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Browsing by Subject "personality"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14
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    The Complex Relationship Between Personality and Functioning
    (2020-07) Wright, Zara
    In recent decades, psychopathology research has established significant evidence in support of a dimensional diagnostic model, in which maladaptive personality traits underlie and predict clusters of mental health symptoms. In this framework, psychopathology may be defined as maladaptively high or low levels of a personality trait causing distress and/or impairment. This literature, however, has yet to characterize the specific relationship between these traits and impairments in functioning (e.g., physical functioning, social functioning, mental health functioning). The current study aims to address this gap in the literature by (a) augmenting the measurement of personality traits along their full range by integrating cognate traits from the “maladaptive” and “normative” personality literature onto unidimensional personality spectra; (b) modeling the nonparametric relationship between newfound personality traits with functioning; (c) explore how these relationships are moderated by age and sex; and (d) validating initial findings using replication and confirmatory procedures in a second sample. Data for this study were collected, using item-sampling techniques, from an online personality questionnaire where individuals self-selected to participate in exchange for feedback on their personality profiles. The overall sample included 214,420 people (split into two samples of 107,210 individuals each) from 223 countries. Results provide support for the replicability of the relationships between personality and functioning. Evidence suggests these relationships are not linear and monotonic, but rather optimal functioning occurs between the extreme ends of the trait. Age and/or sex play different roles in moderating these relationships depending on the personality trait of interest. Future research is needed to address measurement problems which interfere with measuring the full spectrum of each personality trait.
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    Comprehensive Meta-Analyses Of Perfectionism And A Synthesis For Work Psychology
    (2021-09) Tian, Jingyuan
    Research on perfectionism has flourished amidst growing evidence of its positive and negative influences across different domains in life. Past research on perfectionism relied on a variety of models of perfectionism and there is still no consensus on the content and structure of this construct. This represents a major barrier to our understanding of perfectionism and how it is related to important work outcomes. This dissertation presents a comprehensive meta-analysis of perfectionism to clarify the nomological net of the construct and provide evidence of perfectionism constructs’ criterion-related validities for work-related well-being, performance and motivational variables. Study 1 identified five facets of perfectionism: Perfectionistic Strivings, Orderliness, Perfectionistic Concerns, Socially-Prescribed Perfectionism (SPP) and Other-Oriented Perfectionism (OOP), and found two higher-order factors of perfectionism: Adaptive and Maladaptive perfectionism, as well as a general factor of perfectionism. Study 2 found that perfectionism is most strongly related to Conscientiousness and Neuroticism, with Perfectionistic Strivings and Adaptive perfectionism having stronger ties to Conscientiousness, and Perfectionistic Concerns and Maladaptive perfectionism having stronger ties to Neuroticism. In Study 3, sex differences in perfectionism were found to be negligible and age was weakly related with certain perfectionism constructs for adult samples only. Study 4 found that individuals with higher Adaptive perfectionism tend to have higher positive well-being (e.g. positive affect), academic performance, engagement and active coping styles; while those higher in Maladaptive perfectionism tend to have worse well-being (e.g. stress, burnout), procrastinate more and have avoidant coping styles. Perfectionism facets had incremental validity over the Big Five in predicting happiness, quality of life, job satisfaction, burnout, primary coping, broad disengagement, academic performance, engagement and procrastination. Finally, Study 5 identified the criterion profile patterns of perfectionism facets and found that individuals’ perfectionism facet patterns accounted for significantly more variance in nearly all of the criteria examined compared to perfectionism’s level effect (i.e., overall perfectionism). In sum, this dissertation provided evidence for an empirically validated taxonomy of perfectionism constructs that can guide future research on this personality trait. The comprehensive quantitative summary of perfectionism constructs’ nomological nets related perfectionism to a range of important criteria and work outcomes, and thus contributed to knowledge and potential usage of this construct in practical applications.
