What happens when we act out of character? Concurrent, lagged and cumulative effects of counterdispositional conscientiousness.

In work and organizational psychology, there traditionally has been great interest in predicting work-related behaviors and outcomes from personality traits–or stable individual differences in the habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. Whereas this has led to an accumulation of knowledge, the exclusive focus on traits is at odds with a recent call in the literature to conceptualize personality in a more dynamic and integrative way. With the present proposal, we
respond to the call for an integrative approach to personality by studying how stable traits and volatile states dynamically interact when individuals go through everyday working life. We specifically focus on conscientiousness as this is the personality dimension that is most predictive of a wide range of work-related behaviors. Drawing on the Behavioral Concordance Model, which theorizes that behaviors discordant to one’s trait level are demanding and effortful to maintain, we test the possibility that high momentary levels of conscientiousness might be beneficial only for people high in trait conscientiousness. For people low in trait conscientiousness, in turn, we expect high momentary levels of conscientiousness to be detrimental. By studying not only the positive but also potential negative effects of conscientiousness, this project adds to a growing number of studies that shows that constructs that are widely accepted to lead to desirable results may sometimes backfire.