Dictionary of Arguments


Philosophical and Scientific Issues in Dispute
 
[german]

Screenshot Tabelle Begriffes

 

Find counter arguments by entering NameVs… or …VsName.

Enhanced Search:
Search term 1: Author or Term Search term 2: Author or Term


together with


The author or concept searched is found in the following 53 entries.
Disputed term/author/ism Author
Entry
Reference
Agreeableness Psychological Theories Corr I 60
Agreeableness/emotion/five-factor model/personality psychology/psychological theories: Agreeableness is usually defined as a behavioural disposition that contrasts a prosocial, communal orientation towards others with an antagonistic attitude. However, some of the best markers of agreeableness refer to emotional dispositions towards other people (e.g., ‘affectionate’, ‘soft-hearted’ versus ‘cold’; John and Srivastava 1999)(1); and empirically, agreeableness has been found to correlate negatively with trait anger (agreeable people are less anger-prone; e.g., Kuppens 2005)(2) and positively with the tendency to experience empathic emotions (i.e., emotional reactions to the fate of others; Del Barrio, Aluja and García 2004)(3). In addition, agreeable persons seem to try harder than non-agreeable persons to control the expression of negative emotions (Geisler, Wiedig-Allison and Weber in press; Tobin, Graziano, Vanman and Tassinary 2000)(4). Cf. >Extraversion, >openness to experience, >Conscientiousness, >Introversion, >Five-Factor Model.

1.John, O. P. and Srivastava, S. 1999. The Big Five trait taxonomy: history, measurement, and theoretical perspectives, in L. A. Pervin and O. P. John (eds.), Handbook of personality: theory and research, 2nd edn, pp. 102–38. New York: Guilford Press
2. Kuppens, P. 2005. Interpersonal determinants of trait anger: low agreeableness, perceived low social esteem, and the amplifying role of the importance attached to social relationships, Personality and Individual Differences 38: 13–23
3. Del Barrio, V., Aluja, A. and García, L. F. 2004. Relationship between empathy and the Big Five of personality traits in a sample of Spanish adolescents, Social Behaviour and Personality 32: 677–82
4. Tobin, R. M., Graziano, W. G., Vanman, E. J. and Tassinary, L. G. 2000. Personality, emotional experience, and efforts to control emotions, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79: 656–69


Rainer Reisenzein & Hannelore Weber, “Personality and emotion”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Allport Psychological Theories Corr I 92
Allport/personality/traits/psychological theories/Deary: John and Robbins 1993(1) p. 224): ‘The Big Five' structure was derived through purely empirical and purposely atheoretical procedures; theoretical considerations, such as questions about the existence and explanatory status of traits, were deemed unimportant.’ There are two views:
A. There are those who hold to traits as merely descriptive: the summary view.
B. On the other hand, there are those who hold the causal view. The causal view seems irresistible, if only to try to test it and to think how. When discussing the causal view one gets various reiterations of what this means to people: ‘unknown neuropsychiatric structures’, ‘entities that exist “in our skins” ’, ‘underlying causal mechanisms’, ‘some neurophysiological or hormonal basis for personality’, and ‘causal and dynamic principles’ (John and Robins 1993, pp. 227–8). Most of this is hand-waving.
((s) For the philosophical discussion on causal explanation see >Causal explanation.)
>Personality traits, >G. Allport, >Lexical hypothesis, >Lexical studies.

1. John, O. P. and Robbins, R. W. 1993. Gordon Allport: father and critic of the five-factor model, in K. H. Craik, R. Hogan and R. N. Wolfe (eds.), Fifty years of personality psychology, pp. 215–36. New York: Plenum


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Cultural Differences Lexical Studies Corr I 388
Personality traits/lexical studies/cultural differences/Saucier: studies of most languages of European origin (plus those in Turkish, Korean and Chinese) have produced factors corresponding to Extraversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Although this structure was not observed in Filipino, French, Greek or Maasai studies, it appears readily in a sub-set of languages that is larger than the sub-set that yields the >Big Five. Among English adjectives, this structure was as robust across variable selections as were one- and two-factor structures (Saucier 1997)(1). But studies of English type-nouns (Saucier 2003b(2)) and of other inclusive selections of variables (Saucier, Georgiades, Tsaousis and Goldberg 2005;(3) Saucier, Ole-Kotikash and Payne 2006)(4) failed to find it.
Lexical studies in Slavic and Germanic languages (including English) have been quite supportive of the Big Five, and so has a study in Turkish. But other studies (e.g., Di Blas and Forzi 1998(5); Saucier, Georgiades, Tsaousis and Goldberg 2005(3); Szirmák and De Raad 1994)(6) have found no clear counterpart to the Intellect factor in five-factor solutions.
None of these analyses has found the Big Five in a five-factor solution. The appearance of the Big Five is clearly contingent upon the variable-selection procedure, and thus on the operational definition of personality.
Corr I 389
Six factors: Ashton, Lee, Perugini et al. (2004)(7) have presented evidence that many of the lexical studies conducted to date yield a consistent pattern in six factor solutions: six factors that can be labelled as Extraversion, Emotionality, Agreeableness, Honesty/Humility, Conscientiousness and Openness. Although the structural pattern was first detected in studies of Korean (Hahn, Lee and Ashton 1999)(8) and French (Boies, Lee, Ashton et al. 2001)(9), it has appeared to a recognizable degree also in Dutch, German, Hungarian, Italian and Polish. Seven factors: seven-factor solution (Goldberg and Somer 2000(10); Saucier 1997(1); Tellegen and Waller 1987)(11). Of the two additional factors in these studies, one was found in all three: ‘Negative Valence’ (NV) is a factor emphasizing attributes with extremely low desirability and endorsement rates and with descriptive content involving morality/depravity, dangerousness, worthlessness, peculiarity and stupidity (cf., Benet-Martínez and Waller 2002)(12). A core content theme seems to be Noxious Violativeness – attributes reflecting a tendency to harmfully violate the rights of others, corresponding in many ways to contemporary definitions of antisocial personality disorder (Saucier 2007).
Corr I 390
A lexical study of the language with the largest number of native speakers (Chinese) generated seven emic factors with some resemblance to this structure (Zhou, Saucier, Gao and Liu in press). The seven factors include Negative Valence (or Noxious Violativeness), Conscientiousness, Intellect, Gregariousness, Self-Assurance, Even Temper and Concern for Others (versus Egotism). A comparison of seven-factor solutions from numerous studies indicates that the first six of these are particularly recurrent across studies.
1. Saucier, G. 1997. Effects of variable selection on the factor structure of person descriptors, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73: 1296–1312
2. Saucier, G. 2003b. Factor structure of English-language personality type-nouns, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85: 695–708
3. Saucier, G., Georgiades, S., Tsaousis, I. and Goldberg, L. R. 2005. The factor structure of Greek personality adjectives, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 856–75
4. Saucier, G., Ole-Kotikash, L. and Payne, D. L. 2006. The structure of personality and character attributes in the language of the Maasai. Unpublished report. University of Oregon
5, Di Blas, L. and Forzi, M. 1998. An alternative taxonomic study of personality descriptors in the Italian language, European Journal of Personality 12: 75–101
6. Szirmák, Z. and De Raad, B. 1994. Taxonomy and structure of Hungarian personality traits, European Journal of Personality 8: 95–118
7. Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., Perugini, M., Szarota, P. De Vries, R. E., Di Blas, L., Boies, K. and De Raad, B. 2004. A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86: 356–66
8. Hahn, D. W., Lee, K. and Ashton, M. C. 1999. A factor analysis of the most frequently used Korean personality trait adjectives, European Journal of Personality 13: 261–82
9. Boies, K., Lee, K., Ashton, M. C., Pascal, S. and Nicol, A. A. M. 2001. The structure of the French personality lexicon, European Journal of Personality 15: 277–95
10. Goldberg, L. R. and Somer, O. 2000. The hierarchical structure of common Turkish person-descriptive adjectives, European Journal of Personality 14: 497–531
11. Tellegen, A. and Waller, N. G. 1987. Re-examining basic dimensions of natural language trait descriptors. Paper presented at the 95th annual convention of the American Psychological Association, August 1987

Gerard Saucier, „Semantic and linguistic aspects of personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Cultural Differences McCrae Corr I 151
Cultural differences/cultural psychology/psychology/psychological theories/McCrae: Over the past twenty years, researchers around the world have begun to translate instruments like the NEO-PI-R (McCrae and Allik 2002)(1) and the Big Five Inventory (BFI) (Schmitt, Allik, McCrae et al. 2007)(2), and have administered them to respondents in dozens of countries. Results are easily summarized: personality is much the same everywhere. The FFM structure ((s) >Five-Factor Model) itself is universal. McCrae and colleagues (McCrae, Terracciano and 78 others 2005)(3) reported an almost perfect replication of the American adult self-report NEO-PI-R structure using 11,985 observer ratings of college-age and adult targets from 50 cultures. The same study replicated the American pattern of age differences (although the age effects for N ((s) >neuroticism) and A ((s) >agreeableness) were much smaller in the international sample). >Cultural psychology, >Neuroticism, >Agreeableness, >Openness to experience, >Conscientiousness, >Intraversion, >Five-Factor Model.
There is a plausible explanation for this universality: the FFM is strongly rooted in biology. Each of the five factors is heritable (Riemann, Angleitner and Strelau 1997)(4), and studies of twins (Yamagata, Suzuki, Ando et al. 2006)(5) and of family relatives (Pilia, Chen, Scuteri et al. 2006)(6) show that the five-factor structure of the observed traits mirrors the structure of their underlying genes. Apparently, Warmth and Assertiveness are both definers of E because they are influenced by some of the same genes.

1. McCrae, R. R. and Allik, J. (eds.) 2002. The Five-Factor Model of personality across cultures. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers
2. Schmitt, D. P., Allik, J., McCrae, R. R., Benet-Martínez, V., Alcalay, L., Ault, L. et al. 2007. The geographic distribution of Big Five personality traits: patterns and profiles of human self-description across 56 nations, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 38: 173–212
3. McCrae, R. R., Terracciano, A. and 78 Members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project 2005. Universal features of personality traits from the observer’s perspective: data from 50 cultures, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 547–61
4. Riemann, R., Angleitner, A. and Strelau, J. 1997. Genetic and environmental influences on personality: a study of twins reared together using the self- and peer report NEO-FFI scales, Journal of Personality 65: 449-75
5. Yamagata, S., Suzuki, A., Ando, J., Ono, Y., Kijima, N., Yoshimura, K., Ostendorf, F., Angleitner, A., Riemann, R., Spinath, F., Livesley, W. J. and Jang, K. L. 2006. Is the genetic structure of human personality universal? A cross-cultural twin study from North America, Europe, and Asia, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90: 987–98
6. Pilia, G., Chen, W.-M., Scuteri, A., Orrú, M., Albai, G., Deo, M. et al. 2006. Heritability of cardiovascular and personality traits in 6,148 Sardinians, PLoS Genetics 2: 1207–23

Robert R. McCrae, “The Five-Factor Model of personality traits: consensus and controversy”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Cultural Differences Neuroscience Corr I 324
Cultural Differences/neuroscience/DeYoung/Gray: Recently, the genetic factor structure of the >Big Five, as measured by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, was shown to be invariant across European, North American and East Asian samples, suggesting the biological universality of these traits (Yamagata, Suzuki, Ando et al. 2006)(1). When measures of abnormal and normal personality traits are factor analysed together, the standard >Big Five solution appears (Markon, Krueger and Watson 2005(2)), suggesting the utility of the Big Five for studying psychopathology. >Heritability, >Personality traits.

1. Yamagata, S., Suzuki, A., Ando, J., Ono, Y., Kijima, N., Yoshimura, K., Ostendorf, F., Angleitner, A., Riemann, R., Spinath, F. M., Livesley, W. J. and Jang, K. L. 2006. Is the genetic structure of human personality universal? A cross-cultural twin study from North America, Europe, and Asia, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90: 987–98
2. Markon, K. E., Krueger, R. F. and Watson, D. 2005. Delineating the structure of normal and abnormal personality: an integrative hierarchical approach, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 139–57

Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Cultural Psychology De Raad Corr I 133
Cultural psychology/cultural differences/generalizability/five-factor model/personality traits/De Raad: replicability. In pursuit of a cross-lingual trait-structure, Hofstee, Kiers, De Raad et al. (1997)(1), De Raad, Perugini and Szirmák (1997)(2) and De Raad, Perugini, Hrebícková and Szarota (1998)(3) compared several psycholexically derived five factor structures using psychometric criteria. The general conclusion of those studies was that congruence coefficients calculated for corresponding Big Five factors suggested the replicability of the first three factors of the Big Five (Extraversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) and moderate replicability of the fourth factor, Emotional Stability. Moreover, cross-cultural comparisons based on the substance of Big Five factors from six different psycholexical studies also led to the conclusion that Extraversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness are cross-culturally coherent, Emotional Stability and Intellect are not (De Raad and Peabody 2005(4); Peabody and De Raad 2002)(5). >Language/Psychological theories.


1. Hofstee, W. K. B., Kiers, H. A. L., De Raad, B., Goldberg, L. R. and Ostendorf, F. 1997. A comparison of Big-Five structures of personality traits in Dutch, English, and German, European Journal of Personality 11: 15-31
2. De Raad, B., Perugini, M. and Szirmák, Z. 1997. In pursuit of a cross-lingual reference structure of personality traits: comparisons among five languages, European Journal of Personality 11: 167–85
3. De Raad, B., Perugini, M., Hrébicková, M. and Szarota, P. 1998. Lingua franca of personality: taxonomies and structures based on the psycholexical approach, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 29: 212–32
4. De Raad, B. and Peabody, D. 2005. Cross-culturally recurrent personality factors: analyses of three factors, European Journal of Personality 19: 451–74
5. Peabody, D. and De Raad, B. 2002. The substantive nature of psycholexical personality factors: a comparison acrosss languages, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83: 983–97

Boele De Raad, “Structural models of personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Cultural Psychology Deary Corr I 90
Cultural psychology/cultural differences/generalizability/five-factor model/personality traits/Deary: The applicability of the Five-Factor Model to other cultures and language groups has been questioned, and the model has largely done well in this sphere too. The NEO Personality Inventory-Revised has been translated into many different languages. In a study of twenty-six cultures, many non-Western, McCrae (2001)(1) reported that factor analyses retrieved very similar structures of personality description. A later report, in which almost 12,000 students in fifty cultures rated another person’s traits, found good agreement with regard to the American self-report structure (McCrae and 79 others 2005)(2). This study found similar sex and age differences across cultures. Eysenck’s personality questionnaires perform well on this type of cross-cultural comparison too (e.g., Eysenck and Eysenck 1982)(3). A. This type of research is known as the ‘etic’ approach, in which a personality personality questionnaire developed in one culture (usually Western) is translated and applied to others.
B. The other type of research is ‘emic’, which starts with the culture’s own lexicon and asks if a similar personality structure is found in each. Peabody and De Raad’s (2002)(4) summary of emic research was that the ‘effort to achieve Big Five universality has been overextended’.
They found the best generality across cultures for >Conscientiousness, >Extraversion and >Agreeableness.
>language/psychological theories, >Five-Factor Model.


1. McCrae, R. R. 2001. Trait psychology and culture: exploring intercultural comparison, Journal of Personality 69: 819–46
2. McCrae, R. R. and 79 others 2005. Universal features of personality traits from the observer’s perspective: data from 50 cultures, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 547–61
3. Eysenck, H. J. and Eysenck, S. B. G. 1982. Recent advances in the cross-cultural study of personality, in C. D. Spielberger and J. N. Butcher (eds.), Advances in personality assessment, pp. 41–69. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
4. Peabody, D. and De Raad, B. 2002. The substantive nature of psycholexical personality factors: a comparison across languages, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83: 983–97


Ian J. Deary, “The trait approach to personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Emotion System Psychological Theories Corr I 56
Emotion System/psychological theories/Reisenzein/Weber: the emotion system seems to consist at its core of a mechanism that (1) monitors the relevance of cognized events for the person’s desires or motives, and
(2) communicates detected motive-relevant changes to other personality sub-systems and simultaneously proposes particular action goals (Frijda 1994(1); Reisenzein 2009(2)). A person can to a considerable degree decide to heed versus ignore the ‘suggestions’ made by her emotions, as well as control or regulate the emotions themselves. As Frijda (1986(3) put it, ‘people not only have emotions, they also handle them’.
>Emotions, >Emotional intelligence, >Behavior, >Self-knowledge, >Consciousness
Corr I 60/61
it is widely accepted today that emotions have adaptive effects, which were the reason why the emotion system (at least its core) emerged in evolution. This raises the question of whether individual differences in emotionality (e.g., fearfulness or irascibility) are likewise, at least in part, the product of natural selection. Although there is now strong evidence for the partial heritability of the Big Five (e.g., Bouchard (2004)(4) and hence for the heritability of basic inter-individual differences in emotionality, this does not imply that these heritable inter-individual differences are adaptive. adaptive. On the contrary, it has been argued that the very existence of heritable variation in a trait signals a lack of adaptive significance (Tooby and Cosmides 1990)(5). >emotion system/Tooby, >emotion system/Cosmides.