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    Cross-context Examinations of the Big Five Aspect Scales Predicting Counterproductive Behavior
    (2021-12) Ellis, Brenda
    This dissertation explored two under-examined areas regarding relationships between personality and counterproductive work behavior (CWB): 1) relations between counterproductive behavior and personality at the meso-level using the Big Five Aspects (DeYoung, Quilty, & Peterson, 2007) rather than at the level of the Big Five or their individual facets, and 2) the relations between personality and counterproductive behavior in a sample of United States legislators. Three studies are presented. The first study examined the Big Five Aspect Scales as predictors of CWB. The second study investigated relations between CWB and a measure of counterproductive college behavior (CCB) as well as relations between the Big Five Aspect Scales and CCB. The third study explored the relations of other ratings of Big Five personality aspects as well as automated text inferred Big Five personality variables and their facets with politician misbehavior for a sample of US legislators. Each of these three studies shed new light on personality – counterproductive behavior relations. Study 1 and 2 provided evidence that the well-established Big Five antecedents of counterproductive behavior, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, derive the majority of predictive power for counterproductive behavior, in work and college, from Conscientiousness’ Industriousness aspect and Agreeableness’ Politeness aspect. Study 1 and 2 also demonstrated convergence between counterproductive behavior targeted toward the individual or toward the organization in the work context and in the school context. Study 3 provided novel examinations of personality of U.S. legislators as a predictor of politician misconduct, additionally showing gender and party differences in legislator personality. Both context (i.e., interview, floor speech) and personality assessment approach (others’ ratings of personality, automatic text inferred personality scores) showed low convergent validity, and displayed differential relations with external variables (e.g., gender, age, political affiliation), and politician misbehavior. Overall, a unique contribution of this dissertation was its synthesis of variables and ideas from divergent literatures in industrial and organizational psychology and political psychology and reporting of previously unexamined relations that provide insights into personality correlates of counterproductive behaviors, and personality assessment in general.
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    Does Personality Predict Occupational Gravitation?
    (2018-02) Keiser, Heidi
    The current dissertation investigated the role of personality in occupational gravitation. Two directions of occupational gravitation were proposed and tested— lateral and vertical gravitation. Results revealed that individuals found improved person-occupation personality fit over time as measured by the indices of Openness, Conscientiousness, Openness-Conscientiousness, and Big Five fit. Effect sizes ranged from .12 SD to .38 SD. Findings also indicated that Extraversion and Agreeableness fit worsened over time, and Emotional Stability fit remained constant. Analyses further showed that improved fit over time was driven by vertical and not lateral gravitation. Extraversion (+), Openness (-), Agreeableness (-), and Conscientiousness (+) predicted upward job zone movement, and this job zone movement resulted in improved fit. That is, job zone mediated the relationship between age and person-occupation personality fit.
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    Employee Motives for Engaging in Environmentally Sustainable Behaviors: A Multi-Study Analysis
    (2015-08) Klein, Rachael
    This research examines motives for environmentally sustainable (or “green”) employee behavior. Although individuals’ motives for pro-environmental behavior were previously explored in non-workplace domains, systematic attempts to identify the barriers and motives of employee green behavior are lacking. Thus, the aim of this research is to understand and assess why employees engage in green behavior, build a nomological network around these motive constructs, and explore the implications for how employee green behavior can be best supported given different motivations. These overarching research questions were addressed through a series of studies. First, in Study 1, a taxonomy of motives of and barriers to employee green behaviors was developed through an analysis of critical incident interviews with U.S. employees and then replicated in the U.S. and cross-culturally with a European sample. Sixteen motives and barriers were identified. In Study 2, sex differences in pro-environmental behaviors and its determinants were examined. The meta-analysis included environmental motivation (social responsibility, self-efficacy, expectancy, social norms, lack of knowledge), motivationally-relevant variables (environmental values, concern, commitment, behavioral intentions), environmental attitudes, and informational variables (environmental awareness, environmental knowledge) as well as pro-environmental behaviors (general, avoiding harm, conserving, influencing others, responsible product choices, and taking initiative). Generalizable sex differences were observed, with women more likely to report higher levels of specific environmental concern, greater motivation stemming from social norms, self-efficacy, and social responsibility, and more behaviors aimed at avoiding environmental harm. Men were more likely to have higher levels of environmental knowledge, however this effect seems to be diminishing over time. In the third study, the taxonomy of motives and barriers was used to develop an Environmental Sustainability Motives Scale to assess motives for green behavior performance and omission, as well as ungreen commission and avoidance. Exploratory factor analyses revealed four similarly interpretable factors across these behavioral quadrants: Prosocial, Enabling Capabilities, Extrinsic, and Image motive factors. Examinations of the nomological network of these factors showed differing relationships with how factors related to the Big Five personality factors and facets, sex, and green behavior across behavioral quadrants. The findings in this dissertation highlight the benefits of identifying and being able to measure the motivational determinants and barriers of employee green behavior in promoting environmental sustainability in organizations.
