The conference was held with the aim of creating a platform for researchers to share their findings about this complex subject of personality and how it influences and is in turn influenced by other factors.

The conference was held at the Spier conference centre in Stellenbosch from 19 to 23 March 2013. It was attended by a total of 300 national and international delegates. Prof Deon Meiring of the Department of Human Resource Management was a member of the organising committee for this prestigious conference. He was accompanied by Itumeleng Dzivhani, a master’s student in the Department of Human Resource Management.

“The experience far surpassed my expectations. At the conference the theory was made much more practical and it was interesting to discover just how big a role personality plays in our lives,” says Itumeleng.

One of the topics that were discussed at the conference was how genes and the environment are able to influence personality. Prof Meiring gave a presentation about how the personality measurement scales for the South African population was developed. The name of the scale is the South African Personality Inventory. According to Itumeleng, it was interesting to see the amount of work that went into creating the instrument and she is excited to see that people will have an opportunity to respond to questionnaires that have been presented in their home language. “This will take the validity and reliability of the data that will be collected to a whole new level,” she says.

Papers that were delivered revealed that culture has the capacity to influence the pace of transition to adulthood, and as a result; people’s levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness will differ. This is known as the maturity principle. One thing is true, culture influences personalities and the extent to which this is true will be discovered using the instruments that are currently being developed. South Africa is a diverse country and the cultures are rich and different in many respects. As a result, it has become necessary that the Big-Five factors be expanded by adding other factors. This was revealed in a study done by Dr Velichko Valchev, a postdoctoral student in the Department of Human Resource Management.