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A Study of the Effectiveness of Training Proactive Thinking 1
Author(s) -
Kirby Eric G.,
Kirby Susan L.,
Lewis Melanie A.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2002.tb01451.x
Subject(s) - proactivity , psychology , trait , social psychology , personality , applied psychology , training (meteorology) , computer science , physics , meteorology , programming language
Recent studies have consistently demonstrated the significant positive impact that proactive thinking has on job performance, while assuming proactivity to be a relatively stable, dispositional trait (cf. Ashford & Black, 1996; Crant, 1995; Morrison, 1993; Seibert, Crant, & Kraimer, 1999). This study, on the other hand, seeks to determine if proactivity can be increased in participants through training. This study uses a 4‐month long longitudinal pretest/posttest design to assess the relationship between proactive thinking and performance in the classroom. In the study, 177 subjects were split into 2 treatment groups. One group received training in proactive thinking skills, while the other did not. The results of the study confirm that proactive thinking does have a significant impact on student performance over and above other personality and performance variables. Most importantly, this study also demonstrates that proactivity is not stable over time, but can be increased through training.