Category: Big Five Personality Traits

For my paper, I decided to research how the “Big Five” personality traits are shown in both men and women, as well as how these traits are presented cross-culturally. The “Big Five” personality traits, also known as the Five Factor Model, are used to summarize and capture the vast differences in human personality (Soto and Jackson, 2). This model is broken down into five broad personality traits: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism (also referred to as Emotional Stability), and Openness (also referred to as Imagination or Intellect) (Grohol). Extraversion measures one’s activity in social situations, Agreeableness measures one’s level of warmth or friendliness, Conscientiousness looks at one’s work ethic, Neuroticism determines one’s tendency to experience negative emotions, and finally, Openness measures how open-minded someone is (Grohol). Existing stereotypes make society believe that men and women have largely differing personalities, but is this actually true? Furthermore, are these personality differences maintained when examining other countries or cultures?

Differing personality traits between men and women can be explored by using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, NEO-PI-R. The NEO-PI-R was developed by Costa and McCrae in 1992 and measures an individual’s levels of the Big Five traits, as well as six facets of each of these traits. This test is intended for use in both research and clinical settings (Costa and McCrae, 223). Through the use of the NEO-PI-R, studies have shown the personality differences between men and women.

Numerous studies have shown that women tend to score higher than men in terms of Neuroticism (Costa et. al., 322). According to Costa et. al., Neuroticism “is a broad domain of negative affect, including predispositions to experience anxiety, anger, depression, shame, and other distressing emotions” (322). With this information, it makes sense that major psychopathology diagnoses include “generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, phobias, major depression, dysthymic disorder, and borderline personality disorder” (Costa et. al., 323). are more common in women.

In terms of Extraversion, these results are more complicated. Since Extraversion combines both masculine and feminine traits, one must look at the facets of Extraversion in the NEO-PI-R to determine gender differences in this area. When looking at these facets, the general trend is that men score higher on Assertiveness, while women score higher on Warmth (Terracciano and McCrae).

Similarly to Extraversion, men and women tend to score differently on certain facets of Openness. There is a widespread belief that men make decisions based on reason, or “thinking”, and women are more focused on emotion or “feeling”. With this, Costa et. al. expect that men will continuously score higher on Openness to ideas, while women would outscore men on Openness to Aesthetics and Feelings (323).

Sergey Budaev’s 1999 study found that most of the time women scored higher than men on Agreeableness, which may be explained by their stereotypical submissive and loving nature (810). Lastly, gender differences in Conscientiousness have not been examined in depth, so there are no major differences noted between men and women in this case (Costa et. al. 323).

While these studies have shown differences in the personalities of men and women, do these distinctions hold up across different cultures? Cultural norms and variations in societies across the world provide a basis for distinct personality changes. Along with this, how are these distinctions explained and/or maintained?

Williams et. al. conducted a 1999 study in which they compared gender stereotypes to the Five Factor Model in twenty-five different countries. Their research concluded that males from these twenty-five countries presented significantly higher levels of Conscientiousness, and outscored females in all areas besides Agreeableness. In contrast, females had much higher levels of Agreeableness (522). In this study, researchers tested Neuroticism as “Emotional Stability”, meaning that since men had higher scores, this fell into line with the pre-existing gender stereotype that women tend to be more neurotic than men.

While the general gender differences in the Big 5 traits are similar between cultures, some aspects vary. These differences can be attributed to a number of reasons. According to Costa et. al., “Western nations with individualistic values and with inhabitants who are more assertive and progressive have greater gender differences in self-reported personality traits than non-Western, collectivistic cultures” (327-328). Essentially, gender differences in personality are magnified in more progressive regions. For example, in Costa et. al.’s study, Belgians showed major gender differences, whereas Zimbabwean males and females appeared more homogenous (327).

Gender differences in personality could also be linked to sexual selection or adaptational choices from the evolutionary standpoint (Schmitt et. al. 2009, 169). While evolutionary decisions can explain personality differences between genders, these aspects don’t explain why gender differences can vary culturally. However, Schmitt et. al. (2009) mention that the mismatch perspective is an evolutionary theory that may allow researchers to make sense of these cultural differences. The mismatch perspective is described as a scenario in which contemporary environments are different from ancestral conditions, causing traits to become maladaptive (169). This perspective could potentially explain why less-developed nations show fewer gender differences.

Another interesting approach to understanding these differences can be explained by the social role theory. According to Eagly and Wood, the social role theory causes “differences and similarities [to] arise primarily from the distribution of men and women into social roles within their society”. With the social role theory, one would think that gender differences would appear smaller in nations with more egalitarian roles, but this is actually not the case.

