Faculty of Humanities. School of Humanities and Communitiy Development. 0214946y tespsuch@yahoo.com / The five-factor model (FFM) of personality has established itself as the predominant model of personality trait structure (Digman, 1990). The NEO-PI-R has been used as one of the most useful FFM measures. Its reliability and validity has been approved through out the world and this study sought to explore the utility of the NEO-PI-R in the Eritrean context as well by translating the NEO-PI-R English version into Tigrigna language. Reliability and validity analyses were considered and an effort was also made to establish Eritrean norms. The descriptive statistics, norms and reliability co-efficients obtained in this study were not exactly similar to the USA sample, and this was not surprising having cultural difference, however, it was quite satisfactory as a pioneer study in Eritrean context. The scree plot showed that five factors could be extracted in this study. These findings lend support to an extent to the cross-cultural applicability of the instrument. In addition evidence of face, and content validity explorations indicated that this instrument was valid across cultures. Further evidence from inter-group comparisons across variables like age, gender, and level of education supports this argument. However, since the sample size and composition were problematic, there was question in the norming. As a whole the study suggested that NEO-PI-R could make a contribution in the Eritrean context as an initial personality assessment instrument.

Controversy exists over the validity of child Openness to Experience (OE), which is typically considered a major trait in adult personality models. In an effort to establish construct validity for child OE, data were collected for 346 children (51% girls) approximately 9–10 years of age (M = 9.92, SD = 0.83). Parents completed questionnaires about their children’s personality, temperament, and behavioral problems and competencies. Factor analyses of relevant personality and temperament facets revealed a robust and measurable OE factor made up of three facets: Intellect, Imagination, and Sensitivity. Evidence for convergent and discriminant validity was established via associations with other higher-order personality traits, behavioral problems, and behavioral competencies. The results underscore the importance of drawing from both temperament and personality literatures in attempts to establish construct validity for child trait domains as well as of moving beyond the higher-order domain and examining facet-level associations between OE and child behavior.

Controversy exists over the validity of child Openness to Experience (OE), which is typically considered a major trait in adult personality models. In an effort to establish construct validity for child OE, data were collected for 346 children (51% girls) approximately 9–10 years of age (M = 9.92, SD = 0.83). Parents completed questionnaires about their children’s personality, temperament, and behavioral problems and competencies. Factor analyses of relevant personality and temperament facets revealed a robust and measurable OE factor made up of three facets: Intellect, Imagination, and Sensitivity. Evidence for convergent and discriminant validity was established via associations with other higher-order personality traits, behavioral problems, and behavioral competencies. The results underscore the importance of drawing from both temperament and personality literatures in attempts to establish construct validity for child trait domains as well as of moving beyond the higher-order domain and examining facet-level associations between OE and child behavior.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / As the world continues to diversify and we begin to move towards a majority-minority America, it becomes ever critical for organizations to utilize diversity training effectively to create a more equitable work environment. This is especially true when considering the growth of Latino immigrants in the work force and how majority group members may view this as a threat to their group dominance, resulting in experiences of discrimination and prejudice towards minorities. However, research regarding the best methods to utilize to reduce prejudice against specific targeted groups has been inconclusive, and little work has been done to investigate personality characteristics as potential boundary conditions of diversity training effectiveness. Thus, the goal of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of two diversity training methods, perspective taking and imagined contact, specifically for trainees low in Openness to Experience who may be especially resistant to training. To test this over two time points (two weeks apart), we recruited White participants ( N= 471) via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, highlighted the demographic changes occurring in the modern workforce, randomly assigned them to either the perspective taking, imagined contact, or control condition, and then measured their Openness to Experience, intergroup anxiety, prejudiced attitudes and behavioral intentions towards Latino immigrants. Results revealed no significant interactions with Openness to Experience, thus resulting in its omission from the final model. Results also did not provide evidence for the training methods having a significant direct effect on the reduction of prejudice and the increase in behavioral intentions towards Latino immigrants. However, there was support found for intergroup anxiety such that it mediated the relationship between the diversity training methods and prejudiced attitudes and behavioral intentions. Exploratory analyses also revealed imagined contact to be more effective at reducing prejudice and increasing positive behavioral intentions via a reduction in intergroup anxiety compared to the perspective taking condition. Implications, future research, and limitations are discussed.

