The Effects of Cognitive Ability and Conscientiousness on Performance Over Time: A Censored Latent Growth Model

This study examined the extent to which cognitive ability and conscientiousness predicted initial academic performance (i.e., grade point average) and changes in performance over the course of college students' careers. A censored latent growth model that controlled for initial performance was used. Results showed positive effects of cognitive ability and conscientiousness on initial performance, but only positive effects of conscientiousness on performance change. However, because initial performance negatively affected performance change, cognitive ability and conscientiousness negatively indirectly affected performance change through initial performance. In addition, results revealed cognitive ability accounted for more variance in initial performance than conscientiousness, and conscientiousness accounted for more variance in performance change than cognitive ability. Finally, results show that, beyond the third semester, conscientiousness is a better predictor of student performance than cognitive ability.     

The nonlinear effects of conscientiousness on overall job performance and performance dimensions in the Chinese context

The relationship between conscientiousness and job performance has been found to be nonlinear in the West, which challenges conceptually and empirically the traditional assumption of the single linear relationship. In this research, we examined the nonlinear effects of conscientiousness on both overall job performance and performance dimensions (i.e., task performance, adaptive performance and contextual performance) in the Chinese context. The results of our two studies supported some evidence for the nonlinear effect of conscientiousness on overall job performance. In addition, it was found that conscientiousness has different (linear or nonlinear) effects on performance dimensions. These findings suggest that the nonlinear effects of conscientiousness on job performance deserve further investigation, and a distinction should be made with regard to job performance in personnel evaluation. Results are discussed in terms of the significance of considering the nonlinear relationship between conscientiousness and performance criteria.     

Performance Monitoring as a Moderator of the Relations Between Two Conscientiousness Measures and Task Performance

The present study investigated the moderating effects of performance monitoring on the relations between two measures of conscientiousness (general and business-oriented) and performance on a data entry task. A significant interaction was evidenced between conscientiousness and performance monitoring in predicting task performance for the general measure of conscientiousness; however, it was opposite than expected. No significant interaction was evidenced between conscientiousness and performance monitoring in predicting task performance for the business-oriented measure of conscientiousness. Possible explanations for these findings are suggested. Implications and limitations of the present research are identified and various suggestions for future research in this area are recommended.     

The multiple face(t)s of state conscientiousness: Predicting task performance and organizational citizenship behavior

Previous studies have shown that conscientiousness facets incrementally predict performance above and beyond trait conscientiousness. In the present paper we investigate whether this finding also holds at the daily level. We conducted a ten-day experience sampling study assessing state conscientiousness in the morning and task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in the afternoon. Using multilevel bi-factor modeling we show that general state conscientiousness positively predicts both task performance and OCB. Moreover, self-discipline and deliberation showed incremental predictive validity above and beyond overall state conscientiousness in the prediction of daily task performance, whereas none of the state conscientiousness facets uniquely predicted daily OCB levels.     

Conscientiousness and Ability as Predictors of Accounting Learning

Whereas research documents the relation between conscientiousness and performance criteria, little research has studied the temporal stability of that relation. We address the stability of the conscientiousness-performance relations in a learning environment, as well as address the relation of conscientiousness with learning after removing the effects of ability and prior learning. We predicted that the strength of the relation between conscientiousness and performance would increase over time. Data from 274 students enrolled in an accounting course reveal a Time ? Conscientiousness interaction. Although conscientiousness was not related to initial performance, it predicted later performance. Other findings show that conscientiousness added unique performance variance above and beyond the effects of ability and prior learning. These data support theory implying that a single correlation coefficient between a noncognitive predictor and a performance criterion may not capture the nature of the relation between the two variables.     

Examining the Incremental Validity and Adverse Impact of Cognitive Ability and Conscientiousness on Job Performance

Using archival data from a large home improvement organization, the current study examined the incremental validity of conscientiousness over cognitive ability in predicting different performance criteria. Also, the study examined the effects of conscientiousness and cognitive ability on adverse impact. Results indicated that conscientiousness provided incremental validity over cognitive ability in the prediction of several performance criteria. Specifically, conscientiousness had the highest increases in validity over cognitive ability in the prediction of contextual performance factors (e.g., contextual performance, customer service orientation, dealing with others). However, the addition of conscientiousness failed to ameliorate the adverse impact associated with cognitive ability. In addition, limitations of the study and future directions of research are addressed.     

The Interaction Effects of Leader and Follower Conscientiousness on Person-Supervisor Fit Perceptions and Follower Outcomes: A Cross-Level Moderated Indirect Effects Model

ABSTRACT

The primary purpose of this study is to examine how the cross-level interaction between leader and follower conscientiousness influences person-supervisor (PS) fit perceptions, which in turn impact follower work attitudes and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Based on a sample of 1,204 participants in 167 work teams, the results of our cross-level moderated indirect effects model show that highly conscientiousness followers whose leaders also have high levels of conscientiousness experience enhanced perceptions of PS fit which result in higher levels of job satisfaction and OCB and lower levels of intention to quit. The study suggests that high leader conscientiousness serves as a supportive situational cue that motivates followers to more fully express their conscientiousness and act in ways consistent with their conscientiousness.     

