INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS THAT IMPACT TRUST IN VIRTUAL TEAMS

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1 INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS THAT IMPACT TRUST IN VIRTUAL TEAMS Kimberly Furumo Assistant Professor of MIS College of Business and Economics, University of Hawaii at Hilo 200 W. Kawili Street, Hilo, Hawaii Emmeline de Pillis Associate Professor of Management College of Business and Economics, University of Hawaii at Hilo 200 W. Kawili Street, Hilo, Hawaii ABSTRACT Studies have identified the importance of trust in lowering transaction costs and increasing effectiveness in teams. Transaction costs are lower when trust is high because individuals who trust each other feel less compelled to monitor or double check the work completed by others. In this study, the impact of individual personality dimensions on perceived trust is examined for individuals working in virtual teams. An experiment was conducted with participants randomly assigned to virtual teams to complete a project. Results of the experiment show that four of five personality dimensions studied impacted levels of trust in virtual teams. Keywords: Virtual teams, Human Computer Interaction, Big Five Personality dimensions, trust Introduction Efforts to organize a taxonomy of personality traits began in the mid-1930s (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Since that time, researchers have converged their views of the structure and concepts of personality, generally agreeing that there are five main factors of personality: extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. These five factors have been referred to as the Big Five or the five-factor model. Studies of the five personality dimensions suggest a relationship with job performance and satisfaction (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Barry & Stewart, 1997; DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Judge, Higgens, Thoresen, & Barrick, 1999; Levitt, Thomsen, Christiansen, Kunz, Jin, & Nass, 1999; Kirkman, Rosen, Gibson, Tesluk, & McPherson, 2002). Research related to how these Big Five personality dimensions impact the performance of individuals in teams is limited, however, studies suggest that there may be a link (Straus, 1996; Barry & Stewart, 1997; Levitt et al., 1999; Thatcher & De La Cour, 2003). In this study, we examine whether an individual s personality impacts his/her level of trust in virtual teams. Trust has been identified as a critical influence in virtual team performance. Virtual teams, composed of members who are geographically dispersed, interact via information 515

2 and telecommunications technologies. Some of these teams are permanent work groups and others are temporary, forming when needed to complete a specific project. In this study, the focus is on temporary project teams that are formed to complete a specific task. LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT Trust Trust has been defined as the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). A lack of trust exists when one party does not have faith in the competencies of another or questions the motivation of the other to take the promised action as seriously (van der Smagt, 2000). So, trust can be seen as a relationship between two or more individuals in which one perceives that the others are involved, are competent, will complete their fair share of the work, and will make an honest effort to meet commitments. Trust is important in teams because it lowers transaction costs (Watson-Manheim & Belanger, 2002). Individuals, who do not trust fellow team members, are more likely to monitor or double check each other s work to insure the quality of the team s output. This self-protective activity increases the amount of time and resources needed to complete a project. While trust is important in all teams, it is crucial in virtual teams where members generally do not meet faceto-face. In virtual teams, trust becomes an important component in preventing psychological distance (Snow, Snell, & Davison, 1996) and it increases confidence in relationships by promoting open information exchange (Jarvenpaa, Knoll, & Leidner, 1998). Trust is often referred to as the glue that holds the virtual team together. Not surprisingly, trust has been identified as a determinant of effectiveness in virtual teams (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999; Walden & Turban, 2000). Output produced by a well-functioning team should be superior to the output of any single individual since teams allow for better idea generation and the benefits of synergy that occur from multiple viewpoints. Individuals who trust each other typically will be more satisfied with the team experience as well. While trust logically leads to better team performance and satisfaction, what impacts trust? Jarvenpaa & Leidner (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999) found that communication behaviors had an impact on trust in virtual teams. Individuals, in teams whose members had early communication that was social in nature, were more likely to report trust early in the team experience. Later on, predictable and timely communication of team members impacted trust levels. Positive leadership and the team s ability to handle technical uncertainty have also been found to impact trust (Jarvenpaa et al., 1998; Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999). To really understand trust, it is important to understand which factors impact trust. While this might seem like a cat and mouse game, ultimately it is necessary for researchers to look for root causes. Individuals influence how communication, leadership, and uncertainty are handled in teams. So ultimately, individual traits need to be analyzed for insight into why teams succeed or fail. One avenue for exploration is how individual personality traits impact individual trust in teams. 516