Critical thinking is an academically coveted skill important to all areas of education (Halpern, 1998). The ability to think critically requires an individual to question and possibly reject accepted ideals and authorities. A strong self-concept may play an important role in this process. The present study hypothesized a positive relationship between total self-concept and critical thinking ability. An additional purpose of this study was to explore whether self-concept accounted for more of the variance in critical thinking than other correlates of the ability, such as metacognition (Halpern, 1998; Magno, 2010) and openness to experience (Clifford, Boufal, & Kurtz, 2004). The hypothesis was supported; total self-concept significantly and positively correlated with the total score of critical thinking. Regression analyses revealed self-concept was a better predictor of critical thinking, accounting for 19.2% more variance in critical thinking than metacognition and openness to experience. Overall, the results suggest that nourishing students' self-concept may support their ability to think critically.

Rituals are an integral part of society. The focus of research on rituals has been shifting to highlight the effect rituals may produce on individual resilience and ability to function. This study examined the relationships between participation in family rituals and several conceptually related facets of the human experience, including religiosity, openness to experience, and anxiety. Participants responded to questions on an assessment instrument (Family Ritual Questionnaire) designed to measure participation in a broad variety of identified family rituals; they were grouped according to responses on that questionnaire, and the resulting groups were compared on their responses to questionnaires addressing religiosity (Religious Background and Behavior Questionnaire), openness to experience (Revised NEO Personality Inventory Openness to Experiences scale), and anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory). The four-group classification system did not produce significant differences on measures of religiosity, openness to experience, or trait anxiety. Nor were there any significant differences noted when the groups were examined on the basis of the demographic characteristics of age, gender, separation time from family of origin, or academic status. The demographic descriptive which was associated with specific group differences related to adult composition of family of origin: participants described the adults present in their families of origin, and the family types were grouped into traditional, mixed, and nontraditional families. A difference was identified between the traditional and nontraditional families on level of ritualization. This finding may be indicative of a useful direction for subsequent research inquiry.

As the world continues to diversify and we begin to move towards a majority-minority America, it becomes ever critical for organizations to utilize diversity training effectively to create a more equitable work environment. This is especially true when considering the growth of Latino immigrants in the work force and how majority group members may view this as a threat to their group dominance, resulting in experiences of discrimination and prejudice towards minorities. However, research regarding the best methods to utilize to reduce prejudice against specific targeted groups has been inconclusive, and little work has been done to investigate personality characteristics as potential boundary conditions of diversity training effectiveness. Thus, the goal of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of two diversity training methods, perspective taking and imagined contact, specifically for trainees low in Openness to Experience who may be especially resistant to training. To test this over two time points (two weeks apart), we recruited White participants ( N= 471) via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, highlighted the demographic changes occurring in the modern workforce, randomly assigned them to either the perspective taking, imagined contact, or control condition, and then measured their Openness to Experience, intergroup anxiety, prejudiced attitudes and behavioral intentions towards Latino immigrants. Results revealed no significant interactions with Openness to Experience, thus resulting in its omission from the final model. Results also did not provide evidence for the training methods having a significant direct effect on the reduction of prejudice and the increase in behavioral intentions towards Latino immigrants. However, there was support found for intergroup anxiety such that it mediated the relationship between the diversity training methods and prejudiced attitudes and behavioral intentions. Exploratory analyses also revealed imagined contact to be more effective at reducing prejudice and increasing positive behavioral intentions via a reduction in intergroup anxiety compared to the perspective taking condition. Implications, future research, and limitations are discussed.

The focus of this dissertation is exploring personality factors that impact performance within a small insurance agency. The primary research question is, what is (or are) the best personality factor(s), sub-facets, or constructs, that contribute to increased performance within an insurance agency. Three of the Five-Factor Model dimensions, extroversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience along with grit and hardiness were examined, as well as their sub-facets. Grit and hardiness were not found to add additional explanation of the variance while five of the sub-facets were found to better explain the variance over the composite dimensions.

