Browsing by Subject "Big Five"

Both personality and achievement goal orientations have been related to learning based on previous studies. In this study, the term personality is approached through The Big Five theory, which describes five personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, consciousness, and agreeableness. Achievement goal orientation refers to an individual’s tendency to react and be motivated in performance situations in a certain way. While goal orientations and personality have been studied a great deal, the connections between the two not much. Therefore, further research on this topic is highly needed. The purpose of this study is to further clarify the nature of goal orientations and personality, and what is already known about the connection between the two. This study is a systematic literature review. The data of this review consisted of six research articles published in a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. The articles were found through systematic literature searches. The literature was collected using online databases, such as Google Scholar and the Helka database of the University of Helsinki. Articles including search terms such as “goal orientation”, “achievement goal orientation” and “personality” were included, as well as combinations of these and their Finnish equivalents. In addition, the literature was obtained by utilizing the sources used in the articles already found. The data were used to analyze the results of the relationship between goal orientations and personality. Based on this study, goal orientations have connections to some, but not all, personality traits. Learning goal orientation is related to all personality traits except neuroticism. The connections of performance-avoidance orientation to personality traits are the opposite of those of learning orientation. Some of the results were contradictory, such as the connection between performance-approach orientation and personality traits. The results were also partly incomplete, especially in terms of performance orientation, as there has been little research on the issue. This study creates the base on which to build empirical research. The intention is to continue researching the topic empirically in a master's thesis using data from the projects Mind the Gaps and Bridging the Gaps funded by the Academy of Finland.