Personality and Situations

  1. 4 Describe how the situation affects whether personality predicts behavior.

Earlier we discussed how research shows heredity is more important than the environment in developing our personalities. The environment is not irrelevant, though. Some personality traits, such as the Big Five, tend to be effective in almost any environment or situation. For example, research indicates conscientiousness is helpful to the performance of most jobs, and extraversion is related to emergence as a leader in most situations. However, we are learning that the effect of particular traits on organizational behavior depends on the situation. Two theoretical frameworks, situation strength and trait activation, help explain how this works. ...

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