The influence of personality on computer programming: a summary of a systematic literature review

Abstract

The objective of this report is to summarize the results of the systematic literature review we recently did on the influence of personality on computer programming (Karimi et al. 2014). In the SLR, we systematically searched online search resources and found 50 empirical and 4 theoretical studies with findings on the relations between personality characteristics and performance in computer programming. 28 empirical studies found an influence of personality on programming. We discussed that the other studies failed to find an influence of personality because of ceiling or bottom effects, small samples or incomprehensive personality test. We further analyzed the studies that found a relation and mapped the investigated personality characteristics of 22 empirical studies (out of 28) and 3 theoretical studies (out of 4) to the five personality factors: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Due to inaccessible or invalid personality tests, we excluded several studies from this mapping. We found that either in theoretical or empirical studies all personality factors have an effect in at least one study. Except Conscientiousness which always has positive effects, other personality factors may have positive or negative effects. Moreover, all personality factors might have no effect in some cases. We concluded that there is an indication that personality affects programming but this relation is not clear and more studies are needed to clarify the influence of personality on programming.