Journal of Research in Personality 40 (2006) 841–848

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Brief report

Who is late and who is early? Big Fivepersonality factors and punctuality

in attending psychological experiments q

Mitja D. Back *, Stefan C. Schmukle, Boris Egloff

Department of Psychology, University of Leipzig, Germany

Received 12 July 2005; revised 9 November 2005; accepted for publication 15 November 2005Available online 5 January 2006

Abstract

Punctuality is an important social behavior at the workplace and in everyday life. This study ana-lyzed the influence of personality on behavioral indicators of punctuality in a real-life setting. Thestudy consisted of two parts: participants first completed a personality questionnaire at home andthen joined a psychological group experiment some days later. Analyses focused on three objectivebehavioral indicators of punctuality: time of arrival, earliness, and lateness. As expected, the BigFive personality factors predicted punctuality: conscientiousness was related to all aspect of punctu-ality, agreeableness predicted time of arrival as well as earliness and neuroticism was related to ear-liness. Possible directions for future research are outlined.� 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Punctuality; Big Five; Personality; Lateness; Earliness

1. Introduction

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* CoE-m

‘‘Those who come too late, will be punished by life.’’M.S. Gorbatschov

566/$ - see front matter � 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

.1016/j.jrp.2005.11.003

thank Jennifer Dickes for her help with data collection and Sabine Schallmayer for comments on aus draft of this article.rresponding author.ail address: mback@uni-leipzig.de (M.D. Back).

842 M.D. Back et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 40 (2006) 841–848

In an accelerated life, the ability to manage time gains more and more importance.Being on time is necessary to develop and maintain satisfying relationships with others,to structure one’s life, and to be successful on the job. Meeting with others at a specifictime is thus a critical situation in daily social life as well as at the workplace.

There are, of course, a lot of situational factors that influence the time people arrive at aspecific meeting. However, we all know persons who are seemingly invariably late, otherswho are at all times already waiting, and some who are always just in time. There are evencases when we adjust to someone’s assumed (un)punctuality: for example, we make anappointment for 7 p.m. if we want to meet that person at 8 p.m. Thus, in addition to sit-uational influences, individuals tend to show a stable tendency to be on time or late—andwe are aware of each other’s punctuality.

Different aspects of punctuality may be interesting depending on the particular situa-tion at hand. Concerning effort in the job, one could, for example, look at the time peoplearrive at their workplace. In many other situations, such as meeting a friend privately, thedegree of lateness is the only interesting variable because it determines how long you haveto wait. However sometimes, for example when preparing a private party, the degree ofyour guests’ earliness may be important as it determines the time left to finish yourpreparation.

The question arising is who is prone to be late and who tends to be punctual or evenearly? Which personality traits trigger this relevant daily social behavior? Personality mea-sures have been used to predict a variety of social behaviors (Funder, 2001; Paunonen,2003), but punctuality as a criterion has seldom been studied. Studies of lateness at workconcentrated on organizational and attitudinal factors (Johns, 2001). Although punctual-ity was found to be stable over time and situations (Adler & Golan, 1981; but see Dudy-cha, 1936) and thought to be under the individual’s control to a large extent, personalitydifferences were rarely considered (Blau, 1994; Koslowsky, Sagie, Krausz, & Singer, 1997).

2. Big Five and punctuality

A common and replicable taxonomy of personality is the five-factor model of person-ality (McCrae & John, 1992). Following this view, variations in behavior are interpreted interms of five personality dimensions. We expected that three factors of the Big Five arerelevant with respect to punctuality behavior: conscientiousness, agreeableness, andneuroticism.

Persons with a high degree of conscientiousness are predisposed to actively managetheir goals, to be organized, dependable, dutiful, orderly, self-confident, self-disciplined,and deliberate. Accordingly, conscientious persons should have the ability and the moti-vation to appear on time in different situations whereas less conscientious persons shouldnot. This line of reasoning is supported by a recent investigation of the lower-order lexicalstructure of conscientiousness (Roberts, Bogg, Walton, Chernyshenko, & Stark, 2004):punctuality was identified as one of eight components of conscientiousness. Moreover,Ashton (1998) found that conscientiousness was negatively associated with self-reportedlateness at the workplace. Taken together, there are good reasons to assume that consci-entiousness is also positively related with punctual behavior in addition to mere self-reports.

