Bibliometric Cartography on Personality Traits and Stress: In Quest of Panaceas for Contemporary Workplace Challenges

Everyone experiences stress, to some extent.^[1] However, the World Health Organization (WHO) states that the degree of stress an individual can experience could be based on how the individual responds to a stressful situation and also determines the individual’s overall well-being. Stress is a natural human phenomenon,^[2] but the intensity of the consequences of stress can be calibrated by managing stress.^[2,3] As we know, the personality of an individual determines the response to stimuli,^[4] and stress is a state of mind;^[2,3] it is an obvious curiosity among researchers to explore whether an individual’s personality traits can influence stress and, if so, how it works. Numerous studies have examined the relationship between personality traits and stress. In the last few decades, such studies have been explored in various fields such as medicine, psychology, and neuroscience (Figure 1) exhibit multi-field findings and theories. Despite the number of such studies, no study has showcased the overview, intellectual structure, and emerging trends in the relationship between personality traits and stress. Studies including empirical evidence, clinical studies, literature reviews, and case studies have been conducted to establish the strength of the relationship between personality and stress across various fields, to provide a comprehensive overview, and to unveil the intellectual structure and emerging topics.

Figure 1:
Scopus publications across various fields to assess the relationship between stress and personality traits.

To unveil the intellectual structure and emerging trends behind the relationship between stress and personality traits.
To provide a comprehensive overview of the relationship between stress and personality traits by reviewing and compiling the findings of existing literature.
To provide notes for recruiters that help select potential candidates based on their personality traits.

The concept of Personality Traits (PT) emerged during the 1930s when psychology specialists were trying to understand people’s personalities (i.e., a set of characteristic patterns that differ from one another).^[5] Personality traits can be defined as a reflection of the characteristic patterns of thoughts, actions, feelings, and behaviors of people.^[5–7] Each individual possesses their own set of personality traits.^[2,3,6,7] However, during the late 1960s, a debate arose over whether personality determined the characteristic patterns or situations.^[7] After rigorous research, Walter Mischel, in his book “Personality and Assessment (1968),” revealed that situational orientation towards determining characteristic patterns is not consistent, but that personality traits to an average extent help to determine it.^[8] In this case, what is the list of personality traits that exist and how do they work? The most widely used trait theory across the globe is the “Five-Factor Model,” which says that any individual’s characteristic pattern can be determined using OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism).^[5] In 2007, revising the “Five-Factor Model”, Ashton and Lee proposed a new model named the “HEXACO” model.^[9] The HEXACO model included honesty, humility, and emotionality as dimensions, replacing neuroticism. In 2002, Paulhus and Williams introduced three unique dimensions that indicates bad personality traits and behavior that affect the workplace: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy, and named them the “Dark-Triad” of personality.^[10] A ten-year review of dark triads by Furnham, Richards, and Paulhus revealed that, irrespective of situations, these personality traits are highly exhibited by males.^[11] Apart from these three major trait theories, there are various other hundreds of traits like authoritarianism, self-esteem, optimism, pessimism, alexithymia, etcetera that exist in the literature.

Hans Selye, an endocrinologist, first coined the term “stress” and mentioned it as a “non-specific response of the body to any demand”.^[12] World Health Organization (WHO) defines stress as “a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation.” Although stress is a natural human response, the degree of repercussions due to stress can be reduced by managing stress effectively. The American Psychological Association (APA) classified stress into two main types: (1) Acute stress, a short-term and frequent form of stress; and (2) Chronic stress, a long-term form of stress. Acute stress occurs with a sudden change in circumstances (e.g., shock), whereas chronic stress is a pile-up of negative emotions over a period of time (12). As we understand stress as a natural human phenomenon, biological systems in humans, such as the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis and Automatic Nervous System (ANS), are responsible for fighting or freezing stress to avoid biological damage (both mental and physical).^[12] Apart from internal stress-fighting agents (HPA and ANS), experts have explored and found external stress-fighting agents such as therapies, meditation, and medication.^[12] However, researchers have explored other internal (psychological) dimensions to cope with stress,^[13] and personality traits have become one since 1945.

