Personality Dispositions Research Articles

Personality trait change during adolescence as a predictor of later substance use, depressive symptoms, and perceived maturity

Adolescence is considered a critical period for understanding how individuals develop their self-concepts and personality dispositions, with the assumption that these changes presage important life outcomes. However, this tenet has been infrequently tested; few studies have included rigorous, frequent assessment of personality traits during adolescence, particularly from multiple rater perspectives. The current study utilizes data from the Oregon Youth Substance Use Project (OYSUP; N = 951), which followed students throughout their school years into early adulthood. Student- and teacher-reports of the Big Five personality traits were assessed yearly from grades 7 to 10, as well as drug use, well-being, and maturity outcomes later in emerging adulthood. Using latent growth curve models and true intraindividual change score models, results indicated that youth exhibited relative stability but significant trait changes on multiple domains during adolescence. Moreover, individual differences in these changes predicted likelihood for drug use and depressive symptoms later, as well as the students’ perceptions of their status as being developed adults, even when accounting for initial trait levels. Findings differed somewhat between youth- and teacher-reports of personality, with both demonstrating value for predicting young adult outcomes, indicating multiple perspectives of personality development are important.

““The last bastion of democracy”: teachers’ perceptions of the democratic potential of English curriculum”

Purpose Faced with increasing systemic constraints and pressures, secondary school English teachers often implement transactional approaches to pedagogy and curriculum aimed at improving student results on external exams, which are then used to rank schools. Despite the pressure to teach this way, teachers acknowledge the power of literature, literacy and language in the English curriculum as vehicles for educating students to be critical readers of texts for a democratic society. As such, the purpose of this paper is to share perspectives of secondary English teachers in relation to the democratic potential of their subject. Design/methodology/approach Using a qualitative case study method, this paper shares data from six Australian secondary school English teachers who work in culturally diverse schools. Teachers were interviewed about their perspectives regarding how the Australian English curriculum enabled and/or constrained the teaching of critical and creative thinking in support of a democratic society. Findings Using Marri’s model of multicultural democratic education, interview data were deductively analyzed to identify elements of the model, including critical pedagogies, disciplinary content and community building. Teachers were concerned that building critical literacy skills was minimized by the system and students’ personal dispositions. Originality/value The English teachers in this study held a strong belief that the subject of English could emancipate students, although they felt it might be “the last bastion” for a democratic education.

The impact of personality on the propensity of carpooling to work

This study aims to test the sensitivity of five personality tendencies to levers of carpooling to work. We launched a large-scale online questionnaire targeting daily car drivers in France (N = 1,134 respondents) to test the link between levers to engage in carpooling (environmental awareness, confidence in others, relationship to time, economic gain and easy access to carpooling) and five personality tendencies of car drivers’ (feeling of ecological responsibility/ FER, social affinity as a measure of level of extraversion/ SA, saving time tendency to individual with a time-pressure sensitivity/ ST, sensitivity to reward/ SR, and technophilia/ TECH). Respondents were questioned about their home-to-work carpooling habits and motives, their preferences according to some carpooling options, their assessments of a new carpooling to work concept and their projected use of it. The results show a strong link between the five chosen personality tendencies and carpooling practice, perception and overall acceptance, except for the sensitivity to reward (SR). Economic gain is a strong lever for the entire population, and this must be maintained for all and rendered more visible. Our results also reveal that a carpooling to work service, adaptable to all the driver’s requests at each step of carpooling would meet the various needs of the different personality tendencies. In addition, a carpooling application must allow adaptability to specific personality tendencies (FER, ST, SA as a minimum) regarding the choices to be made at each stage of carpooling, while ensuring user-friendliness to facilitate access to those who are least comfortable with new technologies.