Agreeableness subsumes traits like trust, straightforwardness, altruism, cooperative-ness, courtesy, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness. To be punctual at a meeting

M.D. Back et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 40 (2006) 841–848 843

may require that one attributes importance to social agreements and to the needs of oth-ers, both typical features of an agreeable person. Thus, agreeableness should encouragepunctuality.

Persons high in neuroticism are very sensitive and tend to destabilize under stress. Theyare described as anxious, depressive, self-unsure, impulsive, vulnerable, nervous, and irri-table. To be late at a meeting is probably a very uncomfortable situation for anxious, over-cautious, self-conscious persons, because there is a good chance that they will stand outand will be criticized. Thus, concerning the tendency to meet a deadline, one can assumethat neurotic persons will do more to be on time than less neurotic persons (James &Fleck, 1986).

3. Goals of this study

The aim of the present study was to analyze the influence of personality dispositions onpunctuality. We used an experimental setting that is comparable to real-life meeting situ-ations—the psychological group experiment. Similar to a meeting at the workplace or to agroup of people that want to make a journey, the group experiment cannot start if some-one is missing. Therefore being late means that all other persons have to wait for you.

Punctuality is a very narrow but socially important behavior that is determined mani-fold. We assume that participants of psychological group experiments will differ in theirpunctuality depending on their self-discipline and dependability, their empathy and theirsensitiveness for social criticism. Thus, measures of conscientiousness, agreeableness, andneuroticism should be able to predict behavioral indicators of punctuality—the time par-ticipants attend the experiment, their earliness and their lateness.

4. Method

4.1. Participants

Ninety-two students (70 women, 22 men) participated in this study in exchange forresearch participation credit or monetary compensation. Their average age was 23.08years (SD = 4.93).

4.2. Measures and procedure

This study was part of a larger project that comprised experimental group sessions. Pre-vious to joining the experimental session each participant completed a questionnaire athome. This questionnaire included the German version of the NEO-Five Factor Inventory(NEO-FFI; Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1993) for the measurement of the Big Five. Theappointed time of the experiment was written on the first side of the questionnaire alongwith a remark that one should be punctual because of five other students and the investi-gator waiting for them otherwise.

Time of arrival was recorded as the time-lag in minutes between the appointed time ofthe experiment and the time of each participant’s arrival (negative scores indicate early,positive scores late arrival). Earliness was computed by setting all positive scores in timeof arrival to zero and by multiplying the other scores by �1. In the same manner, latenesswas computed by setting all negative scores in time of arrival to zero. We examined the

844 M.D. Back et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 40 (2006) 841–848

influence of personality on all of these behavioral indicators of punctuality: time of arrival,earliness, and lateness.

5. Results

5.1. Descriptive statistics

Means of the personality measures were 2.44 (SD = 0.58) for conscientiousness, 2.55(SD = 0.46) for agreeableness, 1.92 (SD = 0.73) for neuroticism, 2.44 (SD = 0.55) forextraversion, and 2.67 (SD = 0.44) for openness. Internal consistencies were satisfactoryfor neuroticism (a = .90), conscientiousness (a = .85), and extraversion (a = .82) andsomewhat lower for agreeableness (a = .73) and openness (a = .70).

As a typical finding for self-report measures (e.g., Egloff & Schmukle, 2004; Feingold,1994), women described themselves as more neurotic, t (90) = 3.82, p < .05 (d = .93) aswell as more agreeable, t (90) = 2.08, p < .05 (d = .51). There were neither significant asso-ciations between gender and conscientiousness, extraversion or openness nor between ageand personality. Table 1 shows the correlations among the personality dimensions.

The distribution of the punctuality scores can be seen in Fig. 1. They ranged from17 min too early to 15 min too late. On average, participants arrived 1.75 min beforethe appointed time (SD = 5.87). This difference from zero was significant, t = �2.86,p < .05. Thus, people were rather early than late. The skewness of the distribution was.39, the kurtosis was .57. Additionally, a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test revealed that thescores for time of arrival were normally distributed (Z = .737, ns). Fifty-six participantswere early, three were exactly on time, and 33 were late. Lateness and earliness both havea large fraction of observations at the minimum: earliness has 36 values of 0 and latenesshas 59 values of 0. Thus, both measures—earliness and lateness—were censored below.

