Examining the Role of Personality for Intra-Individual Processes: Cross-Level Interactions

1. Examining the Role of Personality for Intra-Individual Processes: Cross-Level Interactions Remus Ilies and Timothy A. Judge University of Florida

2. Old Questions – Old Methods • Old Questions: What is the role of individual differences in moderating • The relationship between mood and job satisfaction, or • The magnitude of emotional reactions to stimuli (mood induction) • Old methods: Moderated regression - cross-sectional data • Predict job satisfaction with mood, affectivity (e.g., negative affectivity), and their interaction (e.g., Brief, Butcher, & Roberson, 1995) • Predict mood with the valence of the mood induction, personality (e.g., Neuroticism and Extraversion), and their interaction (e.g., Larsen & Ketelaar, 1989)

3. Old Questions – New Methods • Old Questions [reframed]: What is the role of individual differences in moderating the within-individual relationships between mood and • endogenous evaluations such as job satisfaction, or • exogenous stimuli such as performance feedback • New method: Cross-level interactions in multi-level modeling • Use time sampled measures of both the dependent and the independent variables (i.e., across time) and model cross-level interactions in a multi-level framework

4. Cross-Level Effects • Example #1: Mood and job satisfaction across time • Ilies and Judge (OBHDP, 2002) • 27 individuals provided an average of 70 reports of momentary mood and job satisfaction over a 4-week period, from work • For each individual, one can compute the correlation between his/her mood and satisfaction scores across time • Then one can correlate the within-individual correlations with person-level variables (Neuroticism)

5. Within-Individual Correlations

6. Cross-Level Correlations • Across individuals, correlate personality scores with the within-individual correlations • For example #1 • Individuals’ Neuroticism scores were significantly correlated with their correlation of negative affect with job satisfaction at r=.36 • Thus, negative affect and job satisfaction were more strongly related for neurotic individuals than for non-neurotic individuals

7. Two Additional Examples • Theoretical Framework: Behavioral-Motivation Theory • Behavioral Approach System (BAS) and Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) regulate (a) individuals’ sensitivity to reward and punishment, and (b) their approach and avoidance motivation • The strength of the BAS and BIS (which is indicated by personality/affectivity) should influence the magnitude of individuals’ reactions to approach- and avoidance-relevant stimuli • Mood or job satisfaction spillover from work to home or home to work (example #2) • Reactions to feedback as reflected in state affect or goal setting (example #3)

8. Cross-Level Interactions • Example #2: Fifty-five individuals provided time sampled ratings for their momentary job satisfaction and mood from work (1,204 ratings) and from home (715 ratings; Judge & Ilies, under second review): • Within individuals, state evaluations of the job (i.e., momentary job satisfaction) will spill over to the off-work sphere by influencing mood at home • Furthermore, the magnitude of the spillover effect on positive and negative mood is moderated by positive and negative affectivity, respectively (affectivity as rated by significant others)

9. Moderating Effect of Trait Positive Affectivity on the Relationship Between Job Satisfaction at Work and Positive Affect at Home

10. Moderating Effect of Trait Negative Affectivity on the Relationship Between Job Satisfaction at Work and Negative Affect at Home

11. Cross-Level Interactions: Example #3 • The behavioral motivation systems regulate individuals’ goal regulation tendencies following performance feedback such as: • When feedback sign is positive, individuals scoring higher on Extraversion will have their subsequent goals influenced more strongly by feedback than those scoring lower on Extraversion • When feedback sign is negative,individuals scoring higher on Neuroticism will have their subsequent goals influenced more strongly by feedback than those scoring lower on Neuroticism

12. Example #3: Method • Internet study where student participants performed eight successive trials of the “uses” task, received feedback, reported mood after receiving the feedback, and set a goal before each trial (N=162 participants; 1,296 data points) • In order to simultaneously estimate different Level 1 parameters for positive and negative feedback, we followed Raudenbush, Brennan, & Barnett (Journal of Family Psychology, 1995) and used a system of dummy variables

13. HLM Equations Level 1 GOAL= b1i*X_neg + b2i*X_pos + b3i*PF_neg + b4i*PF_pos + rji Level 1 GOAL= b1i*X_neg + b2i*X_pos + b3i*PF_neg + b4i*PF_pos + rji Level 1POSITIVE FEEDBACK GOAL= b2i + b4i*PF_pos + rji Level 1NEGATIVE FEEDBACK GOAL= b1i + b3i*PF_neg + rji Level 2 Predicting level 1 coefficients with Extraversion and Neuroticism

14. Results: Moderator Hypotheses • Extraversion did not predict the effect of positive feedback on goals (i.e., positive feedback was not more motivating for extraverts) • Neuroticism did predict the effect of negative feedback on goals (β=.011, p<.02) (i.e., negative feedback was more de-motivating for neurotics) • Interpretation: for one SD increase in N, the regression coefficient increases by Δβ=.09 (Δβ=.07 [standardized])

15. When Feedback Valence Was Negative, Neuroticism Moderated the Effect of Feedback on Goals