Personality and Information Seeking: Understanding How Traits Influence Information-Seeking Behaviors

Abstract

Organizational newcomers go through various socialization processes before becoming organizational veterans. Information seeking (a self-socialization process) involves newcomers' proactively seeking new information, most times to reduce uncertainty. This study assessed how personality traits, specifically, Costa and McCrae's Big Five, affect this process. Multiple regression analyses indicate that certain traits influence information seeking directly and via the mediation of social costs. Of particular note are the results surrounding extroversion. Specifically, the data suggest a direct relationship between extroversion and covert relational information seeking, whereas perceived relational social costs also mediate this relationship. Several important extensions to the literature are discussed herein.

Making Things Happen: A Model of Proactive Motivation

“…At the same time, they recognized that conscientious individuals, because of the strong "industrious element" of conscientiousness that is about being hardworking and dependable (Roberts, Chernyshenko, Stark, & Goldberg, 2005), will want to achieve a good fit within the organization. Other studies have similarly found conscientiousness to predict proactive PE-fit behaviors, such as career planning (Carless & Bernath, 2007) and information seeking (Tidwell & Sias, 2005).…”

Big Five Factors of Personality and Tourists' Internet Search Behavior

“…Previous studies on personality and information search behavior have focused on the influence personality has on the use of word of mouth , information behavior in general (Heinstrom, 2006;Hyldegard, 2009;Tidwell & Sias, 2005), decision process (Horton, 1979), and information processing (Schaninger & Sciglimpaglia, 1981). McElroy, Hendrickson, Townsend, and Demarie (2007) argue for the use of the BFF in information studies, as these are less mutable compared to other personal variables.…”

“…age, income) that might change over time. Within the information-search context, personality has been applied to explain students' information searching (Heinstrom, 2005), the use of word-of-mouth (Mowen, Park, & Zabla, 2007), and the preference for information type (Tidwell & Sias, 2005) with a significant relationship being observed in each case. Despite these findings confirming the influence of personality on informationsearch behavior, few have examined its influence in tourism settings, where the Internet is believed to be an influential information source.…”

Predictors of Organizational Socialization of Instructors in Higher Education

“…For example, review of antecedents and outcomes of socialization, Bauer et al (2007) reported that information gathering, which could be realized through the availability of knowledge sharing, is a significant antecedent of socialization. Knowledge means reduced uncertainty (Iqbal, Toulson, & Tweed, 2011) and contributes to self-socialization (Tidwell & Sias, 2005).…”