3 Personality Traits McDougall (1932) has been credited with launching the effort to systematically organize a taxonomy of personality (Barrick & Mount, 1991). He analyzed various personality dimensions and came up with five factors that he titled intellect, character, temperament, disposition, and temper (McDougall, 1932). For the next 40 years, researchers continued efforts to expand on McDougall s work, finding that their data fit well with minor modification of the five dimension model (Cattell, 1943; 1946; 1947; 1948; Fiske, 1949; Tupes, 1957; Tupes & Christal, 1961; Norman, 1963; Borgatta, 1964; Hakel, 1974). Two of these studies stand out as important. First, Borgatta s (1964) study identified five stable personality factors even when several different methods were used to gather the data. Second, Norman (1963) formally labeled the dimensions as extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and culture and from that point forward, they have been referred to as Norman s Big Five, the Big Five, or simply the Five Factor Model. Since the 1980s, research has identified compelling evidence for the robustness of the five personality dimensions across different theoretical frameworks (Goldberg, 1981), using different instruments (Conley, 1985; Costa & McCrae, 1985; McCrae & Costa, 1985; 1987; Costa & McCrae, 1988; McCrae & Costa, 1989), and with different cultures (Noller, Law, & Comrey, 1987). Research has also shown that the five factors affect individual response to stress (McCrae & Costa, 1986) and occupational interests (Costa, McCrae, & J.L., 1984). While researchers generally agree on the number of factors, there has been some disagreement about how to label these factors. The five factors are measured along a continuum with high levels on one end and low levels on the other. The first factor, extraversion has also been referred to as surgency or disposition in various studies. It refers to the quantity and intensity of an individual s interpersonal activity (Bruck & Allen, 2003). Individuals with high levels of extraversion are sociable, gregarious, assertive, talkative, energetic, and optimistic while individuals with low extraversion are more reserved, independent, and quiet (Barrick & Mount, 1991). The second factor, emotional stability has also been labeled neuroticism or temper. Individuals with low levels of emotional stability (high neuroticism or temper), exhibit anxiousness, depression, anger, embarrassment, worry or insecurity (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Individuals high in emotional stability are even-tempered, relaxed, and easily handle stressful situations without getting upset while those with low emotional stability have more difficulty controlling their impulses when dealing with stress (Bruck & Allen, 2003). The third factor has been called agreeableness, likeability, or temperament and refers to an individual s interpersonal tendencies. Individuals high in agreeableness are helpful, cooperative, good-natured, sympathetic and tolerant of others. Individuals low in agreeableness are characterized as egocentric, competitive, irritable, and skeptical of other s intentions (Bruck & Allen, 2003). The fourth factor, conscientiousness or dependability, assesses individual differences in planning, organizing, and executing tasks. Individuals high in conscientiousness are purposeful, determined, reliable, organized, and strong-willed. Individuals low in conscientiousness are more lackadaisical in working toward goals, careless, aimless, and unreliable. The fifth dimension has been called openness to experience, culture, or intellect. This factor identifies how open an individual is to new experiences. Individuals high in this dimension exhibit an active imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, intellectual curiosity, and independent 517

