Emotionally stable: Robustness of personality scores to emotional states

Prior research has demonstrated a link between personality and emotion; however, the causal direction between these constructs remains unclear. Further, mixed findings in the literature have been found for the influence of emotional states on personality assessment scores. The current study investigated the impact of state affect on personality assessment scores across emotions. Participants ( n = 235) were randomly assigned to one of four emotion manipulation conditions: happiness, calmness, anger, or sadness. Personality was assessed in the same sample over two assessment occasions, the latter of which included an emotion manipulation component. The results demonstrated that personality assessment scores were stable within individual over time despite manipulated emotion states. Further, the emotional state manipulations, varying in valence and activation level, had little to no significant effects on assessment scores between individuals. Those findings that were found to be statistically significant did not result in substantive differences in score interpretations. These findings provide evidence to support the notion that personality assessments are robust to the effects of transient emotional states and time, providing confidence in their use for organizational purposes.