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The Big Five, Everyday Contexts and Activities, and Affective Experience
Joshua Wilt1, William Revelle2
1Case Western Reserve University.
Personality and Individual Differences
|October 9, 2018
Summary
Personality traits influence social contexts and activities. While traits and contexts affect emotions, their interactions in predicting affect are minimal, suggesting distinct influences on emotional experience.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Personality Psychology
Background:
- Personality traits are known predictors of social interactions and activities.
- Previous research links personality, company, and activity to emotional affect.
- Limited studies have investigated the combined influence of personality, context, and affect.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the interplay of Big Five personality traits, social contexts (company, activity), and momentary affect.
- To determine how personality traits predict engagement in specific contexts.
- To assess the main and interactive effects of traits and contexts on affect.
Main Methods:
- A 1-week experience sampling study with 78 participants.
- Data collection via mobile phones, assessing Big Five traits, current company, activity, and affect.
- Statistical analyses included Poisson regressions and multilevel models.
Main Results:
- Personality traits significantly predicted trait-consistent contexts; for example, extraversion correlated with increased social company.
- Multilevel models indicated main effects of traits and contexts on affect (energetic arousal, tense arousal, hedonic tone).
- Few significant interactions were found between personality traits and contexts in predicting affect.
Conclusions:
- Personality traits shape individuals' engagement in specific social and activity contexts.
- Both personality and context independently influence emotional experiences.
- The limited trait-context interactions suggest that personality and situational factors may exert relatively separate influences on affect.
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