Predicting Individual Differences in Complex Skill Acquisition: Dynamics of Ability

Determinants
Ackerman, P. L. (1992). Predicting individual differences in complex skill acquisition:
Dynamics of ability determinants. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77(5), 598-614.
Since 1908 (Thordike) prediction of individual differences in performance during skill
acquisition was an important topic. Do the associations ability performance change or remain
stable during skill acquisition?
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
There are 2 theoretical bases in the discussion.
1. Theory of Controlled and Automatic Processing (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977)
- Distinction on the consistency of information-processing demands or relations
stimuli-responses
Consistency= a situation in which stimuli and responses are mapped in a manner that
allows for complete certainty once the relationships have been learned.
When a person handles each stimulus in the same way over a series of occasions,
consistency of information processing leads to a diminished demand of attentional
resources, and task accomplishment can be performed in an effortless manner.
Some tasks have high consistency, while others have inconsistent information
(vigilance jobs) and others have consistency that is not obvious to the learner (ex.
novel information); in the second and third case task accomplishment can require a
great degree of attentional resources.
Attentional demands imposed by inconsistent stimulus-to-response mappings do not
diminish with additional task practice -> inconsistent information-processing tasks do
not become easy to perform with practice.
2. Theory of Ability Determinants of Skill Acquisition (Ackerman, 1988)
The individual-differences basis for current research is the this theory, concerning
changes in ability-performance relations as a function of 3 task characteristics:
a) Consistency of information-processing demands,
b) Task complexity,
c) Degree of task practice.
- Integrates broad skill theories with an extended hierarchical model of
cognitive/intellectual abilities in the context of predicting individual differences in
 task performanceat several phases of skill acquisition

The cognitive phase is the first phase of skill acquisition, characterized by high
cognitive load on the learner in the context of understanding task instruction, general
familiarization with task goals, and formulating strategies for task accomplishment.
Once learner acquire the basic procedures (consistent information-processing is
needed, if there is inconsistence, further skill development will not take place), the
next phase takes place.
The associative phase of skill acquisition involves the proceduralization of task
strategies in a manner that makes performance quicker and less error prone. Fits &
Posner (1967) this phase is for strengthening associations between stimuli and
responses.
The autonomous phase is the final stage of skill acquisition and involves
automatization of task skills, such that performance of the task, once engaged by
learner, often proceeds with little or no attentional effort. Performance is highly
speeded and accurate.
Ability Structure (complexity of processing is linked with a higher association with
general ability) includes categories for abilities: content of information to be
processed, speediness of processing.
The integrated theory (Ackerman, 1988) based partly on analysis of ability measures
and nature of information processing and skill acquisition: a functional equivalence
exists between 3 broad classes of abilities and the three phases of skill acquisition.
i) The cognitive phase of skill acquisition is associated with demands on
general and broad-content abilities.
ii) The associative phase of skill acquisition is associated with demands on
perceptual speed abilities.
iii) The autonomous phase of skill acquisition is associated with demands on
psychomotor ability.
 Based on these 3 equivalences, for tasks with consistent information-processing
(validated by empirical research) demands, the theory specifies that as skills are
acquired:
a) Correlations between general and broad-content abilities and
performance will start high and then attenuate;
b) Correlations between speed ability and task performance will increase and
then decrease in magnitude;
c) Correlations between psychomotor abilities and task performance will
increase as the skill becomes automated.
For tasks with a substantial degree of inconsistent processing (validated only
through simple tasks – NOT complex, so not trustable)
i) Task performance at any level of task practice will be well predicted by
general and task-relevant broad-content abilities (e.g. spatial ability for
spatial tasks, verbal for verbal tasks etc).
ii) Correlations between perceptual speel and psychomotor abilities and task
performance will be constant throughout task practice.
Mixed information processing requirements constant vs 30% inconstant: individual
difference across task performance resemble with predictions of inconsistent tasks
AIM: expanding knowledge regarding cognitive ability determinants of individual
differences during skill acquisition for tasks that have substantial inconsistent
information-processing demands.
