Personality and Job Satisfaction: The mediating Role of Job Characteristics

This study tested a model of the relationship between core self-evaluations, intrinsic job characteristics, and job satisfaction. Core self-evaluations was assumed to be a broad personality concept manifested in 4 specific traits: self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and low neuroticism. The model hypothesized that both subjective (perceived) job characteristics and job complexity mediate the rela-tionship between core self-evaluations and job satisfaction. Two studies were conducted to test the model. Results from Study 1 supported the hypothesized model but also suggested that alternative models fit the data well. Results from Study 2 revealed that core self-evaluations measured in childhood and in early adulthood were linked to job satisfaction measured in middle adulthood. Furthermore, in Study 2 job complexity mediated part of the relationship between both assessments of core self-evaluations and job satisfaction. In the decade since Staw, Bell, and Clausen (1986) discovered a link between childhood personality and job satisfaction later in life, there has been considerable interest in the relationship be-tween individual dispositions and job satisfaction. Although this literature has had its critics, an accumulating body of researc