For decades, there has been substantial research showing that ability tests effectively predict what people can do, but it is only in the last fifteen years that it has come to be generally accepted that personality is a useful predictor of what they will do. Much of this change in appreciation of the role of personality in predicting performance has been attributed to the application of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality to personality-performance research. The FFM was developed on the basis of the lexical hypothesis, which states that it is advantageous for people to be able to accurately describe the behaviour of others, and therefore the most important dimensions of personality will be encoded in natural languages. An associated premise is that natural language descriptors refer to an individual's surface appearance or reputation (i.e., their observable behaviours), rather than the underlying processes or genotype of personality (i.e., people's cognitive and affective processing). This reasoning was used as the basis for most of the factor-analytical studies of personality descriptors within the English language, and one of the most robust factor solutions was the FFM. The FFM contains the personality dimensions Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience and Emotional Stability. Although the FFM continues to evolve, particularly in response to cross-cultural research, the five basic dimensions appear to be remarkably consistent, and at least the core of each of these has been identified in the first six or seven factors found in every language considered to date. Of the five factors, Conscientiousness has been the one most reliably associated with workplace performance. Workplace performance itself has undergone a major reconsideration over the last fifteen to twenty years. Prior to that time, formal job roles and responsibilities were typically considered the start and finish of performance, but formal job requirements are now recognised as only one aspect of performance, which is increasingly referred to as Task Performance. Task Performance tends to change substantially from job to job, but there are other aspects of job performance, most notably Citizenship Performance, which appear to be consistent in most jobs. Citizenship Performance includes activities undertaken by an employee which facilitate Task Performance, such as making greater effort, complying with rules and procedures, and assisting others. Whereas Task Performance appears to be closely related to an individual's abilities, Citizenship Performance was originally proposed as an aspect of performance which is influenced by attitudinal and personality variables. Thus it has been proposed that Citizenship Performance largely mediates the relationship between personality variables, such as Conscientiousness, and Task Performance. However, this predictors of performance model has previously only been investigated in workplace settings. Yet performance is a relevant construct not only within workplace settings, but also within academic settings. In addition, the FFM dimension of Conscientiousness has been observed to be a reliable predictor of academic performance, just as it is a reliable predictor of workplace performance. Within educational settings, performance is typically tied to assessment measures, such as marks and GPA, which appear to measure academic Task Performance. However, no previous research appears to have considered whether Citizenship Performance mediates the relationship between Conscientiousness and Task Performance within an academic setting. Study One of this dissertation was designed to test this proposition. Participants in this study were 175 students enrolled within an introductory management subject. Participants provided assessments of their own personality using the Mini-Markers (Saucier, 1994), while Citizenship Performance ratings were provided by students' peers, at the end of a three-week group project. The hand-scored version of the Computerised Adaptive Rating Scales (CARS: Borman, 1999; Coleman & Borman, 2000) was used to assess Citizenship, but unfortunately the three scales of the CARS did not demonstrate good internal reliability. Consequently, a factor analysis was conducted to establish a new scale using the CARS items. This new scale, which was labelled Active Support, used six of the twelve CARS items and had satisfactory internal reliability. It was observed that the resulting scores on this Citizenship Performance scale were positively correlated with both Conscientiousness and academic Task Performance (as measured by grades). As predicted, Citizenship Performance entirely mediated the relationship between Conscientiousness and academic Task Performance. Therefore, the results of Study One were consistent with the predictors of performance model. It was concluded that Citizenship Performance is an important component of performance within academic settings, just as it is within workplace settings. Despite the fact that the relationship between both workplace and academic performance, and Conscientiousness, is reliable and well-established, correlations between Conscientiousness and performance tend to be moderate at best. Previous research has observed that other-rated measures of Conscientiousness have higher correlations with academic performance than do self-rated measures. Consequently, Study Two explored whether other-rated Conscientiousness improved the prediction of academic Citizenship and Task Performance, using a similar design to that utilised in Study One. One hundred and twenty-two students participated in Study Two while undertaking the same course as the students who had participated in Study One. Most of the results of Study Two were consistent with expectations, but there were some unexpected outcomes. Other-rated Conscientiousness was found to be a significantly better predictor of both academic Task and Citizenship Performance than was self-rated Conscientiousness. However, contrary to previous ideas, the relationship between other-rated Conscientiousness and Task Performance was not mediated by Citizenship Performance. In contrast, it was observed that the correlation between other-rated Conscientiousness and other-rated Citizenship Performance was .61 if both ratings were obtained from the same raters, and .44 if the two ratings were obtained from independent raters. When corrected for measurement unreliability, these estimates approached unity, which is consistent with the idea that, for the other-raters, Conscientiousness and Citizenship Performance were measuring the same construct. However, this study had several limitations, including its small sample size, the use of an unusual measure for Citizenship Performance, and the fact that it had been conducted in an academic setting. Therefore, there was a need to replicate Study Two before accepting that Conscientiousness and Citizenship Performance are actually much more strongly associated than previous research has indicated. In order to replicate Study Two, while addressing some of its limitations, a third study was conducted within a workplace setting. In Study Three, general staff supervisors within a public university were asked to rate their staff on measures of both personality and Citizenship Performance. In addition to Active Support, the measure used in Studies One and Two, two additional measures were included, which assessed the aspects of Citizenship Performance referred to as Individual Initiative and Helping Behaviour. The FFM dimension of Agreeableness was also added, because previous research indicates that, while Conscientiousness may be a better predictor of Individual Initiative, Helping Behaviour should be more closely associated with the FFM dimension of Agreeableness. However, using multiple ratings derived from the same raters can create common method bias in correlations, and so, in line with previous recommendations (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003), Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to control for this. The resulting correlations confirmed that there were strong relationships between the measures of Citizenship Performance and personality. Helping Behaviour had a strong relationship with supervisor-rated Agreeableness (.81), while Individual Initiative was significantly correlated with supervisor-rated Agreeableness (.44) and supervisor-rated Conscientiousness (.32). Active Support had strong correlations with these measures of personality (.57 and .55 respectively). The results of Study Three indicate that, for the participating supervisors, the Helping Behaviour dimension of Citizenship Performance is largely the same as the Agreeableness dimension of personality. Unlike Study Two, Active Support appeared to be not so closely associated with Conscientiousness, but instead seemed to occupy a position halfway between other-rated Conscientiousness and other-rated Agreeableness. Individual Initiative occupies a similar position, but is not so closely linked to these other-rated personality variables. Although these results suggest that, when compared with the students in Study Two, the supervisors in Study Three had a slightly different view of Active Support, it remains clear that much or most of the variance in each of these measures of Citizenship Performance is accounted for by these other-rated measures of personality. In order to understand why the strength of the relationship between the other-rated personality dimensions of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, and the performance construct of Citizenship Performance, has been overlooked by previous researchers, it was necessary to reconsider the basic reasons for disagreement in ratings. Agreement between raters tends to vary considerably, depending on who is rating whom. Self-other agreement on ratings is typically modest, other-other agreement tends to be higher, but alternate-form and test-retest agreement are typically higher still. The reasons for this appear to be related to the extent to which ratings are produced using similar observations, and integrating these in similar ways, as well as the extent to which ratings are affected by specific aspects of individual rater-ratee relationships. Previous research has provided estimates for these effects which can be used to correct correlations for resulting biases. When these are applied to correlations between ratings of measures, such as performance or personality, which are provided by different other-raters, these correlations approximate unity. This includes the correlations, reported in this dissertation, between other-rated personality and other-rated Citizenship Performance. In conclusion, the results of the research reported in this dissertation are consistent with the idea that measures of Citizenship Performance are largely accounted for by other-rated measures of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. It is argued that this conclusion is consistent with the lexical hypothesis which underlay the development of the FFM, as well as with the theoretical basis for the construct of performance. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the implications of this conclusion, for a range of fields, including understanding the relationship between personality and performance, methodological consequences for future research, and practical implications for staff selection and performance appraisal systems.