1. Frijda, N. H. 1994. Emotions are functional, most of the time, in P. Ekman and R. J. Davidson (eds.), The nature of emotion, pp. 112–36. Oxford University Press
2. Reisenzein, R. 2009. Emotions as metarepresentational states of mind: naturalizing the belief-desire theory of emotion, Cognitive Systems Research 10: 6–20
3. Frijda, N. H. 1986. The emotions. Cambridge University Press, p. 401
4. Bouchard, T. J. Jr. 2004. Genetic influence on human psychological traits, Current Directions in Psychological Science 13: 148–51
5. Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. 1990. On the universality of human nature and the uniqueness of the individual: the role of genetics and adaptation, Journal of Personality 58: 17–67


Rainer Reisenzein & Hannelore Weber, “Personality and emotion”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Extraversion Tellegen Corr I 60
Extraversion/emotion/five-factor model/personality psychology/Tellegen: Tellegen (1985)(1) (…) proposed to rename extraversion ‘positive emotionality’ because of its conceptual and empirical relations to the propensity to experience positive affect (measured, for example, with the Positive Affect sub-scale of the PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule)), which he considered to be the core of extraversion. However, although positive emotionality may be its core, extraversion also subsumes other dispositions, in particular sociability (the tendency to be outgoing and sociable versus withdrawn and reserved) (see Costa and McCrae 1992(2); John and Srivastava 1999(3)). Empirically, too, the correlations between extraversion and positive emotionality are not strong enough to warrant the identification of these dispositions (Lucas and Fujita 2000)(4). >Neuroticism, >Agreeableness, >Openness to experience, >Conscientiousness, >Intraversion, >Five-Factor Model.

1. Tellegen, A. 1985. Structures of mood and personality and their relevance to assessing anxiety, with an emphasis on self-report, in A. H. Tuma and J. D. Maser (eds.), Anxiety and the anxiety disorders, pp. 681–706. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
2. Costa, P. T. and McCrae, R. R. 1992. NEO PI-R Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources
3. John, O. P. and Srivastava, S. 1999. The Big Five trait taxonomy: history, measurement, and theoretical perspectives, in L. A. Pervin and O. P. John (eds.), Handbook of personality: theory and research, 2nd edn, pp. 102–38. New York: Guilford Press
4. Lucas, R. E. and Fujita, F. 2000. Factors influencing the relation between extraversion and pleasant affect, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79: 1039–56


Rainer Reisenzein & Hannelore Weber, “Personality and emotion”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Five-Factor Model Deary Corr I 90
Five-Factor Model/personality psychology/Deary: VsFive-Factor model: the model has been questioned, regarding whether it captures the major sources of human personality variation. For example, from Paunonen’s (2002)(1) ‘supernumerary personality inventory’, Ashton and Lee (e.g., Ashton and Lee 2005(2); Lee and Ashton 2006(3)) provided evidence for Honesty-Humility’s being an additional important and relatively separate trait from the five. Going in the other direction, DeYoung (2006)(4) has emphasized that the Big Five are not orthogonal, and that higher-order traits (named Stability and Plasticity) – though not based on especially strong correlations – could be important when it comes to biological theories of personality.
>Personality traits, >Extraversion, >Openness, >Agreeableness,
>Neuroticism, >Conscientiousness.

1. Paunonen, S. V. 2002. Design and construction of the Supernumerary Personality Inventory, Research Bulletin 763. London, ON: University of Western Ontario
2. Ashton, M. C. and Lee, K. 2005. Honesty-humility, the Big Five, and the Five Factor Model, Journal of Personality 73: 1321–53
3. Lee, K. and Ashton, M. C. 2006. Further assessment of the HEXACO Personality Inventory: two new facet scales and an observer report form, Psychological Assessment 18: 182–91
4. De Young, C. G. 2006. Higher-order factors of the big five in a multi-informant sample, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91: 1138–51


Ian J. Deary, “The trait approach to personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Five-Factor Model Developmental Psychology Corr I 195
Five-Factor Model/Developmental psychology/personality traits/Donnellan/Robins: recent studies on the absolute and differential stability in the Big Five (>Five-Factor Model, >Personality traits) are (Donnellan and Lucas 2008(1); Terracciano, McCrae, Brant and Costa 2005(2); Srivastava, John, Gosling and Potter 2003(3)), meta-analytic reviews (Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer 2006(4); Roberts and DelVecchio 2000(4a)), and narrative reviews (Helson, Kwan, John and Jones 2002(5); Trzesniewski, Robins, Roberts and Caspi 2004(6)).
Corr I 196
Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer (2006) (…) divided the Extraversion domain into two facets: Social Dominance (traits related to independence and dominance) and Social Vitality (traits related to positive affect, activity level and sociability). Average levels of Social Vitality tended to be fairly stable across the lifespan, although there was a slight spike upward from adolescence to young adulthood followed by a plateau in the average level until the mid-fifties when there was a slight decline. Social Dominance, on the other hand, showed a more pronounced and consistent absolute increase from adolescence to the early thirties where mean-levels remained consistent until the mid-fifties, after which the lack of studies precluded further analyses. Agreeableness and Conscientiousness showed gradual increases in absolute scores across the lifespan whereas Neuroticism showed gradual decreases. Finally, Openness showed a mean-level increase from adolescence to young adulthood and then mean-levels remained constant until the mid-fifties when it started to show a slight decline in average levels. There are two dominant explanations for absolute changes in the Big Five.
a) The intrinsic maturational position holds that normative age-related changes in personality are driven by biological processes (e.g., Costa and McCrae 2006)(7) whereas
b) The life course position posits that changes stem from involvement in particular social roles and the life experiences that accompany them (e.g., Roberts, Wood and Smith 2005)(8). (RobertsVsCosta, RobertsVsMcCrae).
Corr I 197
Donnellan/Robins: Thesis: we believe there are compelling findings linking experiences within the important domains of adult life to personality changes. For example, Robins, Caspi and Moffitt (2002)(9) found that individuals who were involved in distressed romantic relationships in their early twenties demonstrated increases in Neuroticism compared to those in relatively satisfying relationships. Likewise, Roberts, Caspi and Moffitt (2003)(10) found that work experiences were tied to a variety of changes in basic personality traits, including the finding that greater autonomy at work was tied to increases in the Social Dominance aspects of Extraversion. Elder and Shanahan: Thesis: that ‘the interplay of social context and the organism [is] the formative process, making people who they are’ (Elder and Shanahan 2006, p. 670)(11).
Absolute Changes: Research on absolute changes in the Big Five challenges the assumption that adolescence is the critical period of maturation in personality (Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer 2006)(4). Instead, Roberts et al. found that most of the action in terms of mean-level changes in personality occurs during young adulthood.
Differential stability: A meta-analysis involving test-retest correlations from 152 longitudinal studies showed that the Big Five become increasingly stable across the lifespan (Roberts and DelVecchio 2000)(12).

1. Donnellan, M. B. and Lucas, R. E. 2008. Age differences in the Big Five across the life span: evidence from two nationally representative samples, Psychology and Aging 23: 558–66
2. Terracciano, A., McCrae, R. R., Brant, L. J. and Costa, P. T., Jr 2005. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses of the NEO-PI-R scales in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, Psychology and Aging 20: 493–506
3. Srivastava, S., John, O. P., Gosling, S. D. and Potter, J. 2003. Development of personality in early and middle adulthood: set like plaster or persistent change?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84: 1041–53
4. Roberts, B.W., Walton, K.E. and Viechtbauer, W. 2006. Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies, Psychological Bulletin 132: 1–25
5. Helson, R., Kwan, V. S. Y., John, O. P. and Jones, C. 2002. The growing evidence for personality change in adulthood: findings from research with personality inventories, Journal of Research in Personality 36: 287–306
6. Trzesniewski, K. H., Robins, R. W., Roberts, B. W. and Caspi, A. 2004. Personality and self-esteem development across the life span, in P. T. Costa, Jr and I. C. Siegler (eds), Recent advances in psychology and aging, pp. 163–85. Amsterdam: Elsevier
7. Costa, P. T., Jr and McCrae, R. R. 2006. Age changes in personality and their origins: comment on Roberts, Walton, and Viechtbauer (2006), Psychological Bulletin 132: 26–8
8. Roberts, B. W., Wood, D. and Smith, J. L. 2005. Evaluating the five factor theory and social investment perspective on personality trait development, Journal of Research in Personality 39: 166–84
9. Robins, R. W., Caspi, A. and Moffitt, T. E. 2002. It’s not just who you’re with, it’s who you are: personality and relationship experiences across multiple relationships, Journal of Personality 70: 925–64
10. Roberts, B. W., Caspi, A. and Moffitt, T. E. 2003. Work experiences and personality development in young adulthood, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84: 582–93
11. Elder, G. H., Jr and Shanahan, M. J. 2006. The life course and human development, in W. Damon and R. Lerner (Series eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology, vol. I, Theoretical Models of Human Development, 6th edn, pp. 665–715. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley
12. Roberts, B. W. and DelVecchio, W. F. 2000. The rank-order consistency of personality from childhood to old age: a quantitative review of longitudinal studies, Psychological Bulletin 126: 3–25


M. Brent Donnellan and Richard W. Robins, “The development of personality across the lifespan”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Five-Factor Model McCrae Corr I 148
Five-Factor Model/McCrae: [the] five factors provide a structure in which most personality traits can be classified. This structure arises because traits co-vary. For example, people who are sociable and assertive tend also to be cheerful and energetic; they are high on the Extraversion (E) factor, which is said to be defined by sociability, assertiveness, cheerfulness and energy. However, people who are sociable and assertive may or may not be intellectually curious and imaginative. Those traits define a separate factor, Openness to Experience (O). Neuroticism versus Emotional Stability (N), Agreeableness versus Antagonism (A), and Conscientiousness (C) are the remaining factors. Cf. >Neuroticism, >Agreeableness, >Openness to experience, >Conscientiousness, >Introversion, >Extraversion.
Corr I 149
Lexical hypothesis: argues that traits are so important in human affairs that common words will have been invented to name them all. >Lexical hypothesis/psychological theories.
Corr I 152
Per FFM/pro Five-Factor Model/McCrae: There is now consensus that the general personality dimension of N is associated with most personality disorders (Widiger and Costa 2002)(1), that E predisposes people to be happy (DeNeve and Cooper 1998)(2), that O predicts social and political liberalism (McCrae 1996)(3), that low A is a risk factor for substance abuse (Ball 2002)(4), that C is associated with good job performance (Barrick and Mount 1991)(5). The utility of the FFM has been securely demonstrated.
Corr I 152/153
VsFFM/VsFive-Factor Model/McCrae: A. a) Advocates of a person-centred approach claim that types more faithfully represent the operation of psychological processes than do variable-centred traits (see Asendorpf, Caspi and Hofstee 2002(6), for a balanced discussion of these issues).
b) Social cognitive theorists (Cervone 2004(7) have argued that traits merely describe, without explaining, behaviour (see McCrae and Costa 2008a(8) for a rebuttal (McCraeVsCervone, CostaVsCervone).
c) The FFM itself does not constitute a full theory of personality, explaining human development, day-to-day functioning and social interactions in cultural context (McAdams and Pals 2006)(9).
McCraeVsMcAdams, McCraeVsPals: see (McCrae and Costa 2003(10), 2008b(11).
B. Some authors propose some variation on or refinement of the FFM: Research in different languages led to proposals of models with more or less factors. De Raad and Peabody (2005)(12) reported analyses of trait descriptive adjectives in Dutch, Italian, Czech, Hungarian and Polish samples and found more robust support for a three-factor model consisting of E, A and C than for the FFM. Conversely, Ashton and colleagues (Ashton and Lee 2005(13); Ashton, Lee, Perugini et al. 2004)(14) reported lexical studies in a number of languages in which six replicable factors appeared.
Corr I 155
There has been made a sub division into facets within the personality traits of the FFM: NEO-PI-R: has thirty facet scales, six for each factor. They were chosen to represent the most important constructs in the personality literature, while at the same time being maximally distinct.(Costa and McCrae 1995a)(15).
VsNEO-PI-R/VsMcCrae/VsCosta: The facet system of the NEO-PI-R has been criticized as being arbitrary, because ‘the key ingredient for a system to provide an adequate lower order structure of the Big Five is some empirical foundation to selecting lower-order traits’ in contrast to the ‘theoretical insight and intuition’ used in developing the NEO-PI-R (Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer 2006(16), p. 29).

1. Widiger, T. A. and Costa, P. T., Jr 2002. Five-Factor Model personality disorder research, in P. T. Costa, Jr and T. A. Widiger (eds.), Personality disorders and the Five-Factor Model of personality, 2nd edn, pp. 59–87. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
2. DeNeve, K. M. and Cooper, H. 1998. The happy personality: a meta-analysis of 137 personality traits and subjective well-being, Psychological Bulletin 124: 197–229
3. McCrae, R. R. 1996. Social consequences of experiential Openness, Psychological Bulletin 120: 323–37
4. Ball, S. A. 2002. Big Five, Alternative Five, and seven personality dimensions: validity in substance-dependent patients, in P. T. Costa, Jr and T. A. Widiger (eds.), Personality disorders and the Five-Factor Model of personality, 2nd edn, pp. 177–201. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
5. Barrick, M. R. and Mount, M. K. 1991. The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: a meta-analysis, Personnel Psychology 44: 1–26
6. Asendorpf, J. B., Caspi, A. and Hofstee, W. K. B. 2002. The puzzle of personality types [Special Issue], European Journal of Personality 16(S1) Ashton, M. C. and Lee, K. 2005. Honesty-Humility, the Big Five, and the Five-Factor Model, Journal of Personality 73: 1321–53
7. Cervone, D. 2004. Personality assessment: tapping the social-cognitive architecture of personality, Behaviour Therapy 35: 113–29
8. McCrae, R. R., and Costa, P. T. 2008a. Empirical and theoretical status of the Five-Factor Model of personality traits, in G. Boyle, G. Matthews and D. H. Saklofske (eds.), Sage handbook of personality theory and assessment, vol. I, pp. 273–94. Los Angeles, CA: Sage
9. McAdams, D. P. and Pals, J. L. 2006. A new Big Five: fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality, American Psychologist 61: 204–17
10. McCrae, R. R., and Costa, P. T. 2003. Personality in adulthood: a Five-Factor Theory perspective, 2nd edn. New York: Guilford
11. McCrae, R. R., and Costa, P. T. 2008b. The Five-Factor Theory of personality, in O. P. John, R. W. Robins and L. A. Pervin (eds.), Handbook of personality: theory and research, 3rd edn, pp. 159–81. New York: Guilford Press
12. De Raad, B. and Peabody, D. 2005. Cross-culturally recurrent personality factors: analyses of three factors, European Journal of Personality 19: 451–74
13. Ashton, M. C. and Lee, K. 2005. Honesty-Humility, the Big Five, and the Five-Factor Model, Journal of Personality 73: 1321–53
14. Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., Perugini, M., Szarota, P., De Vries, R. E., Di Blass, L., Boies, K. and De Raad, B. 2004. A six-factor structure of personality descriptive adjectives: solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86: 356–66
15. Costa, P. T., Jr., and McCrae, R. R. 1995a. Domains and facets: hierarchical personality assessment using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, Journal of Personality Assessment 64: 21–50
16. Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E. and Viechtbauer, W. 2006. Personality traits change in adulthood: reply to Costa and McCrae (2006), Psychological Bulletin 132: 29–32


Robert R. McCrae, “The Five-Factor Model of personality traits: consensus and controversy”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Five-Factor Model Neurobiology Corr I 331
Five-Factor Model/Neurobiology: Identifying serotonin and dopamine as likely biological substrates for the meta-traits begins to develop a psychobiological model of the personality hierarchy based on the Big Five. However, the correlations among the Big Five that reveal the meta-traits are not very strong, and each Big Five trait describes a clearly distinct domain of personality. Biological Biological substrates must exist that are unique to each trait, in addition to the shared substrates that produce the meta-traits. >Personality traits, >Personality, >, >Agreeableness, >Openness, >Neuroticism, >Extraversion,
>Conscientiousness.

Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Five-Factor Model Neuroscience Corr I 324
Five-Factor Model/Neuroscience/DeYoung/Gray: When measures of abnormal and normal personality traits are factor analysed together, the standard >Big Five solution appears (Markon, Krueger and Watson 2005)(1), suggesting the utility of the Big Five for studying psychopathology. Finally, the Big Five appears to be an effective taxonomy of descriptors of individual differences in other species (Gosling and John 1999)(2), and cross-species comparisons are often important in neuroscience. >Personality/Traits, >Personality, >Agreeableness, >Openness, >Neuroticism, >Extraversion,
>Conscientiousness.


