Feeling capable or being flexible? Personality, cognition, and behavior: A moderated mediation of trust-in-supervisor internship

During an internship, some interns perform better when they perceive trust from their supervisors. This might be because a trustee’s self-efficacy increases when a trustor reveals a willingness to take a chance on the trustee. It empowers interns to believe that they are capable. Hence, this study aimed to examine whether interns’ trust in a supervisor moderated the model of internship self-efficacy as a mediator of proactive personality and performance. A total of 158 interns voluntarily participated in this study on three occasions, with a three-month interval between study periods. The results suggest that internship self-efficacy positively mediated the relationship between proactive personality and performance. In addition, the results of a moderated mediating analysis indicated that the interns’ trust in their supervisors weakened the positive effects of proactive personality on performance through internship self-efficacy. These results underscore the importance of situational and personal effects in the connections between proactive personality, internship self-efficacy, and performance.