The relationship between the Big Five personality traits and earnings: evidence from a meta-analysis

Publication type

Journal Article

Author

Publication date

July 1, 2024

Summary:

This meta-analysis examines the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and earnings. The results reveal that openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion exhibit positive correlations with earnings, whereas agreeableness and neuroticism are inversely correlated with earnings. Overall, personality has a modest-to-small effect on earnings, with variations in results depending on econometric models used. Accounting for publication bias, socioeconomic background, and cognitive ability in models affects effect sizes. The findings also underscore the potential for omitted variable bias in the reported personality effects on earnings when relevant factors are omitted from the earnings equation.

Published in

Bulletin of Economic Research

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 76 , p.685 -712

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1111/boer.12437

ISSN

03073378

Subjects

Notes

Open Access

© 2024 The Authors. Bulletin of Economic Research published by Board of Trustees of the Bulletin of Economic Research and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Related Publications

#578263

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest