1. Personality Strength
Operationalization and Relationship With Within-Person Performance Variation
Jennifer Green1, Patrick Bradshaw2, Elnora Kelly2, Mengmeng Zhu1, Reeshad Dalal1, Rustin Meyer2
1George Mason University
2Georgia Institute of Technology

2. Personality is more than trait-level
People differ in personality trait level and variability (Bem & Allen, 1974; Fleeson, 2007; Shoda et al., 1994)
49-78% variance in personality trait expression occurs within rather than between individuals (Fleeson & Gallagher, 2009)
Within-person variability in personality may constitute an individual difference
Equating “personality” with trait level oversimplifies the phenomenon of personality and its relationship with behavior.
Individuals differ not only in their personality trait level, but in the variability of their personality trait expression across situations (Bem & Allen, 1974; Fleeson, 2007; Shoda et al., 1994)
Meta-analytic results suggest that 49-78% of the variance in personality trait expression occurs within individuals across time points, rather than between individuals (Fleeson & Gallagher, 2009)
Some people are more consistent than others in their personality trait expression across situations or time (Fleeson, 2007; Judge et al., 2014).
Thus, this variability may constitute an individual difference.

3. Personality Strength
“The forcefulness of implicit or explicit internal cues regarding the desirability of potential behaviors” (Dalal et al., 2015, p. 263)
How to operationalize personality strength
Does personality strength predict within-person performance variability?
We define this individual difference in variability as personality strength.
Mischel’s Cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) holds that personality is a pattern of “if [situation], then [behavior]” contingencies.
We propose that people with different personality strengths pay differential amounts of attention to situational cues, such that people with strong personalities may pay less attention to situational cues or may at least pay less attention to UNIQUE situational cues. And therefore, compared to people with weak personalities, their behavior is driven less by the situation—and more by internal, dispositional cues.
The focus of the present talk is on how to operationalize personality strength and on whether personality strength predicts within-person performance variability.

4. Personality Strength Operationalizations
Operationalization Category
Definition
Extant Literature Areas
Statistical
Extent to which personality is stable and/or consistent across situations
Traitedness, metatraits, personality consistency/stability
Content-General
Individual difference concepts of one's overall responsiveness to situational cues
Self-monitoring, hardiness
Content-Independent
Assess the situational responsiveness of personality traits and are not inherently yoked to any specific trait
Attitude strength; self-concept clarity; self-esteem stability
The following are operationalization categories of personality strength.
Statistical operationalizations are indices of the extent to which personality is stable over time and/or consistent across situations. For instance, traitedness of various traits, including conscientiousness and friendliness, have been operationalized mathematically through the within-person standard deviation of personality scales across situations or timepoints.
Content-general operationalizations are individual difference concepts important less for their own content than for their indication of one's overall responsiveness to situational cues. One such variable is that of self-monitoring, which reflects the extent to which one will use situational cues to guide behaviors compared to using internal dispositions.
Content-independent operationalizations are those that assess the situational responsiveness of personality traits, but that are not inherently yoked to any specific trait. The attitude strength literature has examined the accessibility, ambivalence, importance and certainty of attitudes in order to determine the extent to which an individual has internalized these attitudes. Given the similarity between attitudes and personality and their similar effects on behavior (see Sherman & Fazio, 1983, for details) we believe that attitude strength measures can be adapted to measure personality strength via accessibility, ambivalence, importance, certainty, and centrality. 
Statistical and content-general operationalizations can more easily be applied to personality strength. However, adapting content-independent operationalizations to personality are not as simple, as there is no existing measure that applies the concepts of attitude strength (such as the importance or certainty of an attitude) to personality traits.
I will show you how our research team has worked to apply attitude strength concepts to personality in the development of our content-independent measure.

5. Content-independent Operationalization
From the attitude strength literature:
Accessibility of attitude: “How often do you think about the issue of employment quotas for women?” (Bassili, 1996)
Importance of attitude: “How important to you personally is the issue of environmental preservation?” (Pomerantz et al., 1995)

6. Applying Operationalizations to Personality
How often do you think about ______?
Conscientiousness?
How important to you personally is _____?
Agreeableness?
Pilot testing demonstrated that using the trait name in the question was unclear.
Pilot testing showed that participants did not have a firm understanding of the trait of conscientiousness or agreeableness in order to answer these question. Thus, we had to further define the traits themselves.

