Assessing Strengths and Weaknesses in Solving Work Problems: A Knowledge and Appraisal Personality Architecture (KAPA) Analysis of the Trait Conscientiousness and Self-Efficacy

Abstract

Our goal was to demonstrate the effect of personal strengths and weaknesses when solving work related problems among students enrolled in business courses. We predicted that each participant would uniquely activate personal knowledge (such as strengths and weaknesses) in situations idiosyncratically judged as relevant to his or her strength or weakness. 65 participants completed all the measures of a two-study program (37 participants in study 1 and 28 participants in study 2). At the outset of both studies, participants completed a card sorting task regarding the relevance of self identified (via a brief written narrative) personal strengths and weaknesses to work related problems. In both studies, we primed our participants with their personal strengths and personal weaknesses (counter balance session 1 and session 2) then assessed their self-efficacy for solving work related problems. In study 1 we also assessed the participants' perceived effectiveness at solving work problems. The results indicated that perceived self-efficacy varied as a function of the interaction between personal knowledge and appraisal of the situations. Participants who were primed with their personal strength (weakness) reported the highest (lowest) self-efficacy for the work problems that were relevant to their strength (weakness). The results also indicated that self-efficacy in turn mediated perceived effectiveness to handle work problems over conscientiousness.

The individual stem student in context: Idiographic methods for understanding self-knowledge and intraindividual patterns of self-efficacy appraisal.

“…Engineering students displayed relatively high (low) self-efficacy in those subsets of situations that they subjectively linked to positively (negatively) valenced knowledge that they possessed. This result, which to our knowledge is novel in the study of self-efficacy beliefs among students in higher education, replicates the pattern of results obtained in other domains (e.g., Artistico & Rothenberg, 2013;Di Blas et al, 2017).…”

“…Although not addressed in the present report, this question has been addressed in numerous prior studies using KAPA-model assessments whose structure paralleled the methods used here. In research on both addictive behaviors (Cervone et al, 2007) and coping with workrelated problems (Artistico & Rothenberg, 2013), self-efficacy appraisals were not assessed until 1 week after assessments of self-schemas and situational beliefs. In research relating knowledge structures to contextualized patterns of self-efficacy appraisal across a wide range of everyday circumstances, self-efficacy was assessed 2 weeks after prior assessments (Cervone, 1997(Cervone, , 2004.…”

“…In research outside of the academic domain, idiographically tailored assessments guided by the KAPA model have demonstrated the ability to predict intraindividual variations in self-efficacy appraisal. People consistently display a higher sense of self-efficacy in those situations in which positively valenced, rather than negatively valenced, self-schemas are most likely to come to mind (Artistico & Rothenberg, 2013; Cervone et al, 2008; Cervone, Orom, Artistico, Shadel, & Kassel, 2007; Di Blas, Grassi, Carnaghi, Ferrante, & Calarco, 2017; Orom & Cervone, 2009). Furthermore, experimental research supports a central KAPA-model prediction.…”

Nurses’ Cyberloafing and Its Relationship to Procrastination and Conscientiousness in Damanhour National Medical Institute

“…Furthermore, Ehrenberg et al defined conscientiousness to be an individual's ability to be careful and efficient which lead to improving task performance [48]. Other studies found that those who demonstrate high levels of trait conscientiousness are better performers than those who do not [49][50]. Conscientiousness has been known to be the strongest predictor of performance across multiple measures as stated by Neal et al [51].…”

Open Peer Commentary and Authors’ Response

“…Its assessment principles (Cervone, Shadel, & Jencius, 2001) facilitate identification of these patterns and their underlying causes (reviewed in Cervone, 2008;Cervone & Quirin, 2017). Researchers have employed KAPA-model theoretical principles and assessment methods to advance three other goals discussed by Baumert and colleagues: testing causal processes experimentally (Artistico & Rothenberg, 2013;Cervone et al, 2008), intervening for behavioral change (Scott & Cervone, 2016), and accounting for within-person variability while empirically integrating between-person and within-person methods (Di Blas, Grassi, Carnaghi, Ferrante, & Calarco, 2017).…”