The offline roots of online hostility: Adult and childhood administrative records correlate with individual-level hostility on Twitter

Reducing hostility in social media interactions is a key public concern. Most extant research emphasizes how online contextual factors breed hostility. Here, we take a different perspective and focus on the offline roots of hostility, that is, offline experiences and stable individual-level dispositions. Using a unique dataset of Danish Twitter users (N [Formula: see text] 4,931), we merge data from administrative government registries with a behavioral measure of online hostility. We demonstrate that individuals with more aggressive dispositions (as proxied by having many more criminal verdicts) are more hostile in social media conversations. We also find evidence that features of childhood environments predict online hostility. Time spent in foster care is a strong correlate, while other indicators of childhood instability (e.g., the number of moves and divorced parents) are not. Furthermore, people from more resourceful childhood environments-those with better grades in primary school and higher parental socioeconomic status-are more hostile on average, as such people are more politically engaged. These results offer an important reminder that much online hostility is rooted in offline experiences and stable dispositions. They also provide anuanced view of the core group of online aggressors. While these individuals display general antisocial personality tendencies by having many more criminal verdicts, they also come from resourceful backgrounds more often than not.

Mindfulness matters: Unveiling the relationship between trait mindfulness and procrastination – A three level meta-analysis

Procrastination is a personality tendency with several deleterious consequences. Trait mindfulness has been found to be associated with procrastination. Nevertheless, the relationship between trait mindfulness and procrastination has yielded inconsistent results in previous studies. Therefore, by utilizing a three-level random-effects meta-analysic model, the present study synthesized previous studies to investigate the relationship between trait mindfulness and procrastination and explore the potential moderators that may affect this relationship. A significant and negative relationship between trait mindfulness and procrastination (r = −0.365; p < 0.0001) was found by analyzing 36 effect sizes from 19 studies with 14,094 participants. The subsequent moderator analysis did not reveal any significant moderators. Overall, the current meta-analysis shed insightful light on information for future research on reducing procrastination by considering utilizing mindfulness-based interventions that make it easier for individuals to maintain a mindfulness state and enhance trait mindfulness, thereby reducing procrastination.

Who Gets Vaccinated? Cognitive and Non‐Cognitive Predictors of Individual Behaviour in Pandemics

AbstractThis study investigates different cognitive and non‐cognitive characteristics associated with individuals' willingness to get vaccinated against Covid‐19 and their actual vaccination status. Our empirical analysis is based on data obtained from three survey waves conducted in 2021 among about 2,000 individuals living in the German state of North Rhine‐Westphalia. We find that individuals with a high level of trait reactance – a personality characteristic that entails the personal tendency to perceive persuasion attempts as restricting one's freedom – display a significantly lower willingness to get vaccinated. They also tend to get inoculated later or never. Moreover, neuroticism, locus of control, and statistical numeracy appear to be associated with the willingness to get vaccinated, but these results are less pronounced and less robust. Our results indicate that vaccination campaigns and policies could be improved by specifically addressing those with a high level of trait reactance.

Successful School Principals Balancing Ethical, Personal and Collective—A Norwegian Case

Over the past two decades, there has been extensive research into what constitutes successful school principal leadership under the assumption that leaders’ practices are significant and context-dependent on their school organization. By investigating how successful principals balance their personal ethical leadership dispositions and their intention of sharing leadership, this paper aims to contribute to the knowledge of how school principals need to balance the ethical, personal, and collective as the top leader of the school. Findings from the interviews suggested that a central aspect in the Norwegian school principals’ characteristics of their leadership practices is student wellbeing and collaborative effort for school quality and student learning. Norwegian successful school principals seem to be relatively unaware of aspects of power use in their leadership practices. Dilemmas arise in the complexity of ensuring individual and collective effort and responsibility for the school to function in accordance with the societal mandate.

Machiavellianism as a crucial Dark Tetrad trait for the prediction of life-course criminal behavior

The Dark Tetrad (Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism) is a taxonomy of personality dispositions toward immoral, antisocial, and antagonistic behavior; still, its predictive power in the domain of criminal behavior is rarely tested. In the present research, we analyzed the associations between the Dark Tetrad and several indicators of criminal behavior (onset of criminal behavior, juvenile correctional measures, problematic use of psychoactive substances [PUPS], penal recidivism, number of convictions, violent offences, and the risk of future recidivism) in a sample of Serbian prisoners (N = 471). While all dark traits were positively associated with criminal behavior indicators on a zero-order level (except violent offences), regression analyses identified Machiavellianism as the most prominent predictor. Psychopathy positively predicted PUPS, while narcissism had a negative contribution to PUPS and penal recidivism. Interactions with the participants’ sex showed that sadism represents a risk factor for females regarding early offences and PUPS, while Machiavellianism elevates the chance of repeated prison sentences for men. Finally, the structural model showed that juvenile offending mediates the association between Machiavellianism and general criminal recidivism. Findings showed the fruitfulness of assessing the Dark Tetrad traits in order to predict various aspects of criminal behavior.