Despite the ubiquity of music and its importance to one’s identity, there has been limited research on individual differences in music preferences. The aim of this dissertation was to examine how music preferences vary across individual differences in stable traits (e.g., gender, personality) and states (e.g., mood) over three studies. The focus of Study 1 was on the influence of the listener’s mood on emotion-based music preferences. The typical preference for happy- over sad-sounding music was found to be mood-dependent, evident after happy and neutral but not sad mood inductions. When the music was emotionally ambiguous (i.e., with cues to both happiness and sadness), happy listeners liked the music more than other listeners, whereas sad listeners perceived it to be more sad-sounding. Study 2 examined how emotion-based music preferences develop. Adults and children 5, 8, and 11 years of age listened to short pieces expressing emotions that varied in arousal and valence: happiness (high, positive), scariness (high, negative), peacefulness (low, positive), or sadness (low, negative). Adults preferred pieces with a positive valence (happy and peaceful), whereas children preferred excerpts depicting high-arousal emotions (happy and scary). Identification accuracy was predictive of a positive-valence bias among 5- and 8-year-olds. A number of other findings related to accuracy and gender differences were also evident. Study 3 examined whether personality differences affect the influence of exposure on liking. Undergraduates completed the Big Five Inventory and provided liking ratings for novel music excerpts as well as for excerpts they heard 2, 8, or 32 times. Higher scores on Openness-to-Experience were related to greater liking for novel excerpts and more rapid satiation. In sum, these three studies highlight that music preferences vary as a function of individual differences and the listening context.