Criterion for task in the study:
- Represent complex skill acquisition
- Has substantial demands for inconsistent information processing throughout task
practice
- Has substantial overlap with the types of tasks encountered in real world
MAJOR GOALS:
- To validate Ackerman (1988) theory of the cognitive ability determinants of
performance during skill acquisition (for a complex task that requires a
substantial degree of controlled peocessing resources throughout task practice)
- To provide experimental basis for developing a tailored aptitude battery for
predicting the success of real-world air traffic controller trainees at various
stages of skill acquisition. (because the task is from a traffic controller job)
- Differences men vs women/ gender as a possible moderator (based on differences
in pass rates between men and women, not sure if for ability or risk taking).
RESULTS: men better in spatial ability; women better on perceptual speed;
performance was better for men overall
Predictions:
- For complex task (inconsistency information-processing demands like scanning,
decision making under time pressure, pairwise comparison of novel targets)
 1. Overall task performance predicted highly and consistently by general and task-
relevant broad-content abilities (i.e. spatial ability) as skills are acquired.
2. Overall task performance will show stable correlations with perceptual speed
ability and perceptual/psychomotor ability as skills are acquired.
- For task components with consistent information-processing requirements (airport
landing procedures, rules of safe airplane separation)
3. Tasks components with predominantly consistent information-processing
requirements that rely significantly on motor responses will show diminishing
correlations with general and spatial abilities and increasing correlations with
perceptual speed and perceptual/psychomotor abilities.
4. For consistent task components with minimal motor response demands (e.g.
declarative knowledge) initial correlations with general abilities will be high but
will attenuate as the information is learned.
METHOD
TRACON Task (Terminal Radar Approach Control)
Trial 16 overflight, 16 departures and 12 arrivals
Performance measure: all flights accepted - airplanes incorrectly disposed=overall
performance
Ability tests: reasoning, spatial ability, perceptual speed and perceptual-psychomotor
ability
Self report: self-monitoring activities, positive affect, negative affect/worry
102 participants, 61 male
ANOVA repeated measures, linear regression, T test
Final:
- Global general ability account for a substantial degree of individual differences in
performance throughout task practice.
- All predictions were supported.
 Overall performance for inconsistent processing highly and consistently
associated with general and broad-content abilities.
 Correlation between overall performance and perceptual speed/psychomotor
abilities were stable throughout task practice.
 For consistent information-processing demands initial high correlation with
general and content abilities. Correlation was attenuated for minimal motor
demands for all abilities.
 After task practice for motor response demands, increases in correlations between
component measures and perceptual speed/psychomotor abilities were found.
 Sex differences in performance (men better) cannot be attributed to experience
and practice, other sources like non-cognitive sex differences such as learning
versus performance orientation may be responsible for this effect./ or maybe
spatial information processing is different between them.
! data contradicts notion that validity coefficients must decline with task practice.
Major idea: information-processing demands moderates the relationship between ability and
performance with consistent information-processing demands (simple stimuli-response
associations) general and broad-content abilities and performance are highly related in the
first stages of learning, then attenuate and increase for motor and perceptual speed abilities
and performance. Inconsistent information processing held the relationship between abilities
and performance constantly high.
SO
Cognitive Ability and Job Performance Stable Over Time?
Murphy, K. R. (1989). Is the relationship between cognitive ability and job performance
stable over time? Human Performance, 2(3), 183-200.
- Focus on general cognitive ability
- Performance is viewed as overall job performance, not performance on a single
task
Job performance = a function of the individual’s performances on the specific tasks that
comprise standard job descriptions but also affected by variables like success in maintaining
good interpersonal relations, absenteeism and withdrawal behaviours, substance abuse, and
other behaviours that increase hazards at work. (task performance, OCB and CWB)
Overall performance – composite variable that reflects the extent to which individuals engage
in work behaviours that contribute to, or detract from, the achievement of goals associated
with their jobs.
Stability = extent to which the correlation between general cognitive ability and overall job
performance changes over time.
