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  • Are traits useful? Explaining trait manifestations as tools in the pursuit of goals

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    McCabePUB3044.pdf (875.1Kb)
    Author(s)
    McCabe, Kira
    Fleeson, William
    Griffith University Author(s)
    McCabe, Kira O.
    Year published
    2016
    Metadata
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    Abstract
    Traits and motivation mainly have been treated separately for almost a century. The purpose of these studies is to test the proposal that traits and motivation are intricately linked. Specifically, that 1 explanation for traits, at least in terms of their descriptiveness of what people actually do, is the goals people pursue. Study 1 used experience-sampling methodology to show that almost half the variance in extraversion and conscientiousness manifestation was explained by goal pursuit differences. Both why people enacted more of extraversion and/or conscientiousness than others, and why people enacted extraversion and/or ...
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    Traits and motivation mainly have been treated separately for almost a century. The purpose of these studies is to test the proposal that traits and motivation are intricately linked. Specifically, that 1 explanation for traits, at least in terms of their descriptiveness of what people actually do, is the goals people pursue. Study 1 used experience-sampling methodology to show that almost half the variance in extraversion and conscientiousness manifestation was explained by goal pursuit differences. Both why people enacted more of extraversion and/or conscientiousness than others, and why people enacted extraversion and/or conscientiousness at any given moment were explained by the goals people were pursuing at those moments. Study 2 used experimental methodology to show that extraversion and conscientiousness enactment was in fact caused by the goal pursuit. Study 3 employed observer ratings to show that the goal-dependent enactments of traits were observer-verified actual behaviors. In all 3 studies, different goals affected different traits discriminatively. Thus, these findings provided strong evidence for 1 explanation of traits, that they are useful for accomplishing goals. These findings provided 1 answer to long-standing questions about the conceptual relations between traits and motivation. And these findings clarified the meaning and nature of extraversion and conscientiousness by revealing part of what these traits are for.
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    Journal Title
    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
    Volume
    110
    Issue
    2
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039490
    Copyright Statement
    © 2016 American Psycological Association. This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record. Reproduced here in accordance with publisher policy. Please refer to the journal link for access to the definitive, published version.
    Subject
    Psychology not elsewhere classified
    Marketing
    Psychology
    Cognitive Sciences
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/142765
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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