The Role of Personality in the Initiation of Communication Situations

Abstract

Whereas a small number of studies have focused on the impact of extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism on the way people communicate, little is known about how the big five personality traits relate to individual differences in the specific types of communication-related situations selected in daily life. For a period of five days, people were asked to report on the types of conversations they initiated earlier that day (N = 168). Multilevel negative binomial regression analysis showed that the specific types of conversations initiated in daily life can be predicted by individual differences in extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. As such, the results show that individual differences in personality are not only reflected in the way people behave once they communicate, but also in the situations that people report to select in daily life.