The Big Five at Work Part 3: Agreeableness
Agreeableness is a key component of the Big Five model and plays an important role in how individuals interact, collaborate, and build relationships at work. This article explores the science behind agreeableness, including what it is, how it functions, and why it matters for both individuals and organizations.
Key Takeaways on Agreeableness at Work
- The Agreeableness domain consists of two aspects: Politeness and Compassion. Each is broken further broken down into more specific personality facets.
- Agreeableness involves both top-down (deliberate) and bottom-up (automatic) cognitive processes, which influence how individuals think about and respond to others.
- Agreeableness is a strong predictor of interpersonal outcomes at work, including lower levels of counterproductive work behavior such as bullying, blame, and gossip.
- Higher levels of Agreeableness are associated with stronger workplace relationships, increased employee engagement, and lower turnover.
- Employees who are high in Agreeableness are more likely to support positive workplace environments through cooperation, compromise in conflict resolution, and pro-diversity attitudes.
- Agreeableness is also associated with pro-environmental attitudes, particularly through the Compassion aspect of the trait.
- Despite its many benefits, Agreeableness can be associated with greater leniency in evaluating others, lower goal-setting motivation, and small negative relationships with productivity and salary.
Background on Agreeableness
Think of the kindest and nicest person you know. It’s a safe bet that they are high on the Big Five personality domain of Agreeableness. Individuals who are high on Agreeableness are genetically predisposed to get along with others and follow social norms¹. They do this through two key aspects of this trait: Politeness and Compassion.
Politeness
Politeness occurs via a top-down cognitive process, meaning it’s part of our reflective processing system (i.e., requiring deliberate thought), and it involves logically considering others’ needs and refraining from doing things to harm them. This is comprised of three facets: cooperativeness, sincerity, and humility. Cooperative individuals are more accommodating and easygoing than argumentative and aggressive in how they respond to disagreements or frustrations. Sincere individuals are authentic, saying what they really think and feel instead of trying to influence people by being manipulative or ingratiating. Humble people admit their shortcomings and mistakes and avoid being boastful or thinking they are better than others and deserve special treatment. This helps them to exhibit accountability and avoid feeling mistreated easily and supports their overall ability to treat people with respect.
Compassion
Compassion occurs via a bottom-up cognitive process, meaning it’s part of our reflexive processing system (i.e., it is automatic and doesn’t require thought), and it involves sympathy and concern for the feelings and problems of others. It consists of the automatic ability to connect with people emotionally, which is one of the facets of empathy, and leads to a desire to help them.
Put more simply, individuals high on Agreeableness are more selfless, whereas those who are low on the domain are more selfish and prone to being antagonistic in their interactions with people to get their own needs met.
Agreeableness and Work Outcomes
Now think about toxic leaders you’ve worked with or heard about. It’s also a safe bet these individuals are very low on the domain of Agreeableness.
If you want to avoid hiring employees like this, then you would be well-served by not hiring those who are low on Agreeableness, as it is a very strong predictor² of interpersonal counterproductive work behavior (CWB) (-.39). Examples of such behavior include taking credit for others’ work, blaming people, bullying, harassment, and gossiping.
Another thing that can contribute to an unpleasant work environment via increased stress and diminished morale is high turnover. If organizations want to avoid this, they would be well-served by hiring those high in Agreeableness, as it has a moderately strong and negative relationship with actual turnover (-.27). Why is this the case? Likely because agreeable individuals have positive relationships with those they work with and these bonds make them more likely to stay. Conversely, antagonistic individuals have strained relationships with their coworkers and probably blame them or the company culture/ environment. This leads them to seek greener pastures.
Beyond just avoiding people who may contribute to an unpleasant work environment, if organizations want to contribute to a positive, welcoming, and motivating work environment, they should be interested in hiring those high on Agreeableness. That’s because it’s a strong predictor of pro-diversity attitudes at work (.29) and has a moderately strong relationship with employee engagement (.26), as well as with cooperative conflict resolution in the form of compromise (.26).
Environmental sustainability has been an increased area of focus for many organizations, with some having even incorporated it into their core values. If those companies are interested in hiring people who are most likely to align with this value, they would be well-served by hiring those high on the Compassion aspect of Agreeableness, as it is an unusually strong predictor of pro-environmental attitudes (.53).
It’s Not All Positive
While Agreeableness is overwhelmingly a good thing overall – it had effects in a desirable direction for 93% of variables in the most comprehensive research review to date – there are still some drawbacks. First, it has a moderately strong relationship with rating the performance of others with greater leniency (.25). This may cause performance issues to go unresolved and result in the promotion of less capable individuals.
Perhaps at least partially because Agreeableness is a strong predictor of self-acceptance (.33), it also has a strong negative relationship with goal-setting motivation (-.30), and goal-setting is one of the most effective ways to boost performance. Likely due to this, it also has a small but negative relationship with productivity (-.09) and, while more detrimental to the individual than the organization, it has a similarly small and negative relationship with salary (-.10).
Thus, one overall theme of Agreeableness is a focus on positive relationships and contentment, which, at least to some extent, comes at the expense of a focus on results.
Why a Holistic View Is Essential
The above theme highlights the importance of not only considering an individual’s standing on a single domain, but also evaluating their scores across the other domains, aspects, and facets of the Big Five. An individual’s traits can interact in complex ways and may either mitigate or exacerbate certain tendencies. So, in the case of someone who is high in Agreeableness, you would also want to know what their standing is on the domain of Conscientiousness and, in particular, their standing on the facet of achievement orientation. For example, a high score there would indicate a strong focus on setting and accomplishing challenging goals, thus lessening the concern that the individual may have less of a drive for results.
There is also much more to a person than just their personality. Therefore, personality scores should never be used in isolation to determine someone’s suitability for a role or to support their development.
The Importance of Thoughtful Application
That said, a Five-Factor Model (FFM) personality measure is a critical component of any well-designed and comprehensive selection and development system. And, when used properly, it can lead to powerful, positive results for both the individual and the organization.
¹This and all Agreeableness correlations, except where otherwise noted, were taken from: Agreeableness and Its Consequences: A Quantitative Review of Meta-Analytic Findings
²Strength of all relationships classified according to Evaluating Effect Size in Psychological Research: Sense and Nonsense
Keith Francoeur, Psy.D.