Supplementary material from "Disentangling the within- and between-person effects of personality on income for men and women"

Understanding the relationship between personality and income is a topic of interest across multiple disciplines. Correlations between people’s personalities and their incomes may arise because differences in stable personalities relate to income differences (between-person effects) or because changes in personality or income are later reflected in the other variable (within-person effects). The current research uses random-intercepts cross-lagged panel models to disentangle the two sorts of effects to better understand the relationship between six factors of personality and income. Using data from 6,824 working age adults in New Zealand across four years, we found between-person effects showing higher incomes were obtained by both men and women who were more extraverted, agreeable, and open, and less neurotic. Within-person effects showed that earning a higher income was associated with higher neuroticism and lower extraversion over time, while higher extraversion was associated with a lower income over time.