Personality

Abstract

Individual differences matter for poverty reduction, but not in the way they are often conceived. Personality traits do not by and large take people into poverty, or keep them in it, just as they are not enough on their own, usually, to bring them out of it. Nonetheless individual differences in enterprise, perspective-taking and generosity can certainly make a difference to business growth, aid worker effectiveness, and charitable causes. Personality makes a difference. It does so when it is matched to the right circumstances, whether this is an economic recession, a disaster management site, or an aid project media campaign. Matching the right person to the right job makes a significant difference. Psychology itself is no exception. Measuring anxiety or depression in “the poor” risks inadvertently pathologizing people instead of enabling talents to shine. When personality tests are use to screen people ‘in’ to roles instead of screening them ‘out’ from roles, for example by banks who use psychometrics to boost their confidence in would-be entrepreneurs, then jobs are created; capacity boosted. This chapter takes the reader on a guided review of ‘how’ personality has figured in psychology’s studies of poverty, and how individual differences are taking on a new role—as a means of fitting or matching personality to opportunity. Macro development principles like alignment mean fitting job candidates to community as well as agency expectations for the role. Multiple indices of fit are a way forward for anti-poverty initiatives that seek to operationalize what alignment actually means, in everyday terms.

Research studies which follow the dispositional paradigm work like double-edged swords. While they may help in understanding the dynamics of poverty at the individual level, they can also become the basis for the victimization of the poor through creation of myths about them… the micro and the macro need to find convergence.

R. C. Tripathi (2010, pp. 211/12).