Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis

This study reports results of a meta-analysis linking traits from the 5-factor model of personality to overall job satisfaction. Using the model as an organizing framework, 334 correlations from 163 independent samples were classified according to the model. The estimated true score correlations with job satisfaction were .29 for Neuroticism,.25 for Extraversion,.02 for Openness to Experience,.17 for Agreeableness, and.26 for Conscientiousness. Results further indicated that only the relations of Neuroticism and Extraversion with job satisfaction generalized across studies. As a set, the Big Five traits had a multiple correlation of.41 with job satisfaction, indicating support for the validity of the dispositional source of job satisfaction when traits are organized according to the 5-factor model. Research on the dispositional source of job satisfaction has had a spotty history in job satisfaction research. The personological basis of job satisfaction was considered in the earliest treatments of job satisfaction. Hoppock (1935), for example, noted a strong correlation between workers ’ emotional adjustment and their lev-els of job satisfaction. Similarly, Fisher and Hanna (1931) con-cluded that a large part of dissatisfaction resulted from emotional maladjustment. With some noteworthy exceptions (P. C. Smith, 1955; Weitz, 1952), these early considerations of the dispositional source of job satisfaction lay dormant until the 1980s, when a series of provocative studies (Arvey, Bouchard, Segal, & Abra