Personality and Social Network Characteristics
Among different personality theories the trait perspective showed to be most useful in
predicting behavioral outcomes that result from aggregation of events across situations (Ozer &
Benet-Martinez, 2006). The Five-Factor Model of personality traits, the Big Five (Goldberg,
1990), is broadly used in contemporary research to predict such life outcomes as quality of
relationships on the interpersonal level, and occupational choice, job satisfaction and
performance at the social institutional level.
Few empirical studies linked personality traits to the social network structure, as
summarized by Table 5. Burt et al. (1998) confirmed the idea that personality varies
systematically with structural holes. Recent studies also investigated how the certain personality
types might affect the structural position of the individual in the network. Klein et al. (2004)
looked into the effect of demographic characteristics, values and Big Five personality traits on
the network centrality. In particular, they found that individuals that are highly educated and low
in neuroticism (high on emotional stability) became high in advice and friendship centrality and
low in adversarial centrality. Surprisingly, openness to experience was negatively correlated to
friendship centrality. Klein et al. (2004) explained that team members find their open colleagues
an irritation, may be due to the fact that they challenge established routines and norms.
The effect of other personality characteristics on the network structure has also been
investigated. So, Mehra et al. (2001) examined how self-monitoring orientation and network
position are related to workplace performance. Additionally, Casciaro (1998) investigated how
personality traits (need for achievement, need for affiliation, self-monitoring and extraversion)
and situational factors (position in the hierarchy, work status and network centrality) affect the
ability to accurately assess the social network structure. However, none of these studies
explicitly addressed the mechanisms of how Big Five personality traits and structural position
interact across time and affect innovation.