The Person–Situation Debate Revisited: Effect of Situation Strength and Trait Activation on the Validity of the Big Five Personality Traits in Predicting Job Performance

Derived from two theoretical concepts—situation strength and trait activation—we develop and test an interactionist model governing the degree to which five-factor model personality traits are related to job performance. One concept—situation strength—was hypothesized to predict the validities of all of the "Big Five" traits, while the effects of the other—trait activation—were hypothesized to be specific to each trait. Based on this interactionist model, personality–performance correlations were located in the literature, and occupationally homogeneous jobs were coded according to their theoretically relevant contextual properties. Results revealed that all five traits were more predictive of performance for…