4 judgment. Individuals who score low on this dimension show conventional and conservative behavior and prefer familiar situations (Bruck & Allen, 2003). In the past 15 years, several studies have analyzed the impact of the big five personality dimensions on various work-related variables including job performance, career satisfaction, salary levels, job training, sustained attention and perceived workload. Extraversion has been positively related to salary levels, promotions, and career satisfaction (Seibert & Kraimer, 2001) and success in two occupational categories (sales and management) that require extensive social interaction (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Extraversion was also associated with lower performance on vigilance tasks that require individuals to maintain a high level of concentration over extended periods of time (Davies & Parasuraman, 1982; Kirkman et al., 2002), and higher training proficiency (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Emotional stability was found to be negatively related to career and life satisfaction (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Seibert & Kraimer, 2001) and was correlated with self-reported stress and frustration levels (Hills & Norvell, 1991; Kirkman et al., 2002) and perceived frustration with workload (Kirkman et al., 2002). Individuals with low levels of emotional stability (high neuroticism) also reported higher levels of work-family conflict. However, there is some evidence that individuals low in emotional stability perform better on the job (Barrick & Mount, 1991) possibly because they anticipate a problem in every situation and thus are prepared when difficulties arise. Agreeableness was not found to be a predictor of job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991) but has been negatively related to career satisfaction (Judge et al., 1999). Studies have also identified a negative relationship between agreeableness and salary among individuals in peopleoriented occupations (Judge et al., 1999; Seibert & Kraimer, 2001). Conscientiousness was positively related to the careful and thorough accomplishing of tasks on the job (Barrick & Mount, 1991). These individuals were found to have a strong sense of purpose, obligation and persistence which helped them to perform better than those who were low in conscientiousness. These individuals showed enhanced performance in vigilance tasks (Kirkman et al., 2002) and conscientiousness was positively related to training proficiency (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Individuals with high levels of conscientiousness report higher levels of life satisfaction (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998). Previous studies have yielded limited findings regarding Openness to Experience. Openness has been negatively related to salary level (Seibert & Kraimer, 2001), possibly because these individuals involve themselves in a variety of work experiences rather than staying in the same line of work where they would eventually be promoted and experience higher salary levels. Openness has also been found to be a valid predictor of training proficiency across occupational categories (Barrick & Mount, 1991). While studies of the big five personality dimensions and job outcomes have focused primarily on job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991), salary levels (Seibert & Kraimer, 2001), life and career satisfaction (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Judge et al., 1999) and job training (Barrick & Mount, 1991), and sustained attention and perceived workload (Kirkman et al., 2002), a few studies have analyzed the importance of personality in teams. Extraversion was positively correlated with levels of participation in computer-mediated teams (Straus, 1996; Barry & Stewart, 1997) even though it did not impact satisfaction with the group s process (Thatcher & De La Cour, 2003). Neuroticism was negatively correlated and extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were positively correlated with self-efficacy, or confidence in abilities, in selfmanaged work groups (Levitt et al., 1999). 518

5 While research of how personality influences outcomes in the work place is preliminary, it seems likely that individual personality does impact work taking place in teams. In the absence of well established theory, it is necessary to take an exploratory look at the impact of individual personality. For this reason, the following general hypotheses were developed. H1: Individual s with high levels of extraversion will report significantly different levels of trust than individuals with low levels of extraversion when working in virtual teams. H2: Individual s with high levels of conscientiousness will report significantly different levels of trust than individuals with low levels of extraversion when working in virtual teams. H3: Individual s with high levels of agreeableness will report significantly different levels of trust than individuals with low levels of agreeableness when working in virtual teams. H4: Individual s with high levels of neuroticism will report significantly different levels of trust than individuals with low levels of neuroticism when working in virtual teams. H5: Individual s with high levels of openness to experience will report significantly different levels of trust than individuals with low levels of openness to experience when working in virtual teams. To test the hypotheses, individual measures of personality and perceived trust were obtained for individuals working in both virtual and face-to-face teams. METHODOLOGY Experimental Design A controlled experiment was conducted to test the research model. Participants in the study were upper level college students enrolled in a management course at a mid-sized university in the Midwestern United States. Students were randomly assigned to 3-member virtual teams. They were given a week to complete a project in which individuals were given a portion of the information needed to complete the project. Individuals were required to work together to develop a final report for a fictional CEO. At the conclusion of the experiment, individual students were given two surveys to complete. One was designed to assess personality traits and the other to measure the individual s perceived trust in the team. Data collected from the study participants were analyzed using ANOVA analysis. Students used WebCT, an instructional software package, to complete the team project. WebCT allows users to participate in and discussion board facilities with assigned members of a team without divulging individual identity. Prior to the start of the experiment all participating students were trained on the WebCT software package. Students completed three assignments requiring them to use the various features of the software. This helped insure that variations among participants were not the result of unfamiliarity with the technology. To further reduce unmeasured variability, students were eliminated from the study if they had had a previous virtual team experience or if one or more of the team members dropped the class before the completion of the experiment. The usable sample consisted of 353 subjects. The students ranged in age from 19 to 50 with a mean age of years and 39.1 percent were female while 60.9 percent were male. In reality, many virtual team members have some face-to-face contact. However in this study, individuals in the virtual teams never met face-to-face and were instructed not to reveal any personal information about themselves during the course of the project. On the day the project 519