Instability does not imply random fluctuation; if the correlation between ability and
performance were to increase monotonically over time, this relationship, although systematic,
will not be stable.
AIM: explaining the relationship between one general mental ability and one overall criterion
(job performance) when performance is measured at different points in time, after different
amounts of training or practice, or at different points in the learning curve.
Evidence of instability:
- When the validity coefficients or intercorrelations among performance measures
collected at several different times are arrayed in a temporally ordered matrix, the
matrix take form of a simplex, in which correlations decrease as the interval
between measurements increase. While cognitive ability is stable, this pattern is
not expected if the influence of ability on performance is stable across time.
- Extensive practice on a task changes the correlation between cognitive ability and
task performance.
- General finding that abilities required for successful task performance change over
time. If the relation between ability and performance is stable, then we would
not expect it to change with practice.
- Ackerman sugest that the effects of practice on this relationship changes with the
type of task (consistent vs varied/inconsistent mapping of stimuli-response).In a
consistent mapping task: when task is new, general cognitive ability is involved;
with practice, information processing shifts from controlled to automated and
cognitive ability is not needed anymore for task performance.
 Two models to explain the effects of task practice: changing-task vs changing-
person model.
Changing task: the structure of task changes with practice.
 Changing-person: abilities and characteristics needed for task performance change
over time.
Both models are inconsistent with hypothesis that relationship between ability
and performance is stable over time.
This research suggest: abilities and characteristics that account for performance on
well-learned, well-practiced tasks are different than those that account for
performance on similar tasks that are new to the incumbent.
“honeymoon effect” – during an employee first few months on the job, the job may be
perceived as new and challenging, resulting in a high level of output and job
commitment. (Helmreich, Sawvin, and Carsrud, 1986); personality measures show
higher levels of validity after 6-8 months, than during first 3 months when is less
variability on job performance.
- Minor changes in the task can lead to significant changes in the validity of
different ability measures; the relation between ability and performance of the task
changes.
Boundary conditions for alternative models
Schmidt et al (1986) model suggested that cognitive ability is the single most
important cause of job performance and this relationship either stays the same, either
grows stronger with time. Evidences:
1. Cognitive ability show consistent evidence in predicting performance in
essentially all jobs. The validity of cognitive ability test is consistently greater or
equal to that of available alternatives like interviews, simulations or biographical
information blanks. So, cognitive ability has a strong causal impact, both directly
and indirectly (via acquisition of job knowledge) on job performance.
2. Job complexity moderates the relationship between cognitive ability and
performance. The more complex the information-processing demands of the job,
the higher the validity/relationship.
3. If complexity is held constant, the validity of cognitive ability test does not vary
substantially from job to job -> job complexity is the only moderator for the
impact of ability on performance.
A Dynamic Model of Job Performance
What do people do with cognitive ability that results in high levels of job performance?
Cognitive ability will be most important in situations where the worker has to learn new
procedures or techniques or where novel problems or job demands that require judgement on
the part of the employee occur.
Do these activities occur with the same frequency throughout an individual’s tenure on the
job?
Model takes in consideration 2 classes of individual difference variables:
 i) Abilities – individual differences in cognitive, physical and psychomotor ability;
relatively stable;
ii) Dispositional variables – individual differences in personality, interests, values,
and motivation; can be stable or variable.
CENTRAL ASSUMPTION: activities requiring/involving ability, particularly cognitive
ability, do not occur with equal frequency throughout a person’s job tenure. A person’s
tenure on a job can be characterized in terms of 2 stages: transition stages and
maintenance stages. The importance of ability and dispositional variables as cause of
performance vary across stages.
Transition stage
- Occur when a employee is new to a job, or major duties and responsibilities of the
job change.
- Job duties, procedures and methods of operation are new or undefined; workers
must learn new skills and tasks and make decisions about unfamiliar topics.
- Performance depends largely on general ability because:
a) Workers must acquire new information
b) Workers cannot rely on past experience but rather on sound judgement to
perform their jobs.
Maintenance stage
- Between stages of transition
- Major job tasks are well learned and can be performed with minimal mental effort.
