The Relation Between Personality and Contextual Performance in "Strong" Versus "Weak" Situations

Abstract

Abstract Both a laboratory and field study investigated the extent to which the strength of behavioral cues in simulated and actual job performance situations moderate the relation between measures of broad personality dimensions and contextual performance behaviors. Extending Mischel's (1977) conceptualization of strong and weak situations, it was hypothesized that personality and contextual performance behavior would be most strongly correlated when there were only weak cues, and less correlated when there were strong cues. Results indicated that personality-contextual performance correlations varied across situations with different expectations for performance.