Mediation of the Big Five’s effect on career decision making by life task dimensions and on money attitudes by materialism

Two studies examine a model in which the Big Five’s effect is mediated by domain specific variables. . Life Task dimensions were hypothesized to mediate the Big Five’s effect on Career Decision Making. Factor analyses found five Life Task and seven Career Decision Making factors. The Big Five were moderately predictive of Life Task (Mean R=0.23) and Career Decision Making (Mean R=0.31) factors. Regression revealed that the Life Task factor of Progress mediated the influence of Conscientiousness and Extraversion, but not Neuroticism on Career Decision Making. . Materialism and Status Concern were hypothesized to mediate the Big Five’s effect on Money Attitudes. Factor analyses found five Materialism-Status and six Money Attitude factors. The Big Five were moderately predictive of both Materialism-Status (Mean R=0.31) and Money Attitude (Mean R=0.29) factors. Regression revealed that several different Materialism factors mediated the effect of the Big Five on Money Attitudes. . In several cases the mediation model revealed that the direct effect of a trait on an outcome was actually an indirect effect channeled through a mediator. Additionally, the combined effect of traits and mediators was larger than the effect of traits alone (Mean R=0.49 study 1 and 0.61 study 2). This suggests that research examining the relation of traits to outcomes might be enriched theoretically and increased in predictive power by including mediators.