We expected little socially desirable reporting. Nonetheless, future research could enhance neutral phrasing of personality items, as neutral phrasing has been shown to decrease the degree of socially desirable answers. Another point of self-reported personality traits is that they might have provided other information about personality traits than observer-reports would have. Indeed, it has been shown that self-reported and observer-reported personality traits each have unique variance. Yet, self- and observer-rated personality traits also showed to have a high degree of construct overlap and self-reported personality traits appeared to provide valid information about the person, predictive for various consequences. Both self- and observer-reported measures deliver valuable information about personality traits, However, both selfand observer-reports of personality are indirect measures, and cannot be directly observed. The conclusions drawn from our results should be interpreted accordingly. Up till date, self-reported personality traits in relation to teaching performance are less common in research than otherreported personality traits. Therefore, this study on selfreported personality traits, which also shows associations with teaching performance, makes an original contribution to current knowledge on this topic. The reported positive effects of extraversion are consistent with previous research. This study adds knowledge on the specific teaching skills involved – namely, provision of a motivating learning climate, communication of learning goals, provision of constructive feedback, and adequate evaluation of residents. Possibly, the positive evaluation of extraverted attending physicians reflects residents’ appreciation of those attending physicians who are best able to adjust to the demands of modern health care and residency training, which stresses typical extraversion related competencies, such as communication and collaboration. In line with expectations, conscientiousness turned out to be a positive trait for some specific teaching skills, i.e. the creation of a motivating learning climate and communication of learning goals. In general, conscientious people tend to be active learners, which may be instrumental or even contagious in terms of teaching residents to be active learners as well. Indeed, residents in this study find that conscientious attending physicians motivate them to study further, keep up with the literature, actively participate in discussions and prioritize learning goals. In addition, we found that attending physicians who reported higher levels of conscientiousness, were perceived as more adequate in evaluating the knowledge and skills of residents, however, this only applied to non-surgical attending physicians. An explanation for this finding could be found in the fact that nonsurgical residents find evaluation a more important teaching.