Examing the personality-performance link using directly observed behavior

Personality psychology seeks to characterize, understand, and predict behavior. However, studies that utilize direct behavioral observation are few in number. The current study analyzes data from the Hawaii Personality and Health Cohort and links self-rated Big Five personality with directly observed behavior in a videotaped cognitive test conducted years later. The study also looks at the link between personality and performance, and how that relationship is mediated by behaviors. Correlations were conducted to assess the relationship between the Big Five Inventory and behaviors enumerated in the Riverside Behavioral Q-Sort. A significant number of correlations were found for Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness. Regression analyses were conducted to determine associations among the Big Five traits, behaviors, and performance on the three sections of the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities: Brief Intellectual Ability. Meaningful relationships were found between Conscientiousness and all three sections of the BIA, and between Openness and two sections of the BIA. Bootstrapping was then employed to examine the mediating relationship of behavior for the personality-performance link. Some behaviors that showed mediation were “Speaks fluently; expresses ideas well,” “Shows interest in intellectual and cognitive matters,” and “Exhibits a high degree of intelligence.” This study begins to address the need to identify the mechanisms by which personality affects real-world outcomes.M.A.Includes bibliographical referencesby Kyle S. Sauerberge

When Doing Things Later is the Best Choice: Precrastination as an Individual Difference

Precrastination is doing something early at an extra cost. That cost may impact financial well-being, health, or physical or mental effort. Although the scientific community is developing interest in this new phenomenon, it has yet to be related to individual differences. Using 300 participants, I replicated one of the designs found in the study that first described the phenomenon (Rosenbaum et al., 2014) and added a wide array of personality measures. Participants were asked to walk along a path and to pick up a bucket on the way to the end of the walking path. Before participating in this part of the study, howeverBecause there was no guidance in the literature regarding the relationships between personality traits and precrastination, a broad, exploratory approach was taken. Self-report measures assessed: the Big Five traits, a separate set of 100 broad personality items, procrastination, intolerance of uncertainty, ego-resiliency, impulsiveness, and coordination. These constructs come from the literature on procrastination. I found that precrastination was positively related to conscientiousness and the extraversion facet of energy. I also found that precrastination was not related to impulsiveness and procrastination, suggesting that the choice to precrastinate is not an illogical choice. Further evidence supporting this inference is that those in my study who rated themselves as uncoordinated were less likely to choose the first bucket. That is, participants who rated themselves as clumsy minimized the time that they were carrying a weighted object

Towards meaningful comparisons of personality in large-scale cross-cultural studies

One of Jüri Allik’s major, pioneering contributions to psychology is the assessment of personality across numerous cultures. His contributions have inspired many other large collaborations of international researchers to move beyond early work confirming the Five Factor Model cross-culturally to assessing the reliability and validity of a broad range of personality traits. Cross-cultural comparisons of personality traits may be problematic if mea ures have unique meanings in different cultural contexts that influence how individuals respond to items. In this chapter we present a new and relatively simple method for assessing the comparability of measures in large-scale cross-cultural studies, and illustrate the method using responses to the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2) from 15,368 participants in 63 countries participating in the International Situations Project

What happy people do: The behavioral correlates of happiness in everyday situations

Gardiner G, Sauerberger K, Lee D, Funder D. What happy people do: The behavioral correlates of happiness in everyday situations. Journal of Research in Personality . 2022;99: 104236.Happier individuals have a greater tendency to experience positive affect in their day-to-day lives. The present study uses a multi-method approach to assess the observable behaviors correlated with happiness in two video-recorded, experimental social contexts resembling everyday situations: an interview about oneself and a conversation with strangers. The patterns of observed behaviors associated with happiness were highly similar between the two situations. Happier people smiled, acted playful and behaved cheerfully, while unhappy people expressed criticism, displayed guilt, or acted irritated. The behaviors of happier individuals not only reflect their greater positive affect in everyday situations but also highlights what might make them more enjoyable to be around

Does pre-crastination explain why some observers are sub-optimal in a visual search task?

How  do  we  decide  where  to  search  for  a  target?Optimal search relies on first considering the relativeinformational  value  of  different  locations,  and  thenexecuting  eye  movements  to  the  best  options.  Butmany   participants   consistently   move   their   eyesto    locations    that    can    be    easily    ascertained    toneither   contain   the   target,   nor   to   provide   newinformation   about   the   target’s   location.   Here   weasked   whether   this   sub-optimal   search   behaviourrepresents  a  specific  example  of  a  general  tendencytowardspre-crastination:  starting  sub-goals  of  a  taskbefore  they  are  needed,  and  in  so  doing,  spendinglonger   doing   the   task   than   is   necessary.   To   testthis  hypothesis,  we   asked  200  participants  to  dotwo  tasks:  retrieve  two  heavy  buckets  (one  closeand  one  far),  and  search  for  a  line  segment.  Pre-crastination  is  defined  as  consistently  picking  upthe   closer   bucket   first,   versus   the   more   efficientstrategy of picking up the farther bucket first. Searchefficiency   is   the   proportion   of   fixations   directedto   more   cluttered   regions   of   the   search   array.Based  on  pilot  data,  we  predicted  an  associationof  pre-crastination  with  inefficient  search  strategies.Personality   inventories   were   also   administered   toidentify  stable  characteristics  associated  with  thesestrategies.  In  the  final  dataset,  there  was  no  clear association between search strategy and pre-crastination,nor  did  these  correlate  strongly  with  any  of  the personality measures collected.</p

Does pre-crastination explain why some observers are sub-optimal in a visual search task?

