Combining trait consistency and learning specificity approaches to personality,with illustrative data on faculty teaching performance

Data on personality and teaching performance in university professors are brought to bear on the debate about the consistency of social behaviour. We argue: (a) that traits can best be inferred by sampling from a domain of specific acts and then aggregating across them to gain a representative composite; and (b) that the modification of behaviour largely represents the alteration of specific acts. In particular, we report data showing: (a) that extraversion correlates 0.51 with teaching effectiveness; (b) that this relationship is mediated by specific classroom behaviours; (c) that extraversion correlates 0.33 (on average) with single teaching behaviours, as compared to 0.50 with an aggregate of behaviours; and (d) that training on specific classroom behaviours improves teaching effectiveness. We conclude that both consistency and specificity exist in behaviour and that each provides a useful focus for analysis. Schematic models representing different levels of explanation are provided.