The Architecture of Personality in the Context of Work

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to replicate Cervone's (2004) study, specifically for a work context. By focusing on the context of work, I believe that a "situationally-sensitive" nomothetic measure of personality for predicting job performance can be developed. My findings indicate that participants were able to identify self-relevant attributes in the context of work and then rate the relevance of each self-relevant attribute to work situations, such that the scores of the self-efficacy items related to those situations rated as relevant correspond with the self-relevant characteristics that were originally identified. Also, the data suggest that while there are several instances of idiosyncrasy in self-perception, there are also many commonalities in both the characteristics believed to be self-relevant and the situations to which those characteristics are relevant. This finding opens up the possibility of using an alternative strategy to develop a nomothetic measure of personality based on idiographic methods.