What is the one factor that best predicts work performance across occupations and cultures quizlet?

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Personality psychologists tend to divide personality into five core dimensions: openness to experiences, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.

Any guesses as to which dimension might be most predictive of occupational performance? If you guessed extraversion, you’d be wrong. If you guessed emotional stability, you’d be wrong again.

The truth is that 100+ years of psychological research has shown conscientiousness – that is, the tendency toward self-efficacy, orderliness, achievement, and self-discipline – to be the best predictor of job performance. New research forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers an in-depth examination of why this is the case, and when it might not be true.

A team of scientists led by Michael Wilmot of the University of Toronto conducted a meta-analysis of 92 studies to explore the relationship between conscientiousness and various occupational variables (for example, on-the-job competence, procrastination, leadership, organizational commitment, adaptability, job satisfaction, and burnout, to name a few).

Across variables, the researchers found strong evidence to support the view that conscientiousness is highly predictive of job performance.

“Conscientiousness refers to individual differences in the tendency to be hard- working, orderly, responsible to others, self-controlled, and rule abiding,” state Wilmot and his team. “We present the most comprehensive, quantitative review and synthesis of the occupational effects of conscientiousness available in the literature. Results show conscientiousness has effects in a desirable direction for 98% of variables [...], indicative of a potent, pervasive influence across occupational variables.”

Although the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance is robust, the researchers identified some interesting caveats and boundary conditions. For example, they found that conscientiousness is a weaker predictor of job performance in “high-complexity” occupations (think, for instance, of professions that require a high degree of brain power such as an analyst or lawyer). It is the low- to moderate-complexity occupations – for example, customer service jobs – that are particularly well suited to the conscientious personality.

Furthermore, the researchers found that individuals high in conscientiousness do better in Health Care than, say, Law Enforcement (although conscientious individuals show above average job performance in both occupational sectors). The graph below reveals the job sectors in which conscientious individuals are most likely to excel, with Health Care leading the pack.

"Summary of meta-analyses of conscientiousness and occupational performance [...]. Diamonds ... [+] represent estimated population correlations corrected for unreliability. Horizontal bars are 80% credibility intervals around each population correlation."

The researchers suggest that organizations should do more to harness conscientious workers’ aptitudes and motivations. According to their analysis, conscientious individuals are motivated by status, acceptance, and predictability. Building organizational frameworks that allow conscientious individuals to pursue these needs is critical to maximizing their occupational potential.

The authors conclude, “Few individual differences variables have occupational effects as potent and pervasive as conscientiousness. Based on evidence from more than a century of occupational research, the vast treasure trove of findings [...] should motivate every individual, organizational, and societal decision maker to better understand, develop, and apply the valuable human capital resource that is conscientiousness.”

a. Extraversion. Comfort level with relationships. Extroverts tend to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
b. Agreeableness. Individual's propensity to defer to others. High agreeableness people—cooperative, warm, and trusting. Low agreeableness people—cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
c. Conscientiousness. A measure of reliability. A high conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent. Those who score low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
d. Emotional stability. A person's ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-confident, and secure. Those with high negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure.
e. Openness to experience. The range of interests and fascination with novelty. Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically sensitive. Those at the other end of the openness category are conventional and find comfort in the familiar.

1. Conscientiousness at Work
a. Employees who score higher, for example, in conscientiousness develop higher levels of job knowledge.
i. The study found conscientiousness—in the form of persistence, attention to detail, and setting of high standards—was more important than other traits. (Exhibit 5-1)
ii. These results attest to the importance of conscientiousness to organizational success.
iii. Like any trait, conscientiousness has pitfalls.
iv. Extremely conscientious individuals can be too deliberate and perfectionistic, resulting in diminished happiness and performance, which includes task performance, safety performance, and OCB.
v. They may also become too focused on their own work to help others in the organization.
vi. Finally, they are often less creative than less conscientious people, especially artistically.
b. Although conscientiousness is the Big Five trait most consistently related to job performance, there are other traits that are related to aspects of performance in some situations.
c. All five traits also have other implications for work and life. Let's look at these one at a time. (Exhibit 5-2)
2. Emotional Stability at Work
a. Of the Big Five traits, emotional stability is most strongly related to life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and low stress levels.
i. People with high emotional stability can adapt to unexpected or changing demands in the workplace.
3. Extraversion at Work
a. Extraverts tend to perform better in jobs that require significant interpersonal interaction.
i. Extraversion is a relatively strong predictor of leadership emergence in groups.
ii. One downside is that extraverts are more impulsive than introverts and may be more likely than introverts to lie during job interviews.
b. Openness at Work
i. Individuals who score high on openness to experience are more likely to be effective leaders and are more comfortable with ambiguity.
ii. They cope better with organizational change and are more adaptable in changing contexts.
c. Agreeableness at Work
i. Agreeable individuals are better liked than disagreeable people, which explains why they tend to do better in interpersonally-oriented jobs such as customer service.
ii. They also are more compliant and rule abiding and less likely to get into accidents as a result.
iii. People who are agreeable are more satisfied in their jobs and contribute to organizational performance by engaging in citizenship behavior.
iv. They are also less likely to engage in organizational deviance.
v. One downside is that agreeableness is associated with lower levels of career success (especially earnings).
4. The five personality factors identified in the Big Five model appear in almost all cross-cultural studies.
a. These studies have included a wide variety of diverse cultures such as China, Israel, Germany, Japan, Spain, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, and the United States.
b. Generally, the findings corroborate what has been found in U.S. research: of the Big Five traits, conscientiousness is the best predictor of job performance.

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