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    Faking and the Validity of Personality Tests: Using New Faking-Resistant Measures to Study Some Old Questions
    (2017-02) Huber, Christopher
    Despite strong evidence supporting the validity of personality measures for personnel selection, their susceptibility to faking has been a persistent concern. Research has found that many job applicants exaggerate their possession of desirable traits, and there are reasons to believe that this distortion reduces criterion-related validity. However, the lack of studies that combine experimental control with real-world generalizability makes it difficult to isolate the effects of applicant faking. Experimental studies have typically induced faking using explicit instructions to fake, which elicit unusually extreme faking compared to typical applicant settings. A variety of non-experimental approaches have also been employed, but these approaches are largely inadequate for establishing cause-and-effect relationships. Thus, researchers continue to debate whether applicant faking substantially attenuates the validity of personality tests. The present study used a new experimental framework to study this question and related methodological issues in the faking literature. First, it included a subtle incentive to fake in addition to explicit instructions to respond honestly or fake good. Second, it compared faking on standard Likert scales to faking on multidimensional forced choice (MFC) scales designed to resist deception. Third, it compared more and less fakable versions of the same MFC inventory to eliminate confounding differences between MFC and Likert scales. The result was a 3 x 3 design that simultaneously manipulated the motivation and ability to fake, allowing for a more rigorous examination of the faking–validity relationship. Results indicated complex relationships between faking and the validity of personality scores. Directed fakers were much better at raising their scores on Likert scales than MFC measures of the same traits. However, MFC scales failed to retain more validity than Likert scales when participants faked. Supplemental analyses suggested that extreme faking decimated the construct validity of all scales regardless of their fakability. Faking also added new common method variance to the Likert scales, which in turn contributed to the scales’ criterion-related validity. In addition to the effects of faking, the present study investigated two recurring methodological issues in the faking literature. First, I investigated the claim that directed faking is fundamentally different from typical faking by comparing results from directed and incentivized fakers. Directed faking results generally replicated using a subtle incentive to fake, but the effects were much smaller and less consistent. Second, some have argued that traditional criterion-related validity coefficients fail to capture the negative effects of faking on actual selection decisions. I investigated this possibility by creating simulated selection pools in which fakers and honest responders competed for limited positions. The simulation results generally indicated reasonable correspondence between validity estimates and selected group performance, suggesting that validity coefficients adequately reflected the effects of faking. Results are interpreted using existing theories of faking, and new methodologies are proposed to advance the study of typical faking behavior.
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    A Latent Variable Investigation of the Personality Correlates of Executive Functions Across Three Levels of the Big Five Hierarchy
    (2017-05) Rautu, Alex
    A latent variable approach was used to examine the relationship between executive functions (EFs) and personality traits spanning three levels of the Big Five hierarchy (DeYoung, 2015). Participants (N=217) completed online questionnaires of the Big Five, Effortful Control, and trait impulsivity, and, in a separate laboratory session, they also performed nine tasks that were used to assess latent variables of response inhibition, task switching, and working memory capacity. Specific predictions were made for two higher-order traits of the Big Five—Stability and Plasticity. Contrary to the first prediction, Stability was not related to better response inhibition, while support for the second prediction was mixed: Plasticity was significantly related to better task switching when assessed with only one of two Big Five questionnaires. Other significant associations with EFs were found for the Big Five dimensions and their aspects, and Effortful Control. The results and their implications are discussed.
