Who do you care about? Scientists’ personality traits and perceived impact on beneficiaries

Abstract

We investigate the roots of scientists' perceptions of the impact of their work by examining stable psychological characteristics such as personality traits. An analysis of personality traits highlights the effects of policies related to gender equality, allocation of research time and skills acquisition. It improves our understanding of the conflicts related to scientists’ perceptions of the impact of their research on beneficiaries. For example, conscientiousness increases the perceived impact on clinical beneficiaries, but reduces the perceived impact on industrial beneficiaries. Organizational scientific freedom increases the effects of personality traits on perceived impact on beneficiaries such that scientists affiliated to a university are less likely than colleagues working in other research settings to perceive the simultaneous impact of their work on both industrial and clinical beneficiaries.

Publication
R and D Management

Highlights

  1. We investigate the roots of scientists' perceptions of the impact of their work by examining stable psychological characteristics such as personality traits.
  2. An analysis of personality traits highlights the effects of policies related to gender equality, allocation of research time and skills acquisition. It improves our understanding of the conflicts related to scientists’ perceptions of the impact of their research on beneficiaries.
  3. The data for this study were collected via an electronic survey of 4,758 biomedical scientists in Spain in April 2013.
Oscar Llopis
Oscar Llopis
Associated Professor

My research interests include university-industry interactions, citizen science, knowledge management in public and private contexts, scientific creativity, and social networks.