Personality in the Real World

Eysenck’s big 2

1. Neuroticism-stability

2. Extraversion-introversion

Extraversion and neuroticism are dimensions

Similarity between Gray and Eysenck?

Neuroticism correlates well with Gray’s anxiety.

Extraversion correlates well with Gray’s impulsivity.

Cloninger’s personality theory - temperament domains

3 then 4:

1. Novelty seeking

2. Harm avoidance

3. Reward dependence

4. Persistence - added later

Cloninger’s personality theory - character domains

1. Self-directedness

2. Cooperativeness

3. Self-transcendence

3 Cloninger’s temperament domains in relation to other concepts

Novelty seeking - some similarities to Gray’s BAS and Eysenck’s extraversion; behavioural activation; dopamine

Harm avoidance - strong similarities to Gray’s BIS and Eysenck’s neuroticism; behavioural inhibition; serotonin (also acetylcholine)

Reward dependence - some similarity to Gray’s BAS; behavioural maintenance; norepinephrine

Cloninger’s temperament domains and their correlates with BIS/BAS, SPSRQ

1. Harm avoidance - positively with BIS/SP, negatively with BAS/SR

2. Novelty seeking - positively with BAS funseeking and SR

3. Reward dependence - positively with BAS reward responsiveness, SR and SP

Similarities between domains summary

BAS = novelty seeking ~ extraversion

BIS = harm avoidance ~ neuroticism

The Big Five

1. Openness

2. Conscientiousness

3. Extraversion

4. Agreeableness

5. Neuroticism

Potential 6th factor to the Big Five

Honesty/humility

Linked to ideas of reciprocal altruism - mediated in part by neuropeptides like oxytocin?

Cloninger vs Big Five - Fruyt et al. (2000)

1. Lots of overlap between the 2 schemes

2. When Cloninger added 1 temperament and 3 character dimensions, his scheme more closely approached the Big 5

3. Multiple associations

Personality constructs vs intelligence - Anglim et al. (2022)

Openness and neuroticism correlated with intelligence

• Openness more strongly correlates with crystallised than fluid intelligence

Other 3 of big 5 NOT

Personality factors and academic performance - Wolfe and Johnson (2000)

3 predictors of academic success (GPA):

1. High school score

2. Self-control/conscientiousness

3. SAT scores

= personality variable was more predictive than a standard academic test (SAT)

Only Big 5 personality variable predicting academic success - Busato et al. (2000)

Conscientiousness

Personality, not just ability, determines academic performance - Chamarro-Premuzic and Furnham (2003)

Neuroticism worsens exam performance

Conscientiousness predicts exam performance and final year project

No advantage of introversion

Psychoticism associated with worse performance

Predictiveness of personality alongside cognitive factors - Mammadov (2022)

Cognitive ability is the biggest predictor of academic performance.

Within personality, conscientiousness is the biggest predictor.

Educational level made difference to openness, extraversion and agreeableness predictions (much more at elementary school, not so much later on)

All predictors stronger in Asia

Personality factors and jobs - Barrick and Mount (1991) 🏢

Meta-analysis across 5 major occupational groups - professionals, police, managers, sales, skilled/semi-skilled.

• Conscientiousness predicted job success in all 5 job groups.

• Extraversion predicted job success in managers and sales.

• Job proficiency predicted by conscientiousness.

• Training proficiency predicted by conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience.

• Conscientiousness best predictor of salary

= personality predictive, but correlations NOT that high.

Conscientiousness and job success - Wilmot and Ones (2019)

Conscientiousness best non-cognitive construct of occupational performance (positively predicts)

• Key theme - motivation for goal-directed performance

High occupational complexity blunts the performance-enhancing effect of consciousness.

Personality factors and happiness - DeNeve and Cooper (1998)

All factors except neuroticism are positively correlated with life satisfaction on satisfaction with life scale.

• Conscientiousness has strongest positive correlation with life satisfaction

All factors except neuroticism are positively correlated with life satisfaction on memorial scale of happiness.

• Extraversion has strongest positive correlation with happiness.

Personality is joint second predictor (with socioeconomic status) for happiness, after health.

Problems with personality research

• Are personality questionnaires by themselves just relabelling?

• How insightful is it to observe that conscientiousness predicts job success and academic achievement?

Real world updates, language in tweets - Kern et al. (2019)

Categorised professions and generated big 5 scores from linguistic info from Twitter.

• Software developers - openness v important

• Tennis pros - openness not important, conscientiousness is

• Developers - low con social aspects (extraversion, agreeableness), low conscientiousness scores