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    Newcomer Retention and Productivity in Online Peer-Production Communities
    (2018-07) Karumur, Raghav Pavan Srivatsav
    Online communities are online interaction spaces for people that break the barriers of time, space, and scale and provide opportunities for companionship and social support, information exchange, retail, and entertainment. Among them are online peer production communities that have a fantastic business model where volunteers come together to produce content and drive traffic to these sites. Although as a class these communities are successful, the success of individual communities greatly varies. To become and remain successful, these communities must meet a number of challenges related to starting communities, retention of members, encouraging commitment, and contribution from their members, regulating the behavior of members and so on. This dissertation focuses on the specific challenge of newcomer retention and productivity in the context of online peer-production communities. Exploring three different communities with entirely different structures and compositions – MovieLens, GitHub, and Wikipedia and building upon prior work in this space, this dissertation offers a number of important predictors of retention and productivity of newcomers. First, this dissertation explores the value of early activity diversity in the presence of the amount of early activity as a predictor of newcomer retention. Second, this dissertation digs into more fundamental psychological traits of newcomers such as personality and presents findings on relationships between personality and newcomer retention, preferences, and productivity. Third, this dissertation explores and presents results on the relationship between community interactions (apart from norms, policies and rigid structures) and newcomer retention. Fourth, this dissertation studies and presents the effects of various kinds of prior experience of newcomers on retention and productivity in a new group they join. This dissertation concludes by offering a number of directions for future research.
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    The Nomological Network of Classic and Contemporary Career Preferences
    (2016-12) Wiernik, Brenton
    This dissertation presents two studies examining the nature, structure, and nomological nets of two dominant domains of career preferences. In study 1, I conduct a large-scale systematic review and meta-analysis of vocational interests to examine the structure of vocational interests, their relations with personality and cognitive ability, and their criterion-related validity for job performance, job satisfaction, and other work attitudes (including their incremental validity over other traits). I propose Differential Engagement Model of Vocational Interests (DEMVI) that unifies interests with other individual differences by arguing that the general factor of interests reflects the personality metatrait Plasticity (Exploration) and the interest circumplex is individuals’ relative tilt toward Extraversion versus Openness in expressing their exploration tendencies. In study 2, I examine the structure of a more recent development in career preferences research—protean and boundaryless career orientations. These constructs have become central to theory and research on career development in contemporary work organizations. This study consists of a comprehensive meta-analysis of the relations among the dimensions of these career orientations, their relations to proactive personality and other traits, and their impact on career outcomes. Together, these studies represent a substantial contribution to our understanding of the nature of career preferences and their impact on work outcomes.
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    Normative and Pathological Personality Predictors of Generalized Conditioned Fear, Instrumental Avoidance, and the Covariation of Generalized Fear and Avoidance
    (2019-08) Cooper, Samuel
    Mechanistic conditioning models of human anxiety pathology have established overgeneralization of classically conditioned fear as a maladaptive correlate of clinical anxiety (e.g., anxiety disorders). These models have also, until recently, largely discounted the pathological contribution of instrumental avoidance of feared stimuli. This is in stark contrast to clinically-based models of anxiety pathology, which establish that the most severe forms of clinical anxiety involve excessive avoidance that results in loss of valued activity and opportunity to extinguish fear, and links this avoidance to individual differences in a variety of personality traits. Recent mechanistic work has partially addressed this gap and investigated the relationship between generalized fear and generalized avoidance, but has largely not incorporated individual difference variables. The current investigation furthers the merging of mechanistic conditioning and clinical models in this area by testing how broadband individual differences (e.g., personality traits) ranging from normative to pathological can improve prediction of instrumental avoidance from generalized fear. Candidate personality variables include those related to Conscientiousness and Extraversion, both traits that are linked to learning and approach systems. The method for this investigation involved lab-based assessment using established conditioning paradigms with behavioral and psychophysiological indicators, as well as multidimensional self-report inventories and a multilevel modeling analytic approach to facilitate more precise testing of personality-related hypotheses. Results indicate that 1) multiple measures of pathological negative affect are related to increased fear generalization and facilitate a maladaptive fear-avoidance relations; 2) Extraversion-related variables generally buffer against fear-avoidance covariation, whereas pathologically low Extraversion (detachment) facilitates the fear-avoidance relation; 3) Conscientiousness-related variables both facilitate and inhibit the fear-avoidance relation, depending on context; and 4) the relationship between the personality variables, generalized fear, and avoidance depends partially on how the fear metric is operationalized (e.g., physiologically or behaviorally). These results are discussed within a framework of improving methodology for future investigations that combine conditioning and individual differences approaches and, eventually, using this type of work to inform translational efforts to further refine and personalize treatments for anxiety and trauma-related psychopathology.
