The higher-order factors of the Big Five as predictors of job performance

Despite the fact that the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and job performance has been widely investigated, no study has focused on the criterion validity of Stability and Plasticity, the two higherorder factors of personality. The current research aims to fill this gap in the literature by relying on a hierarchical model that includes both the Big Five and their higher-order factors. Two studies were conducted among incumbents working for an insurance company (n = 101) and security agents (n = 201). Stability (but not Plasticity) accounted for variance in job performance beyond that accounted for by measures of the Big Five. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The affirmation of the Big Five model (i.e. Extraversion/Energy, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional stability and Openness/Intellect) as one of the most influential description of personality structure (Goldberg, 1993) has bolstered the interest of practitioners and researchers in the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology for personality assessment (but see Block, 1995 for a different perspective). The understanding of how personality is related to Job Performance (JP) is important for personnel selection and theories linking individuals’ characteristics to organizational behavior. Considerable meta-analytical evidence has suggested that JP is associated with conscientiousness and, to a lesser extent, with emotional stability across different occupational groups (Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001; Salgado, 1997). Empirical findings supported the incremental validity of these traits over measures of general mental ability (GMA) (Dunn, Mount, Barrick, & Ones, 1995). The traits of extraversion and agreeableness have also been shown to be predictive of JP, although only for specific occupations or performance criteria (Barrick et al., 2001; Salgado, 1997). The Big Five (BF), however, may not represent the highest level of generality at which the association between personality and JP can fruitfully be examined. In the present study,we examined the role of personality in predicting JP using a hierarchical model that incorporates the BF and their higher-order factors. Although the BF were initially conceived as orthogonal traits (Costa & McCrae, 1995; Goldberg, 1993), factor analysis has demonstrated that two higher-order factors, or metatraits, exist above the BF (DeYoung, 2006; DeYoung, Peterson, & Higgins, 2002; Digman, 1997). These factors were labelled as Stability (or Alpha), which reflects the shared variance of Emotional stability, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, and Plasticity (or Beta), which reflects the shared variance of Extraversion and Openness. Both these factors have been shown to have a genetic basis (Jang et al., 2006; McCrae et al., 2008). Stability appears to reflect stable functioning in emotional, motivational, and social domains, whereas Plasticity appears to reflect the tendency to explore the environment, both behaviorally and cognitively. The relations between JP and personality can be conceived in terms of the metatraits for several reasons. First, the fact that Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional stability are associated with JP may suggest a role for Stability. In this regard, Ones, Viswesvaran, and Schmidt (2003), argued that ‘‘the conglomeration of these three personality constructs [i.e. conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability] corresponds to Digman (1997) factor alpha [Stability] (i.e., the socialization second-order factor of personality—a higher-order factor than the Big Five) and is particularly relevant in the prediction of behaviors at work (p. 23)’’. They also speculated that: ‘‘scoring high on this higher-order personality trait would predict a whole spectrum of work behaviors, from avoiding drug and alcohol use, to engaging in appropriate customer service behaviors from dealing with stress well to not stealing, from avoiding absenteeism to actually being a stellar overall performer on the job’’ (Ones & Viswesvaran, 2001, p. 37). It is difficult to advance similar arguments for Plasticity. Whereas extraversion has proved to be a relevant predictor of JP only for specific occupational groups, for example for those which require leadership or teamwork abilities (Barrick et al., 2001), openness has shown inconsistent or even negative correlations with JP. At the best, it seems arguable that Plasticity will be related to JP only for jobs which require agentic qualities. A different argument for expecting that Plasticity and Stability wouldbe related to JP is thatmeasures of JP are general innature (Hogan & Roberts, 1996; Ones & Viswesvaran, 1996). According to the correspondence principle (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), the generality of typical JP criteria (e.g. overall or average performance) calls for similarly broad trait measures (Ones & Viswesvaran, 1996; Ones, Viswesvaran, & Schmidt, 1993). Since organizational criteria are often 0191-8869/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.05.037 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 06 49917532; fax: +39 06 4469115. E-mail address: [email protected] (G. Alessandri). Personality and Individual Differences 53 (2012) 779–784