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Previous research showed that higher conscientiousness and lower neuroticism are associated with higher levels of perceived control or closely related constructs (Johnson et al., 2009; Kaiseler et al., 2012; Kandler et al., 2015; McEachan et al., 2010). Conscientiousness and neuroticism may be related to how one views life experiences and their inclination to adopt different approaches to coping with those experiences (ConnorSmith & Flachsbart, 2007; Kaiseler et al., 2012), which may affect their perceived mastery and constraints. For example, when facing aging-related challenges (e.g., increased losses), highly conscientious individuals may attempt to take constructive strategies and use planning and persistence to solve the problems (Connor-Smith & Flachsbart, 2007), which may help them maintain their beliefs about their ability to achieve goals.

Perceived control, encompassing the extent to which people consider the performance of a behaviour to be under their voluntary control (cf. Trafimow, Sheeran, Conner, & Finlay, 2002)

The Big Five personality traits (Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) were employed in this study as they are firmly entrenched within the nomological network (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955) of psychological theorists and are posited to be the highest order of personality traits (John & Srivastava, 1999)

like Extraversion, also predicted support seeking

Connor-Smith, J. K., & Flachsbart, C. (2007). Relations between personality and coping: a meta-analysis. Journal of personality and social psychology, 93(6), 1080.

Another point of view suggests that the illusion of control is beneficial (Langer, 1975; Taylor, 1989). The sense of control is assumed to have adaptive value even in the face of adversity because it provides the motivation to work hard to change one's plight in contrast to a sense of apathy or hopelessness (Seligman, 1975, 1991). (...)

Control in most everyday situations is not absolute, and outcomes are probabilistic. If individuals believe they have some degree of control, they may be more likely to take action even though there is no guarantee they will be successful.

The Sese of Control

In all three studies, the sense of control was operationalized with two dimensions: personal mastery and perceived constraints. Personal mastery refers to one's sense of efficacy or effectiveness in carrying out goals. Perceived constraints indicate to what extent one believes there are obstacles or factors beyond one's control that interfere with reaching goals. These dimensions are consistent with Skinner's (1996) two-fold conceptualization of control as comprised of competence and contingency.

In Studies 1 and 2, it was necessary to use a very short measure of control to meet the criteria for inclusion in the 30-min telephone interview. (...) Studies 1 and 2 included three items from Pearlin and Schooler's (1978) Mastery Scale and several new items developed to measure these constructs.

Personal mastery. In study 1, two items measured personal mastery: "I can do just about anything I really set my mind to," and "When I really want to do something, I usually find a way to succeed at it." Study 2 measured mastery using the same items as Study 1, but added a third item: "Whether or not I am able to get what I want is in my own hands." Study 3 added a fourth item: "What happens to me in the future mostly depends on me."  Respondents indicated the extent to which each of those statements described them using a 4-point scale in Study 1.

Perceived constraints. In study 1, perceived constraints was measured using four items on a 4-point scale. The items were as follows: "Other people determine most of what I can and cannot do," "There is little I can do to change many of the important things in my life," "I often feel helpless in dealing with the problem of life," and "What happens in my life is often beyond my control." In addition to these four items, Study 2 included a fifth item: "There are many things that interfere with what I want to do."

Study 3 included all of the items from Studies 1 and 2, as well as three additional items: "I have little control over the things that happen to me," "There is really no way I can solve all the problems I have," and "I sometimes feel I am being pushed around in my life."

Lachman, M. E., & Weaver, S. L. (1998). The sense of control as a moderator of social class differences in health and well-being. Journal of personality and social psychology, 74(3), 763.

Conscientiousness

Mediation effect: self-efficacy. Those with greater conscientiousness scores had higher self-efficacy, which was associated with less depressive symptoms.

Key points

• Neuroticism and extraversion are more closely associated with depressive symptoms in older adults than openness, agreeableness, or conscientiousness. (High neuroticism, low extraversion)

O'shea, D. M., Dotson, V. M., & Fieo, R. A. (2017). Aging perceptions and self‐efficacy mediate the association between personality traits and depressive symptoms in older adults. International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 32(12), 1217-1225.

