Personality & Individual Differences at Work
In the same work environment, why do some people thrive while others struggle?
I study how personal characteristics shape key work behaviors and outcomes.
Related Publications
Who helps and why? Contextualizing organizational citizenship behavior
Article Abstract
Employees use organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) to achieve different functions: some OCB reflects altruistic motivations to help one’s organization or coworkers, and some OCB reflects self-serving impression management motivations. Across 2 samples (Ns = 191 and 189), we contextualize functional (i.e., goal-directed) OCB with respect to dispositional and situational factors. Other-serving OCB was more common among employees higher on Honesty-Humility, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness, and in workplaces with transformational (intrinsically motivating) leaders and low perceptions of politics. In contrast, all forms of self-serving OCB (i.e., OCB for impression management purposes) were more common among employees low in Honesty-Humility, and some forms of self-serving OCB were more common in more political workplaces (high perceptions of politics). These findings extend the theoretical and practical benefits of a functional approach to OCB, where employees use OCB to achieve different goals—namely, to serve or to receive recognition—within different social and material reward systems.
Public Significance Statement
People use helping behaviours to do good things (to serve others) or to look good (to serve themselves). Across two samples, employees with encouraging and ethically conscious leaders more often helped others for others’ sake, but employees in more political workplaces (i.e., unfair reward systems) tended to help others to garner social esteem for themselves.
Full Reference
Wingate, T. G., Lee, C. S., & Bourdage, J. S. (2019). Who helps and why? Contextualizing organizational citizenship behavior. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 51, 147-158. https://doi.org/10.1037/cbs0000125
Who’s getting the grades and who’s keeping them? A person-centered approach to academic performance and performance variability
Article Abstract
The current study used a person-centered approach to explore individual differences in academic performance, as a complement to traditional variable-centered approaches. Personality traits, intellectual ability, and more mutable study skills, habits, and attitudes were used to predict academic performance as indexed by GPA and variability in grades across classes (academic variability). Conscientiousness, intellectual ability, motivation, and anxiety were identified as the strongest predictors of GPA and academic variability using a variable-centered approach. These factors were included in an exploratory cluster analysis to extract four distinct student profiles: High-Achievers, Low-Achievers, Strugglers, and Settlers. These achievement profiles, and particularly Strugglers and Settlers, express complex within-profile variable interactions that the traditional variable-centered approach failed to capture. Our findings speak to research and practice on academic interventions, and provide fodder for future research on individual differences and performance.
Full Reference
Wingate, T. G., & Tomes, J. L. (2017). Who’s getting the grades and who’s keeping them? A person-centered approach to academic performance and performance variability. Learning and Individual Differences, 56, 175-182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2017.02.007
...And more projects underway.