An Empirical Study to Improve Performance Oriented Personality Dimensions through Yoga Intervention

Abstract

Improving employee performance is an important concern for employee, employer and society at large. The performance of employee depends on the personality of employee. In modern times, studies on Big Five Personality concepts suggest that Conscientiousness is the most important dimension affecting performance of employee. Ancient Indian knowledge envisages the Guna Traya model of understanding personality. The description of Sattva Guna indicates that it improves the performance of a person. The present action research study aims to assess if the Conscientiousness and Sattva Guna can be improved through practice of Yoga by employees and to find the relationship between Sattva Guna and Conscientiousness. Fifty one employees who are given intervention for 4 months and another 51 employees forming Control group without any intervention participated in the study. Vedic Personality Inventory was used to assess the changes in Sattva Guna and Big Five Personality inventory was used to assess changes in Conscientiousness. The data analysis showed that there is significant increase in Sattva Guna and Conscientiousness in Intervention group but no significant changes are found in Control group implying that practice of Integrated Yoga improves the performance oriented personality dimensions.