1. Markon, K. E., Krueger, R. F. and Watson, D. 2005. Delineating the structure of normal and abnormal personality: an integrative hierarchical approach, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 139–57
2. Gosling, S. D. and John, O. P. 1999. Personality dimensions in nonhuman animals: a cross-species review, Current Directions in Psychological Science 8: 69–75

Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Five-Factor Model Reisenzein Corr I 59
Five-Factor Model/Big Five/Psychological Theories/Reisenzein/Weber: The Five-Factor Model of personality posits five main, relatively independent, broad personality dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience (see e.g., John and Srivastava 1999(1); McCrae and Costa 1999(2)). Of these traits, four (neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness and openness) are related to emotional dispositions. This is suggested by an examination of the theoretical definitions of these factors, by content analyses of the questionnaires used to measure them (Pytlik Zillig, Hemenover and Dienstbier 2002(3)), and by their correlations to explicit measures of emotional dispositions, such as the trait form of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) (a frequently used instrument for the assessment of pleasant and unpleasant affect; Watson, Clark and Tellegen 1988(4)). See also >Personality/Allport, >Neuroticism, >Extraversion, Agreeableness, >Openness to experience, >Conscientiousness, >Introversion.

1. John, O. P. and Srivastava, S. 1999. The Big Five trait taxonomy: history, measurement, and theoretical perspectives, in L. A. Pervin and O. P. John (eds.), Handbook of personality: theory and research, 2nd edn, pp. 102–38. New York: Guilford Press
2. McCrae, R. R. and Costa, P. T., Jr 1999. A five-factor theory of personality, in L. A. Pervin and O. P. John (eds.), Handbook of personality: theory and research, 2nd edn, pp. 139–53. New York: Guilford Press
3. Pytlik Zillig, L. M., Hemenover, S. H. and Dienstbier, R. A. 2002. What do we assess when we assess a ‘Big Five’ trait?: a content analysis of the affective, behavioural, and cognitive (ABC) processes represented in Big Five personality inventories, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28: 847–58
4. Watson, D., Clark, L. A. and Tellegen, A. 1988. Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the PANAS scales, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54: 1063–70


Rainer Reisenzein & Hannelore Weber, “Personality and emotion”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Five-Factor Model Zuckerman Corr I 327
Five-Factor Model/Zuckerman: Zuckerman (2005)(1) has provided the most extensive review of personality neuroscience to date, in the second edition of his book, Psychobiology of personality. This book is organized around a hybrid of the >Big Five and Zuckerman’s own model of personality, the Alternative Five, which are Sociability, Neuroticism-Anxiety, Aggression-Hostility, Impulsive Sensation-Seeking and Activity. Zuckerman identified the first four of these with >Extraversion, >Neuroticism, >Agreeableness (reversed) and >Conscientiousness (reversed), respectively, in the Big Five. >Personality traits/Zuckerman.

1. Zuckerman, M. 2005. Psychobiology of personality, 2nd edn rev. and updated. New York: Cambridge University Press



Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Heritability MacDonald Corr I 266
Heritability/personality traits/psychology/MacDonald: traits that are heritable and variable, such as the >Big Five personality traits that are heritable by a margin of .3 to .5 (MacDonald 1995)(1), cannot be the result of adaptation. See >Personality/MacDonald, >Heritability/Tooby/Cosmides.
1. MacDonald, K. B. 1995. Evolution, the five-factor model, and levels of personality, Journal of Personality 63: 525–67


Aurelio José Figueredo, Paul Gladden, Geneva Vásquez, Pedro Sofio, Abril Wolf and Daniel Nelson Jones, “Evolutionary theories of personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Heritability Tooby Corr I 266
Heritability/personality traits/psychology/Tooby/Comides: Tooby and Cosmides (1990)(1) have claimed that traits that are heritable and variable, such as the >Big Five personality traits that are heritable by a margin of .3 to .5 (MacDonald 1995)(2), cannot be the result of adaptation. Nevertheless, most evolutionary personality psychologists have generally concluded that individual differences in personality traits are adaptive in nature (see Figueredo, Sefcek, Vasquez et al. 2005(3) for a review).

1. Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. 1990. On the universality of human nature and the uniqueness of the individual: the role of genetics and adaptation, Journal of Personality 58: 17–67
2. MacDonald, K. B. 1995. Evolution, the five-factor model, and levels of personality, Journal of Personality 63: 525–67
3. Figueredo, A. J., Sefcek, J. A., Vasquez, G., Brumbach, B. H., King, J. E. and Jacobs, W. J. 2005. Evolutionary personality psychology, in D. M. Buss (ed.), Handbook of evolutionary psychology, pp. 851–77. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley


Aurelio José Figueredo, Paul Gladden, Geneva Vásquez, Pedro Sofio, Abril Wolf and Daniel Nelson Jones, “Evolutionary theories of personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Hierarchies Psychological Theories Corr I 136
Hierarchies/psychological theories/traits/Five-Factor Model/De Raad: Throughout the history of developing personality trait structures, hierarchy has played an inherent role. Possibly the most well-known hierarchy of traits is the strict hierarchy hypothesized by Eysenck (1970)(1). Leves are: type level (e.g. extraversion), trait level (e.g. sociability), habitual response level (e.g. entertaining strangers) and specific response level (e.g. telling jokes).
Corr I 138
An interesting way of looking at hierarchy, which has been applied increasingly over the last decade (e.g., De Raad and Szirmák 1994(2); Saucier, Georgiades, Tsaousis and Goldberg 2005(3)), is by giving the correlations between factors from different levels of extraction. E.g.
First level: 1 factor (virtue)
Second level: two factors (virtue and dynamism)
Third level: three factors (virtue, anxiety and dynamism)
Fourth level: four factors (virtue, anxiety, pleasure, and competence) (4)
>J. Eysenck, >Personality traits/Eysenck.

Corr I 139
Tests/hierarchies/traits/De Raad: Hierarchy is not only brought about psychometrically, through factoring variables or through factoring factors. Hampson, John and Goldberg (1986)(5) explicitly searched for indexes of hierarchy according to principles of Category Breadth and Concept Asymmetry, to enable an empirical test of hierarchy. Hampson, John and Goldberg (1986)(5) provided supportive empirical evidence for expected two-tiered (e.g., talkative is a way of being social) and three-tiered (e.g., musical is a way of being artistic, and artistic is a way of being talented) hierarchies for different types of descriptors (adjectives, verbs, nouns). Hampson et al. suggested that well-differentiated hierarchies are found in certain domains of the Big Five and not in others. >Big Five, >Five-factor model.
For example, when overt occurrence of behaviour is signalled by a trait (e.g., Emotional Instability), differentiated hierarchies are more frequent than when non-occurrence (e.g., being passive, silent, reserved) of behaviour is signalled by a trait (e.g., Introversion).
>Extraversion, >Introversion, >Behavior.

1. Eysenck, H. J. 1970. The structure of human personality, 3rd edn. London: Methuen
2. De Raad, B. and Szirmák, Z. 1994. The search for the ‘Big Five’ in a non-Indo-European language: the Hungarian trait structure and its relationship to the EPQ and the PTS, European Review of Applied Psychology 44: 17–24
3. Saucier, G. and Goldberg, L. R. 1996. Evidence for the Big Five in analyses of familiar English personality adjectives, European Journal of Personality 10: 61-77
4. De Raad, B. and Barelds, D. P. H. 2008. A new taxonomy of Dutch personality traits based on a comprehensive and unrestricted list of descriptors. descriptors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94: 347–64
5. Hampson, S. E., John, O. P. and Goldberg, L. R. (1986). Category breadth and hierarchical structure in personality: studies of asymmetries in judgments of trait implications, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51: 37–54


Boele De Raad, “Structural models of personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Intelligence Neurobiology Corr I 336
Intelligence/Openness/Neurobiology: Openness/Intellect is the only Big Five trait consistently positively associated with intelligence, and one study found it to be the only Big Five trait associated with performance on a battery of working memory and cognitive control tests (DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins 2005)(1), all of which had been validated through neuroimaging and brain lesion studies as indices of dorsolateral prefrontal cortical function. >Openness, >Five-factor model, >Big Five, >Working memory, >Peformance.
Dopamine may be involved in Openness/Intellect (DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins 2005(1); Harris, Wright, Hayward et al. 2005(2)); dopamine strongly modulates the function of lateral prefrontal cortex (Arnsten and Robbins 2002(3)) and has been linked to individual differences in fluid intelligence and working memory through genomics, pharmacological manipulation and neuroimaging (e.g., Volkow 1998(4); Mattay, Goldberg, Fera et al. 2003(5)).
Corr I 337
Fluid intelligence and working memory seem to be related primarily to the aspect of Openness/Intellect that can be described as Intellect, whereas crystallized or verbal intelligence is associated not only with Intellect but also with the artistic and contemplative traits that characterize the Openness aspect of the domain (DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins 2005(1); DeYoung, Quilty and Peterson 2007)(6). >Creativity.

1. DeYoung, C. G., Peterson, J. B. and Higgins, D. M. 2002. Higher-order factors of the Big Five predict conformity: are there neuroses of health? Personality and Individual Differences 33: 533–52
2. Harris, S. E., Wright, A. F., Hayward, C., Starr, J. M., Whalley, L. J. and Deary, I. J. 2005. The functional COMT polymorphism, Val158Met, is associated with logical memory and the personality trait intellect/imagination in a cohort of healthy 79 year olds, Neuroscience Letters 385: 1–6
3. Arnsten, A. F. T. and Robbins, T. W. 2002. Neurochemical modulation of prefrontal cortical function, in D. T. Stuss and R. T. Knight (eds.), Principles of frontal lobe function, pp. 51–84. New York: Oxford University Press
4. Volkow, N. D., Gur, R. C., Wang, G.-J., Fowler, J. S., Moberg, P. J., Ding, Y.-S., Hitzemann, R., Smith, G. and Logan, J. 1998. Association between decline in brain dopamine activity with age and cognitive and motor impairment in healthy individuals, American Journal of Psychiatry 155: 344–9
5. Mattay, V. S., Goldberg, T. E., Fera, F., Hariri, A. R., Tessitore, A., Egan, M. F., Kolachana, B., Callicott, J. H. and Weinberger, D. R. 2003. Catechol O-methyltransferase val158-met genotype and individual variation in the brain response to amphetamine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 100: 6186–91
6. DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C. and Peterson, J. B. 2007. Between facets and domains: ten aspects of the Big Five, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 93: 880–96


Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Language Psychological Theories Corr I 90/91
Language/personality traits/psychological theories/Deary: in relation to the assessment of personality traits (see >Five-Factor Model, >Agreeablenes, >Extraversion) there is especially good agreement across some languages. For example, English and German have very similar five factor structures in the lexicons (Saucier and Ostendorf 1999)(1). On the other hand, whereas the Greek lexicon did afford a five factor solution, there were also possible one, two, six and seven factor solutions (Saucier, Georgiades, Tsaousis and Goldberg 2005)(2). >Personality traits.
1. Saucier, G. and Ostendorf, F. 1999. Hierarchical subcomponents of the Big Five personality factors: a cross-language replication, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76: 613–27
2. Saucier, G., Georgiades, S., Tsaousis, I. and Goldberg, L. R. 2005. The factor structure of Greek personality

Ian J. Deary, “The trait approach to personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I 134
Language/psychological theories/personality traits/cultural differences/Five-Factor Model/De Raad: Support for (…) [a] sixth factor was observed in several languages (Ashton, Lee, Perugini et al. 2004)(1), but not, or not clearly, in all languages where this sixth factor was studied, as in American-English (Ashton, Lee and Goldberg 2004)(2), Turkish (Somer and Goldberg 1999)(3) and Croatian (Mlačić and Ostendorf 2005)(4). A seventh factor: was assumed by Almagor, Tellegen and Waller (1995)(5) and Benet-Martínez and Waller (1997)(6). Using a so-called ‘non-restrictive’ approach with respect to selecting personality descriptors, Almagor et al. (1995)(5) produced a Big Seven model in Hebrew, that included versions of some of the Big Five factors, and two additional factors, called Negative Valence (e.g., fabricator, envious and corrupted, versus honest, sincere and dependable) and Positive Valence (e.g., sophisticated, sharp and original, versus mediocre). Support for one or both of these factors was found in Spanish (Benet-Martínez and Waller 1997(6)), in Filipino (Church, Katigbak and Reyes 1996)(7) and in Greek (Saucier et al. 2005)(8).
An eighth factor: De Raad and Barelds (2008) argued that on this point the psycholexical approach has not made use of its full potential. potential. In their study they not only used adjectives, but also nouns, verbs, adverbs and some standard expressions as the basis for the formulation of trait-descriptive items.
Greek: dimensions. Saucier, Georgiades, Tsaousis and Goldberg (2005)(8) distinguished Morality (considerate, humble, responsible, versus bad-tempered, gross, disrespectful) and Dynamism (dynamic, exciting, energetic, versus gutless, hesitant, boring) when extracting only two factors to structure the Greek trait-language.
Dutch: De Raad and Barelds (2008)(9) similarly distinguished at the two-factor level for the Dutch trait-language between Virtue (good, reliable, polite, versus unfair, indecent, annoying) and Dynamism (enthusiasm, energy, vividness).
>Cultural differences, >Cultural psychology.

1. Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., Perugini, M., Szarota, P., De Vries, R. E., Di Blas, L., Boies, K. and De Raad, B. 2004. A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86: 356–66
2. Ashton, M. C., Lee, K. and Goldberg, L. R. 2004. A hierarchical analysis of 1,710 English personality-descriptive adjectives, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87: 707–21
3. Somer, O. and Goldberg, L. R. 1999. The structure of Turkish trait-descriptive adjectives, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76: 431–50
4. Mlačić, B. and Ostendorf, F. 2005. Taxonomy and structure of Croatian personality-descriptive adjectives, European Journal of Personality 19: 117–52
5. Almagor, M., Tellegen, A. and Waller, N. 1995. The Big Seven Model: a cross-cultural replication and further exploration of the basic dimensions of natural language of trait descriptions, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69: 300–7
6. Benet-Martínez, V. and Waller, N. G. 1997. Further evidence for the cross-cultural generality of the Big Seven model: indigenous and imported Spanish personality constructs, Journal of Personality 65: 567–98
7. Church, A. T., Katigbak, M. S. and Reyes, J. A. S. 1996. Toward a taxonomy of trait adjectives in Filipino: comparing personality lexicons across cultures, European Journal of Personality 10: 3–24
8. Saucier, G., Georgiades, S., Tsaousis, I. and Goldberg, L. R. 2005. The factor structure of Greek personality adjectives, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 856–75
9. De Raad, B. and Barelds, D. P. H. 2008. A new taxonomy of Dutch personality traits based on a comprehensive and unrestricted list of descriptors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94: 347–64

Boele De Raad, “Structural models of personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Lexical Hypothesis Psychological Theories Corr I 149
Lexical hypothesis/psychological theories/McCrae: the lexical hypothesis argues that traits are so important in human affairs that common words will have been invented to name them all. >Personality traits.
VsLexical Hypthesis: However, the great majority of personality psychologists did not adopt the lexical hypothesis. They were skeptical that the lay vocabulary could be a proper basis for a scientific account of traits, and they tended to offer and defend their own, competing systems. Eysenck (1947)(1) proposed a highly simplified system with only two factors, E and N; Jungian psychologists assessed four psychological preferences (Myers and McCaulley 1985)(2); Block (1961)(3) created a set of 100 theoretically-eclectic descriptors intended for use in clinical research.
Corr I 150
Problems: Most personality assessment takes the form of self-report inventories, in which respondents are asked to say if, or how well, each of a series of statements describes them. This has proven to be a very useful technique, but it is by no means perfect. People may not understand the questions, or they may not understand themselves. It was, therefore, an important advance when psychologists showed that there was substantial (though not complete) agreement between descriptions from self-reports and those obtained when the same questions were put to knowledgeable informants – spouses, roommates, friends (Funder 1980(4); Kurtz and Sherker 2003)(5). The FFM was subsequently found using Q-sort methods, in which people sort statements from most to least characteristic (Lanning 1994(6); McCrae, Costa and Busch 1986)(7), and even in sentence completion tests, in which people describe themselves in response to the question, ‘Who am I?’ (McCrae and Costa 1988)(8).
>Big Five, >Five-factor model.
The Big Five Inventory (Benet-Martínez and John 1998)(9) is another widely-used measure of the five factors; De Raad and Perugini (2002)(10) have edited an entire volume devoted to alternative measures of the FFM in a variety of languages.
>Language/psychological theories, >Cultural psychology, >Concepts/McCrae.

