Personality Assessment in the Modern Workplace

What are personality types and traits?

• Every person can be assigned to one of several personality types (e.g. 4 ancient temperaments, 9 types of Enneagrams)

• Every person can be described through their standing on several personality traits (e.g. 16PF, MMPI, Hogan, OPQ32)

What does the lexical hypothesis say?

• All important human characteristics should be reflected in the language; adjectives describing humans have been long used in personality research

What is the two-factor model of personality?

• Positive dynamic attributes and individual ascendancy VS social propriety and community cohesion

• Bakan (1996) described these factors as Agency vs Communion

What are the ‘Big Five’ personality traits?

• Openness to Experience – considers how imaginative, curious, creative, adventurous, and artistic an individual is

• Conscientiousness – considers how reliable, cautious, disciplined, organised, neat, ambitious, and goal-oriented an individual is

• Extraversion – considers how assertive, talkative, optimistic, sociable, and friendly an individual is and whether they have a need for stimulation

• Agreeableness – considers how compassionate, good-natured, trusting, helpful, cooperative and sympathetic an individual is

• Neuroticism – considers how anxious, nervous, insecure, emotional etc.