A meta-analytic investigation of conscientiousness in the prediction of job performance: examining the intercorrelations and the incremental validity of narrow traits

Researchers of broad and narrow traits have debated whether narrow traits are important to consider in the prediction of job performance. Because personality-performance relationship meta-analyses have focused almost exclusively on the Big Five, the predictive power of narrow traits has not been adequately examined. In this study, the authors address this question by meta-analytically examining the degree to which the narrow traits of conscientiousness predict above and beyond global conscientiousness. Results suggest that narrow traits do incrementally predict performance above and beyond global conscientiousness, yet the degree to which they contribute depends on the particular performance criterion and occupation in question. Overall, the results of this study suggest that there are benefits to considering the narrow traits of conscientiousness in the prediction of performance.     

Perceptions of organizational politics as a moderator of the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance

Meta-analytic studies of the relationships between the five-factor model of personality constructs and job performance indicate that conscientiousness has been the most consistent predictor. Recent research has sought to identify situational factors that may explain additional variance beyond what has been reported by simple bivariate relationships. The authors hypothesized that perceptions of organizational politics would moderate the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance. Data collected from 234 male and 579 female workers in 4 organizations indicated that conscientiousness was related to job performance among workers perceiving average to high levels of organizational politics but unrelated to performance among workers perceiving low levels of organizational politics. Moreover, perceptions of organizational politics were negatively related to job performance only among workers of average to low levels of conscientiousness.     

Does Conscientiousness Moderate the Relationship Between Attitudes and Beliefs Regarding Performance Appraisal and Rating Behavior?

Attitudes, beliefs, and orientations of 253 managers toward performance appraisal, along with the personality dimension conscientiousness, were used to predict rating behavior (i.e., mean ratings and measures of performance dimensions discrimination and ratee discrimination). As predicted, relationships between rater attitudes and rating behavior were moderated by conscientiousness; correlations between the attitudes and rating behavior were strongest for raters who were relatively low on conscientiousness.     

Conscientiousness and effort-related cardiac activity in response to piece-rate cash incentives

Although conscientiousness predicts many aspects of motivation, from delay of gratification to higher achievement, its relationship to responses to monetary incentives is surprisingly inconsistent. Several studies have found null or negative relationships between conscientiousness and behavioral performance in piece-rate, pay-for-performance tasks, in which people earn money for each unit of work completed. In the present study, we examined the role of conscientiousness in effort-related cardiac activity and behavioral performance during a pay-for-performance task. People worked on a self-paced, piece-rate cognitive task in which they earned 1 cent or 5 cents, manipulated within-person, for each correct response. Conscientiousness predicted greater physiological effort (i.e., shorter pre-ejection period [PEP] reactivity) as incentives increased but had no effect on behavioral performance. The findings suggest that conscientiousness is significantly related to effort for piece-rate tasks, and they reinforce a core idea in motivational intensity theory: effort, performance, and persistence are distinct outcomes that often diverge, so drawing conclusions about effort from performance can be complex.     

Personality Configurations in Self‐Managed Teams: A Natural Experiment on the Effects of Maximizing and Minimizing Variance in Traits

In this study, we examined the impact of seeding teams to create maximal and minimal levels of extroversion and conscientiousness variance. Using the theories of complementary and supplementary fit, we make predictions regarding the main and interactive effects of extroversion and conscientiousness variance on performance. Testing our hypotheses in a longitudinal study of MBA teams, our results demonstrate that the combination of minimizing conscientiousness variance (consistent with complementary fit) and maximizing extroversion variance (consistent with supplementary fit) produced the highest levels of short‐term and long‐term performance.     

General,Work-Specific,and Work-Role Conscientiousness Measures in Predicting Work Criteria: A Comparative Perspective

The current study compared general, work-specific, and work-role measures of conscientiousness as predictors of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention, job engagement, and task performance. As expected, work-role conscientiousness yielded stronger relationships with five of the ten work-related criteria than general conscientiousness, and with six of the ten criteria than work-specific conscientiousness. More importantly, work-role conscientiousness displayed incremental validity in predicting nearly all work-related criteria, when controlling for general and work-specific conscientiousness alone or in combination. It is also worth noting that six of ten analyses found that work-role conscientiousness demonstrated greater relative importance compared to its counterparts. Finally, we found that the context in which the items were completed moderated the relationships between work-role conscientiousness and two work-related criteria (i.e., job satisfaction and organizational commitment). Together, these results suggest that researchers should consider the work-role measure of conscientiousness in the prediction of work criteria.     

Antecedent and Consequence of Nurse Engagement

This study explores the mediating effect of work engagement on the relationship between transformational leadership (TFL) and nurses’ job performance, along with the moderating effect of conscientiousness on work engagement within the TFL/performance relationship. Survey data were collected from 234 supervisor–subordinate dyads at a regional hospital in Taiwan, and linear regression modeling performed to examine the hypotheses. TFL was found to be positively correlated with nurses’ job performance; and the motivation mechanism of work engagement did mediate the relationship between TFL and job performance, but only when nurses’ conscientiousness was high. As such, the results provide new insights into both how, and why, TFL can enhance nurses’ job performance: specifically, that their work engagement and conscientiousness are key determinants of how the TFL/job performance relationship operates.     

