Negative effects of the situation and neuroticism on the conscientiousness-performance relationship

This study adds to the growing body of research on the interactive effects of personality traits and trait activation research. Despite conscientiousness being a consistent predictor of high task performance, we challenged this relationship and hypothesized that the positive relationship between conscientiousness and task performance would decrease for individuals who are exposed to an anxiety-provoking, achievement situation compared to individuals in an achievement situation. We examined two interactions and hypothesized that 1) when individuals were conscientious and exposed to an anxiety-provoking, achievement situation, task performance would decrease and 2) the relationship between conscientiousness and task performance would be lowest when highly conscientious and highly neurotic individuals were in an achievement-oriented, anxiety-provoking situation. Results support the idea that highly conscientious individuals have lower task performance when placed in an anxiety-provoking, achievement situatio...