Conscientiousness

Among the five main traits of personality, conscientiousness is one of the foremost and considered highly desirable. In individuals, high levels of conscientiousness are linked with health, well-being, and productivity. Conscientiousness is a vast aspect of personality that encloses individuals' tendency to control their behavior in socially acceptable ways (Roberts et al., 2009). Mount and Barrick (1995) defined it as a mixture of a desire to be dependable and reliable and, a desire to be achievement-oriented and preserving. It displays an awareness of the impact of their own behaviour on people around them. Goldberg (1992) stated that the main attributes which outline conscientiousness are organized, reliable, orderly, clean, precise, practical, efficient, and accurate v/s inefficient, disorganized, disorderly and impractical. As per Zhao and Seibert (2006) and Ansari (2003), motivation, persistence, individual degree of organization, and hard work for pursuing the main aim of accomplishment counts as a few conscientiousness components.

Self-efficacy

Many behaviour qualities are affected by self-efficacy. Bandura (1997) stated that self-efficacy is a belief of individual on their ability to implement behaviours important for creating performance achievements. (...) The social cognitive theory contains the construct of self-efficacy as a person's belief which enables him to manage environmental variations by taking adaptive actions (Romppel et al., 2013). All manners of human experience are influenced by such cognitive self-evaluation. The self-efficacy theory explains that persons only attempt those tasks which they believe they can accomplish, and avoid the tasks they believe they can accomplish, and avoid the tasks they believe will not be attainable (Bandura, 1997).

Larsen and Buss (2002) found that conscientiousness persons are more organized, reliable, practical and efficient. Bandura (1997) made it clear that self-efficacy is the belief of a person to implement behavior for the performance. And organized person believes more on his skill sets. Higher self-efficacy and conscientiousness are more expected variable for the performance of an employee (Chen et al., 2001). Thoms et al. (1996) showed in a self-managed workgroup that conscientiousness has an influence on self-efficacy and various studies were agreed on it Martocchio and Judge (1997), Chen et al. (2001) and Katz et al. (2014). Thus, on the basis of literature review the formulation of the hypothesis is as:

There is a positive effect of conscientiousness on self-efficacy.

Singh, S., & Bala, R. (2020). Mediating role of self-efficacy on the relationship between conscientiousness and procrastination. International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion, 11(1), 41-61.

It is examined whether self-efficacy mediates the relationship between personality and achievement. Conscientiousness was having the strongest effect on self-efficacy beliefs.

Association between personality traits and self-efficacy

Conscientiousness, on the other hand, is associated with industriousness, achievement motivation, and impulse control (Roberts et al., 2014). Naturally, the knowledge to have those traits fosters a solid belief in one's own capabilities to perform upcoming tasks (Fosse, Buch, Safvenbom, & Martinussen, 2015). Highly conscientious sale representatives, for example, were found to set higher goals and showed more commitment to set goals which resulted in better job performance (Barrick, Mount, & Strauss, 1993). Accordingly, it is plausible to assume that conscientiousness is linked positively to self-efficacy.

Recently, some findings have pointed to self-efficacy as a mediator variable. (안타깝게도 citation 이 여긴 없음). In a population-based sample, general self-efficacy was found to mediate the relationship between personality and perceived stress. The strongest mediating effect was seen for conscientiousness, although this personality factor was only moderately related to perceived stress. (...) Also, self-efficacy was found to mediate the relationship between personality and achievement in military academies (Fosse et al., 2015), and to partially mediate the relationship between conscientiousness and work performance (Brown et al., 2011). Other studies found that self-efficacy only mediated the relationship between conscientiousness and achievement for simple tasks (G. Chen, Casper, & Cortina, 2001) or could not support this mediation hypothesis (S. Lee & Klein, 2002)

Braul, D. (2023). Meta-Analytical Mediation Analyses: The Relationship between Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Self-Efficacy, and Scholastic Achievement.