A Meta-Analysis Of Personality And Workplace Safety: Addressing Unanswered Questions

Keywords

Accidents; Five-factor model; Personality; Safety; Safety climate

Abstract

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to address unanswered questions regarding the associations between personality and workplace safety by (a) clarifying the magnitude and meaning of these associations with both broad and facet-level personality traits, (b) delineating how personality is associated with workplace safety, and (c) testing the relative importance of personality in comparison to perceptions of the social context of safety (i.e., safety climate) in predicting safety-related behavior. Our results revealed that whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness were negatively associated with unsafe behaviors, extraversion and neuroticism were positively associated with them. Of these traits, agreeableness accounted for the largest proportion of explained variance in safety-related behavior and openness to experience was unrelated. At the facet level, sensation seeking, altruism, anger, and impulsiveness were all meaningfully associated with safety-related behavior, though sensation seeking was the only facet that demonstrated a stronger relationship than its parent trait (i.e., extraversion). In addition, meta-analytic path modeling supported the theoretical expectation that personality's associations with accidents are mediated by safety-related behavior. Finally, although safety climate perceptions accounted for the majority of explained variance in safety-related behavior, personality traits (i.e., agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism) still accounted for a unique and substantive proportion of the explained variance. Taken together, these results substantiate the value of considering personality traits as key correlates of workplace safety.

Publication Date

1-1-2015

Publication Title

Journal of Applied Psychology

Volume

100

Issue

2

Number of Pages

481-498

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037916

Socpus ID

84929717166 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84929717166

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