Key Traits for Success as Franchisees

Key Traits for Success as Franchisees

Introduction

Personality traits are patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are relatively enduring across the life span. (Matthews, Deary & Whiteman, 2003) The history of personality psychology has witnessed the birth of numerous traits and trait models of personality. In the 1980s and 1990s, the five-factor model (FFM) ascended to popularity and is considered by many personality psychologists to offer a comprehensive trait taxonomy. (Wiggins, 1996)

The traits that constitute the FFM are extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Extraversion, sometimes referred to as surgency, is indicated by assertive, energetic, and gregarious behaviors. Neuroticism is essentially equivalent to emotional instability and can be seen in irritable and moody behaviors. Openness to experience, sometimes referred to as intellect, indicates an individual's inquisitiveness, thoughtfulness, and propensity for intellectually challenging tasks; whereas agreeableness is indicated in empathic, sympathetic, and kind behaviors. Finally, conscientiousness refers to an individual's sense of responsibility and duty as well as foresight.

The FFM was developed largely on the basis of the lexical hypothesis, which suggests the fundamental traits of human personality have, over time, become encoded in our language. Following this hypothesis, the task of the personality psychologist is to cull the essential traits from the thousands of adjectives found in language that distinguish people according to their behavioral dispositions. The lexical hypothesis can be traced back to the 1930s, and the advent of multiple factor analysis in that same decade provided an empirical method for culling these verbal descriptions. In the latter half of the 20th century, personality psychologists in fact relied primarily on factor analysis to discover and validate many of their trait theories (Matthews, Deary & Whiteman, 2003). A large number of personality psychologists have concluded that the FFM represents the most successful outcome of these efforts.

When people describe themselves and others, they tend to use trait descriptors. A trait is marked by the tendency to act, think, and feel in a certain way—over time and across situations. Terms such as disposition, construct, dimension, and personality variable have very similar meanings and psychologists often use them interchangeably.

Traits indicate that the probability of certain behavior is high, but they are not to be understood in a deterministic sense. Even the cruelest person will have moments of tenderness. Strictly speaking, traits describe behavior but do not explain it. Socialization or genetic factors can be used to explain how ...