6 was assigned students were given a personalized printout, providing them with their team number and written instructions about how to complete the project. Students who were randomly assigned to the virtual teams were given the WebCT addresses of their team members and instructed that they would receive a failing grade if they attempted to meet in person or communicate any personal information about themselves to the other team members. WebCT collects a stream of all communications that take place on-line and students were informed that the instructor would review the communication stream to insure that they did not violate the confidentiality guidelines. Review of the communication stream uncovered inappropriate communication in two teams and these individuals were eliminated from the study. Data Collection Instruments While a variety of measures have been used to measure the Big Five personality dimensions (John, Goldberg, & Angleitner, 1984; Trapnell & Wiggins, 1990; Costa & McCrae, 1992; Goldberg, 1992; Saucier, 1994), current research is still trying to identify the underlying components of the Big Five personality dimensions. Because of the complexity of the human personality and the need to better understand the factors which make up the latent constructs (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, and neuroticism), researchers have recognized the need to develop personality scales that are non-proprietary and available to the academic community for research (Goldberg, 1999). A scientific collaboratory to develop advanced measures of personality traits was established by Lewis R. Goldberg and Gerard Saucier through a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (Goldberg & Saucier, 2001). A collaboratory is a computer-supported system that allows scientists to work together by sharing facilities and databases without regard to geographical location (Finholt & Olson, 1997). As a result of Goldberg and Saucier s scientific collaboratory, a non-proprietary big five personality scale has been developed. Many of today s personality scales are based on the lexical hypothesis which subscribes to the idea that human personality can be encoded or described in the lexicons of the world s languages (Goldberg, 1999). To do this, researchers first identified traits or personality markers as adjective descriptors (John et al., 1984; Goldberg, 1992; Saucier, 1994). For instance, an extroverted individual was described in descriptors such as energetic or talkative. Once these descriptor traits were identified, it was easier to develop scales with adequate construct validity. Tests of the scientific collaboratory s non-proprietary big-five scale yielded high coefficient alphas and correlations with Goldberg s (1992) personality markers. The scale is composed of 20 items for each of the five personality dimensions with coefficient alphas ranging from.88 to.91 (Pool, 2001). To assess perceived trust levels, a scale developed by Jarvenpaa, Knoll, and Leidner (1998) was used. Their scale is based on previous instruments developed by Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) and Pearce, Sommer, Morris, and Frideger (1992) to measure the level of trust in dyads. Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1998) modified these instruments to reflect the team rather than a dyad by testing the two instruments at two different time points and across cultures. Both measures of trust were correlated but the Pearce, Sommer, Morris, and Frideger (1992) instrument had higher reliability (α =.92) and thus it was used as the basis of their modified survey. After testing, Jarvenpaa reduced the 8-item scale to a 6-item instrument with a five-point Likert-type response scale anchored on one end with strongly agree and the other with strongly disagree. Cronbach s alpha for the scale is