Moderating effect of self-determination in the relationship between Big Five personality and academic performance

Previous studies have shown that both personality and motivation are important factors in student academic performance. This study examined how the interactions between the Big Five personality traits and self-determination motivation orientations affect students' academic performance. The hypotheses were empirically tested using cross-sectional data collected from 249 primary school students in China. The correlation analysis found that self-determined motivation and four of the five personality traits (not emotional instability) were significantly positively related to academic performance in English. The hierarchical regression analysis revealed that, after controlling for gender, openness to new experience and conscientiousness both positively predicted English performance. Significant interaction effects were found between agreeableness and self-determined motivation, and between conscientiousness and self-determined motivation. However, conscientiousness and agreeableness only positively predicted academic performance when the student's self-determined motivation was low.     

When is ignorance bliss? The effects of inaccurate self-assessments of knowledge on learning and attrition

Two studies were conducted to examine the implications of inaccurate self-appraisals in online training. Self-assessment of knowledge moderated the effects of trainees’ performance on subsequent performance and attrition. Performance was highest after uniformly positive ratings (i.e., high self-assessment and high performance), followed by underestimation, overestimation, and uniformly negative ratings, respectively. Attrition was lowest after uniformly positive ratings, followed by underestimation, uniformly negative ratings, and overestimation, respectively. Effort had a more positive effect on performance following low than high self-assessments and this interaction fully mediated the self-assessment/performance interaction on subsequent performance. Commitment had a more negative effect on subsequent attrition following low than high self-assessments and this interaction fully mediated the self-assessment/performance interaction on subsequent attrition. Finally, trainee conscientiousness affected their behavior when their performance and self-assessments were inconsistent—overestimating and underestimating performance increased attrition more for trainees low in conscientiousness and impaired performance more for trainees high in conscientiousness.     

Conscientiousness,Its Facets,and the Prediction of Job Performance Ratings: Evidence against the narrow measures

This study empirically tested the predictions of the three basic perspectives on the bandwidth debate about the relationship between personality and job performance, regarding the validity of conscientiousness and its facets. The sample consisted of 226 police officers. Conscientiousness and three facets (order, industriousness, and self‐control) were correlated with three performance criteria (overall job performance, task performance, and orderliness). A Schmid–Leiman transformation made it possible to residualize the variance of the facets and to isolate their unique contribution to the prediction of performance measures. The results showed that conscientiousness predicted the three criteria (true validities of.25,.28 and.37, respectively) and that the facets neither predicted job performance nor showed incremental validity over conscientiousness. Finally, the implications of the findings for theory and practice are commented on, and future research is suggested.     

Conscientiousness and self-motivation as mutually compensatory predictors of university-level GPA

To help account for variability across studies in the predictive utility of conscientiousness, we proposed that conscientiousness and self-motivation mutually compensate for each other in predicting university-level academic performance. Consistent with this expectation, we found evidence of such mutual moderation in a sample of 377 college undergraduates. First, we found that conscientiousness and self-motivation compensated for each other in predicting university GPA: Students who were either high in conscientiousness or high in self-motivation had better academic performance (GPA) than those who were low in both conscientiousness and self-motivation. Second, these findings were still evident after we controlled for the students’ previous academic performance (high school rank) and academic ability (SAT/ACT). The study of mutually compensatory predictors not only offers the potential of developing better predictive models; it also helps to account for why some “main effect” predictors of university GPA are variable across studies in their degree of predictive utility.     

Incremental Validity of Locus of Control After Controlling for Cognitive Ability and Conscientiousness

This research examined the criterion-related validity of work-specific locus of control in predicting job performance, including incremental validity after controlling for cognitive ability and conscientiousness. Data from a student sample and from a large employee sample were used to evaluate the scale properties of measures of locus of control, conscientiousness, and cognitive ability. Two concurrent criterion-related validation studies were then conducted to evaluate the incremental validity of locus of control. In both validation studies, locus of control demonstrated overall and incremental relationships with performance after controlling for ability and conscientiousness, such that employees with higher internal locus of control performed more effectively than externals.     

Effects of Organizational Perspective on Implicit Trait Policies About Correctional Officers' Job Performance

This study tests the general idea that people in different organizational positions can have different perspectives on what performance means in a particular job and that these different perspectives are reflected in their implicit trait policies (ITPs) about performance in that job. We test the hypothesis that prison inmates harbor ITPs about the importance of agreeableness and conscientiousness in correctional officers' performance that are different from the ITPs harbored by officers and supervisors. Our results show that critical incidents of officers' performance that are generated by inmates emphasize agreeableness more and conscientiousness less than critical incidents generated by officers and supervisors. Our results also show that inmates' ratings of the effectiveness of officers' behavior described in critical incidents are more strongly associated with the agreeableness of the behavior and less strongly associated with the conscientiousness of the behavior than are officers' and supervisors' ratings.