Level and stability of self-esteem mediate relationships between personality traits and life satisfaction: Bayesian multilevel modeling with annual data

ABSTRACT This study examined the relationships among the Big Five personality traits, self-esteem levels, self-esteem stability, and life satisfaction over a 15-year period. The primary objectives were to examine whether: (1) self-esteem stability contributed to the prediction of life satisfaction beyond self-esteem level, and (2) both self-esteem level and stability mediated the associations between personality traits and life satisfaction. Bayesian multilevel modelling was conducted on a sample of Dutch adults (N = 4,880), with self-esteem stability operationalised using within-person variance and mean square successive difference. Results indicated that higher levels of self-esteem and self-esteem stability were significantly associated with greater life satisfaction. All Big Five traits predicted higher self-esteem level, while emotional stability and conscientiousness emerged as robust predictors of self-esteem stability with both stability operationalizations. Self-esteem level mediated the relationship between all personality traits and life satisfaction. However, self-esteem stability only mediated the effects of emotional stability and conscientiousness on life satisfaction across both operationalizations of stability. This study provides new insights into the importance of self-esteem stability, in addition to self-esteem level, in shaping well-being. These findings underscore self-esteem levels and dynamics as a crucial mechanism linking personality dispositions to life evaluations.

Conceptualizing Mindfulness Using Construal Level Theory: A Two-Dimensional Model

Construal Level Theory (CLT) is a well-established, comprehensive framework that provides an account of the relationship between construal level and psychological distance, and the effects they have on cognitive processing and a wide range of phenomena. In this article we present a conceptualization of mindfulness based on the theoretical foundations of CLT. In light of mindfulness definitions and current research, it is difficult to determine whether mindfulness entails low psychological distance and concrete, non-conceptual representations of experience, or high psychological distance and abstract representations. We argue that mindfulness uniquely combines both. The two-dimensional model we present posits that mindfulness is characterized by a simultaneous decreased psychological distance from external sensory experiences and increased psychological distance from internal mental experiences. We highlight the uniqueness of this quality of mindfulness, and demonstrate how the formulation presented here not only aligns well with but also integrates research on mindfulness as a state of consciousness as well as a personality disposition. We further argue that this combination underlies the beneficial effects of mindfulness and delineate how it enables individuals to leverage the advantages and mitigate the drawbacks associated with both high and low levels of construal and psychological distance. The proposed two-dimensional model resolves contradictions in the literature, aiming to deepen our understanding of mindfulness, its benefits, and core mechanisms.

Fostering the use of reflective learning strategies in teaching big data analytics and data science: Enhancing the quality of epidemiological evidence and decision-making

PURPOSEThis study investigated the frequency of use and perceived effectiveness of reflective learning strategies among university educators and practitioners in big data analytics and data science, including epidemiologists. Reflective learning fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills essential for navigating the complexities of big data. It encourages systematic evaluation of methodologies and the identification and mitigation of biases. These skills are particularly relevant in epidemiology, where the prediction and management of disease outbreaks, as well as public health decisions, increasingly depend on big data analytics. METHODOLOGYA cross-sectional design was employed with a diverse sample of 93 participants from multiple countries, averaging 15 years of teaching and practice experience. Informed by the Diffusion of Innovation Theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior, data were collected in Fall 2023 using an online questionnaire. The questionnaire focused on personal disposition, contextual favorability, and characteristics of reflective learning as predictors of the frequency and perceived effectiveness of reflective learning, analyzed using multiple regression modeling. Acceptable levels of reliability and criterion validity were achieved. This study was approved by the Ethics Panel of Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. RESULTSIn general, reflective learning strategies were perceived as effective for enhancing cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving, but less so for technical skills like algorithm and model selection. Preferred methods included real-world applications, problem-based learning, and collaborative projects. Frequency of use was positively correlated with perceived effectiveness. Personal disposition and characteristics of reflective learning scores were significant predictors of frequency of use (R-squared = 0.32), with older participants being less engaged. The characteristics of reflective learning score was the sole significant predictor of perceived effectiveness, though with a modest predictive value (R-squared = 0.09). Contextual favorability did not significantly predict either frequency of use or perceived effectiveness of reflective learning strategies, implying a lesser role for external factors as drivers of engagement. CONCLUSIONSThis study underscores the importance of reflective learning in enhancing analytical and problem-solving skills, and suggests that intrinsic motivation may be a key factor underpinning the use of reflective learning strategies by educators and practitioners in big data analytics and data science. These findings have major implications for curriculum and professional development, particularly for epidemiologists who must continuously adapt to new data and methodologies to effectively address public health challenges.

