The Effect of Personality and Coping on Perceived Work Stress among the White-Collar Workforce in Hong Kong

Abstract

The relationship between personality dispositions and active coping with three work stress dimensions i.e. job satisfaction, physical stress, and psychological distress were studied among 173 white-collar Chinese adults in Hong Kong. Results indicated that neuroticism and conscientiousness, indexed by the Goldberg’s IPIP Lexical Big Five Scale, were correlated with the work stress variables. The other three personality factors i.e. extraversion, openness, and agreeableness showed no correlation with any of the work stress variables. Comparing the two personality factors, neuroticism demonstrated greater prediction on the variance in the work stress dimensions. Type-A behavioral pattern surprisingly showed no correlation with any of the work stress variables. Active coping was found to be positively correlated with job satisfaction and negatively correlated to both physical stress and psychological distress. Nevertheless, active coping did not moderate neither of the work stress outcome. These findings suggested that among all the personality traits, neuroticism is an important personality trait for the perception of work stress.