The relationship between personality and decision-making: A Systematic literature review

Context: From a point of view, software development is a set of decisions that need to be made while the software is developed. Many alternatives should be considered, such as the technology to employ, or the most important features to implement. However, many factors can influence one's decision-making, such as the decision maker's personality. Objective: This paper reports the state of the art with regard to the relationship between decision-makers' personality and decision-making aspects. Method: We conducted a Systematic Literature Review to search and analyze published primary studies that discuss the abovementioned relationship in the context of companies that develop any kind of product or service. Results: Despite the recognized influence of personality in decision-making activities, we were not able to find any study in Software Engineering field that discusses this relationship. We included 15 studies and most of them are from Management field, excluding one from Information System field. From these studies, we identified 75 reported relationships between 28 different personality aspects and 30 different decision-making aspects. Conclusion: The interest in this topic born on 80's and it has grown after 2002. However, despite the number of reported relationships, and the number of personalities and decision-making aspects investigated, more research on this topic is necessary. In particular, it is important to verify how someone's personality influences the decision-making considering the software development context. This can help in improving how a decision is made in software engineering context.