Abstract
Personality, a little-explored variable in studies of journalists, may prove useful in understanding news people's values and motivations. A short test of two personality dimensions was applied to a random sample of 173 Australian journalists, who were found to be more extroverted than the general population, but not significantly different on the dimension of neuroticism. Job stress was related both to neuroticism and to extroversion, while extroversion was related to the valuing of information disseminating roles of media and of direct feedback from the public. Early success in journalism was related positively to extroversion and negatively to neuroticism. Further approaches to the study of personality in journalism are suggested.
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