Stress and Decision-Making at Workplace: Investigating the Moderating Effect of Personality Traits

Abstract

Today in this competitive world people dealing with stress at work is common and thus finding out stress reduction factors becomes critical. This paper checks the moderating effect of Personality Traits on the relationship between ‘Work Stress’ and ‘Decision-Making’. The five big personality traits have been measured: Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience as personality factors. The research digs into the complex interplay between work stress, personality traits and decision-making effectiveness based on the extensive prior literature and empirical evidence.

The data were collected from 263 professionals across diverse industries in Taiwan, employing a structured survey-based methodology. A quantitative research methodology has been used and statistical data have been analysed using SPSS 27.0 and SmartPLS 4.1.

The findings highlight that work stress negatively affects decision-making quality, with personality traits such as neuroticism playing a pivotal moderating role. While traits like agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion and openness to experience show their indirect moderating effect, however, low neuroticism buffers against stress, enabling better decision-making under pressure, additionally, high neuroticism exacerbates stress’s detrimental effects. These insights provide a deep understanding of how personality factors influence decision-making processes in high-stress environments.

The contribution of this study extends the stress-decision-making framework by incorporating personality traits. It also offers practical implications, especially for decision-makers to manage the stressful situations at their workplace and manage their talent by understanding individuals' personality traits