7 P P P Trust RESULTS Scale Validation To assess the validity and reliability of the scales, Principal Component Factor Analyses using orthogonal rotation were performed and Cronbach alpha coefficients were obtained. The 100 personality items, 20 per trait, loaded on five distinct dimensions as predicted. Several items (1 on the emotional stability scale, 4 on the openness scale, and 3 on the agreeableness scale) were eliminated due to cross loadings on more than one dimension. Scales appear in Appendix A. Composite scores were calculated for each of the personality dimensions by calculating an average of the items that were not eliminated. Cronbach s alphas for each of the scales were.945 for extraversion,.918 for conscientiousness,.943 for emotional stability,.881 for agreeableness, and.854 for openness. All six items of the trust scale loaded on 1 factor with item loadings ranging from.712 to.865 and accounting for 61.19% of the total variability. All items were retained and an average composite score was developed to reflect the individual s level of trust. The Cronbach s alpha for the scale was.869. Independent Variables Scores for each of the personality dimensions were further refined so that individual s with the lowest and highest ratings for each of the personality dimensions were identified and studied. Individual scores lower than one standard deviation from the mean were coded as low on the personality dimension while individuals whose scores were higher than one standard deviation from the mean were coded as high for the personality dimension. Individuals in the low and high groups were then compared to determine whether their trust levels were significantly different. The usable sample size for each of the tests varied depending on how many individuals scored plus or minus one standard deviation from the mean. Personality Traits and Trust To test the relationship between personality traits and trust, ANOVA analyses was completed. Table 1 provides a summary of the results. Individuals who were highly extraverted reported significantly higher levels of trust in the virtual teams than individuals who were highly introverted (low extraversion). Individuals who were high in extraversion reported average trust of 3.94 (on a 5 point scale) compared with 3.43 for those with low extraversion (FB1,54B = 5.153, p =.027). Low High F test Significance Extraversion mean = 3.43 mean = 3.93 F1,54 = p =.0272 Conscientiousness mean = 3.47 mean = 3.84 F1,71 = p =.0412 Agreeableness mean = 3.36 mean = 4.11 F1,50 = p =.0012 Neuroticism mean = 3.52 mean = 4.03 F1,59 = p =.0142 Openness to Experience 1 2 mean = 3.79 mean = 3.61 F1,56 = p = Table 1: Mean Trust LevelsP P for Individuals in Virtual Teams scores ranged from 1 to 5 with 1 being very low and 5 being very high. PSignificant at α <

8 Highly conscientious and highly agreeable individuals also reported significantly higher levels of trust than low conscientious (FB1,71B = 4.348, p =.041) and low agreeable (FB1,50B = , p =.001) individuals. Individuals who scored the highest levels of neuroticism also reported significantly higher levels of trust than individuals who had low levels of neuroticism (FB1,59B = 6.472, p =.014). Finally, there were not significant differences in trust levels between individuals who were high and low in terms of openness to experience (FB1,56B = 0.716, p =.401). These results indicate that hypotheses H1, H2, H3, and H4 were supported while hypothesis H5 was not. Individuals with lower levels of extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism reported significantly lower levels of trust than individuals who had high levels of the personality dimensions. However, an individual s level of openness to experience had no impact on the level of trust reported. Discussion and Conclusions In this study, we hypothesized that the Big Five personality dimensions would predict levels of trust when working in a virtual team environment. Results indicated that this held true for extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism. It is not surprising that individuals with high levels of extraversion reported more trust in virtual teams. Previous studies have shown a positive correlation between extraversion and the levels of participation in computer-mediated teams (Straus, 1996; Barry & Stewart, 1997). And Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1999) found that teams whose members had early communication that was social in nature were more likely to report higher levels of trust in virtual teams. Past studies have linked low levels of agreeableness with egocentric, competitive, and skeptical behavior by individuals (Bruck and Allen 2003). It could be argued that these behaviors are not conducive for teamwork and perhaps these individuals are less trusting in general and not well suited for participation in virtual teamwork. Individuals who scored high in conscientiousness are purposeful, determined, reliable and organized. They also reported higher levels of trust in the team. Perhaps these individuals take charge in the virtual team setting, completing a large share of the task. If this is the case, they may be more trusting of their efforts because they feel they have control over the final product. Individuals who score low in conscientiousness tend to be more lackadaisical and aimless and perhaps had less involvement in the virtual team than their counterparts. Surprisingly, individuals who were highly neurotic reported higher levels of trust than those who had low neuroticism. This seems to be somewhat counterintuitive. Since individuals with low neuroticism tend to be relaxed and even-tempered, we expected that they would be better suited for the virtual team environment and thus report higher levels of trust. However, just the opposite was true. These findings may lend support to the findings of Barrick and Mount (1991) which suggest that individuals high in neuroticism perform better because they anticipate that there will be a problem in every situation and thus are prepared when difficulties arise. The findings of this exploratory study offer insight for organizations that utilize virtual teams. We believe it is noteworthy that trust levels are predicted by the personality characteristics of the individual rather then the situation. Since trust is an important component in virtual team success, managers may want to pay close attention to the dimensions of their employees personalities and assign individuals who are extraverted, conscientious, agreeable and neurotic to virtual teams. 522

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