The strongest piece of evidence that explains cultural gender differences in personality is the idea that egalitarian societies appear to have more personality differences than non-egalitarian nations, which disproves the social role theory. Schmitt et. al.’s 2016 study provided some interesting insight into this argument. Their research showed that “the largest overall gender differences in personality were found in relatively high gender egalitarian cultures of France (d = −0.44) and the Netherlands (d = −0.36), whereas the smallest gender differences were found in the relatively low gender egalitarian cultures of Botswana (d =0.00) and India (d = −0.01)” (47). Essentially, the more egalitarian a nation is and the less they rely on gender norms, the higher the gender differences are in terms of personality traits. Another interesting observation by Schmitt et. al. (2016) is that these increased gender differences in egalitarian nations may be due to how these people view each other. Members of egalitarian societies are more likely to see an act of “Agreeableness” done by a woman as a part of their personality, whereas if the same act had been done in a non-egalitarian nation, it would have been considered to be a reflection of social norms (50).

The use of the Five-Factor Model to detect differences in personality has been continued for decades, but how effective is this method of testing personality for people of different cultures? While there have been copious amounts of research done regarding pancultural gender differences in personality, Terracciano and McCrae note that these types of studies do have possible limitations. They discuss that cross-cultural personality studies using the Five-Factor Model can pose to be difficult due to “scale translation, cultural differences in response biases, and unfamiliarity with questionnaires in some cultures” (1). However, the most important limitation that they mentioned is the use of convenience samples (1). In most studies, researchers use college students to collect their data, which might not show the personalities of the overall population of that country, especially in non-western regions. In most studies, psychologists who conduct cross-cultural research should proceed with caution to ensure that their data provides a sample of the complete population.

In most cases, the gender differences in personality remain true across different cultures. Females tend to show higher levels of agreeableness and neuroticism, whereas males usually outscore women in conscientiousness or openness to ideas. However, while these differences were maintained across most cultures, some outliers do appear. These gender differences in personality were less magnified in non-western or non-egalitarian regions and were at their highest in egalitarian nations where gender norms are bent. There are a number of other possible explanations for consistent gender differences in personality across cultures, including evolutionary consequences, the social role theory, and errors in translation of the scales or inadequate research samples.

Works Cited

1. Budaev, S. V. (1999). Sex differences in the Big Five personality factors: Testing an evolutionary hypothesis. Personality and Individual Differences, 26(5), 801–813. doi: 10.1016/s0191-8869(98)00179-2
2. Costa, P. T., Terracciano, A., & Mccrae, R. R. (2001). Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: Robust and surprising findings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(2), 322–331. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.81.2.322
3. Costa, P., & McCrae, R. R. (2008, January). The revised NEO personality inventory (NEO-PI-R). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285086638_The_revised_NEO_personality_inventory_NEO-PI-R.
4. Eagly, A. H., & Wood, W. (2016). Social Role Theory of Sex Differences. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, 1. doi: 10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss183
5. Grohol, J. M. (2019, November 21). The Big Five Personality Traits. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-big-five-personality-traits/.
6. Schmitt, D. P., Realo, A., Voracek, M., & Allik, J. (2009). ‘Why can’t a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in big five personality traits across 55 cultures’: Correction to Schmitt et al. (2008). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(1), 118–118. doi: 10.1037/a0014651
7. Schmitt, D. P., Long, A. E., McPherson, A., Obrien, K., Remmert, B., & Shah, S. H. (2016). Personality and gender differences in global perspective. International Journal of Psychology, 52, 45–56. doi: 10.1002/ijop.12265
8. Soto, C. J., & Jackson, J. J. (2013, January). Five-factor Model of Personality. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264476432_Five-factor_model_of_personality.
9. Terracciano, A., & McCrae, R. R. (2006). Cross-cultural studies of personality traits and their relevance to psychiatry. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2756039/.
10. Williams, J. E., Satterwhite, R. C., & Best, D. L. (1999). Pancultural Gender Stereotypes Revisited: The Five Factor Model. Sex Roles, 40, 513–525. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.464.8919&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Abstract

In this research it includes that how personality varies at each person and with the same person how it differs as per the different situation. It is also mentioned that how people sometime behave in such manner they do, the way they do and for what reason. Also on what basis we judge people and their personality at what extent of level. It is likely suggest that how we can judge each person’s personality and at the same time their reaction for that thing. It also determines how it shows behaviour of yours to others and how others see you as a person. How Personality affects each and every stage of your life. It is a dominant force. Personality is also considered as a consequential. Some researcher also connects personality with a field of psychology and determines their outcomes through their behaviours. The Big five model of personality trait determines a person with different characteristic.

