THE JOURNALISTS PERSONALITY - AN EXPLORATORY-STUDY

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 samp le of 173 Australian journalists, who were found to be more extroverte d than the general population, but not significantly different on the dimension of neuroticism. Job stress was related both to neuroticism a nd to extroversion, while extroversion was related to the valuing of i nformation disseminating roles of media and of direct feedback from th e public. Early success in journalism was related positively to extrov ersion and negatively to neuroticism. Further approaches to the study of personality in journalism are suggested.