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The influence of mood on self-reported personality

University of British Columbia

Self-report personality measures are commonly used across all of psychology, both in research and clinical settings. Given their ubiquity in psychological research and practice, it is important to characterize potential threats to the validity of self-report personality measures, so that this information can be considered during research design. One potential threat to the validity of self-report personality measures which has yet to be investigated is the influence of current mood state on self-reported personality ratings. The current research used an experimental, within-person design in two undergraduate samples to investigate: 1) whether current mood state in fact influences self-reported Big Five personality ratings or structure; 2) to identify whether these changes are primarily driven by a positive mood state, a negative mood state, or both; and 3) to explore potential moderators of this effect, including clinical disorder symptoms and the social desirability of the individual personality items. Study 1 (N=185) demonstrated an effect of current mood state on self-reported personality ratings, where individuals in a positive mood state rated themselves as more extraverted, more agreeable, more conscientious, and less neurotic than when they were in a negative mood state (ps<.03). The results from Study 2 (N=431) suggested that extraversion and openness to experience ratings were increasing in response to the positive mood state, whereas neuroticism ratings were increasing in response to the negative mood state. Clinical symptoms did not moderate the effect of mood on personality ratings, and the structure of the personality factors did not appear to significantly change between the mood conditions. Although the social desirability of the personality items did not moderate the effect of mood on self-report personality ratings in the models we tested, there was some evidence that highly socially desirable items were more stable in their ratings across mood conditions. Overall, the results from the current research provide evidence that mood state at the time of questionnaire completion can influence self-report ratings of certain personality traits. However, the size of the effect appears to be very small, and unlikely to represent a large threat to the validity of self-report personality measures under typical research conditions.

Text

2019-01-03

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/68160

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/