- Job performance is a matter of executing well-learned procedures; individual
differences in job performance are not affected by differences in cognitive ability.
- Personality and motivational factors have a greater influence on job performance
than cognitive ability
Progression through stages
Duration and frequency of stages are a function of the person and the job.
Assembly line jobs have transition period short and most of the job is maintaining.
Managerial jobs have more transition stages
Within-Person Job Performance Variability Over Short Timeframes: Theory,
Empirical Research, and Practice
Dalal, R. S., Alaybek, B., & Lievens, F. (2020). Within-person job performance variability
over short timeframes: Theory, empirical research, and practice. Annual Review of
Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 7, 421-449.
Job performance = employee behaviour that is relevant to the accomplishment of
organizational goals. Includes:
 task performance (behaviour that contributes to the production of a good or the
provision of a service),
 OCB (behaviour that contributes to the organization by contributing to its social
and psychological environment),
  CWB (voluntary behaviour that harms or is intended to harm the well-being of
the organization and/or its stakeholders)
- proactive behaviour (anticipatory action that employees take to impact themselves
and/or their environment)
- creative behaviour (the production of novel, useful ideas or problem solutions)
- adaptive performance (behavioural modifications made in response to the
demands of a new or changing environment, or situational demands)
performance-behaviour = the same thing in this study
effectiveness= result of performance.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Long-timeframe job performance variability and its antecedents: historical overview
Is performance static or variable over longer timeframes?
Dynamic = changes in the rank-ordering of individuals in their performance over time.
Meta-analysis 22 studies between person Sturman et al. (2005):
- distinction between stability (degree to which performance scores stays the
same over time) and temporal consistency (degree to which performance
measures correlate over time).
- They tried to find if stability is a result of error in measurement of performance vs
a real change in performance
- Over 1 year stability was between 0.67 and 0.85, while temporal consistency
between 0.36 to 0.59
 Despite some stability, performance is a dynamic construct.
Antecedents of performance: ability, motivation.
Ability = capacity to perform.
Motivation = willingness to perform.
Work situation = opportunity to perform. -> influence the extent to which motivation and
ability can influence performance.
Ability domain
- Evidence on changing task model: importance of specific abilities as
determinants of performance fluctuates over time due to changes in work tasks.
- Compared to changing-person model: people’s abilities develop over time.
Ackerman (1988) theory of skill acquisition is evidence in changing task, since
propose that general mental ability plays an important role in early learning stages but
becomes less important as task experience increases. Task consistency is a moderator
in this case.
Murphy (1989) another variant of changing-task model: the importance of ability and
motivation in determining performance differs across job stages because the
situational characteristics of jobs change over time. In transitional job stage there is a
need to learn new things and cognitive ability is proposed to be an important
determinant of performance. This is less the case in maintenance stage, in which
motivation and more specifically personality are expected to emerge as performance
predictors. But, mixed support from Thoresen et al. (2004). Lievens et al. (2009)
showed extraversion to be important in later stages of medical profession as opposed
to the learning stages.
Baltes (1997) metatheory of selective optimization with compensation provides a
variant of changing-person model in that the person’s abilities and motivation
(including personality), and as a result performance, change over time as a function of
age (as opposed to task tenure/practice), thereby questioning the stability perspective.
Roberts et al. (2006) demonstrated that people become more conscientious, more
extraverted and less neurotic over time. Although the social investment principle
(young adults’ increased commitment to roles within social institutions, such as
family and work; Roberts et al., 2008) has emerged as a general explanation for
personality maturation during young adulthood (20 to 40), Tasselli et al.(2018)
posited that in organizational settings, personality can more generally change due
to both self-driven (self-development and self-actualization) and external processes
(unemployment, major career stages, and specific situational factors).
Ng & Feldman (2013): increases in conscientiousness and agreeableness likely lead to
task performance and OCB as well as lower CWB across the lifespan.
Whithin-person job performance variability over short timeframes
- The job performance literature has begun to appreciate the importance of within-
person variability across time and situations,
- An appreciable portion of the variability in job performance is attributable to
within-person sources: 48, 42 an 41% of the variability in task/job performance,
CWB and OCB was attributable to within-person factors (meta-analysis Podsakoff
et al., 2019).