How  do  we  decide  where  to  search  for  a  target?Optimal search relies on first considering the relativeinformational  value  of  different  locations,  and  thenexecuting  eye  movements  to  the  best  options.  Butmany   participants   consistently   move   their   eyesto    locations    that    can    be    easily    ascertained    toneither   contain   the   target,   nor   to   provide   newinformation   about   the   target’s   location.   Here   weasked   whether   this   sub-optimal   search   behaviourrepresents  a  specific  example  of  a  general  tendencytowardspre-crastination:  starting  sub-goals  of  a  taskbefore  they  are  needed,  and  in  so  doing,  spendinglonger   doing   the   task   than   is   necessary.   To   testthis  hypothesis,  we   asked  200  participants  to  dotwo  tasks:  retrieve  two  heavy  buckets  (one  closeand  one  far),  and  search  for  a  line  segment.  Pre-crastination  is  defined  as  consistently  picking  upthe   closer   bucket   first,   versus   the   more   efficientstrategy of picking up the farther bucket first. Searchefficiency   is   the   proportion   of   fixations   directedto   more   cluttered   regions   of   the   search   array.Based  on  pilot  data,  we  predicted  an  associationof  pre-crastination  with  inefficient  search  strategies.Personality   inventories   were   also   administered   toidentify  stable  characteristics  associated  with  thesestrategies.  In  the  final  dataset,  there  was  no  clear association between search strategy and pre-crastination,nor  did  these  correlate  strongly  with  any  of  the personality measures collected.</p

Many Labs 3: Evaluating participant pool quality across the academic semester via replication

The university participant pool is a key resource for behavioral research, and data quality is believed to vary over the course of the academic semester. This crowdsourced project examined time of semester variation in 10 known effects, 10 individual differences, and 3 data quality indicators over the course of the academic semester in 20 participant pools (N = 2696) and with an online sample (N = 737). Weak time of semester effects were observed on data quality indicators, participant sex, and a few individual differences conscientiousness, mood, and stress. However, there was little evidence for time of semester qualifying experimental or correlational effects. The generality of this evidence is unknown because only a subset of the tested effects demonstrated evidence for the original result in the whole sample. Mean characteristics of pool samples change slightly during the semester, but these data suggest that those changes are mostly irrelevant for detecting effects. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Many Labs 3: Evaluating participant pool quality across the academic semester via replication

The university participant pool is a key resource for behavioral research, and data quality is believed to vary over the course of the academic semester. This crowdsourced project examined time of semester variation in 10 known effects, 10 individual differences, and 3 data quality indicators over the course of the academic semester in 20 participant pools (N = 2696) and with an online sample (N = 737). Weak time of semester effects were observed on data quality indicators, participant sex, and a few individual differences conscientiousness, mood, and stress. However, there was little evidence for time of semester qualifying experimental or correlational effects. The generality of this evidence is unknown because only a subset of the tested effects demonstrated evidence for the original result in the whole sample. Mean characteristics of pool samples change slightly during the semester, but these data suggest that those changes are mostly irrelevant for detecting effects. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

The economic well-being of nations is associated with positive daily situational experiences

People in economically advantaged nations tend to evaluate their life as more positive overall and report greater well-being than people in less advantaged nations. But how does positivity manifest in the daily life experiences of individuals around the world? The present study asked 15,244 college students from 62 nations, in 42 languages, to describe a situation they experienced the previous day using the Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ). Using expert ratings, the overall positivity of each situation was calculated for both nations and individuals. The positivity of the average situation in each nation was strongly related to the economic development of the nation as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI). For individuals’ daily experiences, the economic status of their nation also predicted the positivity of their experience, even more than their family socioeconomic status. Further analyses revealed the specific characteristics of the average situations for higher HDI nations that make their experiences more positive. Higher HDI was associated with situational experiences involving humor, socializing with others, and the potential to express emotions and fantasies. Lower HDI was associated with an increase in the presence of threats, blame, and hostility, as well as situational experiences consisting of family, religion, and money. Despite the increase in a few negative situational characteristics in lower HDI countries, the overall average experience still ranged from neutral to slightly positive, rather than negative, suggesting that greater HDI may not necessarily increase positive experiences but rather decrease negative experiences. The results illustrate how national economic status influences the lives of individuals even within a single instance of daily life, with large and powerful consequences when accumulated across individuals within each nation