratings of the big five personality factors.

The authors examined the validity of observer ratings (supervisor, coworker, and customer) and selfratings of personality measures. Results based on a sample of 105 sales representatives supported the 2 hypotheses tested. First, supervisor, coworker, and customer ratings of the 2 job-relevant personality dimensions—conscientiousness and extraversion—were valid predictors of performance ratings, and the magnitude of the validities were at least as large as for self-ratings. Second, supervisor, coworker, and customer ratings accounted for significant variance in the criterion measure beyond self-ratings alone for the relevant dimensions. Overall, the results suggest that validities of personality measures based on self-assessme nts alone may underestimate the true validity of personality constructs. In the past 10 years, the views of many personality psychologists have converged regarding the structure and concepts of personality. Generally, researchers agree that there are five robust factors of personality that can serve as a meaningful taxonomy for classifying personality attributes (Digman, 1990). This taxonomy has consistently emerged in longitudinal studies; across different sources (e.g., ratings by self, spouse, acquaintances, and friends); with numerous personality inventories and theoretical systems; and in different age, sex, race, and language groups. It also has some biological basis, as suggested by evidence of heritability (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1992; Digman, 1990). Although the names for these factors differ across researchers, the following labels and prototypical characteristics are representative: (a) extraversion (sociable, talkative, assertive, ambitious, and active), (b) agreeableness (good-natured, cooperative, and trusting), (c) conscientiousness (responsible, dependable, able to plan, organized, persistent, and achievement oriented), (d) emotional stability (calm, secure, and not nervous), and (e) openness to experience (imaginative, artistically sensitive, and intellectual). The emergence of the five-factor model has enabled researchers to conduct construct-oriented meta-analytic reviews of the predictive validity of personality (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Hough, Eaton, Dunnette, Kamp, & McCloy, 1990; Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991). Although these reviews have adopted slightly different personality frameworks, the conclusions can be summarized in terms of the Big Five taxonomy. The Barrick and Mount (1991) and Hough et al. (1990) reviews demonstrated that only one dimension of the Big Five, conscientiousness (achievement and dependability in the Hough et al. frame

The Moderating Role of Top Management Team Interdependence: Implications for Real Teams and Working Groups

Prior research evidence shows that within-team interdependence moderates the process-performance relationship in small groups. Data collected from 94 top management teams (TMTs) replicated and exte...

What You See May Not Be What You Get: Relationships Among Self-Presentation Tactics and Ratings of Interview and Job Performance

The image candidates portray in the interview, via appearance, impression management, and verbal and nonverbal behavior, has been hypothesized to influence interviewer ratings. Through the lenses of social influence and interdependence theories, this meta-analysis investigated (a) the magnitude of the relationship between these 3 self-presentation tactics and interviewer ratings, (b) whether these tactics also are correlated with later job performance, and (c) whether important theoretical moderators (e.g., the level of interview structure, the rating source, the use of field or experimental designs) affect these relationships. Results reveal that what you see in the interview may not be what you get on the job and that the unstructured interview is particularly impacted by these self-presentation tactics. Additionally and surprisingly, moderator analyses of these relationships found that the type of research design (experimental vs. field) does not moderate these findings.