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    Personality and Psychopathology in Offspring of Mothers Diagnosed with Affective Illness
    (2016-10) Allen, Timothy
    Offspring of mothers diagnosed with an affective illness are at increased risk for developing an affective spectrum disorder. The overarching goal of the present study is to investigate whether individual differences in cognition and personality among at-risk offspring promote or prevent the development of affective symptomatology in adolescence and young adulthood. Participants included siblings drawn from 98 families participating in a longitudinal study of the offspring of depressed mothers (Radke-Yarrow, 1998). Forty-two of the mothers in the study were diagnosed with unipolar depression, 26 with bipolar disorder I or II, and 30 were healthy comparisons. Ratings of offspring personality, cognitive style, and psychopathology were obtained from multiple measures across two time points in adolescence and young adulthood. History of a maternal affective disorder and offspring Neuroticism independently predicted elevated depressive symptoms in adolescence, while high Neuroticism and Extraversion predicted offspring mania. Offspring Neuroticism interacted with maternal diagnosis to predict risk for depression in young adulthood. Lower-order traits comprising Neuroticism showed unique associations with offspring affective symptoms both concurrently and prospectively. Overall, findings suggest that high Neuroticism is associated with increased risk for depressive and manic symptoms in adolescence and young adulthood, and this effect may be partially moderated by maternal psychopathology.
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    Personality Traits and Cognitive Abilities Relations Database
    (2023-10-26) Stanek, Kevin C.; Ones, Deniz S.; stane040@umn.edu; Stanek, Kevin C.
    This database consists of personality-ability correlations that were amassed for a set of meta-analyses. Contributing materials spanned journal articles, theses, personal communications, archival datasets, conference presentations, and others sources. Further details about how these data were curated, cleaned, and organized as well as results of the meta-analyses based on these data are presented in Of Anchors & Sails: Personality-Ability Trait Constellations (2023).
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    Personality, psychosis, and connectivity: Neuroimaging endophenotypes in the psychotic spectrum
    (2016-05) Grazioplene, Rachael
    The link between diagnoses of psychotic disorders and altered structural and functional brain connectivity is well established, yet little is known about the degree to which similar neural features predict traits linked to psychosis-proneness in the general population. Moreover, intelligence is too rarely considered as a covariate in neural endophenotype studies, despite its known protective role against psychopathology in general and its associations with broad aspects of neural structure and function. To determine whether psychosis-linked personality traits are linearly associated with putative psychosis endophenotypes, this dissertation examines white matter and functional connectivity correlates of Psychoticism, Absorption, and Openness to Experience in a large community sample, covarying for sex, age, and IQ. Findings support the hypothesis that the white matter correlates of the shared variance of these traits overlap substantially with the frontal lobe white matter connectivity patterns characteristic of psychotic spectrum disorders. Positive schizotypy did predict connectivity in hypothesized functional networks, but also appears positively associated with average coherence across all intrinsic networks. These findings provide biological support for the notion that liability to psychosis is distributed throughout the population, is evident in measureable neural features, and manifests as normal personality variation at subclinical levels.