5.2. Main analyses

We first computed zero-order correlations between age, gender, the five personalitymeasures, and the three punctuality indicators. We then performed hierarchical regres-sions with the punctuality indicators as criteria. Gender and age were entered in Step 1,and the personality measures were entered in Step 2.

Due to the limited range of the censored dependent variables lateness and earliness, thelinear regression model would lead to biased estimates of correlations and of the depen-dent variable’s regression on explanatory variables. In contrast, the censored regression

Table 1Correlations among the personality measures and correlations of personality with the punctuality variables

C A N E Time of arrival Earliness Lateness

C �.23* .22 �.35*

A .11 �.26* .23* �.28*

N �.30* �.11 �.07 .08 .00E .10 .15 �.39* �.07 .07 �.14O �.01 .18 �.31* .51* �.08 .12 �.11

Note. N = 92. C, conscientiousness; A, agreeableness; N, neuroticism; E, extraversion; O, openness.* p < .05 (two-tailed).

-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15

N

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Earliness LatenessTime of arrival

M = -1.75SD = 5.87N = 92

Fig. 1. Distribution of participants’ time of arrival in minutes. Negative scores indicate an arrival before, positivescores indicate an arrival after the appointed time.

M.D. Back et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 40 (2006) 841–848 845

model (also called Tobit model), which is a hybrid of probit and linear regression analyses,gives unbiased estimates in this case (Tobin, 1958). Thus, this model is suggested for cen-sored absence data (Baba, 1990). Consequently, for earliness and lateness, we computedcensored correlations and performed censored regressions by using PRELIS 2.71 (Jore-skog, 2002; Joreskog & Sorbom, 1996).

Correlations between personality and the three punctuality indicators can be seen inTable 1. No significant associations could be found between age and punctuality or genderand punctuality. Each punctuality indicator was then regressed on gender and age (Step 1)and the personality measures (Step 2). The personality variables significantly explainedvariance in each case. As can be seen in the first column of Table 2, conscientiousnessand agreeableness were negatively related to time of arrival—conscientious and agreeableparticipants arrived earlier. Conscientiousness and agreeableness were again significantpredictors when earliness was examined. Additionally, neuroticism explained variance inearliness1 (see second column of Table 2). More conscientious, agreeable, and neuroticparticipants showed a higher overpromptness. With regard to lateness, conscientiousnesswas the only significant predictor (see third column of Table 2). Conscientious participantsshowed a smaller amount of delay than less conscientious participants.

6. Discussion

The present study investigated the influence of personality dispositions on an importantreal-life criterion—punctual arrival at a meeting. As expected, three personality factorsinfluenced aspects of punctuality: conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

1 Note that the zero-order correlation between neuroticism and earliness was not significant. Given the negativeassociation between neuroticism and conscientiousness, one reviewer suggested that the relation emerges onlywhen conscientiousness variance is removed from neuroticism in the regression analysis. We tested this suggestionby performing a hierarchical regression with earliness as a criterion and neuroticism and conscientiousness aspredictors. This analysis did not show a significant result for neuroticism (b = 1.28, ns).

Table 2Prediction of time of arrival, earliness, and lateness by gender, age, and the personality measures

b, Time of arrivala b, Earlinessb b, Latenessc

Step 1Gender 1.98 �.62 3.18Age �.02 �.03 �.23

Step 2Gender �.38 2.25 1.54Age .06 �.11 �.13Conscientiousness �2.88* 3.27* �3.74*

Agreeableness �3.18* 3.10* �2.64Neuroticism �1.93 2.70* �1.12Extraversion �.64 .62 �1.50Openness �1.08 1.59 �1.52

Note. N = 92. b = unstandardized regression coefficients.a R2 = .022, ns, Step 1; DR2 = .130, p < .05, Step 2.b R2 = .020, ns, Step 1; DR2 = .080, p < .05, Step 2.c R2 = .092, ns, Step 1; DR2 = .076, p < .05, Step 2.* p < .05 (two-tailed).

