Big Five Personality Traits and the Goal Setting Theory of Motivation - Thesis Example

The paper is divided into five chapters. The first chapter, introduction introduces the reader to the five traits of an individual’s personality and also defines conceptually how goals motivate a person to act in a certain manner and how personality traits influence goal setting. The second chapter introduces the reader to the previous researches done and discusses the studies of different kinds of literature related to this issue. The third chapter deals with the methodology or the approach of the dissertation and how we reach the findings in order to accept or reject the hypotheses.

The next chapter is that of findings where the observations of the primary survey are presented in order to find an association with goal setting and personality traits. The fifth section is also the concluding section where the findings are related to the hypotheses framed earlier and finally the reasons are analyzed logically based on the kinds of literature studied. While some of the hypotheses are accepted, some are rejected and some results do not conform to the traditional findings. The personality of an individual dictates the way in which a person will perform a certain task.

Hence, the ways a person behaves or conducts his or her activities are very much dependent on the characteristics features of the personality of that individual. There are actually innumerable personality traits. However, all these traits are not equally important in determining the ways in which an individual behave or performs his or her tasks. In the field of psychology, huge numbers of researches have been conducted to find out the personality traits that are important in directing a person is behaving in some particular way.

Five personality traits have been found to be most important in determining individuals’ behavioral patterns. These five traits include Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional stability or Neuroticism, and Openness to experience. These five personality traits are commonly known as the Big Five personality traits.