It is commonly believed that people’s interest in understanding other people is become universal. The reason why people choose to study psychology is because they want to know more about who they are, why they behave in such manner or in such a way they do. So, personality psychology is the term that answers to these questions because it concerns or connect with the human nature. It tells us how a person will act in different situations and why. It also tells us what a person will do in the future and for what reason. Basically, it reveals whether and what degree or level people change their behavior. It is something that tells you the difference and similarities between people (Ahmetoglu, 2012).

Our attempt to understand personality is mostly driven by two goals, 1) We are interested in predicting behavior specially what different people are likely to do and 2) We are interested in explaining that why people do such things they do and why different people act in different ways. Indeed, personality is essential to explaining who we are and how others see us, how we relate to others within different environments, and why our idea to others ( As an individual ) remains pretty much same throughout time. Thus, personality is something highly consequential: You may think about it as a dominant force underlying the dynamics of social behavior and affecting the laws of history (Hogan & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2011)

Personality is important factor that helps to determine how individual differences in everyday behaviours. It sometimes affects our educational and occupational success, our health and longevity, our marital status and relationship satisfaction, and even our eating and sleeping preferences. Everyday concept of personality traits makes two key assumptions. First traits are stable over long time. Like Most people would accept that an individual’s behaviour naturally varies somewhat from one occasion to other occasion, but also would maintain that there is a consistency which defines the individual’s true nature’s (Deary, I. J., & Whiteman, M. C. (2003)

If we relate personality with the field of psychology, two dimensional conceptions is currently most stimulating approach. Traits are not describing the actual characteristic but instead of judgment criteria used to communicate value expected from a person in social environment. It is not two dimension of psychological nature of a person but two aspect of social value attributed to persons in evaluations process. According to Beauvois personality is based upon distinction between Social desirability judgement and Social utility judgement. It can be said that it is rooted in social functioning.(Jackson,2012)

Each human being obtains distinct personality very early in their life. At the time a person has born, with such volume babies cries that reflect differences about their personality. Personality composed both the temperament and characteristic traits. Whereas Temperament refers innate emotions, while character is something what intentionally make of themselves. (Jackson,2012)

There are also Big five personalities traits that can define the different personality of a person with different characteristics are as follows. (Evans, J. G,1999).

1. NEUROTICISM: A person with this trait experiencing negative effects such as fear, anger, sadness, guilt and disgust. In this stage a person faces psychological distress. A person who scores high in this stage is likely to have irrational ideas, and to be less able to control their impulses.
2. EXTRAVERSION: It is general tendency to be outgoing and prefer large group or gathering and are assertive, active also talkative. They tend to be cheerful in disposition. They are also energetic and optimistic too.
3. OPPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE: It shows to be more curious about inner and outer world. Having element of an active imagination, sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feeling. A person with this trait refers for variety, curiosity and independent judgement. Also willing to entertain with new ethical and social ideas.
4. AGREEABLENESS: It is general tendency with sympathetic and eager to help others and believes that others will do the same in return. It is with low in compare to others and also competitive instead of comparative to others.
5. CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: It consider general tendency to be able to resist impulses and temptation. As an individual they are strong, purposeful and determined. With positivity associated with occupational achievement and at the same time they are lack in moral principles.

In last I would like to sum up this research paper, and I would mentioned that I found through the research that individual’s personality differ at different level of stages in their life. As well as it can also be defined with the big five trait model for personality. Also each person’s personality differs at different situations that occur in their life. So, it could be same the way they doing something for usual but not for every time. They react differently as per the situation.

