Keeping Calm and Carrying On: Relating Proactive Personality, Affect Spin, and Affect Pulse to Learning and Adaptive Task Performance

Abstract

The purpose of this laboratory study involving 214 undergraduate students learning a complex videogame was to address the gaps in the empirical literature regarding the non-cognitive traits that comprise the construct of adaptability, specifically proactive personality and two aspects of affect variability—spin and pulse. Proactive personality was hypothesized to positively impact performance through effort. Two mechanisms for the influence of affect variability were hypothesized: (1) undermining effort directly and (2) undermining the effort-performance relationship. Results showed that proactive personality explained no additional variance in effort or performance beyond the Big Five personality dimensions. Affect variability negatively impacted performance through both of the proposed mechanisms, and also by directly undermining performance. It was theorized that these results are due to the additional cognitive resources required to regulate emotion, along with the haphazard application of performance strategies driven by emotion fluctuations. Implications for a better understanding of the traits that comprise adaptability are discussed, specifically people’s capacity to be successful in environments characterized by unexpected changes in task demands or the need for sustained effort and continuous learning. Keywords: Proactive personality, affect variability, skill acquisition, adaptive performance, complex task learning, self-regulated learning