Matching personality expressions to situational demands, a concept referred to (implicitly or explicitly) in most personality theories, is considered adaptive for survival, wellbeing, and success. Numerous constructs and measures have been posited to address this, or similar, phenomena. However, psychometric and conceptual limitations have meant that few have proven adequate. In response, this symposium brings together five papers regarding a promising novel approach: Adaptive Personality Regulation (APR), “the ability or propensity to regulate personality expressions to meet situational demands”, assessed by the APR-index (i.e., the discrepancy between observer ratings of expressed personality and expert ratings of ‘optimal’ personality expression; Irwing, Cook, & Hughes, 2025). Paper 1 describes the conceptual and methodological development of APR, assessed by the APR-index, and reports relations with the Big Five personality traits, self-monitoring, and task performance in an experimental study and study of professional comedians. Paper 2 presents a fuller and more stringent test of the APR-index in an online assessment centre, assessing correlations with 11 other variables (e.g., GMA, Big Five, functional flexibility), and incremental prediction of task performance. Paper 3 extends these findings, examining how the APR-index predicts task performance assessed 9-11 months later. Paper 4 calculates the APR-index using observations of publicly available apology videos, examining predictive properties of performance (observer-rated and video comment analysis) in a real-world, incredibly high-stakes scenario. Finally, there will be an open discussion regarding potential uses of the APR-index, potential pitfalls, and next-steps in developing the underlying theory.
The idea that matching personality expression with situational demands is adaptive is common to many accounts of personality. Numerous constructs and measures have been posited to address this or similar phenomena. Few have proven adequate, with each circumscribed to specific situational (e.g. interpersonal) or experiential domains (e.g. emotion). In response, we proposed and tested a novel and more general measurement approach to rate participants’ success in matching personality expression with situational demands, the APR-index, which results from the discrepancy between observer ratings of expressed personality and expert ratings of ‘optimal’ personality expression. An experimental study (N = 88), in which participants had to perform in high and low extraversion tasks, and an observational study of comedian stand-up performances (N = 203) provided tests of whether the APR-index constituted a useful metric of adaptive personality regulation. In both studies, the APR-index showed robust psychometric properties, was statistically unique from self-rated Big Five personality traits, self-monitoring, and the general factor of personality expression. The APR-index also provided incremental prediction of task/job performance. This initial study suggests that the APR-index is a viable and predictively useful approach to assessing the phenomenon of successfully matching personality expression to situational demands.
Paper 1 assessed Adaptive Personality Regulation (APR) (i) in a single trait, across multiple tasks (high-low extraversion) and (ii) in multiple traits within a single task, thus serving as a useful proof of concept study. However, APR is proposed to be a general ability or propensity to regulate personality expressions to meet situational requirements. Thus, a fuller test would examine APR across multiple traits and situations. In this pre-registered study, 206 participants completed four tasks (presentation, group discussion, teaching, and critique) as part of an online assessment centre, with APR-index scores (observed personality – optimal personality) calculated using recordings of these tasks. CFA models revealed that APR generalizes across traits (e.g., those who regulated agreeableness well, also regulated extraversion) and situations (e.g., those who regulated well when presenting, also regulated when critiquing). Correlations and regressions revealed that the APR-index was weakly correlated with self-rated personality traits (r ≈ -.02 - .15), moderately correlated with functional flexibility (r = .19), emotion regulation (r ≈ -.03 - -.23), and cognitive ability (r = .14), and provided strong incremental prediction of task performance (average β = .46). Thus, the APR-index captures individual differences personality-situation matching and explains large proportions of variance in task performance.
Three of the major limitations/constraints on generalisability in Paper 2 were: (i) all tasks were interpersonal, (ii) performance was rated subjectively, and (iii) the APR-index and performance were rated in the same sitting. Paper 3 was designed to address all three through a stringent test that assessed performance on (i) solo-working tasks, (ii) scored objectively, (iii) completed 9-11 months later. Specifically, 160 participants from Paper 2 returned to complete two relatively simple tasks (proof-reading, comprehension), three relatively complex tasks (workplace situational judgement test, emotion management test, divergent thinking test), and two self-report measures of performance (task, creative). The APR-index, calculated 9-11 months earlier, explained significant proportions of variance in all tasks (β = .23–.46) but not self-ratings (β = -.02–.05). When controlling for the 11 other variables assessed in Paper 2 (e.g., GMA, Big Five, Emotion Regulation, Functional Flexibility) the APR-index explained incremental variance in performance on four of the five tasks (β = .22–.48), the only exception being proof-reading. That the APR-index, assessed in interpersonal tasks, predicts performance in unrelated tasks almost one-year later suggests trait-like (i.e., general and somewhat stable across time) capacity to match personality expression to situational demands.
Previous studies (excluding the comedian study of Paper 1) have taken place in experimental or lab-based settings, arguably with reduced ecological validity. Paper 4 describes the assessment of APR in the ecologically valid and very-high-stakes scenario of public apologies. First, experts identified NEO facets of relevance to public apologies, before trained raters assessed the expression of these facets within 202 public apology videos. The subsequent APR-index was used to predict eight apology quality dimensions (e.g. acknowledging responsibility, expressing regret) and video engagement metrics (likes-to-dislikes ratio, ChatGPT ratings of comments). The Agreeableness APR-index explained 50% of the variance in apology quality and the Extraversion APR-index predicted user engagement (e.g., video likes and comments), illustrating the utility of APR-index scores for explaining performance in high-stakes real-world tasks. Interestingly, some facets suggested to be relevant for apology performance by the experts were unrelated to apology quality, demonstrating the importance of identifying which facets are central to performance (and thus require predictable regulation of expressions) and which are peripheral (and thus can probably be expressed at varying levels without influencing performance).