Personality has been found to be more strongly associated with subjective well-being in many instances than are life circumstances. In part, this might be due to the fact that temperament and other individual differences can influence people’s feelings and evaluations of their lives, but also because people’s emotions are an inherent part of personality. This chapter discusses the heritability of “happiness,” that portion of subjective well-being that is due to genetic differences between individuals. The stability of subjective well-being over time is substantial, and this is likely due in part to the stability of personality. Specific personality traits are related to various types of well-being. For example, extroversion appears to be more strongly related to positive emotions, while neuroticism is more related to negative feelings. Although personality is an important correlate of subjective well-being, situations and life circumstances can in some cases have a considerable influence as well. Furthermore, personality can to some degree change over time, and with it, levels of subjective well-being can change.

Personality and Subjective Well-Being

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.

Understanding subjective well-being (SWB) has historically been a core human endeavor and presently spans fields from management to mental health. Previous meta-analyses have indicated that personality traits are one of the best predictors. Still, these past results indicate only a moderate relationship, weaker than suggested by several lines of reasoning. This may be because of commensurability, where researchers have grouped together substantively disparate measures in their analyses. In this article, the authors review and address this problem directly, focusing on individual measures of personality (e.g., the Neuroticism-Extroversion-Openness Personality Inventory; P. T. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 1992) and categories of SWB (e.g., life satisfaction). In addition, the authors take a multivariate approach, assessing how much variance personality traits account for individually as well as together. Results indicate that different personality and SWB scales can be substantively different and that the relationship between the two is typically much larger (e.g., 4 times) than previous meta-analyses have indicated. Total SWB variance accounted for by personality can reach as high as 39% or 63% disattenuated. These results also speak to meta-analyses in general and the need to account for scale differences once a sufficient research base has been generated.

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Refining the relationship between personality and subjective well-being.

Personality may directly facilitate or constrain coping, but relations of personality to coping have been inconsistent across studies, suggesting a need for greater attention to methods and samples. This meta-analysis tested moderators of relations between Big Five personality traits and coping using 2,653 effect sizes drawn from 165 samples and 33,094 participants. Personality was weakly related to broad coping (e.g., Engagement or Disengagement), but all 5 traits predicted specific strategies. Extraversion and Conscientiousness predicted more problem-solving and cognitive restructuring, Neuroticism less. Neuroticism predicted problematic strategies like wishful thinking, withdrawal, and emotion-focused coping but, like Extraversion, also predicted support seeking. Personality more strongly predicted coping in young samples, stressed samples, and samples reporting dispositional rather than situation-specific coping. Daily versus retrospective coping reports and self-selected versus researcher-selected stressors also moderated relations between personality and coping. Cross-cultural differences were present, and ethnically diverse samples showed more protective effects of personality. Richer understanding of the role of personality in the coping process requires assessment of personality facets and specific coping strategies, use of laboratory and daily report studies, and multivariate analyses.

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Relations between personality and coping: a meta-analysis.

We quantitatively integrated 169 samples (N= 35,265 employees) that have been used to investigate the relationships of the following 7 work-related stressors with job performance: role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload, job insecurity, work–family conflict, environmental uncertainty, and situational constraints. Overall, we obtained a negative mean correlation between each job performance measure and each stressor included in our analyses. As hypothesized, role ambiguity and situational constraints were most strongly negatively related to performance, relative to the other work-related stressors. Analysis of moderators revealed that (a) the negative correlation of role overload and performance was higher among managers relative to nonmanagers; (b) publication year moderated the relation of role ambiguity and role overload with performance, although in opposite directions; (c) the correlations obtained for published versus unpublished studies were not significantly different; and (d) using the Rizzo et al. scale of role ambiguity and role conflict decreased the magnitude of the correlations of these stressors with performance, relative to other scales. Theoretical contributions, future research directions, and practical implications are discussed.

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A meta-analysis of work demand stressors and job performance: examining main and moderating effects

Road traffic accident involvement rates show that younger males are over represented in accidents. A number of studies have shown individual differences in accident involvement. Questionnaire-based methods to investigate individual and group differences in driver stress and risk perceptions reported in chapter 2 and 3 revealed that neuroticism was associated with; heightened perception of personal risk, driver stress, and inefficient coping strategies. Younger drivers and female drivers reported higher levels of stress. Young male drivers assessed their personal risk and driving abilities less realistically than did other age and sex groups. Driving simulator-based methods reported in chapter 4 revealed that young drivers and male drivers; drive faster, overtake more often, and commit more `high risk' overtakes than do other age and sex groups. Middle-aged and elderly drivers were poorer at maintaining a fixed distance from a lead `vehicle'. Older drivers adopt a slower, more cautious driving style, but appear to be worse at controlling distance from a `lead' vehicle. Results are consistent with individual and group differences in accident involvement rates. Findings are discussed with reference to the implementation of driver education programs to reduce stress, the adoption of more realistic perceptions of risk among younger drivers, and the training of compensation strategies to counteract age-related changes in older drivers.

Individual and group differences in driving behaviour

Whilst the relationship between driver stress and crashes has been established, little is known about how an organisation’s safety culture might mediate this relationship in the passenger services industry. Interviews with thirty bus drivers from a major bus company were conducted to investigate work related road risk and safety culture. A qualitative analysis revealed that the company’s unrealistic time schedules were perceived to be a major contributor to crash involvement. Bus drivers consider that the company puts profits over safety and that policies and practices creates time pressure and increases crash risk. The results are discussed with reference to organisational processes, safety systems and regulation issues.

Investigating safety culture: a qualitative analysis of bus driver behaviour at work

The tendency for drivers to have a stable accident record over time was tested in a population of bus drivers. Analyses included investigations of the effects of responsibility for the cras...

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Lisa Dorn

Papers

Individual and group differences in driving behaviour

Investigating safety culture: a qualitative analysis of bus driver behaviour at work

Bus driver accident record; stability over time, exposure and culpability

Novice Driver Performance Improvement with Simulator Training

Professional Driver Training and Driver Stress