Reference

1. Ahmetoglu, G., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2012). Personality 101. New York: Springer Publishing Company. Retrieved from https://lc.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=485654&site=ehost-live&scope=site
2. Matthews, G., Deary, I. J., & Whiteman, M. C. (2003). Personality Traits (Vol. 2nd ed). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://lc.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=125150&site=ehost-live&scope=site
3. Jackson, M.-A., & Morris, E. F. (2012). Psychology of Personality. Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. Retrieved from https://lc.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=541963&site=ehost-live&scope=site
4. Ehrler, D. J., & Evans, J. G. (1999). Extending Big-Five Theory into Childhood: A Preliminary Investigation into the Relationship between Big-Five Personality Traits and Behavior Problems in Children. Psychology in the Schools, 36(6), 451. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1520-6807(199911)36:63.0.CO;2-E

Introduction

These assessments helped me understand what kind of leader I want to be and have given me a plan to improve my leadership skills. I have developed an idea of the potential my leadership has in my professional and personal life. With the help of leadership, we can uplift, inspire, and, most of all, help others realize their potential. With a lot of hard-working and patience, it is a skill that will improve over time by learning from more experienced leaders. It is a journey that would not be smooth or straight, and it is a never-ending journey. It is a growth and development journey for both the people around me and me, so we might pass on a sense of purpose and confidence in those we touch. My objective will be to strengthen my essential skills, including being forward-looking, competent, and inspiring (Krell, 2015).

Background

To better understand the role of personality trait in leadership, or in other words, you can say leadership attributes, the theory named Great Man Theory came into existence. The first leadership researcher to summarise the results was Ralph Stogdill. He concluded that some personal characteristics, such as intellectual, friendly nature, and many others were significantly related to leadership success (Hughes et al.,2019,p.176).

Personality Traits Assessment

Personality traits help to forecast overall job performance and career success (Hughes et al.,2019,p.188). After taking the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, I realized that my personality type is ENFJ (Extrovert, Intuitive, Feeler, Judger). This is often referred to as the Energizer. ENFJ’s are strong extraverts, and they motivate and support other peoples in different ways (Cherry,2020). I believe this is true as I always make several decisions on impulse. Although this can be exciting and rewarding, it can lead to being a costly and consequent personality trait. As an intuitor, working with tangled situations is my major strength, and being impatient is my weakness. My strength is considering others’ feelings, while my weakness is being unorganized as a feeler. As a judger, I may stick to a specific task, yet I can sometimes be resistant. I feel this assessment is very accurate, and identifying personality strengths and weaknesses will enable me to overcome future situations more efficiently.

Leadership Style Assessment

Leadership style assessment is the analysis of the skills and styles of an individual as a leader (Cyprus, 2020). As per the result of the online assessment, my leadership style is transformational. Transformational leaders motivate the followers to give high-levels of performance and help them to possess their leadership potential (Riggio, 2009). Transformational leaders use emotions as the key to achieving better results (Hughes et al.,2019,p.213). Some abilities of a transformational leader are:

• Transformational leaders have the ability to take the right risks.
• Transformational leaders motivate team members to innovate new ideas that are beneficial for the organization (Ismail, 2020).
• Transformational leaders entertain follower’s ideas.
• Transformational leaders are known for inspiring other peoples.

For example, one of the best transformational leaders the world has ever seen is Steve Jobs. He made his message clear in the minds of each employee about the company’s vision. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple company, challenged his employees to think beyond and create innovative ideas that benefit his company (Bhasin, 2020).

Relationship Between Two Assessments

The results of both assessments are almost similar and correlated with each other. Leadership involves giving guidance to team members and provides them with directions. Business success depends on good leadership leads to success or failure. On the other hand, Personality traits help to determine the kind of leadership that a leader exercises. Successful leadership is predicted by personality traits. Thus, I believe that personality traits play an important role in becoming a leader. Both of the assessment results state that I am good at building relationships with the team members, which helps motivate them to create innovative ideas.

Strengths and Weakness

The following are the strengths and their relation to my leadership style:

• A good relationship with team members: All the company’s objectives are accompalished by building good relationships with team members. This behavior of a leader helps in communication while managing a team. Apart from that, it also helps in keeping employees engaged in the vision and mission of the company. For, e.g., I always communicate with my team at the current workplace and frequently ask them if they face any difficulties while working.
• Allocating the right jobs: Knowing the ability of each team member is required for segregating the workforce. This strength helps the leader in allocating different job roles as per the ability and efficiency level of the team members. Reducing work pressure, which is not required, is the primary goal of a transformational leader. Therefore, this strength of mine enables me to influence the team members to achieve different goals on time. E.g., I will always ask a person to solve customer complaints who have great experience in the organization rather than giving to a person who has just joined recently.
• Steadiness: A good leader always tries to give equal opportunity to every individual within the team. With the help of appraisal and recognition, consistency strength is helping me to reduce discrimination practices among the organization.
• Compatability: Reducing conflicts within the organization is an essential factor for improving the decision-making process. A transformational leader always considers innovative ideas from the employees and reconciles their differences in making the final decision. I believe that giving significant judgment helps to reduce conflicts within the employees’ viewpoint.
• Positive attitude: Having a positive attitude helps me to motivate team members to achieve the goal of the organization. Moreover, as a transformational leader, this positive attitude influences me to implement different tools that help me to boost the team member’s overall performance.

