Honesty leads to better job performance

Washington: A new study has revealed for the first time that the more honest and humble you are, the better is your job performance.

“This study shows that those who possess the combination of honesty and humility have better job performance,” said lead author Wade Rowatt, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University “In fact, we found that humility and honesty not only correspond with job performance, but also predicted job performance above and beyond any of the other five personality traits like agreeableness and conscientiousness,” he added. Rowatt and his colleagues surveyed 269 employees in 25 different companies across 20 states in the United States who provide health care for challenging clients. Supervisors of the employees in the study then rated the job performance of each employee on 35 different job skills and described the kind of customer with whom the employee worked. The researchers found that those who self-reported more honesty and humility were scored significantly higher by their supervisors for their job performance. They defined honesty and humility as those who exhibit high levels of fairness, greed-avoidance, sincerity and modesty. “Honest and humble people could be a good fit for occupations and organizations that require special attention and care for products or clients,” said study co-author Megan Johnson. “Narcissists, on the other hand, who generally lack humility and are exploitative and selfish, would probably be better at jobs that require self-promotion,” he added. The study currently appears online in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. ANI