- Effectiveness is influenced to a greater extent by situational factors
- Knowledge, skills, abilities and personality traits should be more important
antecedents of performance in longer timeframes, while personality states and
affective states should be more important in shorter time frames.
The study focus on variability over short timeframes: that is minutes, hours, days or at
most, weeks.
Performance variability = the change in an employee’s performance levels over
time and/or across situations.
 CAPS (Mischel & Shoda, 1995)
- posits that identical situational characteristics can result in different cognitions and
affects and, ultimately, different behaviour across people.
- There exists a stable pattern of reacting to specific situation given the person’s
unique perception of the situational characteristics = behavioural signature of
the personality; are stable within-person “if (situation) then (behaviour)”.
Density distributions theory (Fleeson 2001, Fleeson & Jayawickreme 2015)
- Short-timeframe fluctuations in personality can be observed as a situation-specific
behavioural expression of traits = temporal density distribution of personality
(trait relevant behaviour)
 - The distributions differ across persons, suggesting within-person personality
variability versus consistency as a stable individual difference
- Within-person personality variability and personality mean score can additively
and interactively predict within-person variability in job performance ( we can
additionally explain performance if we know how much variability in trait
expression a particular person displays across various situations)
Personality strength theory (Dalal et al. 2015)
- Recent theory from organizational psychology and behaviour
- Personality strength = the forcefulness of implicit or explicit internal cues
regarding desirability of potential behaviours; a strong personality reduces
variability in behaviour across situations within persons, thereby inoculating one’s
behaviour from the impact of the situation
- Compared to weak personalities, strong personalities not only experience a
weaker impact of experienced situations on job performance but also that -prior to
this- they more actively choose, shape, and interpret situations to be homogenuos
(trait-level consistent) with regard to their behavioural requirements.
AET affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano 1996)
- Discrete workplace events cause discontinuities in employees’ mood cycles (e.g. a
sudden increase in negative or positive affect). These discontinuities in turn affect
employee’s performance.
- Increases in negative emotions yield virtually immediate increases in CWB
(Suppresion). Increases in positive emotions improve receptivity to new
information, build resource capacity, and yield gradual increases in OCB as well
as creative and proactive behaviour. (appraisal)
- Changes in affect yield within-person variability in task performance through attentional
pull and affect regulation.
P11
Do personality states predict momentary task performance? The moderating
role of personality variability
Debusscher, J., Hofmans, J., & De Fruyt, F. (2016). Do personality states predict
momentary task performance? The moderating role of personality variability. Journal
of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 330-351.
Aim: To examine predictive validity of state personality for momentary task
performance. They study the relationship between state neuroticism and state
conscientiousness on one hand and momentary task performance on the other hand.
They test the boundary conditions of these relationships by examining the moderating
role of the extent to which a person fluctuates in his/her level of state neuroticism or
state conscientiousness across situations.

Traits and states: Two sides of the same coin

Personality traits have traditionally been considered to be relatively stable over time
and consistent across situations, with studies that show change/maturation in
personality traits occurs over a time span of several years. The behaviours, cognitions
 and affects that are characteristic of each of the personality dimensions are also
subject of short-term, situation-induced changes.
Momentary enactments of personality are personality states that are characterized by
instability over time and inconsistency across situations, and are often conceptualized
as responses to changes in the work environment.
Full understanding of personality can be obtained only when both personality traits
and states are taken into account.
These two are two sides of the same coin with traits pertaining to stable between-
individual differences, and states short-term variations in the behaviours, affects and
cognitions of interest.
e.g. people high in trait neuroticism are considered highly neurotic because they are
often in a highly neurotic state, while people low in trait conscientiousness are seen as
low in overall conscientiousness because they often experience low state
conscientiousness
Fleeson (2001) density distribution approach to personality:
- Because people behave, feel and think differently on different occasions, their
pattern of behaviour, feeling, and thinking can be summarized using a distribution
of states.
