BEYOND PERSONALITY TRAITS: A STUDY OF PERSONALITY STATES AND SITUATIONAL CONTINGENCIES IN CUSTOMER SERVICE JOBS

By Jason L. Huang, A. Ryan. 2011

105 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although the interactionist approach has been applied to understanding situational influences on the expression of personality at work, examination of within-person variation in personality trait expression in the workplace is lacking. Using experience sampling methodology, this study examined the moment-to-moment influences of situational characteristics on personality states (i.e., situational contingencies) during social interactions on 56 customer service employees over 10 days at work. At the within-individual level, state Conscientiousness was associated with the immediacy of the task, and state Extraversion and Agreeableness were associated with the friendliness of the other party in the interaction. At the between-individual level, self-monitoring did not moderate the associations between situational characteristics and personality states but predicted the mean level of state Conscientiousness at work over and above trait Conscientiousness. Contrary to expectations, the relationship between state Extraversion and friendliness was weaker in customized service jobs than in noncustomized ones.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/266fcf3baef285be438e1bbad668efc742bebdef

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In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Whole Trait Theory (2014, background): “…situational, work, cultural, motivational, and interpersonal processes involved in causing Big 5 personality states (Côté, Moskowitz, & Zuroff, 2012; Fleeson, 2007; Heller, Komar, & Lee, 2007; Huang & Ryan, 2011; Judge et al., 2013; McCabe & Fleeson, 2012; Read et al., 2010; Church et al., 2013).”
Personality and Cognitive Ability as Predictors of Effective Performance at Work (2014, background): “In an interesting and novel examination of the role of personality at work and the influence of the work situation on the expression of personality, Huang & Ryan (2011) found that the expression of conscientiousness was correlated with the immediacy of a task and that extraversion and agreeableness…”
Personality Strength and Situational Influences on Behavior (2015, background): “When restricted solely to workplace settings, trait-relevant behavior exhibits slightly lower but nonetheless considerable within-person variability across occasions (Huang & Ryan, 2011; Judge, Simon, Hurst, & Kelley, 2014).”
Experience Sampling Methods: A Discussion of Critical Trends and Considerations for Scholarly Advancement (2018, methodology): “Huang and Ryan (2011) similarly took what seems to be a post hoc approach, using the Power analysis IN Two-level designs (PINT) program (Snijders & Bosker, 1993; Snijders, Bosker, & Guldemond, 2003) to determine if their two-level model (events [Level 1; n ¼ 998] nested within people [Level 2; n ¼…”
Individual adaptive performance in organizations: A review (2015, background): “Although the trait approach emphasizes consistent behavioral tendencies across situations, emerging research has identified consistent within-person associations (Mischel & Shoda, 1995) between situational cues and Big Five personality expressions (Fleeson, 2001; Huang & Ryan, 2011).”