Openness to Experience as a Predictor of Job Performance Trajectories

The present study used a longitudinal design to examine the relationship between openness to experience and 4-year job performance trajectories for a sample of 129 newly employed professionals. For the typical person, performance increases decelerated over time, plateaued at 2.93 years, and then started to decline thereafter. Openness was not significantly related to initial performance differences or the initial linear rate of growth in performance; however, the performance of individuals high on openness decelerated at a slower rate and started to decline at a later point in time than that of individuals low on openness. We discuss the implications of our findings for theories of job performance and for the use of openness measures in selection contexts.