To understand whether or how personality traits as internal agents can cope with human stress across various domains, publications from Scopus were downloaded (Figure 1), and studied. Literature across fields with higher publication is discussed. Medicine, with 36.6% of overall publications, leads the list as stress is highly associated with human anatomy and most of the stress-related studies are conducted among nurses and then followed by educational sectors.^[14–16] Psychology, with 22.7% of publications, stands second as the literature is oriented towards human psychology, as personality traits are more into human psychology. Neuroscience shares concepts of both human psychology and human anatomy. Thus, 9% of the publication is on neuroscience. Social science, with 7.1% of publications, is the study of social sectors.

It is widely known that personality traits are directly associated with the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease; however, it has also proven that certain personality traits strongly promotes stress and neural injury through plasma Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein (GFAP).^[17] Likewise, a clinical study has proven that certain personality traits can influence impulse control disorders among people affected by Parkinson’s disease,^[18] and traits such as higher neuroticism and lower extroversion have been seen as common among people suffering from Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) syndrome, which causes stress and anxiety.^[19] The secretion of stress hormones such as cortisol seems to be common among people with alexithymia, a personality trait that causes difficulties in social cognition.^[20] Likewise, personality traits can even influence the eating behavior of an individual; eating proper, nutritious food can reduce stress.^[21] It should be noted that Psychopathic Personality Traits (PPT) and depression have reduced emotional and cognitive functions,^[22] which may cause harm in daily routines and even in the workplace. Similarly, Insomniacs are complex personalities who develop stress over time. In general, type D (distressed) personalities exhibit insomniac behaviors^[23] and hassle with their work-life balance. Impulsiveness is a negative personality trait often seen among stressful professionals (e.g., professional drivers), but this trait can be moderated by mindfulness.^[24] Likewise, personality traits can be turned positive, and stress and anxiety can be simultaneously reduced by practicing yoga regularly.^[25] Yoga is an excellent coping strategy for stress and a moderately negative personality traits. In general, people with positive personality traits, such as extroversion, agreeableness, and openness tend to have control over their stress. It has been observed that people with positive personality traits have regulated stress even after testing positive for COVID-19, whereas people with negative traits suffered from a stress surge when testing positive for COVID-19.^[26]

Personality traits are the psychological faculties of an individual. As the traits could be positive or negative, the results were. For instance, individuals with higher positive traits such as agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and extraversion have experienced lower job stress^[27] than those with negative trait like neuroticism.^[28] This specific trait, ‘neuroticism,’ not only causes job burnout^[28] but also interpersonal conflicts at the workplace.^[27] It is important for policymakers to look into the agreeableness of the candidates, as it increases the chances of growth for an individual post-trauma (say PTG, Post-Traumatic Growth).^[29] However, people with negative traits seldom seek growth after a traumatic event. In short, personality traits can regulate emotions, which, in turn can have a strong effect on stress.^[30]

The study of the nervous system and the brain constitutes neuroscience. Does personality and stress have something to deal with neuroscience? Of course, yes. Personality traits are characteristic patterns of humans that are reflected in a person’s memory.^[31] Neuroscience has revealed how personality traits influence human life. For instance, one of the most common neural disease is Alzheimer’s, which is common among people who exhibit a higher degree of neuroticism.^[32] It is also noteworthy that patients with mood disorder with neuroticism and schizotypal personality^[33] frequently reported suicide attempts.^[34] Furthermore, narcissistic personalities also develop neural disorders over time.^[35] However, certain medications can fight stress, panic attacks, and trauma. Neurexan (Nx4) is a multicomponent drug that is known to reduce neural stress network activation.^[35] However, people with higher levels of neuroticism and conscientiousness are more concerned about the side effects of medicines and have poorer adherence to medication.^[37]

Social science studies involve human behavior and society in various fields. Thus, personality traits, which are pattern of human behavior, have also been studied in the social science context. A study conducted among business school students on mindfulness. Mindfulness is a personality trait exhibited by business school students who have reported experiencing less stress and chronic pain.^[38] During the COVID-19 outbreak, an interesting study said, “I need husband-distancing”. This study involved South Korean wives with certain personality traits who developed adverse stress during the pandemic outbreak and expected distance from their spouses.^[39] Another study examined technology users who spend a lot of time on the Internet and the corresponding technology-induced stress (TECHNOSTRESS). This study found that people with a higher degree of conscientiousness had moderated technostress.^[40] Thus, another point for techie recruiters is ‘technostress’. Candidates with higher levels of conscientiousness could cope with technostress.

