Does Personality Matter? A Review of Individual Differences in Occupational Well-Being

In the context of occupational health psychology, personality has usually been depicted from the perspective of single traits, dispositions, or their combinations. However, there is a clear need to better understand personality as a whole. For this reason, an integrative framework of personality is presented in order to give a more comprehensive and cohesive picture of how the different personality constructs relate to each other. In recent years, several holistic models of human personality have been presented. For example, such models have been formulated by Dan McAdams (1995), Brian Little (2007), Robert McCrae and Paul Costa Jr. (1999), and Brent Roberts and Dustin Wood (2006). In this chapter, we briefly introduce one of these models, that is, the three-tiered conceptual framework of personality by McAdams and his colleagues (McAdams, 1995; McAdams & Adler, 2006; McAdams & Olson, 2010; McAdams & Pals, 2006). This comprehensive and multifaceted model conceptualizes human personality via a developing pattern of (1) dispositional traits, (2) characteristic adaptations, and (3) constructive life narratives (see Fig. 1). Each of these three levels possesses its own characteristics for describing and understanding personality.