1. Eysenck, H. J. 1947. Dimensions of personality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
2. Myers, I. B. and McCaulley, M. H. 1985. Manual: a guide to the development and use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press
3. Block, J. 1961. The Q-sort method in personality assessment and psychiatric psychiatric research, Springfield, IL: Thomas
4. Funder, D. C. 1980. On seeing ourselves as others see us: self-other agreement and discrepancy in personality ratings, Journal of Personality 48: 473–93
5. Kurtz, J. E. and Sherker, J. L. 2003. Relationship quality, trait similarity, and self-other agreement on personality traits in college roommates, Journal of Personality 71: 21–48
6. Lanning, K. 1994. Dimensionality of observer ratings on the California Adult Q-Set, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67: 151–60
7. McCrae, R. R., Costa, P. T., Jr and Busch, C. M. 1986. Evaluating comprehensiveness in personality systems: the California Q-Set and the Five-Factor Model, Journal of Personality 54: 430–46
8. McCrae, R. R., and Costa, P. T. 1988. Age, personality, and the spontaneous self-concept, Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences 43: S177–S185
9. Benet-Martínez, V. and John, O. P. 1998. Los cinco Grandes across cultures and ethnic groups: multitrait multimethod analyses of the Big Five in Spanish and English, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75: 729–50
10. De Raad, B. and Perugini, M. (eds.) 2002. Big Five assessment. Göttingen: Hogrefe and Huber Publishers


Robert R. McCrae, “The Five-Factor Model of personality traits: consensus and controversy”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Lexical Studies Saucier Corr I 386
Lexical studies/psychology/Saucier: to a key premise of the lexical approach: the degree of representation of an attribute in language has some correspondence with the general importance of the attribute in real-world transactions. >Lexical hypothesis.
Lexical studies in relation to personality:
A. 1. Lexicalized concepts can be found in standard sources created by disinterested parties (e.g., linguists and lexicographers), and basing variable selection on such a source reduces the likelihood of investigator bias in deciding what is or is not an important variable.
2. Because lexicalized concepts constitute a finite domain, one can sample them representatively to establish content-validity benchmarks for personality variables.
B. The lexical-study paradigm gives special importance to cross-cultural generalizability.
The lexical approach involves an indigenous research strategy. Analyses are carried out separately within each language, using a representative set of native-language descriptors, rather than merely importing selections of variables from other languages
Personality: The majority of lexical studies of personality descriptors have attempted to test the most widely influential structural model of the last two decades, the Big Five factor structure (Goldberg 1990(1); John 1990(2)).
Corr I 387
Several lexical studies have reported evidence about factor solutions containing only one factor (Boies, Lee, Ashton et al. 2001(3); Di Blas and Forzi 1999(4); Goldberg and Somer 2000(5); Saucier 1997(6), 2003b(7); Saucier, Georgiades, Tsaousis and Goldberg 2005(8); Saucier, Ole-Kotikash and Payne 2006(9); Zhou, Saucier, Gao and Liu in press), with consistent findings. The single factor contrasts a heterogeneous mix of desirable attributes at one pole with a mix of undesirable attributes at the other pole. This unrotated factor can be labelled Evaluation (following Osgood 1962)(10), or as Socially Desirable versus Undesirable Qualities.
1. Goldberg, L. R. 1990. An alternative ‘description of personality’: the Big-Five factor structure, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59: 1216–29
2. John, O. P. 1990. The ‘Big Five’ factor taxonomy: dimensions of personality in the natural language and in questionnaires, in L. A. Pervin (ed.), Handbook of personality: theory and research, pp. 66–100. New York: Guilford
3. Boies, K., Lee, K., Ashton, M. C., Pascal, S. and Nicol, A. A. M. 2001. The structure of the French personality lexicon, European Journal of Personality 15: 277–95
4. Di Blas, L. and Forzi, M. 1999. Refining a descriptive structure of personality attributes in the Italian language: language: the abridged Big Three circumplex structure, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76: 451–81
5. Goldberg, L. R. and Somer, O. 2000. The hierarchical structure of common Turkish person-descriptive adjectives, European Journal of Personality 14: 497–531
6. Saucier, G. 1997. Effects of variable selection on the factor structure of person descriptors, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73: 1296–1312
7. Saucier, G. 2003b. Factor structure of English-language personality type-nouns, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85: 695–708
8. Saucier, G., Georgiades, S., Tsaousis, I. and Goldberg, L. R. 2005. The factor structure of Greek personality adjectives, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 856–75
9. Saucier, G., Ole-Kotikash, L. and Payne, D. L. 2006. The structure of personality and character attributes in the language of the Maasai. Unpublished report. University of Oregon
10. Osgood, C. E. 1962. Studies on the generality of affective meaning systems, American Psychologist 17: 10–28


Gerard Saucier, „Semantic and linguistic aspects of personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Lifespan Friedman Corr II 192
Lifespan Prediction/Personality/Study/Friedman/Kern: In 1990, Friedman obtained funding from the US National Institute of Aging to use an archival study, the Terman Life Cycle Study, to examine lifespan predictors of mortality.
II 193
Complementing the archived data, Friedman and his colleagues collected death certificates, providing an objective indicator of how long participants lived (or an indication that they were still alive) and cause of death. Then, using the archival data, they identified variables that were theoretically relevant to personality theory. At baseline, parents and teachers rated the children on 25 different trait dimensions (e.g., ‘will power and perseverance’), comparing the child to others of the same age (…). >Personality traits, >Aging.
The researchers considered the extent to which each trait rating theoretically aligned with the Big Five personality dimensions (…) and statistically analysed the items. They then used two analytic approaches to estimate mortality risk: survival analysis, which estimates the probability of dying at any given age, and logistic regression, which predicts a dichotomous outcome (…).
Findings: controlling for age and gender, there were two significant child personality predictors: conscientiousness and cheerfulness. Across seven decades, a person rated in the highest quartile on conscientiousness had a significantly lower risk of dying at any given age than a person rated in the lowest quartile. In contrast, cheerfulness predicted greater mortality risk. Interestingly, although conscientiousness was protective across genders, effects were stronger for males. In addition, emotional stability showed some signs of being protective for males (…).
II 196
Conscientious individuals are more likely to engage in healthy behaviours (e.g., healthy diet, moderate exercise, not smoking, no or moderate alcohol intake, proactively caring for health) than individuals low in conscientiousness (Bogg & Roberts, 2004(1); Lodi-Smith et al., 2010)(2). In contrast, neuroticism increases risk of smoking and other poor habits (Mroczek, Spiro, & Turiano, 2009(3); Shipley, Weiss, Der, Taylor, & Deary, 2007(4)). [One still has to take into account that] personality and behavioural links can be inconsistent. Other factors: (…) studies have demonstrated how important positive social relationships are for health (Tay, Tan, Diener, & Gonzalez, 2012; Taylor, 2011)(5), and personality appears to influence how one socially interacts with others. (…) hostility and aggression relate to greater risk of heart disease (Booth-Kewley & Friedman, 1987)(6), and neuroticism increases risk of loneliness, which in turn increases risk for mental and physical health problems (Cacioppo, Hawkley, & Berntson, 2003)(7). (…) personality [also] influences situations that a person selects or is drawn towards (Friedman, 2000)(8) [as well as] experiences with and perceptions of stress.
II 197
Relatedly, personality may impact various physiological mechanisms, including blood pressure, heart and brain function, neurotransmitters such as serotonin and cortisol, and immune responses.
II 200
VsFriedman: the Terman sample used in the study is quite unique, and care needs to be taken in generalizing findings to other populations. The participants were highly intelligent – comprising the top 2.5% of the population. Most were Caucasian and from a middle- to upper middle-class background.
II 201
The measures themselves are far from ideal. The items and constructs reflect the interests of the researchers at the time rather than the constructs that we might want to study. (…) while the study found that cheerfulness predicted increased mortality risk, other studies find that cheerfulness, optimism, humour, positive affectivity and related characteristics predict better health outcomes, including longevity (Howell, Kern, & Lyubomirsky, 2007(9); Pressman & Cohen, 2005)(10).
II 202
[The study by Friedman et al. (1993)](11) follows a trait-based approach and [t]raits fail to capture the dynamic and contextualized nature of individual behaviours, thoughts, feelings and motivations (McAdams & Olson, 2010(12); Mischel, 2004)(13).
1. Bogg T., & Roberts, B. W. (2004). Conscientiousness and health-related behaviors: A meta-analysis of the leading behavioral contributors to mortality. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 887-919.
2. Lodi-Smith, J., Jackson, J., Bogg, T., Walton, K., Wood, D., Harms, P., & Roberts, B. W. (2010). Mechanisms of health: Education and health-related behaviours partially mediate the relationship between conscientiousness and self-reported physical health. Psychology and Health, 25, 305–319.
3. Mroczek, D. K., Spiro, A., & Turiano, N. A. (2009). Do health behaviors explain the effect of neuroticism on mortality? Longitudinal findings from the VA Normative Aging Study. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 653–659.
4. Shipley, B. A., Weiss, A., Der, G., Taylor, M. D., & Deary, I. J. (2007). Neuroticism, extraversion, and mortality in the UK Health and Lifestyle Survey: A 21-year prospective cohort study. Psychosomatic Medicine, 69, 923–931.
5. Tay, L., Tan, K., Diener, E., & Gonzalez, E. (2012). Social relations, health behaviors, and health outcomes: A survey and synthesis. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-being, 5, 28–78.
6. Booth-Kewley, S., & Friedman, H. S. (1987). Psychological predictors of heart disease: A quantitative review. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 343–362.
7. Cacioppo, J. T., Hawkley, L. C., & Berntson, G. G. (2003). The anatomy of loneliness. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 71–74.
8. Friedman, H. S. (2000). Long-term relations of personality, health: Dynamisms, mechanisms, and tropisms. Journal of Personality, 68, 1089–1107.
9. Howell, R., Kern, M. L., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). Health benefits: Meta-analytically determining the impact of well-being on objective health outcomes. Health Psychology Review, 1, 83–136.
10. Pressman, S. D., & Cohen, S. (2005). Does positive affect influence health? Psychological Bulletin, 131, 925–971.
11. Friedman, H. S., Tucker, J., Tomlinson-Keasey, C., Schwartz, J. Wingard, D., & Criqui, M. H. (1993). Does childhood personality predict longevity? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 176–185.
12. McAdams, D. P., & Olson, B. D. (2010). Personality development: Continuity and change over the life course. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 517–542.
13. Mischel, W. (2004). Toward an integrative science of the person. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 1–22.


Kern, Margaret L.: “Personality, Health and Death Revisiting Friedman et al. (1993)”, In: Philip J. Corr (Ed.) 2018. Personality and Individual Differences. Revisiting the classical studies. Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne: Sage, pp. 191-208.

Econ Fried I
Milton Friedman
The role of monetary policy 1968


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Measurements Lamiell Corr I 75
Measurement/traits/personality psychology/Lamiell: Trait measurements are grounded in information about behaviour or by a questionnaire. the psychometrician’s psychometrician’s objective is to represent behavioural information in terms of numerical values that can in turn be used to derive quantitative assessments of the target person with respect to the trait variable(s) of interest. The elements, which are combined in a formula are
- the assessment of a person with respect to some underlying trait represented by a dimension,
- a set of observations conveying information about the behaviour,
- the weight or importance attached by the assessor,
- an operation of summing the weighted items of behavioural information about the person.

An illustration of this is shown in the NEO Personality Inventory (Costa and McCrae 1992)(1), an instrument currently in wide use for purposes of measuring the so-called ‘Big Five’ personality traits of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. This instrument is comprised of 240 items, for each of which the respondent indicates his/her level of agreement with the content of the item as a characterization of him/herself.
>Five-Factor Model.
Corr I 76
Problem: the assessments are not yet measurements because they lack a context. Solution/Lamiell: what is needed in addition is

- a normative measure,
- an arithemic mean computed for an aggregate of individuals,
- the standard deviation within the aggregate of the set.

Finally we will need a transformation of z-scores into T-scores (see Corr I 77).
LamiellVsTradition: proposes instead an interactive measurement(2). See the “interactive” measurement of Cattell (1944)(3).
Corr I 78
Lamiell: Clearly, the ‘portrait’ of an individual that emerges from a set of ‘raw’ assessments can differ depending upon the way in which those assessments are contextualized. A. Tradition: contextualized. In traditional normative measurement, assertions about what any one individual is like are formulated within a context defined by considerations about what other individuals are like, as operationalized in terms of statistical estimates of assessment means and standard deviations in populations.
B. In interactive measurement, however, assertions about what any one individual is like are formulated
Corr I 79
within a context defined by considerations about what that same individual is not but might otherwise be like, as operationalized in terms of the maximum and minimum possible assessments that could possibly have been made of him/her under the constraints imposed by the assessment procedure itself.
Corr I 82
LamiellVsEpstein/LamiellVsTradition: according to the normative measurement (cf. Epstein 1983)(4), it would be meaningless to try to characterize [a person called] Smith in any way at all with respect to this dimension without comparing him with others. To claim this, however, is to claim that prior to comparing Smith with others he has no standing at all along the dimension. This, however, is tantamount to saying that with respect to the dimension in question Smith does not exist, and if this is so, then of course no comparison of Smith with others could ever be carried out. >comparisons/Lamiell, >interaction/Lamiell.

1. Costa, P. T. and McCrae, R. R. 1992. Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources
2. Lamiell, J. T. 1981. Toward an idiothetic psychology of personality, American Psychologist 36: 276–89
3. Cattell, R. B. 1944. Psychological measurement: normative, ipsative, interactive, Psychological Review 51: 292–303
4. Epstein, S. 1983. Aggregation and beyond: some basic issues in the prediction of behaviour, Journal of Personality 51: 360–92, p. 381.

James T. Lamiell, “The characterization of persons: some fundamental conceptual issues”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Neuroticism Neurobiology Corr I 332
Neuroticism/Neurobiology: Because Neuroticism and sensitivity to threat are so strongly implicated in psychopathology, research on their likely biological substrates has been extensive. Gray and McNaughton’s (2000)(1) model of the BIS (behavioural inhibition system, >Gray) and FFFS (fight-flight-freeze system, >Gray), which jointly determine Neuroticism, is very thoroughly elaborated. This model is reasonably compatible compatible with Depue’s model of Anxiety and Fear, although Depue believes that Fear is not well represented within Neuroticism. Gray and McNaughton associated the FFFS not only with fear but also with panic and anger, and these emotions are also associated with Neuroticism (Costa and McCrae 1992(2); DeYoung, Quilty and Peterson 2007(3); Saucier and Goldberg 2001(4)).
Corr I 333
Hemispheres: a number of EEG studies have demonstrated that Neuroticism (including various trait measures of negative emotionality) is associated with greater activation of the right frontal lobe relative to the left (Davidson 2002(5); Zuckerman 2005)(6). Davidson (2002)(6) has argued that the right hemisphere is preferentially involved in emotions and motivational states associated with withdrawal, whereas the left hemisphere is preferentially involved in approach. The one complication in linking the right hemisphere to Neuroticism is that anger is associated with approach motivation, and EEG studies have shown anger to be associated with greater relative left frontal lobe activation (Harmon-Jones 2004(7); Harmon-Jones and Allen 1998(8)). >Lateralization of the brain.

1. Gray, J. A. and McNaughton, N. 2000. The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system, 2nd edn. New York: Oxford University Press
2. Costa, P. T., Jr. and McCrae, R. R. 1992. Four ways five factors are basic, Personality and Individual Differences 13: 653–65
3. DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C. and Peterson, J. B. 2007. Between facets and domains: ten aspects of the Big Five, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 93: 880–96
4. Saucier, G. and Goldberg, L. R. 2001. Lexical studies of indigenous personality factors: premises, products, and prospects, Journal of Personality 69: 847–79
5. Davidson, R. J. 2002. Anxiety and affective style: role of prefrontal cortex and amygdala, Biological Psychiatry 51: 68–80
6. Zuckerman, M. 2005. Psychobiology of personality, 2nd edn rev. and updated. New York: Cambridge University Press
7. Harmon-Jones, E. 2004. Contributions from research on anger and cognitive dissonance to understanding the motivational functions of asymmetrical frontal brain activity, Biological Psychology 67: 51–76
8. Harmon-Jones, E. and Allen, J. J. B. 1998. Anger and frontal brain activity: EEG asymmetry consistent with approach motivation despite negative affective valence, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74: 1310–16


Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Neuroticism Psychological Theories Corr I 60
Neuroticism/emotion/five-factor model/personality psychology/psychological theories: The strongest and most obvious link between the Big Five and emotional dispositions exists for neuroticism. As a matter of fact, neuroticism is primarily an emotional disposition: the propensity to experience negative emotions, in particular fear, anger and depression. No wonder, then, that strong correlations have been obtained between standard measures of neuroticism and measures of dispositional negative affect, such as the trait form of the Negative Affect sub-scale of the PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule). The robustness of this finding led Tellegen (1985)(1) to argue that neuroticism be renamed ‘negative emotionality’, which is indeed offered as an alternative label for neuroticism in a more recent chapter on the Five-Factor Model (John and Srivastava 1999)(2). Cf. >Extraversion, >Agreeableness, >Openness to experience, >conscientiousness, >introversion, >Five-Factor Model.

