Personality Dynamics at Work: Integrating between-person stability and within- person change
ID
MSCA-2020-JHofmans01
Supervisors
Project description
Traditionally, there has been a great interest in the role of personality at work in industrial, work and organizational (IWO) psychology. Typically, these studies predict work- related behaviors from personality traits –or stable individual differences in the habitual patterns of behavior, thought and emotion. Whereas such a static approach to personality undoubtedly serves applied psychologists primarily interested in predictive validities, it fails to tap into the dynamic processes underlying personality functioning at work. In response to this, the personality literature has witnessed an increased attention for aspects of change, including research on short-term fluctuations (i.e., personality states) (Fleeson & Gallagher, 2009) as well as long-term changes (i.e., personality maturation) (Roberts, Wood, & Caspi, 2008). The present project aims at integrating our knowledge on between-person stability and within-person change, thereby reconciling the stable, trait perspective with the dynamic, state perspective, providing a so-called “integrative approach” to personality (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Judge, Simon, Hurst, & Kelley, 2014). One way to do so is to study what happens when work-related demands require employees to deviate from their trait level because of (e.g., Pickett, Hofmans, & De Fruyt, 2019). Building on the idea that deviations from one’s trait level- also known as counterdispositional behaviors- are demanding, stressful, are effortful to maintain (Gallagher, Fleeson, & Hoyle, 2011), one might expect counterdispositional behavior to negatively relate to (work-related) outcomes that are resource-intensive. An integrative approach to personality can also be achieved by using a model that explicitly captures individual differences in the dynamics of personality. We have recently proposed such model: The Personality Dynamics (PersDyn) model (Sosnowska, Kuppens, De Fruyt, & Hofmans, 2019). This model captures growth and novelty in the emerging patterns of personality states using three components: (1) the average level of the states [baseline], (2) the extent to which people experience different states [variability], and (3) the swiftness with which they return to their baseline once they deviated from it [attractor strength]. A second possibility might thus be to test the usefulness of such an integrative model in an IWO setting.
About the research Group
WOPS Research Group
Work and Organizational Psychology studies the behavior of people when executing a job, in a variety of organization types. Work is surely more than earning money in itself.
At VUB’s WOPS lab, we approach our domain not only from an individual point of view, but also include social psychological insights. Within this field of psychology, ‘human resource management’ receives major emphasis in our education program from a scientific as well as from a practical point of view, based on insights from work, personnel and organizational psychology, but also from ergonomics, and taking account of health issues. Teamwork, dealing with conflicts, organizational culture and change, leadership and political or ganizational behavior are but a few of the various topics being dealt with. But also how one chooses the most fitting employees, trains and develops them, motivates and rewards them, are all investigated, besides current societal issues such as mobbing at work, emotional labor, work in non-profit organizations, managerial career development, etc.