Relations between personality traits and self-reports of daily behavior

Abstract

This study investigates relations between personality traits and everyday behavior - an area of research that too often is ignored in contemporary personality assessment. Participants completed personality questionnaires and for 2 weeks kept daily records of behaviors related conceptually to 1 of 3 traits: aggression, exhibitionism, and impulsivity. Aggregating across time, correlations between 2 measures of trait aggression correlated .51 with behavioral aggression but only .14 and .18 with behavioral exhibitionism and behavioral impulsivity, respectively. Trait exhibitionism and trait impulsivity demonstrated similarly clean convergent/ discriminant correlational patterns with the three types of behaviors. Many individual behavioral items also showed significant correlations with corresponding personality traits. Results are discussed in terms of using personality-behavior relations to further understanding of personality. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.