According to Kumar and others in 2015,^[41] analyzing and evaluating scientific production has been considered a potential indicator of the impact of research on the scientific community. Thus, this study involved rigorous bibliometric analysis^[42] to explore various outcomes. However, if the amount of scientific data is small and the scope is broad, systematic literature helps the researcher to get the knowledge extract.^[43] The size of the scientific data chosen for this study was larger (2919 documents) (Figure 2); however, the scope was large. Therefore, the methodology of this study involves rigorous bibliometric analysis^[42] and a literature review.

Figure 2:
Systematic collection of scientific data.

Scopus is a global indexing platform that archives publications in all domains and has been widely used by researchers. By giving “stress” and “personality traits” as input in the title, abstract, and keywords, a total of 3631 publications have been reflected. Of 3631 documents, 2919 were filtered for analysis, which includes only articles and reviews in the final stage of publication, written in English, and published in Scopus-indexed journals. This dataset of 2919 documents was chosen for bibliometric analysis.

According to the primary objectives (1 and 2) of this study, a list of secondary objectives was made, and a list of tools and methods was used^[43] to uncover outcomes. To understand the stock metrics and recent trends, the annual publication trend and other trend methods were performed using Biblioshiny, powered by RStudio. The same software package was used to perform citation analysis and thematic evolution analysis to determine influential constituents and thematic evolution, respectively. The VOSviewer software package was used to perform co-citation analysis, co-occurrence analysis, and bibliographic coupling to obtain corresponding science mapping visualisations.

The rationale behind bibliometric analysis is to identify potential areas for future research, recent trends, and the intellectual structure^[43] behind the scientific data (a systematic dataset downloaded from Scopus, Figure 2). The most common problem behind bibliometric papers by researchers is that they focus only on performance analysis; otherwise, they only perform science mapping.^[43] Rigor bibliometrics should include both performance analysis and science mapping.^[41,43] Therefore, this bibliometric analysis involves three stages of analyzing the scientific data. The influential constituents and performance metrics of the research field were analyzed using RStudio and discussed in the first stage. The second stage involves generating graphical representations of scientific data using various scientific bibliometric analyses such as co-occurrence and co-citation analysis. This will be performed using VOSviewer software. Finally, the third stage involved displaying recent trends, thematic maps, and thematic evolution behind the scientific data using RStudio (Figure 3).

Figure 3:
Methodology and analysis used for bibliometric study.

Performance Analysis of the study is focused on displaying the main information processed from the scientific data (Table 2) and computing the performance using publication-related metrics, citation-related metrics, and both publication-citation- related metrics (Figure 4). Influential constituents such as authors, journals, and articles based on citation and frequency of publication will be unveiled.

Figure 4:
Representation of publication frequency and citation metrics of the scientific data.

Over a span of 78 years, from 1945, to 2023 there have been a total of 2,925 publications consisting of articles and reviews. These publications were sourced from 1,319 journals. The number of authors who contributed to these publications is an 11,483. Out of the publications only 227 were solely authored while the remaining 2,698 were co-authored. The research field has shown a growth rate of 5.92%. Please note that the formulas used to calculate these statistics have been mentioned below.

1. NAY is number of active years of publication.
2. TP is total number of articles published.
3. TS is total number of sources.
4. NCA is number of contributing authors.
5. SA is sole-authored publications.
6. CA is co-authored publications (CA)=(TP-SA).

The total number of citations is 149,151. On average each article has received 129.61 citations regardless of the years of publication.

The number of publications that have been cited is 2644. On average each cited publication has received 56.4 citations. The proportion of cited publications, in relation to the number of publications is 0.903. The collaboration index, which measures the extent of collaboration between authors, is calculated as 0.001 (the extent of collaboration). Additionally the collaboration coefficient, which standardizes author collaboration on a scale from 0, to 1 is determined to be 0.745 (standardizing author collaboration between 0 and 1). Please note that the formulas used to calculate these statistics have been mentioned below.

1. Number of cited publications (NCP)
2. Average citation of cited publications (ACCP)=(TC÷NCP)
3. Proportion of cited publications (PCP)=(NCP÷TP)
4. Collaboration Index (CI)=[(NCA÷TP)÷TP]
5. Collaboration co-efficient (CC)=[1-(TP÷NCA)]

The purpose of identifying influential constituents is to help the researcher choose relevant areas to conduct research, or relevant authors to collaborate with, or relevant sources to publish their work, etc. Therefore, in this study, all influential constituents such as authors, sources, affiliations, and documents are displayed for future research.