- From this distribution, the centre of gravity is a good indicator of trait personality
as it represents how the individual behaves, feels and thinks on average.
- In the density distribution of personality people are considered low/high on a
particular trait because they often experience low/high trait-relevant states.
Both the integrative approach of personality and the density distribution
approach to personality argue that personality argues that personality traits and
states are intertwined rather than counterparts, which implies that both should
be taken into account to arrive at a good understanding of the structure and
effects of personality.
The same reasoning is true for performance. Although stable between-individual
differences in performance exist and are important, Beal, Weiss, Barros, and
MacDermid (2005), in their episodic model of performance, demonstrated that
performance also changes considerably within a person over short periods of time.
 Performance varies both between and within individuals, with both sources of
variation being essential to fully grasp the concept of performance.
The personality-performance relationship: From traits to states
- Relationship between trait personality and general task performance has received
a lot of scholarly attention, but the states no.
This issue is important as it is known that between- and within-person variation
are two independent, orthogonal types of variation, with relationships at the
between-person being not readily transferable to the within-person level
(Hamaker, 2011).
 e.g. Vancouver, Thompson and Williams (2001) self-efficacy positively related to
performance at the between person level, while/whereas at the within-person level the
relationship reversed.
State neuroticism – momentary level of anxiety, distress and impulsivity
State conscientiousness – momentary level of orderliness, dutifulness and
achievement striving.
Two reasons for choosing these two dimensions:
1. Neuroticism and conscientiousness are the personality dimensions that best
predict performance. (Judge et al., 2008).
2. Neuroticism and conscientiousness have been found to vary as much within as
between individuals. (Heller et al., 2007).
Personality variability: Conceptualization and operationalization
Traitedness –is defined as the relevance of a personality trait for an individual’s
personality.
But was conceptualized in very different ways: Dwight et al. (2002) traitedness as the
extent to which trait-relevant behaviours co-vary within an individual. Following this
conceptualization, traitedness reflects the extent to which and individual has a strong
internal representation of a trait. Second conceptualization refers to the extent to
which an individual has similar personality states over time when being in same
situations (i.e., temporal within-person variability) – the extent to which identical
situations trigger the same personality related behaviours across time. Third way of
conceptualization for traitedness is as situational within-person variability, or the
variability in personality states across different situations; covers the extent to
which a person’s personality-related behaviour is sensitive to variation in the
situation.
The most used operationalization of situational within-person variability is to ask
people to report how much their trait-relevant behaviour varies across situations; with
low test-retest reliability, and prone to measurement error since involving reflection.
Present study use the density distribution of states, in which dispersion is most
important for reflecting how much one’s personality states vary across situations;
because has good test-retest reliability and outperforms self-reported measures.
There is also a third option that combines one measure with density distribution by
asking people to report on the relative frequency of occurrence of specific behaviours.
Hypotheses development
They expect state neuroticism to relate negatively to momentary task performance.The reason
is that , to perform at an optimal level, a person permanently needs to regulate negative
thoughts for them to not interfere with his/her normal functioning (Wallace & Newman,
1997). For a person high in neuroticism, this regulation mechanism gets disrupted more
easily because the person is more susceptible to automatic orientation of attention (any
instance where attention and cognitive resources are redirected from an ongoing process to
distractor stimuli or cognitions). So, an employee in a highly neurotic state will be distracted
more easily by irrelevant task cues, which results in lower levels of task performance.
Also, neuroticism is related to avoidance motivation, meaning heightened sensibility to
negative/undesirable stimuli -> a person high in neuroticism is more likely to detect negative
stimuli, which in turn lead to lower levels of task performance. People high in avoidance
motivation continuously focus on avoiding things that could go wrong, this uses up a lot of
the self-regulatory resources available to that person which cannot be invested anymore in
heightened performance. The negative relationship between state neuroticism and task
performance was already confirmed by another study.
H1a: State neuroticism relates negatively to momentary task performance.
