Personality in the Workplace

Studies of sales representatives have defined two aspects of motivation--status striving and accomplishment striving--and they are correlated with extraversion and conscientiousness, respectively. These two subsets of motivation lead to sales performance, although the data imply that status striving leads to performance and accomplishment striving leads to performance only indirectly via a relation between accomplishment striving and status striving (Barrick, Stewart, & Piotrowski, 2002). This study is questionable in that it studied sales representatives, who are likely required to be extraverted in order to succeed at their job. To say that extraverted sales representatives perform better is a bit redundant; shy sales people do not go far. Because extraversion is such an integral aspect of being a salesperson, this study does not lend much support for a general model or theory correlating the five-factor model with job performance.

Job Satisfaction
The five-factor model is correlated with overall level of job satisfaction experienced by employees. In general, satisfied employees are more likely to remain in a position and to avoid absences than are dissatisfied employees.
Initial research indicated that neuroticism is negatively correlated with job satisfaction, whereas conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness are positively correlated with job satisfaction. Openness to experience has a negligible impact on job satisfaction. Additional research, however, has only been able to replicate correlations among the factors of neuroticism and extraversion, with extraversion being positively correlated with job satisfaction and neuroticism being negatively correlated. This could be due to the social nature of the workplace (Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002).

This finding may be due to the low level of arousability for extraverted individuals (Hebb's theory). If the workplace is a social environment, then extraverted employees are more likely to be at a low