It is evident that these six journals were highly active in publishing content related to personality traits and stress. In particular, journals such as Plos One, Journal of Affective Disorders, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Frontiers in Psychiatry, and Frontiers in Psychology seem to be on a growing curve (Figure 5).

Figure 5:
Top five influential sources of the scientific data generated using RStudio.

The top 10 influential authors with higher citation counts are shown. Although citation counts vary with time, the work of these authors has piqued reader interest. Therefore, following these authors will be helpful for scholars, as they already have field knowledge at their disposal and a potential collaborative network (Table 3).

It is evident that the above mentioned have a rigorous publication frequency in the field of psychology and stress. Therefore, scholars who are willing to pursue doctoral or post-doctoral programs can choose universities from this list (Table 4).

The top ten countries with higher productivity in publishing content related to stress and personality traits have been identified (Table 5). Through this, scholars from other countries can understand that there is a contextual gap to be filled in these areas of research.

The keywords most commonly used by authors of scientific data are displayed (Figure 6). Astonishingly, it says that the keyword “personality” is the most influential word, as reflected in science mapping analysis. Followed personality, the keywords “personality traits and stress” were frequently used. Recently, keywords like “COVID-19, depression, burnout, and coping” have started seeing a surge; which denotes recent trends in a form. Thus, researchers can begin working in booming areas. Researchers can also use the structure behind documents that have received more citations, as shown in Table 6. Digital object identifier (DOI) is also provided for easy access.

Figure 6:
Top ten influential keywords of the scientific data generated using RStudio.

Science mapping is a bibliometric technique that helps researchers find associations between research constituents such as authors, cited references, documents, affiliations, and author keywords.^[43,46] This study uses co-citation analysis, co-occurrence analysis, and bibliographic coupling to determine the science mapping behind scientific data. The VOSviewer software package was used to generate visualizations for the analyses.

The co-citation of cited references with a minimum of 20 citations provided 25 eligible references out of 139197 cited references (Figure 7). These 25 cited references form clusters, and the clusters say as follows, Cluster red is the principal cluster with eight items. Cluster green was followed by seven items, cluster blue by five items, cluster yellow by three items, and cluster purple by two items. However, the visualization shows cited references in bold, with strong citation weights. In that case, from Cluster Red, an article written by Folkman et al., titled “Dynamics of Stressful Encounter” published in 1986, says that there is a strong relationship between the outcomes of coping and the stress experienced by people on a daily basis. For instance, the coping mechanism varies when a person encounters satisfactory or unsatisfactory stress outcomes.^[47] Likewise, in the green and blue clusters, book chapter (cited reference) titled “Diagnostic and statistical manual for mental disorders,” published by the American Psychiatric Association are reflected multiple times as they are published in different issues (such as DSM 1, DSM 2, and DSM 5), discusses how to record and analyse reactions of people in abnormal situations.^[48] In the yellow cluster, an article written by Jacob Cohen titled “Statistical power analysis” published in 1988, provides in-depth statistical inferences.^[49] In purple cluster, the scale developed by Zigmond and Snaith in 1983, named “The hospital anxiety and depression scale”,^[50] that has been used by many authors, belongs to the scientific data. Evidently, these articles were chosen based on significant citation weightage.

Figure 7:
Network visualization of co-citation analysis.

Co-occurrence analysis helps determine the constituents that co-occur among publications of scientific data. Author keywords were used in the analysis to determine thematic clusters. The co-occurrence of author keywords with a minimum of five occurences across the scientific data reflects a total of 326 keywords that meet the threshhold with strong connections out of 5451 keywords. These 326 keywords forms clusters as follows, Keywords “personality, personality traits, stress, and depression” are reflected in bold and large font in the density visualization (Figure 8) i.e., the larger the font size, the greater the co-occurrence of a specific keyword. Therefore, these bold-sized keywords were chosen to determine how networks were formed (Table 7). Emerging networks have also been identified, and scholars can tap into such potential areas for future research (Table 7).

Figure 8:
Density visualization of co-occurrence analysis.

The Table 7 clearly depicts the association among the keywords. Thus, the authors attempted to establish a conceptual model. As personality traits and stress were the chosen terms for analysis, other keywords were considered here to draw a flowchart (Figure 9).

Figure 9:
Negative personality traits consequences.