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    Yards as Critical Urban Green Spaces: Understanding Residential Yardscape Uses and Preferences Through an Interdisciplinary Lens
    (2020-06) Barnes, Michael
    Residential yards herein referred to as yardscapes are individually owned and maintained micro landscapes. More abstractly, though, yardscapes are amalgamations where individual, social, and ecological forces coalesce to form complex socio-ecological systems. In the United States alone, yardscapes cover an area the size of the state of Georgia and are the single largest irrigated crop (Milesi et al., 2005). Yardscapes are an obsession for many, an annoyance for some, and actively harmful for others, depending upon one’s perspective (Robbins, 2007). These ubiquitous pieces of the urban ecological landscape have received a considerable amount of attention in the past across three main areas, sociological, psychological, and ecological. From a sociological perspective, the form our yardscapes take is largely determined by current and historical normative influences of what a yardscape should look like (Nassauer, 1995; Nassauer et al., 2009). Norms influence yardscapes through injunctive norms (what ought to be), which describes the general form and function that yardscapes should take (Larson & Brumand, 2014), which generally encourages the preservation of the status quo i.e., yards dominated by large areas of turfgrass. Yardscapes also are influenced by descriptive norms (what is), which influences maintenance regimes and associated behaviors (e.g., fertilizing) to keep a yardscape looking as intended (Fielding et al., 2016; Martini et al., 2015). Yardscapes and associated norms are also reinforced by policies and ordinances that help to maintain the status quo across aesthetics, maintenance, vegetation, and uses (Larson & Brumand, 2014; Sisser et al., 2016). Norms, therefore, are a significant factor when trying to understand yardscapes for both a) the types of yardscapes we observe and b) the subsequent behaviors performed to maintain them. Individual differences, both demographically and psychologically, are also significant drivers of yardscape type choices and behaviors. Sociodemographic factors (i.e., including income, age, and years of residence) have predicted both yardscape type preferences, for example, older and wealthier individuals preferring lush oasis style yards in Phoenix, Arizona (Larson et al., 2017; van den Berg & van Winsum-Westra, 2010) alongside specific yard maintenance behaviors such as individuals with children and pets fertilizing less frequently (Kurz & Baudains, 2012). In addition to sociodemographic factors, environmental attitudes, specifically those focused on stewardship and preservation, have been found to promote pro-environmental behaviors in yardscapes. Individuals with higher preservation and stewardship orientations were more likely to install rain barrels and plant native species (Gao et al., 2016; Knuth et al., 2018). There is also evidence that an individual’s personal need for structure (PNS) can influence the type of yardscape one prefers. Individuals high in PNS have been found to prefer highly manicured and regimented yards (van den Berg & van Winsum-Westra, 2010). Sociodemographic and psychological factors influence individuals along the same two lines as norms driving broad yard typology preferences and specific behaviors. Ecosystem services (ES) and disservices (ED) have risen to become a prominent framework to understand the benefits of landscape-level socio-ecological systems. Although traditionally applied to rural and exurban landscapes, recent work focuses on applying the ES framework, including ED in urban areas (Ruckelshaus et al., 2015; von Döhren & Haase, 2015). ES in urban areas encompass the three main ES sections of cultural services (CES), provisioning services (PES), and regulation and maintenance services (RES) (Haines-Young & Potschin, 2018). Although several studies have investigated homeowner uses and features of their yards (Dahmus & Nelson, 2014a, among others), few have specifically analyzed ES in yardscapes (see Larson et al., 2016). From this body of work, ES in yardscapes could include a variety of services, for example, CES in the form of recreational opportunities (Dahmus & Nelson, 2014b; Dou et al., 2017), PES from edible gardens (Kamiyama et al., 2016), and CES in the form of carbon sequestration from vegetation (Monteiro, 2017). ES then have been applied in moderate success to urban landscapes, and initial evidence suggests their applicability in yardscapes. Despite the growth of research focused on yardscapes over the past decade, most scholarship still approaches these complex landscapes from a singular empirical or methodological perspective. This lack of interdisciplinarity has led to the current body of work being disjointed with some perspectives overrepresented in the literature (e.g., biophysical attributes, social norms). This dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach to investigate yardscapes. It brings to bear theories and methods from sociology, psychology, and ecology to understand these complex amalgamations of historical and current societal norms, individual differences, and floral and faunal communities from a holistic socio-ecological systems perspective. The work attempts to confirm, fill in gaps, and propose future work in this area relative to the current body of literature.