The following stated are some of the weakness:

• Adverse outcomes are developed sometimes: Sometimes, negative outcomes occur with the positives ones. The best example of this could be Adolf Hitler as a transformational leader. The repercussions of his achievement led his people away from moral betterment (Romgens, 2012).
• Communication: As I think that building a good relationship with the team members is beneficial, it can certainly affect my decision-making process. It is possible that some employees can take advantage of my decent behavior for implementing their decision as to the final decision. It will bring a high chance of conflict between the employees and will create difficulties while achieving objectives.
• Employees’ freedom may sometimes backfire: A transformational leader is open to independent thinking and encourages their employees to think outside the box. There is a lot of freedom given to the employees regarding deadlines, thinking, structure, and guidelines. Although this works well in some cases, it can backfire if they take you for granted. For, e.g., I didn’t take any action against one of my employees regarding not completing the job given to her, but due to this, other employees too didn’t finish their job on time.

Action Plan

• I will make a list in which I note down the ways to reward my team members who have done something exceptionally well. And will try my best to give rewards to those hard-working efforts (Krell, 2015).
• Will create an understanding between each other where it becomes comfortable for everyone to give and take feedback (Krell, 2015).
• To expand my understanding of leadership, I will always observe and learn from more experienced leaders (Krell, 2015).
• Before the interaction with team members, I will ask myself this question: ‘What will I do in this interaction to make the person feel more comfortable and powerful?’ (Krell, 2015).
• Once in week, I will ask all the team members to answer this question: ‘what have you done in the last week to improve so that you are improved this week than you were a week ago?’ (Krell, 2015).
• I will build a friendly relationship with the team members and make sure they take things seriously and not for granted. And fulfill the tasks given to them on time. For this, I will be harsh on them when needed (Krell, 2015).
• I will be open to all the feedback and take it positively to grow and develop my leadership skills. (Hughes et al.,2019,p267) For this, I will conduct 360-degree feedback in which feedback from the boss, peers, team members, and self feedbacks are taken.
• I will work on self to develop as a leader. (Hughes et al.,2019,p176) As American psychologist R.T.Hogan well says,’ Everyone is a star in their own movie. Unfortunately, the you that you know is net worth knowing about.’

Conclusion

I have opted to use the personality trait and leadership style assessments to create my action plan. This plan will be an evergreen document that I will refer to daily to improve my leadership style. I feel confident now because I have developed a plan for the desired destination. This plan will not always be comfortable, and it might even change as the year’s pass, but my forward direction is guaranteed as long as I continue to push forward.

References

1. Hughes, L.R., Ginnett, C.R., Curphy, J.G.(2019). Leadership: enhancing the lessons of experience(9E). New York.
2. Riggio, E.R.(2009). Are You a Transformational Leader? Psychology Today. Retrieved March 24, 2009, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge leadership/200903/are-you-transformational-leader
3. Kendra, C.(2020). An Overview of the ENFJ Personality Type. Verywellmind. Retrieved April 27, 2020, from https://www.verywellmind.com/enfj-extraverted-intuitive-feeling-judging-2795979
4. Ismail, K.(2020). What Is Transformational Leadership Theory?.CMS Wire. Retrieved July 15, 2020, from https://www.cmswire.com/leadership/what-is-transformational-leadership-theory/
5. Bhasin, H. (2019). Transformational leadership explained with examples. Marketing91. Retrieved November 13, 2019, from https://www.marketing91.com/transformational-leadership/
6. Cyprus, S. (2020). What is a Leadership Assessment?. Wisegeek. Retrieved October 11, 2020, from https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-leadership-assessment.htm
7. Romgens, I. (2012). What made Adolf Hitler a charismatic leader? Retrieved October 29, 2012, from http://www.talkinbusiness.nl/2012/10/charismatic-leadership/
8. Practical psychology. https://practicalpie.com/myers-briggs-type-indicator/ – for personality trait assessment.
9. Leadership IQ. https://www.leadershipiq.com/blogs/leadershipiq/36533569-quiz-whats-your-leadership-style -for leadership style assessment.
10. Krell, M. (2015). Academia. Retrieved May 24, 2020, from https://www.academia.edu/12913498/Leadership_Development_Plan