Sociability and dominance: Extraversion’s competing subdimensions

Sociability and Dominance have been conceptualized as the two subdimensions of the personality construct extraversion. In terms of personal characteristics, sociability refers to affiliation and sensitivity to others and dominance refers to assertiveness and control-seeking. While researchers have theorized that the subdimensions of extraversion should work together to explain extraversion, the two subdimensions, sociability and dominance, can exist with opposite signs, working against each other to impede the effectiveness of the higher-order construct, extraversion. This is one reason that impairs the efficacy of the extraversion construct, especially when it is used to predict leadership outcomes. This study included cross-sectional data and linear regression and showed that sociability is associated positively with job satisfaction, deep acting, and trust and dominance is associated negatively with job satisfaction, deep acting, and trust, in part cancelling out the predictive power of the higher-order construct, extraversion. This research contributes to the literature by providing a different, empirical example of extraversion’s lack of efficacy in leadership research.