Criterion Aggregation in Personality Research: A Demonstration Looking at Self-Esteem and Goal Setting

Past research suggests that personality variables have little effect on work behaviors. To illustrate a more productive method of conducting personality research in organizational behavior, our study examines the hypothesis that aggregating measures of goal-setting behaviors across repeated observations on a particular task and across diverse tasks would increase the correlations found between self-esteem and these behavioral criteria. Subjects set goals and performed three trials on card sorting, anagrams, addition, and creativity tasks. Aggregating across trials on a particular task had only modest effects on the correlations of self-esteem with goals and performance. Aggregating across tasks and trials had a pronounced effect, particularly across the anagram and creativity tasks. The implications of these results for future personality research in organizational behavior are discussed.