Eva Asselmann is Professor of Differential and Personality Psychology at the University of Potsdam. She just published a book, “Where We Grow” (unpublished in French), in which she explains how our personality is shaped and how it affects our professional life. The daily The world, who interviewed her, recalls that Jaap Denissen, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands, had already shown that people who have a job corresponding to their personality earn up to a month of extra salary per year.
Eva Asselmann goes in the same direction and explains that there are the “Big Five”, five outstanding personality traits: openness to new experiences, sense of organization and precision, extroversion, pleasantness and emotional stability. These five components were put forward by Lewis Goldberg in 1981 then by Costa and McCrae in the years 1987-1992. Today, it is easy to determine one’s psychological profile by doing fairly simple tests. We can then deduce what type of work suits us. And if it suits us more, we will derive greater satisfaction from it, we will be better and we will earn more, says Eva Asselmann.
“There is often a strong match between skill and fun. In other words: the things we like to do, we do them well. So it makes sense to go in that direction.”
According to her, the people most open to others are often the most creative and must absolutely avoid routine and repetitive tasks, while the most agreeable people excel in teamwork, but, not knowing how to negotiate well, are often poorly paid.
However, there is no question of setting limits and not taking up challenges. It is not because a task seems difficult to us that we cannot achieve it. Eva Asselmann gives three tips for achieving this:
- “When we believe in ourselves and our skills, we are much more likely to get things done.”
- “You shouldn’t condemn yourself for your mistakes, but see them as something that helps you do better next time.”
- “A good exercise is also to defuse thoughts: instead of thinking about the worst-case scenario, you can also imagine the best-case scenario.”
Finally, if your personality influences your career, the reverse is also true. This is the conclusion of Eva Asselmann, after studying the latest German socio-economic panel, in which around 20,000 to 30,000 people have been interviewed each year in Germany since 1984. According to the researcher, the start of a career, retirement or certain significant events can lead to changes in behavior, even personality, more important than the birth of a child!