Figure 9 depicts the consequences of negative personality traits. That is, personality traits such as neuroticism and alexithymia of an individual, are responsible for causing stress and secreting stress hormones like cortisol that cause mood swings that leads to destructive behaviors such as aggression, depression, and PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Such moods can cause deviant behavior at the workplace as well, which eventually leads to burnout at the workplace and sometimes quitting work. Such flow can cause severe health issues for the individual, such as obesity (which is the root cause of several health issues),^[51] heart problems, and even cancer. However, there is an alternative approach to cope the entire process, i.e., to balance the consequences of negative traits such as neuroticism and alexithymia, individuals can start practicing positive traits such as extraversion, openness, and agreeableness. Therefore, the stress hormones were avoided. Individuals can perform physical exercises, yoga, and meditation to balance mood swings caused by negative personality traits. Likewise, to achieve employee productivity and performance instead of burnout and turnover, recruiters can facilitate their employees with wellness programmes and workplace spirituality, which can maintain harmony in the workplace.

Trend analysis helps in identifying the thematic map of the research field by analyzing the niche and emerging trends in the scientific data. It also helps in unveiling recent trends by identifying recent keywords and explains how these keywords have evolved from time to time through thematic evolution.

Recent trends were identified using RStudio. Time slice from 2013 to 2023 was selected from the dataset to understand what recent topics have evolved out of it. COVID-19 related publications^[52] have seen a surge after 2020. However, as a seasonal topic, it will start to decline after 2022. Generic topics such as mindfulness and resilience have seen a surge in publications since 2017. Personality trait studies mostly involve the Big Five theory (conclusions were drawn especially on neuroticism in 2015 (Figure 10)). However, since 2017, studies on conscientiousness have increased (Figure 10).

Figure 10:
Recent trends based on author keywords (2010 to 2023).

Thematic evolution is the bibliometric concept that connects studies by determining how transitions between themes happen over a period of time. Themes can be defined by choosing titles, author keywords, keywords plus, and abstracts. The authors have chosen 5000 author keywords with a frequency of five occurrences per 1000 documents from the dataset to run thematic evolution using the Louvain algorithm. According to the Sankey principle, based on the higher frequency of keyword occurrence, transitions themes have been identified. The first time slice, i.e., 1945-2000 and 2001-2012, is the largest time slice of the study, which unveiled certain themes like serotonin (stress hormones) liked with suicide, certain personality traits linked with environmental illness, and certain personality traits linked with depression. Likewise, time slice 2 (i.e., 2001-2012 and 2013-2017) revealed themes such as depression being connected with stress, cortisol (stress hormone) being linked with psychological distress, and neuroticism (considered to be a negative personality trait) linked with stress. Time slice 3 (i.e., 2013-2017 and 2018-2022) themes included stress linked with psychology, schizophrenia, heart rate variability, and personality disorders. Job stress, salivary cortisol levels, and certain personality traits are linked with burnout. Likewise, timeline 2(2018-2022 and 2023) revealed that themes such as burnout are connected with mindfulness, COVID-19 pandemic, perceived stress, neuroticism, mental health, and psychological stress. Burnout and mindfulness were inversely proportional.

Thematic maps differ from other thematic analyses in that they deliver themes that are based on centrality and density. Author keywords, keyword plus, abstracts, or titles were chosen to unveil the thematic map. The study assessed 2000 titles with unigram words that recurred at least five times per 1000 documents. Likewise, thematic evolution and thematic maps use the Louvain algorithm. Themes are formed in four distinct quadrants as follows. (1) Themes with a lesser degree of relevance and a lesser degree of development are labelled as declining themes. However, certain themes in this quadrant fall under the category of emerging themes, as their degree of development is lower (i.e., they have yet to be tapped). (2) Themes with lesser relevance and a higher degree of development were considered niche themes they lacked relevance. (3) Themes with higher degree relevance and development were considered motor themes. (4) Themes with higher relevance and a lower degree of development are considered basic themes, as these themes evolved at the earliest with fewer development opportunities. Therefore, themes that fall into the third and first quadrants, such as motor themes and emerging themes, are considered to have potential for future research. Figure 12 depicts the thematic map of the study that describes clinical studies related to personality traits, psychological disorders, coping strategies, and their relationship with emotional intelligence form the motor theme. Although studies related to burnout, neuroticism, and burnout are in the first quadrant, their degree of development has reached saturation and is declining. Therefore, studies on assessment, approaches, and relations between stress and personality traits are considered emerging trends.