1. Tellegen, A. 1985. Structures of mood and personality and their relevance to assessing anxiety, with an emphasis on self-report, in A. H. Tuma and J. D. Maser (eds.), Anxiety and the anxiety disorders, pp. 681–706. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
2. John, O. P. and Srivastava, S. 1999. The Big Five trait taxonomy: history, measurement, and theoretical perspectives, in L. A. Pervin and O. P. John (eds.), Handbook of personality: theory and research, 2nd edn, pp. 102–38. New York: Guilford Press


Rainer Reisenzein & Hannelore Weber, “Personality and emotion”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Openness Neurobiology Corr I 336
Intelligence/Openness/Neurobiology: Openness/Intellect is the only Big Five trait consistently positively associated with intelligence, and one study found it to be the only Big Five trait associated with performance on a battery of working memory and cognitive control tests (DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins 2005)(1), all of which had been validated through neuroimaging and brain lesion studies as indices of dorsolateral prefrontal cortical function. >Openness, >Big Five, >Five-factor model, >Working memory, >Peformance.
Dopamine may be involved in Openness/Intellect (DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins 2005(1); Harris, Wright, Hayward et al. 2005(2)); dopamine strongly modulates the function of lateral prefrontal cortex (Arnsten and Robbins 2002(3)) and has been linked to individual differences in fluid intelligence and working memory through genomics, pharmacological manipulation and neuroimaging (e.g., Volkow 1998(4); Mattay, Goldberg, Fera et al. 2003(5)).
Corr I 337
Fluid intelligence and working memory seem to be related primarily to the aspect of Openness/Intellect that can be described as Intellect, whereas crystallized or verbal intelligence is associated not only with Intellect but also with the artistic and contemplative traits that characterize the Openness aspect of the domain (DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins 2005(1); DeYoung, Quilty and Peterson 2007)(6). >Creativity.

1. DeYoung, C. G., Peterson, J. B. and Higgins, D. M. 2002. Higher-order factors of the Big Five predict conformity: are there neuroses of health? Personality and Individual Differences 33: 533–52
2. Harris, S. E., Wright, A. F., Hayward, C., Starr, J. M., Whalley, L. J. and Deary, I. J. 2005. The functional COMT polymorphism, Val158Met, is associated with logical memory and the personality trait intellect/imagination in a cohort of healthy 79 year olds, Neuroscience Letters 385: 1–6
3. Arnsten, A. F. T. and Robbins, T. W. 2002. Neurochemical modulation of prefrontal cortical function, in D. T. Stuss and R. T. Knight (eds.), Principles of frontal lobe function, pp. 51–84. New York: Oxford University Press
4. Volkow, N. D., Gur, R. C., Wang, G.-J., Fowler, J. S., Moberg, P. J., Ding, Y.-S., Hitzemann, R., Smith, G. and Logan, J. 1998. Association between decline in brain dopamine activity with age and cognitive and motor impairment in healthy individuals, American Journal of Psychiatry 155: 344–9
5. Mattay, V. S., Goldberg, T. E., Fera, F., Hariri, A. R., Tessitore, A., Egan, M. F., Kolachana, B., Callicott, J. H. and Weinberger, D. R. 2003. Catechol O-methyltransferase val158-met genotype and individual variation in the brain response to amphetamine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 100: 6186–91
6. DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C. and Peterson, J. B. 2007. Between facets and domains: ten aspects of the Big Five, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 93: 880–96


Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Person Lamiell Corr I 72
Person/Variables/personality psychology/psychological theories/LamiellVsTradition/Lamiell: notions like “school”, “work”, “personal relationships” on one hand and “nature”/”nurture” on the other hand have long been the objects of the mainstream research and still are. Unfortunately, this entire enterprise has been predicated on the notion that our scientific understanding of the behaviour/psychological functioning of individuals can be advanced through the systematic investigation of variables representing individual differences (Lamiell 1987(1);1997(2);2003(3)) Tradition/Lamiell: mainstream thinkers still stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the mistakenness of this notion (see e.g., recent articles by McAdams and Pals 2006(4); and by McAdams 2007(5); also Hofstee 2007(6)). LamiellVsMcAdams, LamiellVsPals, LamiellVsHofstee.
Person characterization/Lamiell: what, exactly, do statements about the personality characteristics of an individual entail? What is implied when someone is called “highly” extraverted?
For the variables “school”, “work”, “personal relationships” on one hand and “nature”/”nurture” on the other hand see Epstein 1983(7).
LamiellVsEpstein.
See also LundbergVsAllport, SarbinVsAllport >Allport/Lamiell. LamiellVsTradition see >Measurement/traits/Lamiell.

1. Lamiell, J. T. 1987. The psychology of personality: an epistemological inquiry. New York: Columbia University Press
2. Lamiell, J. T. 1997. Individuals and the differences between them, in R. Hogan, J. Johnson and S. Briggs (eds.), Handbook of personality psychology, psychology, pp. 117–41. New York: Academic Press
3. Lamiell, J. T. 2003. Beyond individual and group differences: human individuality, scientific psychology, and William Stern’s critical personalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
4. McAdams, D. P. and Pals, J. L. 2006. A new Big Five: fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality, American Psychologist 61: 204–17
5. McAdams, D. P. 2007. On grandiosity in personality psychology, American Psychologist 62: 60–1 (comment)
6. Hofstee, W. K. B. 2007. Unbehagen in individual differences: a review, Journal of Individual Differences 28: 252–3
7. Epstein, S. 1983. Aggregation and beyond: some basic issues in the prediction of behaviour, Journal of Personality 51: 360–92, p. 381.

James T. Lamiell, “The characterization of persons: some fundamental conceptual issues”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Allport Corr I 4
Personality/Allport: Gordon Allport (1937)(1) defined personality as ‘the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to the environment’ (Allport 1937,p.48).
I 5
McAdamsVsAllport/PalsVsAllport: A definition that gives a modern twist to this personological integration is offered by McAdams and Pals (2006)(2), who define personality as ‘an individual’s unique variation on the general evolutionary design for human nature, expressed as a developing pattern of dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and integrative life stories complexly and differentially situated in culture’ (McAdams and Pals 2006(2), p. 212). The emphasis on dynamics and development in these two personological definitions reminds us that some theories emphasize function and change, in contrast to the typically more static trait emphasis on description.
>Environment, >Situations, >Culture, >Cultural psychology, >Personality traits.

1. Allport, G. W. 1937. Personality: a psychological interpretation. New York: Holt, p. 48.
2. McAdams, D. P. and Pals, J. L. 2006. A new Big Five: fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality, American Psychologist 61: 204–17

Susan Cloninger, “Conceptual issues in personality theory”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.


Corr I 43
Personality/Allport/AsendorpfVsAllport: Allport (1937) owed most of his ideas to Stern (1911)(1). >W. Stern.

1. Stern, W. 1911. Die Differentielle Psychologie in ihren methodischen Grundlagen [Methodological foundations of differential psychology]. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth

Jens B. Asendorpf, “Personality: Traits and situations”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.


Corr I 380
Personality/Allport/Saucier: Allport (1937)(1): ‘personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment’ (1937, p. 48). Saucier: Allport called this a ‘biophysical’ conception. It focused on ‘what an individual is regardless of the manner in which other people perceive his qualities or evaluate them’ (1937, p. 40). Phrasings like ‘within the individual’ and ‘systems that determine’ reveal an emphasis on the underlying mechanisms behind behaviour.

1. Allport, G. W. 1937. Personality: a psychological interpretation. New York: Holt

Gerard Saucier, „Semantic and linguistic aspects of personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Developmental Psychology Corr I 198
Personality/Developmental Psychology/Donnellan/Robins: (see also >Personality traits/Developmental psychology, >Five-Factor Model/Developmental psychology). It appears that traits become increasingly stable after age thirty, but never reach the point where change no longer occurs; that is, no matter how old an individual is, it is possible that his/her standing relative to others can fluctuate with the passage of time. Secondly, they counter the claim that personality shows minimal, if any, stability during childhood (e.g., Lewis 2001(1)). Thus, there is accumulating evidence that individual differences in children are not ephemeral qualities but instead show an appreciable degree of stability; however, it also the case that differential stability seems to increase across the lifespan for all of the Big Five traits.
Corr I 199
One central message conveyed by contemporary work in personality development is that stability and change result from complicated transactions between persons and situations. Therefore strong forms of both situationalism (the view that behaviour is determined largely by factors external to the person) and dispositionalism (the view that behaviour is determined largely by factors internal to the person) are difficult to reconcile from a developmental perspective, in which personality characteristics and situations are seen as increasingly interdependent over time. Cf. >Situations/psychological theories, >Dispositions/Allport, >Dispositions/Asendorpf.
Situations: First, personality traits ‘draw out’ or elicit particular responses from the social environment which can promote personality continuity. Secondly, personality traits shape how people construe social situations. Thirdly, individuals play an active role in selecting and manipulating their own social experiences. As a consequence, it seems as if many life experiences accentuate and reinforce the personality characteristics that were partially responsible for the particular environmental elicitations in the first place. This is known as the corresponsive principle of personality development (Caspi, Roberts and Shiner 2005(2); Roberts Wood and Caspi 2008(3))
“Turning points”/Personality changes: changes in contingencies are one reason why scholars have suggested that behaviour changes are associated with ‘turning points’ in the life course (e.g., Laub and Sampson 2003)(4). That is, events such as marriage, parenthood or military service launch individuals into more restricted and tightly monitored environments that have new and salient reward and punishment structures.
>Punishment, >Reinforcement sensivity.

1. Lewis, M. 2001. Issues in the study of personality development, Psychological Inquiry 12: 67–83
2. Caspi, A., Roberts, B. W. and Shiner, R. L. 2005. Personality development: stability and change, Annual Review of Psychology 56: 453–84
3. Roberts, B. W., Wood, D. and Caspi, A. 2008. The development of personality traits in adulthood, in O. P. John, R. W. Robins and L. A. Pervin (eds.), Handbook of personality: theory and research, (3rd edn, pp. 375–98). New York: Guilford Press
4. Laub, J. H. and Sampson, R. J. 2003. Shared beginnings, divergent lives: delinquent boys to age 70. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

M. Brent Donnellan and Richard W. Robins, “The development of personality across the lifespan”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Attachment Theory Corr I 236
Personality traits/attachment theory/Shaver/Mikulincer: Studies using self-report measures of adult attachment style have found them to be coherently related to relationship quality, mental health, social adjustment, ways of coping, emotion regulation, self-esteem, interpersonal behaviour and social cognitions (see Mikulincer and Shaver 2003(1), 2007(2), for reviews). >Emotion, >Regulation, >Self-regulation.
Importantly, these attachment-style variations are usually not well explained by less specific, more global personality traits such as Extraversion, Neuroticism or self-esteem (see Mikulincer and Shaver 2007(2), for a review), although there are predictable and meaningful associations between attachment orientations and personality traits (e.g., Carver 1997(3); Noftle and Shaver 2006(4)).
>About the Attachment theory.

1. Mikulincer, M. and Shaver, P. R. 2003. The attachment behavioural system in adulthood: activation, psychodynamics, and interpersonal processes, in M. P. Zanna (ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, vol. XXXV, pp. 53–152. New York: Academic Press
2. Mikulincer, M. and Shaver, P. R. 2007. Attachment in adulthood: structure, dynamics, and change. New York: Guilford Press
3. Carver, C. S. 1997. Adult attachment and personality: converging evidence and a new measure, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23: 865–83
4. Noftle, E. E. and Shaver, P. R. 2006. Attachment dimensions and the Big Five personality traits: associations and comparative ability to predict relationship quality, Journal of Research in Personality 40: 179–208

Phillip R. Shaver and Mario Mikulincer, “Attachment theory: I. Motivational, individual-differences and structural aspects”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Behavioral Genetics Corr I 287
Personality traits//Behavioral Genetics/Munafò: Investigation of the association between DNA variants and psychological phenotypes has the potential to determine which genes influence heritable psychological traits, such as personality (Ebstein, Benjamin and Belmaker 2000(1); Eysenck 1977)(2). Such research has a long history, beginning with the observation that behavioural phenotypes (including personality) tend to show greater similarity between pairs of individuals as genetic similarity increases. Problems: molecular genetic studies have so far been characterized more by the inconsistency of their results than by the provision of novel biological information. Given the large number of candidate genes that can be hypothesized to influence psychological traits, the extent of DNA sequence variation and the numerous, often conflicting, methods of measuring phenotypic variation in psychological and behavioural science, the task of evaluating competing statistical hypotheses is likely to be onerous. (VsMolecular genetics, VsBehavioral genetics).
Traits/psychology: Most trait psychologists argue that a small number of factors can be used to account for individual differences in personality. For example, there is strong agreement that the dimensions of Extraversion-Introversion and Neuroticism-Stability are fundamental parts of any personality taxonomy. >Personality traits/psychological theories.
Causality: Causal theorists of personality have attempted to go further and associate known neurobiological mechanisms with personality dimensions, measured using a range of instruments. >Causality/Developmental psychology.
Behavior: Following Revelle’s typology (Revelle 1995)(3), three fundamental behavioural dimensions have been proposed to correspond to differential activity in neurotransmitter systems (Ebstein, Benjamin Benjamin and Belmaker 2000(1); Munafò, Clark, Moore et al. 2003(4)): dopamine for approach behaviours, serotonin and noradrenaline for avoidance behaviours, and serotonin, noradrenaline and GABA for aggressive or fight-flight behaviours. There is considerable consensus over the construct validity of the first two of these dimensions, but there remains equally considerable debate over the third.

1. Ebstein, R. P., Benjamin, J., Belmaker, R. H. 2000. Personality and polymorphisms of genes involved in aminergic neurotransmission, European Journal of Pharmacology 410: 205–14
2. Eysenck, H. J. 1977. National differences in personality as related to ABO blood group polymorphism, Psychology Reports 41: 1257–8
3. Revelle, W. 1995. Personality processes, Annual Review of Psychology 46: 295–328
4. Munafò, M. R., Clark, T. G., Moore, L. R., Payne, E., Walton, R. and Flint, J. 2003. Genetic polymorphisms and personality in healthy adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Molecular Psychiatry 8: 471–84

Marcus R. Munafò,“Behavioural genetics: from variance to DNA“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.)2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I 329
Personality traits/Behavioral Genetics: Behaviour genetic analysis has shown that the two meta-traits have genetic origins (Jang et al. 2006)(1), and evidence is accumulating that Stability (>Personality traits/neurobiology) is related to serotonin, whereas Plasticity may be related to dopamine (DeYoung 2006(2); DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins 2002;(3) Yamagata, Suzuki, Ando et al. 2006)(4). Serotonine and dopamine act as diffuse neuromodulators affecting a wide array of brain systems, and their broad influence is consistent with a role in the broadest level of personality structure.
1. Jang, K. L., Livesley, W. J., Ando, J., Yamagata, S., Suzuki, A., Angleitner, A., Ostendorf, F., Riemann, R. and Spinath, F. 2006. Behavioural genetics of the higher-order factors of the Big Five, Personality and Individual Differences 41: 261–72
2. DeYoung, C. G. 2006. Higher-order factors of the Big Five in a multi-informant sample, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91: 1138–51
3. DeYoung, C. G., Peterson, J. B. and Higgins, D. M. 2002. Higher-order factors of the Big Five predict conformity: are there neuroses of health? Personality and Individual Differences 33: 533–52
4. Yamagata, S., Suzuki, A., Ando, J., Ono, Y., Kijima, N., Yoshimura, K., Ostendorf, F., Angleitner, A., Riemann, R., Spinath, F. M., Livesley, W. J. and Jang, K. L. 2006. Is the genetic structure of human personality universal? A cross-cultural twin study from North America, Europe, and Asia, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90: 987–98

Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Deary Corr I 89
Personality traits/Deary: There are still issues about how psychologists know whether traits, and any given model of traits, are the right way to construe human personality differences, and their nature is still largely mysterious.
Corr I 91
Temporal stability/traits/developmental psychology/Deary: The stability of personality trait ratings has been questioned. A review of over 152 longitudinal studies with over 3,000 correlation coefficients found that trait stability increased from childhood to adulthood, rising from about 0.3 to over 0.7 (Roberts and DelVecchio 2000)(1). This supported earlier research with traits from the Five Factor Model (Costa and McCrae 1994(2)) and Eysenck’s factors (Sanderman and Ranchor 1994)(3), which had found stability coefficients of well above 0.6, rising to above 0.8, for periods of between six and thirty years. The stability of individual differences among children can be high, given an appropriate measurement instrument. Using the Berkeley Puppet Inventory, in which identical puppets make opposite statements, and the children choose which applies better to them, the stability coefficients between age six and seven years were often well above 0.5, and considerably higher when corrected for period-free unreliability (Measelle, John, Ablow et al. 2005)(4). Traits are stable aspects of people’s (including children’s) make-up. Heritability of traits: There is (…) the well-supported heritability of traits including those of the Five Factor Model (Bouchard and Loehlin 2001)(5). However, in ten years of molecular genetic studies of personality, there are still no solid associations between genetic variations and personality traits (Ebstein 2006)(6).
Animals/traits: There is evidence that other species, including primates (Weiss, King and Perkins 2006)(7) and others (Gosling 2001)(8), have something like a Five-Factor Model of personality.
See >Five-Factor model, >personality traits.
Some milestones in the research on personality traits:
Corr I 99
The starting point for Tupes and Christal (1961)(9) was the thirty-five trait variables developed by Cattell (1947)(10), whose work in turn derived from the identification of dictionary trait terms by Allport and Odbert (1936)(11). The result (Tupes and Christal 1961(9), p. 232): from their eight heterogeneous studies ‘five fairly strong rotated factors emerged’: Surgency (Extraversion), Agreeableness, Dependability (Conscientiousness), Emotional Stability (opposite of Neuroticism) and Culture. This was a breakthrough in dispelling some uncertainty about the structure of personality trait ratings.
At about the same time, citing the same empirical history and with a similar aim, Norman (1963)(12) found similar results. The focus was on clarifying the observational language of personality, arguing that research into personality ‘will be facilitated by having available an extensive and well-organised vocabulary by means of which to denote the phenotypic attributes of persons’ (Norman 1963, p. 574).
Corr I 100
One of Norman’s (1963) conclusions was that researchers should go back to the pool of trait items to search for traits beyond the five. By this stage, one can discern three processes (there might be more) going on in the trait approach to personality. (1) There was good progress in identifying traits for measurement and predictive validity.
(2) There was the process of defending the trait approach from whatever was the zeitgeist in psychology (Freudiansim, behaviourism, situationism, etc.). (VsPsychoanalysis, VsBehaviorism, VsSituationism).
(3) There was the process of thinking about and studying what traits actually were, beyond scores from an inventory or rating scales.
Meehl (1986)(13) addressed the third issue by going back to Cattell’s (e.g. 1945)(14) surface traits and source traits distinction. He gave a good account of how, in everyday language we make trait attributions, and how these generalize from narrow to broader traits. He gave a good account of how, in everyday language we make trait attributions, and how these generalize from narrow to broader traits. These are from observed behaviours, and they are surface traits. Narrow traits that go to make up broader traits are ‘related by a) empirical covariation and b) content similarity’ (p. 317).
For today’s discussion see >Personality traits/Tellegen, >Personality traits/McCrae.

