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

Oscar Llopis and Joaquín M. Azagra-Caro

Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) from Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA)

Abstract: Policymakers compel scientists to influence colleagues, corporations and non-commercial actors. In the current study, we examine the relationship between biomedical scientists’ psychological characteristics –personality traits and motivations– and their perceived impact on these different stakeholders. Taking the scientist as the main unit of analysis, we merge the organizational psychology and research evaluation literature to better understand the individual origins of societal impact. We also combine motivation and personality research with science policy studies to predict perceived beneficiary impact. Our focus is on biomedicine and its interest in and consequences for industry and patients, and we measure psychological characteristics through a large-scale survey. Openness to experience increases biomedical scientists’ perceived impact on the academic community, extraversion on industry and conscientiousness on patients. Accounting for these effects opens new paths for designing more effective policies regarding scientific mobility, allocation of research activities and incentive schemas.

Keywords: perceived beneficiary impact; psychological motivations; big five personality traits; biomedicine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://cahiersdugretha.u-bordeaux.fr/2015/2015-29.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Who do you care about? Scientistsâ personality traits and perceived beneficiary impact (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2015-29

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) from Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ernest Miguelez ().