Figure 11:
Thematic evolution based on author keywords.

Figure 12:
Thematic map using titles of the dataset.

The findings of this study collected evidence to provide an overview and unveil the intellectual structure behind the correspondence between stress and personality traits. However, certain negative personality traits like neuroticism, alexithymia, and distress personalities have gained focus in this study, as they are relevantly reflected in publications investigating personality traits and stress. It is important to discuss all possible dimensions reflected by the investigations on personality traits and stress. As the consequences of the negative traits were discussed previously, the benefits of developing positive traits such as openness, optimism, agreeableness, extraversion, humility, honesty, etc., are notable. For instance, an individual with positive traits can naturally cope with stress and can evade all stress hormones and related diseases to an extent,^[53,54] which makes the individual lead a happy life and a successful career.^[55] According to the literature, personality traits influence emotional regulation over stress control. Therefore, choosing candidates with potential and suitable traits for the workplace and workforce is profitable. Thus, recruitment notes for selecting the right candidates based on their personality traits were suggested in this study. Scales and measures to assess personality traits have also been tabulated (Table 8).

Employees with negative traits such as neuroticism and narcissism in higher degrees tend to have chronic stress and exhibit deviant behaviour at work. Whereas employees with higher degrees of positive traits, such as agreeableness and conscientiousness tend to experience less perceived stress in the workplace.^[55] It is also noted that employees with higher levels of conscientiousness can cope with technostress,^[40] which is very common among IT professions. It is also known that productivity requires a small amount of stress as a threshold to push the human mind to drive and complete the task successfully. However, the accumulation of stress over time causes exhaustion and burnout. The level of coping with such stress can vary from person to person, as can external factors such as peer communities at the workplace. The psychometric selection process has been quite common across all fields for decades. Thus, involving personality trait assessment in psychometric rounds of interviewing could possibly reduce workplace deviant behaviours in the future. Recruiters can also facilitate their employees with wellness programmes and workplace spirituality (promoting meaningful work and a sense of community in the workplace),^[56,57] so that the level of coping stress could be improved.

Thorough bibliometric analyses of scientific data using RStudio and VOSviewer and visualisations helped to interpret the studies and identify potential, emerging, and untapped areas where studies can be conducted in the future to add value to the existing body of knowledge. The intellectual structure behind the correspondence between personality traits and stress has been revealed, and it is understood that personality and stress can be highly associated, and it is essential to monitor these factors in the workplace.

This study aims only at rigor in the bibliography and the nucleus of a literature review. This study is limited in its objectives, such as unveiling intellectual structure and providing recruitment policy guidelines. However, the scope of the study is wide and can be applied to other aspects. In science mapping, the study focused only on co-citation and co-occurrence analysis, which provides an overview and intellectual structure. However, researchers can perform other analyses such as bibliographic coupling and co-authorship to determine networks. Data set for analyses has its limitations as it includes publications from Scopus database and there are other significant databases which can be considered in future. The process of data mining limited to research articles and review papers due to their volumes. However, excluding other document types is a limitation of this study.

A full-fledged systematic literature review can add value to this study. Emerging networks such as bruxism, perfectionism, and resilience (Table 7) can be adopted in the studies, as bibliometrics indicate that such topics are about to have scope in the future. Studies on mindfulness will be interesting in the current research era, as it has started to attract the interest of researchers and publishers across the globe (Figures 10 and 11). Figure 9 depicts strategies to cope with stress and manage negative personality traits. Despite ample literature on coping strategies such as meditation, yoga, and physical exercises, studies on pragmatic ways of coping strategies, such as workplace spirituality, are scarce. Thus, analyzing how workplace spirituality can condition personality traits and stress in the workplace could open new avenues for further research. Table 1 could be considered a standard model for future studies with similar objectives on different topics. Stress and personality traits are both subjective phenomena; therefore, future interviews, group discussions, and clinical studies can make accurate predictions than survey-based studies. In this digital era, future studies orienting to examining how artificial intelligence can help employees cope with stress will add value. For instance, AI can be used as a counselling/ advisory body in many organizations. Future studies to predict technological interventions for human personality traits and stress will be remarkable. For instance, the use of robot therapist in psychotherapist treatment has seen growth. Therefore, examining such technological cues for stress and personality traits requires further study.