Linking Proactive Personality and the Big Five to Motivation to Learn and Development Activity

Key Takeaways:

• People with proactive personality are relatively unconstrained by situational forces, tend to set high standards, and harness all available resources into achieving those standards
• Proactive personality captures the willingness and determination to pursue a course of action, characteristics that are central to models of self-development
• Proactive personality has been linked to objective and subjective indicators of career success [...]
• Proactive personality was positively related to innovation, political knowledge, and career initiative, all of which, in turn, had positive relationships with career progression and career satisfaction
• Research has shown consistent positive relationships between proactive personality and two Big Five factors: Conscientiousness and Extraversion
• In one study, proactive personality was also positively correlated with openness and negatively correlated with neuroticism
• Proactive personality also had a significant indirect effect on development activity. Motivation to learn was positively related to development activity