1. Roberts, B. W. and DelVecchio, W. F. 2000. The rank-order consistency of personality from childhood to old age: a quantitative review of longitudinal studies, Psychological Bulletin 126: 3–25
2. Costa, P. T., and McCrae, R. R. 1994. Set like plaster? Evidence for the stability of adult personality, in T. Heatherton and J. Weinberger (eds.), Can personality change?, pp. 21–40. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
3. Sanderman, R. and Ranchor, A. V. 1994. Stability of personality traits and psychological distress over six years, Perceptual and Motor Skills 78: 89–90
4. Measelle, J. R., John, O. P., Ablow, J. C., Cowan, P. A. and Cowan, C. P. 2005. Can children provide coherent, stable, and valid self-reports on the Big Five dimensions? A longitudinal study from ages 5 to 7, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89: 90–106
5. Bouchard, T. J. and Loehlin, J. C. 2001. Genes, evolution, and personality, Behaviour Genetics 31: 243–73
6. Ebstein, R. P. 2006. The molecular genetic architecture of human personality: beyond self-report questionnaires, Molecular Psychiatry 11: 427–45
7. Weiss, A., King, J. E. and Perkins, L. 2006. Personality and subjective well-being in orangutans, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90: 501–11
8. Gosling, S. D. 2001. From mice to men: what can we learn about personality from animal research?, Psychological Bulletin 127: 45–86
9. Tupes, E. C. and Christal, R. E. 1961. ASD Technical Report (reprinted in 1991 as Recurrent personality factors based on trait ratings), Journal of Personality 60: 225–51
10. Cattell, R. B. 1947. Confirmation and clarification of primary personality factors, Psychometrika 12: 197–220
11. Allport, G. W. and Odbert, H. S. 1936. Trait-names: a psycho-lexical study, Psychological Monographs 47: No. 211
12. Norman, W. T. 1963. Toward an adequate taxonomy of personality attributes, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 66: 574–83
13. Meehl, P. E. 1986. Trait language and behaviourese, in T. Thompson and M. Zeiler (eds.), Analysis and integration of behavioural units, pp. 315–34. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
14. Cattell, R. B. 1945. The principal trait clusters for describing personality, Psychological Bulletin 42: 129–61


Ian J. Deary, “The trait approach to personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Depue Corr I 329
Personality traits/Depue: Depue has typically operationalized his constructs with the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) (Tellegen 1982)(1). The MPQ scales of Social Potency and and Social Closeness, used to represent Agentic Extraversion and Affiliation respectively, both load primarily on Extraversion (Markon, Krueger and Watson 2005)(2). Depue associates Anxiety most strongly with the MPQ Stress Reaction scale, which is a clear marker of Neuroticism. Fear he associates with MPQ Harm Avoidance, which, unlike Cloninger’s Harm Avoidance, specifically assesses aversion to physical danger and is not well described by the Big Five (Markon et al. 2005)(2). >Conscientiousness/Depue, >Five-Factor Model/Depue, >Extraversion/Depue, >Personality traits/Depue.

1. Tellegen, A. 1982. Brief manual for the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire. Unpublished manuscript. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
2. Markon, K. E., Krueger, R. F. and Watson, D. 2005. Delineating the structure of normal and abnormal personality: an integrative hierarchical approach, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 139–57

Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Developmental Psychology Corr I 192
Personality traits/developmental psychology/Donnellan/Robins: we emphasize that the potential neurobiological bases of the Big Five in no way precludes the possibility that personality traits are affected by life experiences and change over time. >Five-factor model, >Personality, >Agreeableness, >Openness, >Extraversion, >Neuroticism.
Corr I 193
How stable is personality? There is no simple answer to these types of questions because there are different ways of conceptualizing and measuring stability and change (e.g., Caspi and Shiner 2006(1); Roberts and Pomerantz 2004(2)). 2004). The broadest distinction is between homotypic and heterotypic stability (or continuity).
A. Homotypic stability refers to the stability of the exact same thoughts, feelings and behaviours across time.
B. Heterotypic stability refers to the stability of personality traits that are theorized to have different manifestations at different ages. Heterotypic stability can only be understood with reference to a theory that specifies how the same trait ‘looks’ (i.e., manifests itself) at different ages and it broadly refers to the degree of personality coherence across development.
What is the evidence for heterotypic continuity? Longitudinal studies covering long periods of the lifespan provide important evidence of personality coherence. For example, Caspi, Moffitt, Newman and Silva (1996)(3) found that children who were rated as being irritable and impulsive by clinical examiners at age three were more likely to be dependent on alcohol and to have been convicted of a violent crime by age twenty-one.
Corr I 193
The superficial manifestations of self-control are likely to be quite different in pre-schoolers and adolescents; however, the underlying psychological characteristic of being able to forgo immediate impulses to obtain desired long-term outcomes seems to have an appreciable degree of consistency across development. Homotypic stability concerns the evaluation of different kinds of change using the exact same measure of personality across time or across age groups. Four types of stability and change are typically examined: (a) absolute stability (i.e., mean-level stability), (b) differential stability (i.e., rank-order consistency), (c) structural stability, and (d) ipsative stability.
Corr I 194
b) Differential stability reflects the degree to which the relative ordering of individuals on a given trait is consistent over time. For example, a population could increase substantially on a trait but the rank ordering of individuals would be maintained if everyone increased by exactly the same amount. Conversely, the rank ordering of individuals could change substantially over time but without any aggregate increases or decreases (e.g., if the number of people who decreased offset the number of people who increased). c) Structural stability refers to similarity over time in patterns of co-variation among traits, or items on a personality scale. For example, one can use structural equation modelling techniques to test whether the intercorrelations among the Big Five domains are the same at the beginning versus the end of college (Robins, Fraley, Roberts and Trzesniewski 2001)(4). Likewise, investigations of structural stability often include the testing of measurement invariance (e.g., Allemand, Zimprich and Hertzog 2007)(5).
d) Ipsative stability refers to continuity in the patterning of personality characteristics within a person and how well the relative salience (or extremity) of these attributes is preserved over time. For example, a researcher might investigate the degree to which an individual’s Big Five profile is stable over time – if an individual’s cardinal (i.e., most characteristic) trait in adolescence is Openness to Experience,
Corr I 195
is this also likely to be true in adulthood? Examinations of these kinds of questions are fairly rare and often use methods that quantify the similarity of personality profiles such as within-person correlation coefficients (e.g., Ozer and Gjerde 1989)(6). >Five-Factor Model/Developmental psychology.

1. Caspi, A. and Shiner, R. L. 2006. Personality development, in W. Damon and R. Lerner (Series eds.) and N. Eisenberg (Vol. ed.), Handbook of child psychology, vol. III, Social, emotional, and personality development, 6th edn, pp. 300–65. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley
2. Roberts, B. W. and Pomerantz, E. M. 2004. On traits, situations, and their integration: a developmental perspective, Personality and Social Psychology Review 8: 402–16
3. Caspi, A., Moffitt, T. E., Newman, D. L. and Silva, P. A. 1996. Behavioural observations at age 3 years predict adult psychiatric disorders, Archives of General Psychiatry 53: 1033–9
4. Robins, R. W., Fraley, R. C., Roberts, B. W. and Trzesniewski, K. H. 2001. A longitudinal study of personality change in young adulthood, Journal of Personality 69: 617–40
5. Allemand, M., Zimprich, D. and Hertzog, C. 2007. Cross-sectional age differences and longitudinal age changes of personality in middle adulthood and old age, Journal of Personality 75: 323–58
6. Ozer, D. J. and Gjerde, P. F. 1989. Patterns of personality consistency and change from childhood through adolescence, Journal of Personality 57: 483–507

M. Brent Donnellan and Richard W. Robins, “The development of personality across the lifespan”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Evolutionary Psychology Corr I 265
Personality traits/evolutionary psychology: the argument that personality differences are selectively neutral is unable to account for the fact that our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, exhibits similar versions of the >Big Five personality traits (plus Dominance) (King and Figueredo 1997)(1). >Five-Factor Model, >Causality/psychology/evolutionary theories, >Heritability/Tooby/Cosmides.
Corr I 272
Personality traits/evolutionary psychology/Figueredo: we propose that sociality is the major cause of personality variation in humans. Specifically, adaptation to different micro-niches within the overall social ecology of the species is what leads to the differentiation of personality traits among individuals. Climactic and ecological fluctuations during repeated Ice Ages may have historically provided much of the initial impetus by exacerbating social competition, but the larger population densities occasioned by the Neolithic Revolution in human subsistence economies (e.g., farming, herding, industrial and now information-based) have largely taken their place in recent human history. >Ecology/evolutionary psychology, >Niches/evolutionary psychology, >Adaption/evolutionary psychology, >Selection/evolutionary psychology.

1. King, J. E. and Figueredo, A. J. 1997. The five-factor model plus dominance in chimpanzee personality, Journal of Research in Personality 31: 257–71

Aurelio José Figueredo, Paul Gladden, Geneva Vásquez, Pedro Sofio, Abril Wolf and Daniel Nelson Jones, “Evolutionary theories of personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Lexical Studies Corr I 388
Personality traits/lexical studies/cultural differences/Saucier: studies of most languages of European origin (plus those in Turkish, Korean and Chinese) have produced factors corresponding to Extraversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Although this structure was not observed in Filipino, French, Greek or Maasai studies, it appears readily in a sub-set of languages that is larger than the sub-set that yields the >Big Five, >Personality/Traits, >Personality, >Agreeableness, >Openness, >Neuroticism, >Extraversion, >Conscientiousness.

Among English adjectives, this structure was as robust across variable selections as were one- and two-factor structures (Saucier 1997)(1). But studies of English type-nouns (Saucier 2003b(2)) and of other inclusive selections of variables (Saucier, Georgiades, Tsaousis and Goldberg 2005;(3) Saucier, Ole-Kotikash and Payne 2006)(4) failed to find it.
Lexical studies in Slavic and Germanic languages (including English) have been quite supportive of the Big Five, and so has a study in Turkish. But other studies (e.g., Di Blas and Forzi 1998(5); Saucier, Georgiades, Tsaousis and Goldberg 2005(3); Szirmák and De Raad 1994)(6) have found no clear counterpart to the Intellect factor in five-factor solutions.
None of these analyses has found the Big Five in a five-factor solution. The appearance of the Big Five is clearly contingent upon the variable-selection procedure, and thus on the operational definition of personality.
Corr I 389
Six factors: Ashton, Lee, Perugini et al. (2004)(7) have presented evidence that many of the lexical studies conducted to date yield a consistent pattern in six factor solutions: six factors that can be labelled as Extraversion, Emotionality, Agreeableness, Honesty/Humility, Conscientiousness and Openness. Although the structural pattern was first detected in studies of Korean (Hahn, Lee and Ashton 1999)(8) and French (Boies, Lee, Ashton et al. 2001)(9), it has appeared to a recognizable degree also in Dutch, German, Hungarian, Italian and Polish. Seven factors: seven-factor solution (Goldberg and Somer 2000(10); Saucier 1997(1); Tellegen and Waller 1987)(11). Of the two additional factors in these studies, one was found in all three: ‘Negative Valence’ (NV) is a factor emphasizing attributes with extremely low desirability and endorsement rates and with descriptive content involving morality/depravity, dangerousness, worthlessness, peculiarity and stupidity (cf., Benet-Martínez and Waller 2002)(12). A core content theme seems to be Noxious Violativeness – attributes reflecting a tendency to harmfully violate the rights of others, corresponding in many ways to contemporary definitions of antisocial personality disorder (Saucier 2007).
Cor I 390
A lexical study of the language with the largest number of native speakers (Chinese) generated seven emic factors with some resemblance to this structure (Zhou, Saucier, Gao and Liu in press). The seven factors include Negative Valence (or Noxious Violativeness), Conscientiousness, Intellect, Gregariousness, Self-Assurance, Even Temper and Concern for Others (versus Egotism). A comparison of seven-factor solutions from numerous studies indicates that the first six of these are particularly recurrent across studies.
1. Saucier, G. 1997. Effects of variable selection on the factor structure of person descriptors, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73: 1296–1312
2. Saucier, G. 2003b. Factor structure of English-language personality type-nouns, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85: 695–708
3. Saucier, G., Georgiades, S., Tsaousis, I. and Goldberg, L. R. 2005. The factor structure of Greek personality adjectives, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 856–75
4. Saucier, G., Ole-Kotikash, L. and Payne, D. L. 2006. The structure of personality and character attributes in the language of the Maasai. Unpublished report. University of Oregon
5, Di Blas, L. and Forzi, M. 1998. An alternative taxonomic study of personality descriptors in the Italian language, European Journal of Personality 12: 75–101
6. Szirmák, Z. and De Raad, B. 1994. Taxonomy and structure of Hungarian personality traits, European Journal of Personality 8: 95–118
7. Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., Perugini, M., Szarota, P. De Vries, R. E., Di Blas, L., Boies, K. and De Raad, B. 2004. A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86: 356–66
8. Hahn, D. W., Lee, K. and Ashton, M. C. 1999. A factor analysis of the most frequently used Korean personality trait adjectives, European Journal of Personality 13: 261–82
9. Boies, K., Lee, K., Ashton, M. C., Pascal, S. and Nicol, A. A. M. 2001. The structure of the French personality lexicon, European Journal of Personality 15: 277–95
10. Goldberg, L. R. and Somer, O. 2000. The hierarchical structure of common Turkish person-descriptive adjectives, European Journal of Personality 14: 497–531
11. Tellegen, A. and Waller, N. G. 1987. Re-examining basic dimensions of natural language trait descriptors. Paper presented at the 95th annual convention of the American Psychological Association, August 1987

Gerard Saucier, „Semantic and linguistic aspects of personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Neurobiology Corr I 329
Personality traits/Neurobiology: The Big Five were originally conceived as independent traits at the highest level of the personality hierarchy, but research has shown that they are regularly intercorrelated and possess a higher-order factor structure (DeYoung 2006(1); DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins 2002(2); Digman 1997(3); Jang, Livesley, Ando et al. 2006(4); Markon, Krueger and Watson 2005)(5). Neuroticism (reversed), Agreeableness and Conscientiousness form one higher-order factor or metatrait, labelled α or Stability, and Extraversion and Openness/Intellect form another, labelled β or Plasticity. >Personality traits/Behavior Genetics, >Five-factor model,
>Personality, >Agreeableness, >Openness, >Neuroticism, >Extraversion,
>Conscientiousness,


1. DeYoung, C. G. 2006. Higher-order factors of the Big Five in a multi-informant sample, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91: 1138–51
2. DeYoung, C. G., Peterson, J. B. and Higgins, D. M. 2002. Higher-order factors of the Big Five predict conformity: are there neuroses of health? Personality and Individual Differences 33: 533–52
3. Digman, J. M. 1997. Higher-order factors of the Big Five, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73: 1246–56
4. Jang, K. L., Livesley, W. J., Ando, J., Yamagata, S., Suzuki, A., Angleitner, A., Ostendorf, F., Riemann, R. and Spinath, F. 2006. Behavioural genetics of the higher-order factors of the Big Five, Personality and Individual Differences 41: 261–72
5. Markon, K. E., Krueger, R. F. and Watson, D. 2005. Delineating the structure of normal and abnormal personality: an integrative hierarchical approach, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 139–57

Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Neuroscience Corr I 329
Personality traits/hierarchy/causality/Neuroscience: Personality traits are arranged hierarchically, with correlated groups of more specific traits categorized together in broader traits. For example, the lower-level traits of talkativeness, assertiveness, enthusiasm and sociability are all grouped within the trait of Extraversion. A key premise of the factor-analytic approach is that specific traits fall within the same larger factor because of some shared underlying cause (Haig 2005)(1). Though this cause need not be exclusively biological, the correlational structure of traits provides a useful clue for personality neuroscience. >Extraversion, >Neuroticism, >Openness, >Big Five.