Hope of success relates to the memory for unsolved compared to solved anagrams.

It is widely believed that unfinished tasks are better remembered than finished tasks, a phenomenon labelled the "Zeigarnik-Effect." It has been argued that this advantage relies on the persisting tension inherent in uncompleted intentions. However, this interpretation has been challenged. First, the memory advantage could not be reliably replicated. Second, a memory advantage can still be observed when the unfinished status of an uncompleted intention is inherently terminated, rendering the "persisting tension" explanation unlikely. The goal of this study was to investigate the potential memory advantage of interrupted but finished tasks and its relation to the personality disposition achievement motivation, specifically, hope of success and fear of failure. This goal was motivated by the hypothesis that the experience of a discrepancy between the anticipation of success and the subsequent failure would relate to the memory for an unfinished task, and that this discrepancy experience would be stronger for people high in hope of success. A large sample of adults (>1,000 participants) was presented with 12 anagrams. If they did not solve an anagram within 60 s, they were shown the solution. Afterwards, we measured free recall of the anagram solutions and assessed achievement motivation. Overall, participants recalled more unsolved anagrams than solved anagrams. However, only individuals high in hope of success displayed a greater tendency to remember unsolved anagrams. This study supports the idea that a discrepancy experience rather than persisting tension coincides with memory for unsolved tasks.

Long-term and ongoing food safety issues: Theorising consumers’ long-term coping strategies

This study aims to conceptualise and empirically explore consumers’ long-term coping strategies and to achieve an in-depth understanding of the factors that may predict and influence consumer coping behaviours in the context of a long-term and ongoing food safety situation. 848 consumer questionnaires were collected in China and analysed using structural equation modelling. The results suggest that the interplay of stress and cognitive appraisal, and stress and personality traits, relate to different consumer long-term coping strategies. This study contributes to the study of food safety and consumer coping by conceptualising a multidimensional consumer long-term coping framework, providing a sound theoretical foundation for how consumers deal with chronic stressful consumption situations. This study also contributes to coping theory by theorizing and incorporating cognitive appraisals and dispositional personality traits into the examination of the relationships between stress and consumers’ long-term coping, underscoring the importance of inquiry into the complex and nuanced coping process.

MyBioethics: How Ed-Tech Enables Discovery-Driven Empirical Bioethics Research

Digital tools have granted new opportunities to engage people with bioethical discussion and rehearsed decision-making. The ongoing development of the MyBioethics mobile application links these together within a digital space designed to encourage deliberation and research participation by inviting users into the process of discovery. Besides educational purposes, this has enabled a unique way to gather real-world observations. A research procedure was designed to harness the functionality of a mobile application. Quantitative data was generated by dilemma scenarios and integrated surveys that measure and inform users about their psychological and epistemic tendencies. The resulting analysis enabled the possible influence of these factors on moral judgment formation to be investigated—leading to the preliminary identification of prospective relationships. The adopted methodology is crowdsourced and explorative. We seek to generate hypotheses as well as facilitate ethical reflection among users. This work is a proof-of-concept. The main finding is the tentative confirmation of the approach. A digital teaching tool can function to advance empirical bioethics research. The gathered data unveiled prospective areas of academic interest and yielded observations that may contain valuable reflective insights for individual end users. Digital bioethics brings along new opportunities to engage a diverse user base in a way that provides educational resources, challenges ethical preconceptions and intuitions, allows inclusion in research efforts, and encourages autonomous decision-making. Ed-tech applications appear suitable for investigating personal tendencies that are influencing our moral judgments. Digital environments could be designed to surface unarticulated factors behind our held positions and challenge unquestioned moral notions.