846 M.D. Back et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 40 (2006) 841–848

Conscientiousness seems to play a role with respect to all aspects of punctuality. It pre-dicted time of arrival as well as the degree of earliness and lateness.2 How do conscientiouspersons manage to be punctual? They are self-organized and self-disciplined enough thatthey do not forget their appointments. Furthermore, they are able to actively execute sub-ordinate goals—to get up early, to catch the bus, to find the room, and so on. As a con-sequence, they generally arrive earlier at a meeting. Even if they are delayed, they will bedutiful enough to try to minimize the degree of lateness. Because conscientious persons areable to consider external factors—like a delayed bus—they will be earlier in those caseswhen caution would not have been necessary.

Our findings suggest that agreeableness is also relevant when considering punctuality—at least in a setting where other persons are involved and the group depends on the arrivalof the single participant. In this study, the importance of being punctual was explicitlystated in the questionnaire—because other participants and the investigator would bewaiting otherwise. Agreeable persons are motivated to stick to such mutual arrangementsand feel empathy for other persons, and consequently, attend earlier at a group meeting.

Neuroticism influenced a specific aspect of punctuality—earliness. Participants high inneuroticism showed a higher overpromptness than less neurotic participants, probably toprevent being criticized or that attention is drawn to them. However, it must be stated thatthis effect only emerged in the regression analysis, where all predictors were entered simul-taneously. Additionally, it should be noted that neuroticism seems to play a counterpro-

2 Regarding lateness, Conte and Jacobs (2003) could not find a significant association with conscientiousness(r = �.10, ns). However, this study differed from ours in several aspects: Conte and Jacobs analyzed a differentsample in a very different setting with strict demands and pressures for schedule adherence (train operators, 86%male, with a mean age of 42.65 years and a seniority of 11.59 years, who were penalized for tardiness). As aconsequence, criterion variance as well as predictor variance may be restricted. Furthermore, a different statisticalmethod was used to analyze censored data. Besides, a different personality inventory was applied. This might haveconsequences for the facets of conscientiousness that are measured (Roberts, Chernyshenko, Stark, & Goldberg,2005).

M.D. Back et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 40 (2006) 841–848 847

ductive role when regular attendance at work is regarded (Iverson & Deery, 2001). In thiscase, poor coping with stress and negative expectations may be more pronounced aspectsof neuroticism than sensitiveness for social criticism.

The results clearly showed that personality does matter when analyzing punctuality.Although there are surely lots of situational factors that determine punctuality, stable indi-vidual differences also seem to be important. It is not only the train (or whatever environ-mental factor) that is responsible, but also the person him-/herself that is late due tocertain characteristics of his/her personality. Because of the many determinants of punc-tual behavior it is not surprising that the effect sizes are rather small (DR2 between .08 and.13). In fact, one should not expect more, especially when punctuality is not measured as aself report (e.g., items like ‘‘When I have a meeting I will attend punctually.’’) but as thebehavior of being late or early itself. Other studies including several situational, organiza-tional, attitudinal, and aggregated punctuality measures reported comparable or lowereffect sizes (e.g., Blau, 1994; Conte & Jacobs, 2003; Iverson & Deery, 2001; Koslowskyet al., 1997). In this sense, nontrivial associations between broad personality dimensionsand a narrow, behavioral real-life criterion could be observed in this study.

Several extensions of the present study may improve the prediction of punctual behav-ior. On one hand, one can measure lower-order facets of personality instead of just thebroad dimensions. Lower-order facets have often been shown to be better predictors ofbehavioral outcomes than composite measures (Ashton, 1998; Paunonen & Ashton,2001). For example, specific facets of conscientiousness, like dependability or self-reportedpunctuality, could be more important than others (e.g., orderliness).

On the other hand, punctuality as a behavioral criterion could be assessed in differentsocial situations. The aggregation of several indicators of punctuality may further enhanceits predictability. In addition, one may search for specific associations between facets ofpersonality and different indicators of punctuality (Blau, 1994). Combining the strategiesof specificity and aggregation may allow more fine-grained analyses and improve the pre-diction of punctuality.

To conclude, the present study examined personality determinants of punctuality. Indoing so, real-life indicators of punctual behavior were analyzed. In sum, punctualityseems to be a social behavior where personality differences can be observed. Conscien-tiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism are associated with indicators of punctuality.In particular, conscientious persons are punctual—and as a consequence they might notbe punished by life because of being too late.

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