1. Haig, B. D. 2005. Exploratory factor analysis, theory generation, and scientific method, Multivariate Behavioural Research 40: 303–29

Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Saucier Corr I 386
Personality traits/cultural differences/lexical studies/Saucier: The majority of lexical studies of personality descriptors have attempted to test the most widely influential structural model of the last two decades, the Big Five factor structure (Goldberg 1990(1); John 1990(2)).
Corr I 387
Several lexical studies have reported evidence about factor solutions containing only one factor (Boies, Lee, Ashton et al. 2001(3); Di Blas and Forzi 1999(4); Goldberg and Somer 2000(5); Saucier 1997(6), 2003b(7); Saucier, Georgiades, Tsaousis and Goldberg 2005(8); Saucier, Ole-Kotikash and Payne 2006(9); Zhou, Saucier, Gao and Liu in press), with consistent findings. >Lexical studies.
The single factor contrasts a heterogeneous mix of desirable attributes at one pole with a mix of undesirable attributes at the other pole. This unrotated factor can be labelled Evaluation (following Osgood 1962)(10), or as Socially Desirable versus Undesirable Qualities.
>Lexical hypothesis.

1. Goldberg, L. R. 1990. An alternative ‘description of personality’: the Big-Five factor structure, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59: 1216–29
2. John, O. P. 1990. The ‘Big Five’ factor taxonomy: dimensions of personality in the natural language and in questionnaires, in L. A. Pervin (ed.), Handbook of personality: theory and research, pp. 66–100. New York: Guilford
3. Boies, K., Lee, K., Ashton, M. C., Pascal, S. and Nicol, A. A. M. 2001. The structure of the French personality lexicon, European Journal of Personality 15: 277–95
4. Di Blas, L. and Forzi, M. 1999. Refining a descriptive structure of personality attributes in the Italian language: language: the abridged Big Three circumplex structure, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76: 451–81
5. Goldberg, L. R. and Somer, O. 2000. The hierarchical structure of common Turkish person-descriptive adjectives, European Journal of Personality 14: 497–531
6. Saucier, G. 1997. Effects of variable selection on the factor structure of person descriptors, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73: 1296–1312
7. Saucier, G. 2003b. Factor structure of English-language personality type-nouns, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85: 695–708
8. Saucier, G., Georgiades, S., Tsaousis, I. and Goldberg, L. R. 2005. The factor structure of Greek personality adjectives, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 856–75
9. Saucier, G., Ole-Kotikash, L. and Payne, D. L. 2006. The structure of personality and character attributes in the language of the Maasai. Unpublished report. University of Oregon
10. Osgood, C. E. 1962. Studies on the generality of affective meaning systems, American Psychologist 17: 10–28

Gerard Saucier, „Semantic and linguistic aspects of personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Tupes Corr II 87
Personality Traits/Tupes/Christal/Johnson: After Allport and Odbert (…) found 17,953 words for human traits in Webster’s unabridged New International Dictionary [a demand arose to shorten that list]. Cattell reduced his set of 35 personality variables one more time with a statistical procedure called factor analysis. His factor analyses indicated 11 personality factors in one study and 12 personality factors in a second study (Cattell, 1945, 1947)(1,2). All might have been well, except that another set of factor analyses published by Donald Fiske (1949…)(3) repeatedly showed five rather than the 11 or 12 factors discovered by Cattell. The Tupes and Christal (1961/1992)(4) study was designed to explain the difference between Cattell’s and Fiske’s results.
II 88
Factor rotation/Tupes/Christal: (…) Tupes and Christal believed that the most likely reason for the different results was that Cattell used what is called oblique rotation of factors in his statistical analyses, while Fiske used what is called orthogonal rotation of factors. The difference between the two rotation strategies is that oblique factors are allowed to overlap with each other, whilst orthogonal factors are independent of each other (…). Tupes and Christal (1961/1992)(4) set up their study to test whether using the same (orthogonal) rotation method would produce the same factors across different sets of personality rating data (…). Method/Tupes/Christal: [Tupes and Christal] simply re-
II 89
analysed eight existing datasets. Tupes and Christal’s method was motivated by the observation that differences in the number of personality factors found in previous studies could have been due to either the differences in the participants and rating scales or to differences in the method of factor analysis (…) used. By reanalysing data from these diverse samples with the same form of factor analysis, they reasoned that if similar factors are found across the samples, these factors might be ‘universal enough to appear in a variety of samples, and […] are not unduly sensitive to the rating conditions or situations’ (Tupes & Christal, 1992, p. 227)(4). Findings/Personality Factors/Tupes/Christal: Tupes and Christal (1992) summarized their findings in the following sentence: ‘In every sample except one there appeared to be five relatively strong and recurrent personality factors and nothing more of any consequence’ (p. 245)(4). (…) regardless of the total number of factors found in any sample, in every sample each of the first five factors was
II 90
clearly defined by the same unique set of trait-words. Tupes and Christal labelled the common theme among the trait-words that defined each of the five factors with a term from previous factor-analytic studies. Tupes and Christal’s first factor was defined by the following traits in all eight samples: I
Silent vs. Talkative;
Secretive vs. Frank;
Cautious vs. Adventurous;
Submissive vs. Assertive; and
Languid, Slow vs. Energetic.
Together, according to Tupes and Christal, these traits described a recurrent factor labelled (…) by others as Extroversion. Traits defining the second factor in all eight samples were
II.
Spiteful vs. Good-Natured; Obstructive vs. Cooperative;
Suspicious vs. Trustful;
Rigid vs. Adaptable; and
Cool, Aloof vs. Attentive to People.
In six of the eight samples,
Jealous vs. Not So;
Demanding vs. Emotionally Mature;
Self-Willed vs. Mild; and
Hard, Stern vs. Kindly
helped to define the second factor. Traits that defined the third factor in all eight samples were
III.
Frivolous vs. Responsible and Unscrupulous vs. Conscientious. In addition,
Relaxed, Indolent vs. Insistently Orderly;
Quitting vs. Persevering; and
Unconventional vs. Conventional
defined the third factor in six of the eight samples. Traits defining the fourth factor in all eight samples were
IV.
Worrying, Anxious, vs. Placid; Easily Upset vs. Poised, Tough; and
Changeable vs. Emotionally Stable.
[Factors also helping to define this factor were:]
Neurotic vs. Not So;
Hypochondriacal vs. Not So; and
Emotional vs. Calm.
The fifth factor was less clearly defined than the first four. Overall, only the following three traits defined the fifth factor in all eight samples:
V.
Boorish vs. Intellectual, Cultured; Clumsy, Awkward vs. Polished; and
Immature vs. Independent-Minded.
II 91
The five recurrent factors were labelled as (a) Surgency [or Extroversion by others], (b) Agreeableness, (c) Dependability, (d) Emotional Stability, and (e) Culture.
II 94
Counterarguments against Tupes and Christal: VsTupes/VsChristal: One of the first questions one should ask about any study is, ‘How representative is the subject sample?’(…) Tupes and Christal used eight groups, and only two of them were undergraduates. However, two of the samples were psychology graduate students (a rather exclusive group), and the other four were students or graduates of Officer Candidate School for the US Air Force (again, a rather specialized group). Worst of all, only one of the eight samples was female, and in this sample the ratings that defined the Culture factor in the seven male samples split into two factors. Tupes and Christal (1961/1992)(4) do not report the nationality and ethnicity of subjects in the eight samples. Neither do the original reports from which they drew their data, but we can be fairly confident that nearly all of them were native-English-speaking, Caucasian Americans.
VsVs: Subsequent research has revealed consistent sex differences on some of the Big Five traits, with women expressing higher levels of Agreeableness and Neuroticism than men (e.g., Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001)(5), but no studies have presented evidence that there are different basic personality factors for men and women.
>Personality, >Personality traits, >Agreeableness, >Openness, >Extraversion, >Neuroticism, >Conscientiousness.

1. Cattell, R. B. (1945). The description of personality: Principles and findings in a factor analysis. American Journal of Psychology, 58, 69–90.
2. Cattell, R. B. (1947). Confirmation and clarification of primary personality factors. Psychometrika, 12, 197–220.
3. Fiske, D. W. (1949). Consistency of the factorial structures of personality ratings from different sources. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44, 329–344.
4. Tupes, E. C., & Christal, R. E. (1961/1992). Recurrent personality factors based on trait ratings (USAF ASD Technical Report No. 61–97). Aeronautical Systems Division, Personnel Laboratory: Lackland Air Force Base, TX. (Reprinted as Tupes, E. C., & Christal, R. E. (1992). Recurrent personality factors based on trait ratings. Journal of Personality, 60, 225–251.)
5. Costa, P. T., Terracciano, A., & McCrae, R. R. (2001). Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: Robust and surprising findings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 322–331.

Johnson, John A.: “Five Strong and Recurrent Personality Factors - Revisiting Tupes and Christal (1961)”, In: Philip J. Corr (Ed.) 2018. Personality and Individual Differences. Revisiting the classical studies. Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne: Sage, pp. 87-100.


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Personality Traits Twin Studies Corr I 290
Personality traits/twin studies/Munafò: Heritability of personality traits: Data from a review of the literature (Loehlin 1992)(1), selected primary studies (Jang, Livesley and Vernon 1996(2); Riemann, Angleitner and Strelau 1997(3); Waller 1999(4)) and an analysis (Loehlin 1998(5)) of previously collected data (Loehlin and Nichols 1976(6)), all of which indicate relatively consistent and substantial heritability coefficients for all major personality traits. >Heritability.
It is striking that these findings appear to be relatively independent of the measurement instruments used, and hold for traits drawn from Eysenck’s tripartite theory of personality and those drawn from Costa and McCrae’s ‘Big Five’ model (Bouchard and Loehlin 2001)(7). In particular, there appears to be little or no effect of shared family environment; residual variance is typically labelled as non-shared environment, but it should be noted that this term also includes gene × environment effects and measurement error.
>Personality, >Five-factor model, >P.T. Costa, >R.R. McCrae, >Nature versus nurture, >Environment.

1. Loehlin, J. C. 1992. Genes and environment in personality development. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
2. Jang, K. L., Livesley, W. J. and Vernon, P. A. 1996. Heritability of the big five personality dimensions and their facets, Journal of Personality 64: 577–91
3. Riemann, R., Angleitner, A. and Strelau, J. 1997. Genetic and environmental influences on personality: a study of twins reared together using the self- and peer report NEO-FFI scales, Journal of Personality 65: 449-75
4.Waller, N. G. 1999. Evaluating the structure of personality, in C. R. Cloninger (ed.), Personality and psychopathology, pp. 155–97. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association
5. Loehlin, J. C. 1998. Latent variable models: an introduction to factor, path, and structural analysis, 3rd edn. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
6. Loehlin, J. C. and Nichols, R. C. 1976. Heredity, environment and personality: a study of 850 sets of twins, Austin, TX: University of Texas
7. Bouchard, T. J., Jr and Loehlin, J. C. 2001. Genes, evolution, and personality, Behavioural Genetics 31: 243–73


Marcus R. Munafò,“Behavioural genetics: from variance to DNA“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.)2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Plasticity Neurobiology Corr I 329
Plasticity/Neurobiology/behavioral genetics: Behaviour genetic analysis has shown that the two meta-traits have genetic origins (Jang et al. 2006)(1), and evidence is accumulating that Stability (>Personality traits/neurobiology) is related to serotonin, whereas Plasticity may be related to dopamine (DeYoung 2006(2); DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins 2002(3); Yamagata, Suzuki, Ando et al. 2006)(4). Serotonine and dopamine act as diffuse neuromodulators affecting a wide array of brain systems, and their broad influence is consistent with a role in the broadest level of personality structure.
Corr I 320
Plasticity appears to reflect a general exploratory tendency, with Extraversion representing a more behavioural mode of exploration and Openness/Intellect a more cognitive mode. The role of dopamine in exploratory behaviour and cognitive flexibility is well-established, making it a plausible biological substrate for Plasticity (Ashby, Isen and Turken 1999(5); Braver and Barch 2002(6); Depue and Collins 1999(7); Panksepp 1998)(8). >Five-factor Model/Neurobiology.

1. Jang, K. L., Livesley, W. J., Ando, J., Yamagata, S., Suzuki, A., Angleitner, A., Ostendorf, F., Riemann, R. and Spinath, F. 2006. Behavioural genetics of the higher-order factors of the Big Five, Personality and Individual Differences 41: 261–72
2. DeYoung, C. G. 2006. Higher-order factors of the Big Five in a multi-informant sample, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91: 1138–51
3. DeYoung, C. G., Peterson, J. B. and Higgins, D. M. 2002. Higher-order factors of the Big Five predict conformity: are there neuroses of health? Personality and Individual Differences 33: 533–52
4. Yamagata, S., Suzuki, A., Ando, J., Ono, Y., Kijima, N., Yoshimura, K., Ostendorf, F., Angleitner, A., Riemann, R., Spinath, F. M., Livesley, W. J. and Jang, K. L. 2006. Is the genetic structure of human personality universal? A cross-cultural twin study from North America, Europe, and Asia, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90: 987–98
5. Ashby, F. G., Isen, A. M. and Turken, A. U. 1999. A neuropsychological theory of positive affect and its influence on cognition, Psychological Review 106: 529–50
6. Braver, T. S. and Barch, D. M. 2002. A theory of cognitive control, aging cognition, and neuromodulation, Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Review 26: 809–17
7. Depue, R. A. and Collins, P. F. 1999. Neurobiology of the structure of personality: dopamine, facilitation of incentive motivation, and extraversion, Behavioural and Brain Sciences 22: 491–569
8. Panksepp, J. 1998. Affective neuroscience: the foundations of human and animal emotion. New York: Oxford University Press


Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Psychology Evolutionary Psychology Corr I 265
Psychology/evolutionary psychology: Although evolutionary psychologists agree that evolution is relevant to all psychological mechanisms, there has been very little research done on personality from an evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary psychologists have generally been interested solely in what Tooby and Cosmides (1992)(1) have termed the psychic unity of mankind. Therefore, they have been primarily concerned with human nature rather than individual differences. Consequently, much of evolutionary personality psychology research has focused on universally-shared psychological mechanisms that result in phenotypic plasticity due to varying environmental input without regard to genetic variability or heritable traits. >Personality/evolutionary theories. However, the vast behavioural genetics literature on personality traits indicates strong genetic components for differences in all of the >Big Five personality traits (Loehlin, McCrae, Costa and John 1998)(2). The genetic variability of such traits is dismissed or explained by some evolutionary psychologists as selectively neutral or as genetic ‘noise’ (Tooby and Cosmides 1990)(3). >Personality traits/evolutionary psychology.

1.Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. 1992. The psychological foundations of culture, in J. Barkow, L. Cosmides and J. Tooby (eds.), The adapted mind: evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, pp. 19–136. New York: Oxford University Press
2. Loehlin, J., McCrae, R., Costa, P. and John, O. 1998. Heritabilities of common and measure-specific components of the Big Five personality factors, Journal of Research in Personality 32: 431–53
3. Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. 1990. On the universality of human nature and the uniqueness of the individual: the role of genetics and adaptation, Journal of Personality 58: 17–67

Aurelio José Figueredo, Paul Gladden, Geneva Vásquez, Pedro Sofio, Abril Wolf and Daniel Nelson Jones, “Evolutionary theories of personality”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Self Personality Psychology Corr I 459
Self/Personality Psychology/Robinson/Sedikides: Why are traits so stable over time? Swann’s (e.g., Swann and Schroeder 1995)(1) contends that people are motivated to confirm rather than disconfirm strongly held views of the self (see also Sedikides 1995)(2). Thus, a given self-view (e.g., that the self is high in Neuroticism) is likely to create its own reality through trait-consistent processes related to self-verification (Swann, Rentfrow and Guinn 2002)(3). See also Tamir (2005)(4).
>Personality traits.
Self-enhancement reflects a motive to view the self as positively as possible (Sedikides and Gregg 2008(5); Sedikides and Strube 1997)(6). On the basis of this motive, one can explain why individuals
(a) view their own traits as more socially desirable than the average person (Alicke and Govorun 2005)(7);
(b) interpret ambiguous trait terms in a way that reflects best on the self (Dunning, Meyerowitz and Holzberg 1989)(8);
(c) choose questions likely to confirm their positive (versus negative) traits (Sedikides 1993)(9); and
(d) manifest superior memory for feedback related to their positive (versus negative) traits (Sedikides and Green 2000)(10).
Heterogeneity of the self: when describing themselves, individuals mention important relationships, social roles, goals and motives, preferences and values, as well as rules and strategies for self-regulation (Markus 1983(11); McConnell and Strain 2007(12)).
>Self-regulation, >Self-description.
When individuals rate their traits in relation to different role-contexts (e.g., in school versus at home), their traits differ in ways that are particular to a given role-context (Donahue and Harary 1998(13)). There has been an attempt to incorporate role-specific tendencies into more general models of traits (Wood and Roberts 2006)(14).

