Temperament, namely the biologically based foundation of one's personality, is closely related to both personality and personal hardiness. The latter represents the ability to handle adverse conditions and recover quickly from them. Hardy individuals, therefore, perceive less stress, cope with it more successfully and experience fewer related negative health consequences. The relationship between temperament and stress (as well as what role hardiness may play in the proposed relationship) however, has not been studied to date. In Slovenian cultural conext, The Pavlovian Temperament Survey (PTS) has been translated and adapted. Although previous studies show good psychometric properties, its construct validity on Slovenian samples has not been fully corroborated. The present study thus aims to examine the construct validity of PTS by examining the relationship between the three temperament traits (strength of excitation, strength of inhibition, mobility), personality traits based on the big-five theory and personal hardiness. The second aim is to explore how temperament and hardiness relate to perceived stress in leaders. A total of 135 leaders from a large Slovenian retail company participated in the study. Based on the results, as expected, the PTS shows satisfactory construct validity as it relates highly with all five personality traits and personal hardiness. Both temperament traits and hardiness are also strongly related to perceived stress. Moreover, a moderation analysis shows that the positive facets of personal hardiness affect the relationship between the strength of inhibition and perceived stress. In low and average hardy leaders the relationship is not significant, while in highly hardy leaders perceived stress drops significantly with higher levels of strength of inhibition. In conclusion, I find that the PTS has satisfactory psychometric characteristics and should be further prepared for practical use, not only in research but also for organizational and HR-managerial needs, with some proposed alterations on the original instrument. The relationships between the studied constructs show how important training and development of hardiness in leaders could be, as it could ease or prevent the negative consequences of stress, especially in those with a weaker temperament structure.
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