Personality and Individual Differences

This chapter focuses on the individual characteristics that mold workers' safety behavior. It begins with a timeline-based review of key personality traits appearing in the occupational health and safety literature. Then, the chapter explains how individual differences in cognition, age, and experience influence an employee's ability to respond to organizational hazards. It also discusses physiological predictors of safety outcomes, and provides several examples of behavior related to individual differences that lead to accidents and injuries. The chapter then talks about underrepresented areas of research and describes the recent shift from a singular lens of safety outcomes to multilevel interactional safety psychology, which includes the workplace environment and employee experiences at work. It talks about the Big Five, which comprises of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability or neuroticism, and openness to experience or intellect. The chapter concludes with a commentary on the direction of personality and individual differences research.