7. Applying Operationalizations to Personality
How often do you think about ______?
How important to you personally is _____?
being efficient
being organized
striving for achievement
being deliberate
Instead of completing the items with personality traits, we substituted personality facets or trait adjectives that correlated with facet (Costa & McCrae, 1992, p. 49, as cited by John & Srivastava, 1999). For each item stem, we would average the responses to the 4 items to get a score for that dimension of strength (such as accessibility or importance).
We would then average responses to the 5 item stems (representing the strength dimensions such as accessibility, importance, certainty, centrality, and ambivalence) in order to get a personality strength scale score for that trait.
All items:
How certain are you of your feelings on _____ ?
How important to you personally is ______?
How often do you think about ______?
How much do you vary from one situation to another (e.g., in a work meeting, doing independent tasks, giving a work presentation) in how ______ you are? (Reverse-scored)
How central is ______ to your self-image?

8. Pilot Study 1: Operationalizations
Purpose: Compare personality strength operationalizations for conscientiousness and agreeableness
Statistical (SD of frequency-based response items; Fleisher, Woehr, Edwards, & Cullen, 2011)
Content-general (Self-monitoring; Gangestad & Synder, 1985) – reverse coded
Content-independent (Attitude strength literature)
To pilot our content-independent operationalization, we compared three personality strength operationalizations for two traits: conscientiousness and agreeableness.
Our operationalizations included a statistical operationalization adapted from Fleisher and colleagues – where we calculated the standard deviation of items on a personality test. Rather than using a Likert scale, this personality test used a frequency-based format, where participants indicated with percentages how often a personality item was descriptive of their actual behavior.
Content-general operationalization was the 18-item Self-monitoring measure from Gangestad and Synder. This measure was reverse-coded because high self-monitoring correspond to low personality strength.
And finally, we used our previously presented content-independent operationalization adapted from the attitude strength literature.

9. Pilot Study 1: Sample N = 60 undergraduates
Age: M = years; SD = 4.09
Gender: 28 Men, 32 Women
Hours worked per week: M = hours; Minimum = 10 hours

10. Results: Content-independent operationalization
Dimensions of strength (i.e., importance, certainty) highly correlated (except for ambivalence):
Conscientiousness strength: average r = .51
Agreeableness strength: average r = .79
Content independent operationalization:
Within trait
Strength dimensions (Accessibility, importance, certainty) were highly correlated except for ambivalence: For personality strength items for conscientiousness (excluding ambivalence items), the average correlation between dimensions was .51; For the dimensions relevant to the personality strength of agreeableness (excluding ambivalence), the average correlation was .79
Extra info not in slides:
Across traits
Ambivalence across traits correlated strongly positively: r = .663
Remaining strength dimensions correlations across traits (i.e., importance conscientiousness – importance agreeableness; certainty conscientiousness – certainty agreeableness) were weakly-to-moderately positive: ravg = .26

11. Results: All Operationalizations
Acceptable levels of alpha ( )
Correlations of strength operationalizations had trends in general direction
Conscientiousness strength: average r = .10
Agreeableness strength: average r = .17
Personality strength of traits correlated:
Content-independent: r = .37
Statistical: r = .76
Correlations between operationalizations: Trends are in the general direction:
For personality strength operationalizations of conscientiousness (Statistical, Content-independent, Content-general): average r = .10
For personality strength operationalizations of agreeableness (Statistical, Content-independent, Content-general): average r = .17
Correlations between personality strength of traits suggests that personality strength may be an overarching trait.
The content-independent operationalization of conscientiousness correlated with content-independent operationalization of agreeableness: r = .37
The statistical operationalization of conscientiousness correlated with statistical operationalization of agreeableness: r = .76

12. Results: Personality Trait-Strength Relationships
Personality strength operationalizations of traits positively correlated with trait levels. However, only for content-independent operationalizations are the correlations strong, raising concerns regarding confounding between personality trait level and personality strength. This appears to be less of a concern for statistical and content-general operationalizations.

