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How Personality And Individual Differences Affect Career Choice And Success

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This essay will discuss how personality and individual differences can influence and affect career choice and success. Personality is defined as a group of emotional, cognitive, and behaviour characteristics that make an individual unique (Matsumoto, 2009). Individual Differences psychology examines how individuals vary in their behaviour and personality and the processes that cause this to occur (Eysenck, 1987). While there are many different theories and ideas as to what job satisfaction actually is, the definition that will be used in this essay is a balance between the intrinsic rewards of satisfaction of the job itself, and the extrinsic rewards which are the associated benefits such as salary and position (Benet-Martinez, & Ozer, 2006). All people are born or develop qualities or ‘personality traits’ that can influence what career a person takes as well as what an employer is looking for, for example, introversion and extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness etc. These traits are thought to be expressions of behaviours that are consistent across situations and that all of a person’s personality traits would form the majority, if not all, of their personality (Buss, & Plomin, 2014). In career choice, and career satisfaction, these personality traits can be desirable in certain careers or undesirable in others. For example, a biologist working primarily in a laboratory may not need to have a high level of extraversion whereas a person employed in a bar would likely need

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