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Personality Traits and Career Role Enactment: Career Role Preferences as a Mediator

De Jong, N.; Wisse, B.; Heesink, J.A.M.; Van der Zee, K.I.

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Authors

N. De Jong

B. Wisse

J.A.M. Heesink

K.I. Van der Zee



Abstract

It has been argued that how a person’s career unfolds is increasingly affected by his or her own values, personality characteristics, goals and preferences. The current study addresses the issue of how we can explain that personality traits are associated with the enactment of certain career roles. Two survey studies (e.g., a two wave worker sample and a cross-sectional worker sample) were conducted to investigate the relationships between personality traits, career role preferences and career role enactment. As expected, results indicate that peoples’ personality traits predicted the preference for certain roles in the work context which, in turn, predicted the career roles they actually occupy. Specifically, our findings show that Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Openness to experience influence various career role preferences (i.e., Maker, Expert, Presenter, Guide, Director, and Inspirer role preferences) and, subsequently, the enactment of these career roles. Other traits, such as Neuroticism and Agreeableness, seem less important in predicting role preferences and subsequent role enactment. These results underline the importance of acknowledging not only individual trait differences but especially role preferences in explaining how careers develop over time. Further implications, limitations and research ideas are discussed.

Citation

De Jong, N., Wisse, B., Heesink, J., & Van der Zee, K. (2019). Personality Traits and Career Role Enactment: Career Role Preferences as a Mediator. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, Article 1720. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01720

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 10, 2019
Online Publication Date Jul 25, 2019
Publication Date Jul 25, 2019
Deposit Date Jul 16, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Frontiers in Psychology
Print ISSN 1664-1078
Publisher Frontiers Media
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 10
Article Number 1720
DOI https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01720
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1297707

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2019 de Jong, Wisse, Heesink and van der Zee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.




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