Coaches, hiring managers, and career counselors use personality assessments for many reasons – to guide people into careers, to help organizations select the right people, and to support employee development. To date though, there has been no large-scale research that has explored how personality traits actually differ across occupations. For example, are certain jobs composed of highly extraverted individuals? Addressing this, new research (Anni et al., 2024) studied the personalities of over 68,000 people in 263 occupations.
PERSONALITIES IN DIFFERENT OCCUPATIONS
The researchers used a large sample of Estonian participants who filled out several personality measures (i.e., Big Five and narrower facets) along with their job titles. Next, the researchers coded the job titles into groups (e.g., software developers). They found that these occupational groups accounted for 2% to 7% of the variation in scores of the Big Five personality traits. This indicated that while personality traits differ across jobs, there is still substantial variation attributed to other factors.
The researchers also calculated average Big Five scores for each occupation and produced an interactive tool that is available online. Ship engineers were highest in conscientiousness, advertisers were highest in extraversion, electronics engineers were highest in agreeableness and openness, and actors were highest in neuroticism.
Occupations with higher average levels of extraversion and conscientiousness tended to have more similar employees. This is likely because people are either drawn to these jobs or selected into them because they possess a certain level of the trait. The study results were confirmed using personality ratings provided by other people, such as by a spouse.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
The researchers’ interactive tool can be beneficial in helping people identify career paths that are right for them, as well as those that may be poor matches. Interestingly, occupations tended to vary the most in the traits of extraversion and openness, which could be two domains to prioritize when searching. Still, personality is just one piece of the puzzle; people also bring unique skills, knowledge, and other abilities that should be considered when trying to match individuals to jobs.
Anni, K., Vainik, U., & Mõttus, R. (2025). Personality profiles of 263 occupations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 110(4), 481–511.
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