How Does Culture Influence Personality and Personality Assessments? An Emic Investigation Within the Teaching Profession

Abstract

Personality and assessments have important practical applications within the work domain (Salgado, 2017) making it important to examine the work-relevancy of personality descriptions. Generally-developed personality assessments have been useful for examining personality at work but modifying the assessment instructions enhances the work-contextualisation, allowing for responses that correspond more closely with work behaviours (Shaffer & Postlethwaite, 2012). The findings from cross-cultural research studies (Church, 2016) suggest that the work-relevance of personality may be further enhanced by developing assessments within specific cultures, leading to improvements in structural and criterion validity. An additional implication may be an improved ability to thoroughly evaluate personality structural consistency. Therefore, this dissertation examines the utility of adopting a cultural perspective to examine profession-based personality assessment and change within the professional group of teaching. Specifically, this dissertation summarises and examines the description of personality provided by members of the teaching profession and describes if and how members develop a culturally-relevant understanding of personality. This dissertation is comprised primarily of four studies: one critical review and three empirical studies (based on two stages of data collection). Study 1 is a critical review examining the importance of thoroughly contextualising personality assessments at work, by developing personality factors from within specific professions. This study integrates cross-cultural and personality literatures to examine why personality change may be expected during professional socialisation and whether investigations of change may be enhanced by adopting a cultural perspective. Study 1 concludes that lexically-derived personality assessments diverge from generic personality models. Emic research studies may provide an alternative approach to investigating structural consistency by allowing for examinations of how the description of personality changes. Therefore, Study 1 outlines the theoretical foundations that are subsequently empirically examined. Study 2 reports a qualitative examination of personality description and change across levels of socialisation within the teaching profession. Personality descriptors were obtained from members of the teaching profession, enabling comparisons with generic personality descriptions, and an examination of whether and how those descriptions differed with socialisation. Volunteers (n = 62) participated in group-based interviews from three groups: student teachers in their first and last years (or equivalent) of a tertiary education program and working teachers. The results identify work-specific personality descriptions that differ from broadly-developed descriptions. Group differences were identified across categories of lexically-based descriptions, varying with stage of socialisation. These findings provide initial evidence to demonstrate that entering and maintaining membership with the teaching professional culture influences how members describe personality. Study 3 identifies emergent teaching-based personality factors, enabling examinations of the associations with work-contextualised Big Five factors and scales of work behaviours, and examines whether personality factors vary across levels of socialisation. Volunteers (n = 508) participated in a self-report survey, recruited from the same three groups as Study 2. Analyses of the responses identified a six-factor personality structure, and the factors were mostly distinct from the Big Five factors. The teaching personality factors produced incremental validity when statistically predicting work behaviours. Significant differences in mean ratings and metric non-invariance indicates that personality ratings and factor loadings vary across groups. The findings show that teaching-based personality factors differ from general factors, and this culturally-relevant understanding of personality may develop with socialisation. Study 4 further investigates the influence of socialisation by examining how factor structures vary between earlier and later stages of socialisation. This study identifies and compares personality factor structures based on descriptions provided by first year teaching students and working teachers. The data reported in Study 3 are reanalysed by conducting exploratory factor analyses separately for each group, using only the descriptors provided by that group. Analyses of the descriptors provided by first year student teachers and working teachers identified personality factor structures that were mostly distinct from each other, and from work-contextualised Big Five factors. The lexically-based personality factors were associated with work behaviours, but the pattern of associations varied between groups. Study 4 demonstrates the importance of utilising an emic approach to examining personality structural consistency by showing how the description of personality differs with socialisation. By adopting a cultural perspective, this dissertation identifies personality factors that are relevant for describing personality within the teaching profession and correspond more strongly with work behaviours. By targeting participants who represent different stages of socialisation within the teaching profession, this dissertation shows how descriptions of personality change when learning what it means to be a teacher. Group-differences in factor structures were important because it provides evidence of personality structural inconsistency across levels of socialisation. Therefore, socialisation may influence personality to strengthen personal capacities to achieve the requirements of the teaching profession. Several implications resulting from the findings reported for personality and change theory, research, and practice are discussed.