The intermediation effect of psychological capital in the relationship between personality characteristics and job satisfaction: A research on public employees in Kırşehir province

The aim of the study is to investigate whether psychological capital plays an mediator role in the relationship between five factor personality traits and job satisfaction on public employees working in Kırşehir. For this purpose, a questionnaire was applied to 391 public employees working in Kırşehir Province. The scale developed by Benet, Martinez and John in 1998 was used to measure personality traits. The scale developed by Weiss, Davis, England and Lofguist (1967) and adapted to Turkish by Baycan (1985) was used for job satisfaction measurement. For psychological capital, psychological capital scale developed by Luthans, Avolio, Avey & Norman (2007) and adapted into Turkish by Çetin and Basım (2012) was used. According to the results of the regression analysis, the emotional balance dimension, which is the sub-dimension of the five factor personality traits, has negative and significant effects on the internal job satisfaction dimension, while the extraversion and agreeableness dimensions have positive and significant effects. On the other hand, the agreeableness dimension, which is a sub-dimension of the five factor personality traits, has a positive and significant effect on the external job satisfaction dimension. In addition, emotional balance, which is one of the sub-dimensions of five-factor personality traits, has a negative and significant effect on psychological capital, while the dimension of extraversion has a positive and significant effect. Psychological capital has positive effects on internal and external job satisfaction dimensions. In terms of the mediation effect, it was observed that there was a full mediation effect of psychological capital between the five factor personality traits, emotional stability and extraversion, and internal job satisfaction, while the psychological capital had a partial mediation effect in the compatibility dimension, which is another personality trait sub-dimension. Again, regarding the compatibility dimension, psychological capital has a partial mediation effect in the relationship of this dimension with external job satisfaction. In terms of general job satisfaction, psychological capital has a full mediating effect in the extraversion sub-dimension, while it has a partial mediation effect in the compatibility sub-dimension.