Exploring the effects of traffic light countdown displays on the driving behaviours of drivers with different personality dispositions: A VR-simulated study

The dilemma zone, where drivers must decide whether to stop or proceed through an intersection as a traffic signal turns yellow, poses a substantial risk for traffic accidents. One factor affecting the dilemma zone is the inconsistency of green light countdown displays across intersections. This VR simulation study aims to investigate how different countdown display settings impact driver behaviour in the dilemma zone. Using a simulated traffic intersection developed using Unity3D, 31 participants completed driving tasks under 5 different green light countdown displays. Vehicle speeds were collected objectively in the experiments. Questionnaires were employed to assess drivers' hesitation levels and personality dispositions. The results from the statistical analysis reveal that drivers with diverse personality dispositions exhibited consistent hesitation levels across countdown displays. While longer countdown displays tended to reduce drivers' hesitation, the countdowns set between 5-10 seconds resulted in lower vehicle speeds through the intersection compared to other shorter or longer settings. This indicates that the optimal green light countdown display for mitigating the dilemma zone is 5-10 seconds. Findings of the study provide useful insights into the relevant research field. Transportation departments may apply these findings to improve driver safety, refine policies, and standardise countdown timers across intersections.

Thinking style preferences of Chinese and Western physicians: A mixed-methods study

IntroductionTraditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine (WM) stem from distinct cultural and regional contexts, with the primary difference in their approaches to clinical reasoning. This study aims to investigate the cognitive preferences of TCM and WM physicians in clinical diagnosis and treatment, providing valuable insights for the advancement of TCM. MethodsWe implemented a two-phase mixed methods approach comprising questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The Thinking Style Inventory (TSI) was used to evaluate the thinking styles of physicians through convenience sampling. Additionally, a total of six physicians (three practicing TCM and three WM) were selected by purposive sampling and open-ended responses regarding self-cognition and influencing factors were analyzed using thematic analysis. ResultsA total of 150 surveys and six interviews consistently indicated a preference among both TCM and WM physicians for Legislative, Executive, Hierarchical, Liberal, and External styles. In contrast, TCM physicians exhibited a tendency towards Legislative and Liberal styles, whereas WM physicians leaned towards Executive and Judicial styles. Thematic analysis of the interviews revealed four themes: self-understanding, thinking characteristics, influencing factors, and style changes. ConclusionOur study identified that within TCM and WM, a blend of shared characteristics and distinct individuality in thinking styles existed, exhibiting variations in the growth processes of physicians. Both TCM and WM physicians attributed the formation of their thinking styles to factors such as education, internship experience, Chinese social culture and personal disposition. Furthermore, empirical research methods emerged as effective tools for studying clinical reasoning in healthcare contexts.

Exploring Sense of Purpose and Conscientiousness as Correlates to Health and Well-Being With Indigenous and Low Socioeconomic Communities on Coast Salish Territories, Vancouver, Canada.

Research is needed to better understand factors promoting health and well-being with Indigenous Peoples and people with socioeconomic barriers in Canada, given they face multiple social determinants that are barriers to health. Individual dispositions, sense of purpose and conscientiousness, are known to predict health and well-being in broader samples. In a community-based approach, guided by Indigenous Elders with traditional ways of knowing, we aimed to determine whether these measures correlate with self-rated health and well-being among Indigenous (n = 149) and non-Indigenous (n = 151) Peoples in Vancouver, Canada. The majority of participants (mean age 49 years, and 58% male) had relatively low income (≤$15,000/year) and educational attainment (<high school). Factors were valid and reliable in all groups. Mean scores were similar between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups, and lower among participants with lower than with higher income. Correlations were similar between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups: purpose significantly correlated with health (SF-6; 0.34 and 0.28, p < .001) and life satisfaction (0.55 and 0.58, p < .001), and conscientiousness with health (0.19 and 0.18, p < .05). Correlations were similar between income groups. When exploring and promoting the health, equity, and well-being of Indigenous and low socioeconomic status communities, purpose and personal disposition are factors to consider alongside social determinants of health.

ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR AND INTEGRITY AMONG EMPLOYEES IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: A CRITICAL REVIEW

This systematic review synthesises and analyses current research on ethical behaviour and integrity among public sector employees. Despite the growing emphasis on ethics in public administration, there remains a significant gap in consolidating the diverse factors influencing ethical conduct and integrity. Employing the Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) approach, a comprehensive search of Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) was conducted using the keywords (1) ethical behaviour, (2) employee, and (3) public sector. The final dataset included (n = 44) relevant articles meticulously reviewed and validated by experts. These articles were categorised into four coherent themes: (1) factors influencing ethical behaviour and integrity in the public sector; (2) challenges and barriers to ethical behaviour and integrity; (3) the leadership role as well as trust with regard to enhancing ethical behaviour; and (4) the implementation and prevention of ethical issues. Key findings indicate that ethical leadership, organisational culture, personal dispositions, education, professionalism, and holistic approaches are vital to fostering ethics in public service, and comprehensive initiatives are needed to address systemic and individual barriers to ethical conduct and integrity.

The relationship between script memory for everyday events and schizotypy: an investigation through a development of Japanese Situational Feature Recognition Test.

Script memory is stored information about a sequential structure of an activity (e.g., going shopping), including what actors do, the purpose of the activity, and the likely consequences of the actor's actions. It has been reported that script memory is impaired among schizophrenia patients. The present research investigated the relationship between schizotypal personality tendencies (schizotypy) and script memory by testing Japanese individuals. First, a new test to measure the intactness of the script memory was created by asking the public to report activities they often perform and what behaviors each activity contains. The test contains 15 everyday activities, each accompanied by 15 behavior choices, either strongly associated, completely unrelated, or weakly associated with the activity. Next, undergraduate participants were presented with the test and chose appropriate behaviors for each activity (Study 1 and 2). Their extent of schizotypy was measured using Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire Brief (SPQ-B). Study 3 targeted the public of various ages. In addition to Study 2 procedure, participants reported the extent of psychological burden for performing each activity, their life satisfaction, and subjective evaluation of their memory ability. All studies consistently found that the script memory performance was worse for individuals with higher schizotypy. Signal detection indices for accurate discrimination between correct and incorrect choices, which were A' in Study 1 and C in Study 2 and 3, negatively correlated with the SPQ-B scores (r = -0.16, -0.11, -0.17, respectively). Study 3 found that the relationship between schizotypy and memory task performance was mediated by the extent of psychological burden. When a signal detection index (d') for the memory task was regressed on the SPQ-B, while the psychological burden scores being a mediator, the mediation effect was significant (B = 0.003, SE = 0.001, 95% CI [0.001, 0.005]). Individuals with higher schizotypy seem to associate unrelated behaviors to an event, forming script memory with irrelevant information, maybe due to the schizotypy symptom of having peculiar thoughts. The newly created test must be validated using a clinical population to expand its potential to be used in clinical research.

Unlocking the sources of individual readiness for change: exploring the role of nationality

PurposeThis paper aims to examine primarily the readiness for change at an individual level. Additionally, this study examines the impact of internal change factors on individual readiness for change as well as their effect across nations.Design/methodology/approachThe research relies on a quantitative research approach. A survey was conducted among 241 managers across 33 countries. Covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) approach and multigroup analyses have been applied for hypothesis testing.FindingsOur research contributes a novel perspective on individual readiness for change and unveils how employees' perceptions of context, process and intensity as internal change factors influence their readiness for change. The findings give support to the assertion that employees' attitudes toward change are altered by individual perceptions.Research limitations/implicationsOur research explores the moderating effect of nationality used through a grouped variable and finds significant impacts of clusters of nationalities. Thus, nationality may serve as a proxy for culture that might be examined in future research studies in a more deeply focused way to include beliefs, values and societal norms.Practical implicationsThe new understanding of the topic “individual readiness for change” opens up new research directions and enriches ongoing discussions about societal change and sustainable project management. This topic creates a link to situational leadership principles, considers cultural factors and, therefore, advocates for a people-centric approach to modern stakeholder management in order to achieve commitment toward change initiatives and consequent project success.Social implicationsConsidering that the path toward the successful implementation of any change project is highly contingent on personal dispositions to change, our research uncovers the potential impact of individual perceptions on employees' readiness for change.Originality/valueOur major contribution is to highlight the importance of considering individual perceptual drivers of readiness for change and to acknowledge the moderating effect of nationality as a contextual factor altering the relationship between perception of change and individual readiness for change.