13. Pilot Study 2: Within-Person Performance Variation
Proposition: Personality strength will be negatively related to within-person variation in behavior (or performance).
Personality
Strength -
Within-Person
Variation in
Behavior/
Performance
The purpose of pilot study 2 was to test the proposition that personality strength will be negatively related to within-person variation in behavior (or performance), such that someone with a strong personality will have less variation in behavior across situations than someone with a weak personality.

14. Pilot Study 2: Sample N = 82 working adults
Age: M = 36.9; SD = 10.2
Gender: 21 Men, 61 Women
Hours worked per week: M = 41.9; SD = 5.1
ESM study (5 signals/day for 10 workdays)
Agreeableness and conscientiousness personality states (10 items each; Goldberg’s IPIP)
OCBs (8 items; Dalal et al., 2009)
Pilot Study 2 results are from an experience sampling study. The data were used to test the proposition that personality strength relates negatively to the within-person variation in performance.

15. Pilot Study 2: Personality Strength Operationalization
Statistical operationalization of personality strength:
Within-person SD of personality states (smaller SD = higher personality strength)
This study used a statistical operationalization of personality strength, different from the statistical operationalization used in Pilot Study 1.

16. Pilot Study 2: Results
Personality strength negatively correlated with variability in OCBs:
Conscientiousness: r = - .42
Agreeableness: r = - .63
Personality strength of traits correlated:
r = .63
Personality strength of trait correlated with trait level:
Average r = .70
Support for relationships between personality strength and within-person performance variation. Personality strength negatively correlated with variability in OCBs. Meaning, variability in personality states positively correlated with variability in OCBs
Positive correlation between strength in conscientiousness and strength in agreeableness again suggests that personality strength may be an overarching trait (e.g., those who are more variable in conscientiousness expression are also more variable in agreeableness expression)
Similar to Pilot Study 1, personality strength positively correlated with personality trait level. Personality strength and conscientiousness: .77; Personality strength and agreeableness .62

17. Pilot Study 2: Results
Regress within-person performance variability on logical ordering of predictors
Step 1: Trait Level
Step 2: Trait Level, Personality Strength
ΔR2 = .218 (p < .01), Agreeableness strength
ΔR2 = .041 (p = .05), Conscientiousness strength
Due to the multicollinearity between personality strength and personality trait level, a logical ordering of predictors was used in regression analyses to show that personality strength contributes to variation in performance over and above trait level.
In step 1 of the regression, within-person performance variability was regressed onto personality trait. In step 2 of the regression, personality strength was added to the equation. The change in R2 when adding personality strength to an equation already containing trait level was significant. This suggests incremental validity of personality strength of both conscientiousness and agreeableness. Thus, personality strength adds value to the prediction of within-person performance variability.

18. Conclusions
Operationalization categories of personality strength positively correlate
Personality strength negatively correlates with within-person variation in performance
Personality strength may be an overarching trait
Future research should further disentangle personality strength from personality trait level
Operationalization categories of personality strength positively correlate
Personality strength negatively correlates with variance in performance
Personality strength may be an overarching trait (i.e., those who have high levels of personality strength for one trait are also likely to have high levels of personality strength for another trait).
Future research should disentangle personality strength from personality trait level

19. Thank you!

20. Extra Slides

21. Pilot Study 1 Results
All items correlated except for ambivalence items
Coefficient alpha was much lower (~.4) when ambivalence items were included.

22. Pilot Study 1 Results Note: Self-monitoring is reverse-scored.
Correlations between operationalizations: Trends are in the general direction:
Within-trait: Conscientiousness (Statistical, Content-independent, Content-general): ravg = .10
Within-trait: Agreeableness (Statistical, Content-independent, Content-general): ravg = .17
Correlations within operationalizations between trait:
Content-independent (conscientiousness and agreeableness): r = .37
Statistical (conscientiousness and agreeableness): r = .76
Suggests that personality strength may be an overarching trait
CI operationalizations positively correlate with statistical operationalization (both: higher score = higher personality strength)
SM (high score = lower personality strength)

23. Pilot Study 2: Conscientiousness Regression Results

24. Pilot Study 2: Agreeableness Regression Results