They expect that the negative relationship between state neuroticism and momentary task
performance to be stronger for people who do not vary very much in their levels of state
neuroticism (i.e. people low on situational within-person neuroticism variability). The
expectation was builded on the idea that an individual performance can be better predicted
from his/her behaviour, feeling and thinking when this person shows a low variability of
those behaviours, feelings and thoughts. The idea was confirmed in between subject design,
Dwight et al (2002) showed that when a trait is high in traitedness, it predicts future task
performance better than when it is low on traitedness. Similarly, in affect literature Beal et al.
(2013) found that while people high on affect variability show a higher reactivity to
environmental or external cues, they react less strongly to internal feeling states. Following
this reasoning, they may expect that for people high in situational within-person neuroticism
variability, their state neuroticism levels will affect their momentary levels of task
performance to a lesser extent. For people with low situational neuroticism variability will
predict better the level of momentary task performance.
H1b: The negative relationship between state neuroticism and momentary task performance
will be stronger for employees who are lower in situational within-person variability than for
employees higher in situational within-person variability.
For conscientiousness they expect a positive relationship between state conscientiousness and
momentary task performance.
- For between the relationship is confirmed between trait and performance
motivation, which in turn benefits an employee task performance.
H2a: State conscientiousness relates positively to momentary task performance.
They expect the relationship between state conscientiousness and momentary task
performance to be stronger for people who vary less in their levels of state conscientiousness
(low in situational within-person conscientiousness variability).
- This lines up to Beal et al (2013) findings of lower levels of situational affect
variability are associated with increased reactivity to internal feeling states.
- Applied to conscientiousness as a state, situational conscientiousness variability
will moderate the relationship between state and momentary task performance.
H2b: The positive relationship between state conscientiousness and momentary task
performance will be stronger for employees who are lower in situational within-person
variability than for employees higher in situational within-person variability.
Method
Participants: from a company in financial sector 130 employees with 60% female mean age
39,3 years
Procedure:
- Baseline questionnaire: demographical variables, trait personality with Mini-
Markers scale.
- After one week experience sampling study with 2 electronic questionnaires before
noon and 2 in the afternoon; first questionnaire was random before noon and
afternoon and asked momentary level of neuroticism and conscirntiousness.
Second questionnaire 1 hour after the first and asked momentary level of task
performance.
- They chose 1 hour interval because of previous studies indicating so.
Measures:
- Traut and state neuroticism by Mini-Markers scale
- Trait and state conscientiousness same
- Task performance – seven item task performance subscale of Williams and
Anderson (1991), adapted to self-rated momentary assessment
- Situational within-person variability – calculated from the state scores of
neuroticism and conscientiousness by a explained method.
Analyses:
- Three-level regression analyses using Ime4 package in R (Bates, 2010
- See original study for explanation
Results:
H1a supported.
H1b – no statistically significant moderation effect
+ using between and within measures of personality and the momentary task performance,
results showed negatively relation in between-person differences in state neuroticism and
momentarly task performance, while within person differences in state neuroticism did not
relate to momentary task performance; no interaction was found when adding within person
situational variability.
H2a supported
H2b supported
+ within and between-person state conscientiousness: positive relationship between-person
state consciousness and momentarly task performance, same with within. Interaction within-
between was negative. Three way interaction significant with situation within-person
variability and the two state measures, suggesting that the within-person relationship between
state conscientiousness and momentary task performance is strongest for employees who are
low in within-person conscientiousness variability AND on average low on state
conscienciousness.
Discussion
The relationshipsthat have repeatedly been found at the trait level do generalize to the
situation-specific state level
 State personality significantly predicted momentary levels of task performance.
 For people low on trait personality, the state personality-momentary task
performance relationship is stronger for people whose level of state perdonality is
more consistent across situations than for those whose level of state personality
varies a lot.
 The trait level and the situational within-person variability represent different
features of a person’s personality.

Lievens, F., Ones, D. S., & Dilchert, S. (2009). Personality scale validities
increase throughout medical school. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(6), 1514-
1535.
Judge (2014)
- Whole trait theory of personality: - traits are distribution of personality states
-