If you are asked to imagine an actor, you may think of a neurotic person, while the thought of a salesperson may conjure up someone who is talkative and outgoing.
While some may consider these lazy stereotypes, an extensive new study suggests that such common assumptions are actually true.
Using data from 68,540 people, researchers identified the personality traits typical of more than 260 jobs.
They found that actors, journalists, urban planners, authors and graphic designers are among those who tend to be more neurotic.
Meanwhile, PR managers, marketers, psychologists, dental assistants and film directors tend to be more extroverted.
“People often have stereotypes about the personality traits typical of different jobs, and it turns out that many of these intuitions are quite accurate,” says study author Dr René Mõttus of the University of Edinburgh.
‘But this is the first time that a scientific study with such a large sample and such detailed assessments has confirmed these patterns.’
So, what does your work say about you? Use MailOnline’s interactive tool to search for your profession.
According to the study, agents are often unpleasant, while managers are conscientious and actors are neurotic
To try out MailOnline’s interactive tool, which merges the new data, enter your profession in the search bar and click on it when it appears.
You will be shown the typical values for five different personality traits: neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.
For each attribute, you will be shown an average for that attribute that is around 50, probably slightly higher or slightly lower.
A score above 50 indicates that this profession scores higher than average on that characteristic, while a score below 50 indicates that it scores lower.
For example, if we search for ‘journalist’, it turns out that we score above average on neuroticism, extraversion and openness, but below average on agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Moreover, ‘N’, which means number, indicates how many people have been rated in that particular profession.
To collect the data, Dr. Mottus and colleagues from the University of Tartu in Estonia 68,540 people from the Estonian Biobank, a large collection of personal data from volunteers in the country.
“This sample represents approximately seven percent of the Estonian adult population,” study author Kätlin Anni from the University of Tartu told MailOnline.
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Participants were assessed on their level of the ‘big five’ traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
The ‘big five’ personality traits are the most widely accepted and widely used personality model in academic psychology.
Researchers found that creative jobs such as artists, writers and designers attract people with open-mindedness, meaning they are open to new experiences, imaginative and curious.
Salespeople and PR professionals tend to be outgoing, so they enjoy social interactions and thrive in people-oriented environments.
Although managers are also extroverts, they often score high on conscientiousness, meaning they tend to be organized, responsible, careful and diligent in their work.
In addition, managers are often less neurotic or emotional, which allows them to better cope with the demands of the position.
But many managers and salespeople, in addition to real estate agents, can also be unpleasant because these jobs involve complicated and sometimes even confrontational interactions with others.
Meanwhile, software developers tend to be introverted, while chefs tend to be less than friendly and pilots are among the least neurotic.
For neuroticism, the highest average scores characterized actors, artists, designers, composers, writers, translators and journalists.
Overall, the professions with the most neurotic people include actors, journalists, and various other creative professions.
Researchers are unsure whether the nature of jobs attract certain personality types during the hiring process, or whether the roles accentuate personality traits once hired.
For example, an extroverted actor may want to be an actor in the first place partly because he or she is so outgoing, but the nature of the job may also have made him or her more outgoing over time.
Researchers say the findings, published in the Journal of Applied Psychologywe paint the most detailed picture yet of which personality traits are more common in certain jobs.
However, they admit that the results are based solely on people in Estonia, so further studies could focus on taking a global sample.
‘The generalisability of the findings may be limited as we rely on a sample from Estonia,’ Ms Anni told MailOnline.
‘At the very least, general patterns in the findings generalize to other liberal Western democracies with industrialized free market economies, such as Estonia.
‘Yet, more work is needed with diverse samples representing many world regions to determine the universal characteristics and details of how personality varies with jobs.’