The Relationship Between Personality Traits, Self-Esteem, and Attachment at Work

This study explores the relationships between the Big Five personality traits, self-esteem, and attachment orientation at work. A total of 248 working adults (165 female and 83 male) completed the revised form of the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness-Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992), a self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965) and a self-report measure of attachment at work (Neustadt, Chamorro-Premuzic, & Furnham, in press). Principal component analysis identified two major attachment factors, namely secure/autonomous and insecure, which were significantly correlated with self-esteem and all five personality factors (as well as specific subfacets). Regression analyses showed that between 15–20% of the variance in secure and insecure attachment at work could be explained by personality traits and self-esteem. Self-esteem partly mediated the link between Neuroticism and insecure attachment; however, most associations between personality and attachment could not be explained by self-esteem. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.