Derived from two theoretical concepts--situation strength and trait
activation--we develop and test an interactionistmodel governing
the degree to which five-factormodel personality traits are related
to job performance. One concept--situation strength--was
hypothesized to predict the validities of all of the "Big Five"
traits, while the effects of the other--trait activation--were
hypothesized to be specific to each trait. Based on this
interactionist model, personality--performance correlations were
located in the literature, and occupationally homogeneous jobs were
coded according to their theoretically relevant contextual
properties. Results revealed that all five traits were more
predictive of performance for jobs in which the process by which
the work was done represented weak situations (e.g., work was
unstructured, employee had discretion to make decisions). Many of
the traits also predicted performance in job contexts that
activated specific traits (e.g., extraversion better predicted
performance in jobs requiring social skills, agreeableness was less
positively related to performance in competitive contexts, openness
was more strongly related to performance in jobs with strong
innovation/ creativity requirements). Overall, the study's findings
supported our interactionist model in which the situation exerts
both general and specific effects on the degree to which
personality predicts job performance.
