Personality and psychological capital as indicators of future job success? : A multicultural comparison between three European countries

• Main Author: Brandt, T.
• Publication Date: 2011
• Other Authors: Gomes, Jorge F. S., Boyanova, D.
• Format: Article
• Language: eng
• Source: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Download full: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/25011
• topic: Personality; Psychological Capital; Culture

The main goal of this research was to study psychological capital and its relationship with personality across cultures. This was achieved by comparing the main variables across three distinct cultural settings: Eastern Europe (Bulgaria), Nordic Europe (Finland), and South Europe (Portugal). Altogether 231 people answered the questionnaires. Results indicated that personality and psychological capital were connected. In particular, Extraverted (p < 0.01), iNtuitive (p < 0.01) and Thinking people (p < 0.01) revealed higher scores in all psychological capital dimensions than their counterparts: Introverted, Sensing and Feeling people. There were also significant differences concerning the level of psychological capital in different countries. The Portuguese sample scored highest in all the dimensions of psychological capital, whereas Finnish indicated the lowest scores of the three countries. When all variables are taken together, results show that the highest psychological capital scores are observed in the “Portuguese perceiving” group; the lowest psychological capital scores are found in the “Finnish introverted” group. Bulgarians did not differ significantly in their scores. These results illustrate important and previously unidentified relationships between psychological capital and personality in distinct cultures. All together, and from a theoretical standpoint, the findings point to the need to explore the effect of culture on psychological capital; the relationships between personality and psychological capital also need further exploration. There are also practical implications, which are discussed at the end of the text. The fact that the questionnaires were collected from students in distinct scientific areas in the three countries may represent a drawback. Studies of psychological capital are very recent. After a first phase of instrument development, the next step is to build knowledge regarding the relationships between psychological capital and other well-established individual, social and organizational constructs. The current research aimed at contributing to this stream of works.