Corr I 460
Hierarchies: The self is hierarchically organized. Its most abstract features are captured when individuals characterize themselves in general, irrespective of context or social role (Schell, Klein and Babey 1996)(15). Lower Level: here, social roles encompass aspects of personality that, although generalized, are specific to the role under consideration (Donahue and Harary 1998)(13).
At the lowest level of abstraction, self-views are particular to a given day (Kernis, Grannemann and Barclay 1989)(16) or moment in time (Heatherton and Polivy 1991)(17).
Such levels of the self function differently. For example, momentary self-esteem varies substantially from day to day, whereas this is not true of global self-esteem (Heatherton and Polivy 1991)(17).

1. Swann, W. B. and Schroeder, D. G. 1995. The search for beauty and truth: a framework for understanding reactions to evaluations, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21: 1307–18
2. Sedikides, C. 1995. Central and peripheral self-conceptions are differentially influenced by mood: tests of the differential sensitivity hypothesis, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69: 759–77
3. Swann, W. B., Rentfrow, P. J. and Guinn, J. 2002. Self-verification: the search for coherence, in M. R. Leary and J. P. Tangney (eds.), Handbook of self and identity, pp. 367–83. New York: Guilford Press
4. Tamir, M. 2005. Don’t worry, be happy?: Neuroticism, trait-consistent affect regulation, and performance, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89: 449–61
5. Sedikides, C. and Gregg, A. P. 2008. Self-enhancement: food for thought, Perspectives on Psychological Science 3: 102–16
6. Sedikides, C. and Strube, M. J. 1997. Self-evaluation: to thine own self be good, to thine own self be sure, to thine own self be true, and to thine own self be better, in M. P. Zanna (ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, vol. XXIX, pp. 209–69. New York: Academic Press
7. Alicke, M. D. and Govorun, O. 2005. The better-than-average effect, in M. D. Alicke, D. A. Dunning and J. I. Krueger (eds.), The self in social judgement, pp. 85–106. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press
8. Dunning, D., Meyerowitz, J. A. and Holzberg, A. D. 1989. Ambiguity and self-evaluation: the role of idiosyncratic trait definitions in self-serving assessments of ability, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57: 1082–90
9. Sedikides, C. 1993. Assessment, enhancement, and verification as determinants of the self-evaluation process, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65: 317–38
10. Sedikides, C. and Green, J. D. 2000. On the self-protective nature of inconsistency/negativity management: using the person memory paradigm to examine self-referent memory, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79: 906–22
11. Markus, H. 1983. Self-knowledge: an expanded view, Journal of Personality 51: 543–65
12. McConnell, A. R. and Strain, L. M. 2007. Structure and content of the self, in C. Sedikides and S. Spencer (eds.), The self in social psychology, pp. 51–73. New York: Psychology Press
13. Donahue, E. M. and Harary, K. 1998. The patterned inconsistency of traits: mapping the differential effects of social roles on self-perceptions of the Big Five, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 24: 610–19
14. Wood, D. and Roberts, B. W. 2006. Cross-sectional and longitudinal tests of the personality and role identity structural model (PRISM), Journal of Personality 74: 779–809
15. Schell, T.L., Klein, S. B. and Babey, S. H. 1996. Testing a hierarchical model of self-knowledge, Psychological Science 7: 170-3
16. Kernis, M. H., Grannemann, B. D. and Barclay, L. C. 1989. Stability and level of self-esteem as predectors of anger arousal and hostelity, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 56: 1013-22
17. Heatherton, T. F. and Polivy, J. 1991. Development and validation of a scale for measuring state self-esteem, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60: 895-910


Michael D. Robinson and Constantine Sedikides, „ Traits and the self: toward an integration“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Self Psychological Theories Corr I 457
Self/psychological theories/Robinson/Sedikides: Self researchers (who are primarily social psychologists) often operate under the assumption that the self is multifaceted, malleable, and low in cross-situational consistency (McGuire and McGuire 1988)(1). VsSocial psychology: By contrast, trait researchers (who are primarily personality psychologists) have converged on the idea that there are a few basic dimensions of personality that are quite stable and consistent across situations (Benet-Martínez and John 1998)(2).
>Social psychology, >Personality psychology, >Personality, >Personality traits, >Situations, >Stability, >Philosophical theories on the self.

1. McGuire, W. J. and McGuire, C. V. 1988. Content and process in the experience of the self, in L. Berkowitz (ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, vol. XXI, pp. 97–144. San Diego, CA: Academic Press
2. Benet-Martínez, V. and John, O. 1998. Los Cinco Grandes across cultures and ethnic groups: multitrait-multimethod analyses of the Big Five in Spanish and English, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75: 729–50


Michael D. Robinson and Constantine Sedikides, „ Traits and the self: toward an integration“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Sex Differences McCrae Corr I 151
Gender differences/sex differences/McCrae: Research on the FFM ((s) >Five-Factor Model) has shown consistent patterns in gender differences. These differences are generally small, with substantial overlap between the distribution of traits in men and in women. But in most samples, women score higher in N ((s) >neuroticism) and A ((s) >agreeableness) than men. At the level of specific facets, there are sometimes differences within domain. Thus, both Warmth and Assertiveness are facets of E ((s) >extraversion), but women are typically warmer and men more assertive. Again, women are more open to aesthetic experiences, whereas men are more open to ideas. ((s) >Openness). Cf. (McCrae and Allik 2002)(1) and the Big Five Inventory (BFI) (Schmitt, Allik, McCrae et al. 2007)(2), Costa and McCrae 1992a(3) and McCrae, Terracciano et al. 2005(4). Cf. >Neuroticism, >Agreeableness, >Openness to experience, >Conscientiousness, >Introversion, >Extraversion, >Five-Factor Model.

1. McCrae, R. R. and Allik, J. (eds.) 2002. The Five-Factor Model of personality across cultures. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers
2. Schmitt, D. P., Allik, J., McCrae, R. R., Benet-Martínez, V., Alcalay, L., Ault, L. et al. 2007. The geographic distribution of Big Five personality traits: patterns and profiles of human self-description across 56 nations, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 38: 173–212
3. Costa, P. T., Jr and McCrae, R. R. 1992a. Revised NEO Personality Inventory Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources
4. Terracciano, A., Abdel-Khalak, A. M., Ádám, N., Adamovová, L., Ahn, C.-k., Ahn, H.-n. et al. 2005. National character does not reflect mean personality trait levels in 49 cultures, Science 310: 96–100


Robert R. McCrae, “The Five-Factor Model of personality traits: consensus and controversy”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Somatic Diseases Psychological Theories Corr I 205
Somatic diseases/psychological theories/Elovainio/Kivimäki: (...) in the 1700s and 1800s, psychological explanations, including personality, were used mainly if there was no evident physiological mechanism found for a somatic disease (for a review see Ravaja 1996)(1)). Today, a large body of evidence suggests that psychological factors may have a role in many somatic health problems involving inflammatory and cardiovascular disease processes (Hemingway and Marmot 1999(2); Miller, Markides, Chiriboga and Ray 1996(3); Schneiderman 1987(4); Smith 1992(5)). The psychological factors were expected to be linked to somatic health without any complicated mechanisms and the psychosomatic diseases were proposed to be caused by specific psychological problems or conflicts, as defined for instance by psychodynamic theories (Lipowski 1984)(6). Later research suggests that this is clearly an oversimplified view. [The] growth of scientific activity has led, however, to a more and more fragmented picture of the field. Problems:
First, although there is a growing consensus about the structure of personality traits at the higher-order level, as defined by the Big Five in adulthood or by temperament theories (Buss, Plomin and Willerman 1973(7); Cloninger, Svrakic and Przybeck 1993(8)) in childhood, much of the current research about personality and health focuses on single, lower-order traits (e.g., hostility) without examining those traits in relation to other traits.
The second problem in the field relates to the lack of a conceptual model of the evidently complex interaction process between personality and health.
Corr I 206
Thirdly, personality researchers have used a large number of measures and scales to describe individual differences between people in a wide variety of ways. This has contributed to a situation where coherent scientific evidence cumulates extremely slowly compared to the amount of scientific activity in the field. Finally, the fragmented picture of the scientific activities in psychosomatic research also reflects its background as a mixture of two different scientific traditions: medicine and behavioural sciences.
Cf. >Stress/psychological theories.
Corr I 209
An important set of theories is based on the idea that personality, as part of the emotional reaction or behaviour pattern, induces direct biological and physiological changes or reactions with potential pathophysiological pathophysiological consequences. >Personality, >Personality traits.
A. Direct effect models: (Krantz and Manuck 1984(9); Schneiderman 1987)(10), (Besedovsky, del Rey, Klusman et al. 1991(11); Besedovsky, Herberman, Temoshok and Sendo 1996(12); Maier and Watkins 1998)(13); (e.g., Baum and Nesselhof 1988(14); Baum and Posluszny 1999(15); Cohen, Tyrrell and Smith 1991(16); Kiecolt-Glaser and Glaser 1999(17); Kiecolt-Glaser, Marucha, Malarkey et al. 1995)(18).
According to the reactivity hypothesis, there are significant differences in physiological reactivity that are related to personality factors (Miller, Smith, Turner et al. 1996)(19).
Structural weakness hypothesis: many of the personality-related features, such as shyness and hostility, share the same genetic or biological background with some physiological problems that are related to or even cause somatic health problems. (Cloninger, Svrakic and Przybeck 1993)(20) temperament theory or the theory of Buss, Plomin and Willerman (1973)(21).
Corr I 211
B. Direct effect models: e.g. (Miller, Smith, Turner et al. 1996)(19). Health and disease are influenced by behaviours that convey risks or protect against them. Less studied and more controversial than those described above is the selection hypothesis proposing that psychological factors, such as personality, may be associated with selection of people to health risk environments or situations (Kivimäki, Virtanen, Elovainio and Vahtera 2006)(22).

1. Ravaja, N. 1996. Psychological antecedents of metabolic syndrome precursors in the young. Helsinki: Yliopistopaino
2. Hemingway, H. and Marmot, M. 1999. Evidence based cardiology: psychosocial factors in the aetiology and prognosis of coronary heart disease. Systematic review of prospective cohort studies, British Medical Journal 318: 1460–7
3. Miller, T. Q., Markides, K. S., Chiriboga, D. A. and Ray, L. A. 1995. A test of the psychosocial vulnerability and health behaviour models of hostility: results from an 11-year follow-up study of Mexican Americans, Psychosometric Medicine 57: 572–81
4. Schneiderman, M. A. 1987. Mortality experience of employees with occupational exposure to DBCP, Archives of Environmental Health 42: 245–7
5. Smith, T. W. (1992). Hostility and health: current status of a psychosomatic hypothesis, Health Psychology 11: 139–50
6. Lipowski, Z. J. 1984. What does the word ‘psychosomatic’ really mean? A historical and semantic inquiry, Psychosomatic Medicine 46: 153–71
7. Buss, A. H., Plomin, R. and Willerman, L. 1973. The inheritance of temperaments, Journal of Personality 41: 513–24
8. Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, D. M. and Przybeck, T. R. 1993. A psychobiological model of temperament and character, Archives of General Psychiatry 50: 975–90
9. Krantz, D. S. and Manuck, S. B. 1984. Acute psychophysiologic reactivity and risk of cardiovascular disease: a review and methodologic critique, Psychological Bulletin 96: 435–64
10. Schneiderman, M. A. 1987. Mortality experience of employees with occupational exposure to DBCP, Archives of Environmental Health 42: 245–7
11. Besedovsky, H. O., del Rey, A., Klusman, I., Furukawa, H., Monge Arditi, G. and Kabiersch, A. 1991. Cytokines as modulators of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 40: 613–18
12. Besedovsky, H. O., Herberman, R. B., Temoshok, L. R. and Sendo, F. 1996. Psychoneuroimmunology and cancer: fifteenth Sapporo Cancer Seminar, Cancer Research 56: 4278–81
13. Maier, S. F. and Watkins, L. R. 1998. Cytokines for psychologists: implications of bidirectional immune-to-brain communication for understanding behaviour, mood, and cognition, Psychological Review 105: 83–107
14. Baum, A. and Nesselhof, S. E. 1988. Psychological research and the prevention, etiology, and treatment of AIDS, American Psychologist 43: 900–6
15. Baum, A. and Posluszny, D. M. 1999. Health psychology: mapping biobehavioural contributions to health and illness, Annual Review of Psychology 50: 137–63
16. Cohen, S., Tyrrell, D. A. and Smith, A. P. 1991. Psychological stress and susceptibility to the common cold, New England Journal of Medicine 325: 606–12
17. Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. and Glaser, R. 1999. Chronic stress and mortality among older adults, Jama 282: 2259–60
18. Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K., Marucha, P. T., Malarkey, W. B., Mercado, A. M. and Glaser, R. 1995. Slowing of wound healing by psychological stress, Lancet 346: 1194–6
19. Miller, T. Q., Smith, T. W., Turner, C. W., Guijarro, M. L. and Hallet, A. J. 1996. A meta-analytic review of research on hostility and physical health, Psychological Bulletin 119: 322–48
20. Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, D. M. and Przybeck, T. R. 1993. A psychobiological model of temperament and character, Archives of General Psychiatry 50: 975–90
21. Buss, A. H., Plomin, R. and Willerman, L. 1973. The inheritance of temperaments, Journal of Personality 41: 513–24
22. Kivimäki, M., Virtanen, M., Elovainio, M. and Vahtera, J. 2006. Personality, work, career and health, in L. Pulkkinen, J. Kaprio and R. J. Rose (eds.), Socioemotional Development and Health from Adolescence to Adulthood, pp. 328–42. New York: Cambridge University Press


Marko Elovainio and Mika Kivimäki, “Models of personality and health”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Stability Neurobiology Corr I 329
Stability/Neurobiology/behavioral genetics: Behaviour genetic analysis has shown that the two meta-traits have genetic origins (Jang et al. 2006)(1), and evidence is accumulating that Stability (>Personality traits/neurobiology) is related to serotonin, whereas Plasticity may be related to dopamine (DeYoung 2006(2); DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins 2002;(3) Yamagata, Suzuki, Ando et al. 2006)(4). Serotonine and dopamine act as diffuse neuromodulators affecting a wide array of brain systems, and their broad influence is consistent with a role in the broadest level of personality structure.
Corr I 320
The discovery of Stability as a meta-trait encompassing the shared variance of Neuroticism, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness may allow a parsimonious description of the broad effects of serotonin on personality, which largely reconciles the various hypotheses regarding serotonin. >Five-factor Model/Neurobiology.

1. Jang, K. L., Livesley, W. J., Ando, J., Yamagata, S., Suzuki, A., Angleitner, A., Ostendorf, F., Riemann, R. and Spinath, F. 2006. Behavioural genetics of the higher-order factors of the Big Five, Personality and Individual Differences 41: 261–72
2. DeYoung, C. G. 2006. Higher-order factors of the Big Five in a multi-informant sample, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91: 1138–51
3. DeYoung, C. G., Peterson, J. B. and Higgins, D. M. 2002. Higher-order factors of the Big Five predict conformity: are there neuroses of health? Personality and Individual Differences 33: 533–52
4. Yamagata, S., Suzuki, A., Ando, J., Ono, Y., Kijima, N., Yoshimura, K., Ostendorf, F., Angleitner, A., Riemann, R., Spinath, F. M., Livesley, W. J. and Jang, K. L. 2006. Is the genetic structure of human personality universal? A cross-cultural twin study from North America, Europe, and Asia, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90: 987–98


Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Temperament Cloninger Corr I 328
Temperament/R. C. Cloninger: He hypothesized that the original three traits and Persistence reflect dimensions of temperament, meaning that they should be evident early in ontogeny and strongly genetically determined. In contrast, he hypothesized that Self-Directedness, Cooperativeness and Self-Transcendence reflect dimensions of character, meaning that they should develop later, being determined by experience during development rather than primarily by genes. VsCloninger: Research has demonstrated several problems with Cloninger’s model (>personality traits/Cloninger).
(1) A simple distinction between temperament and character appears untenable. The character traits show much the same levels of heritability as the temperament traits (Ando, Suzuki, Yamagata et al. 2004(1); Gillespie, Cloninger, Heath and Martin 2003)(2).
(2) Evidence has accumulated to contradict the idea that single neurotransmitter systems are responsible for Novelty-Seeking, Harm Avoidance and Reward Dependence (Paris 2005)(3).
(3) Cloninger’s seven-factor structure has not proven consistently replicable. Factor analyses have demonstrated (a) that the scales Cloninger developed do not group together in the manner that he assigned them to his seven traits (Ando, Suzuki, Yamagata et al. 2004(1); Ball, Tennen and Kranzler 1999(4); Herbst, Zonderman, McCrae and Costa 2000)(5), and (b) that his instrument is best described by the five factor structure of the Big Five (Markon, Krueger and Watson 2005(6); Ramanaiah, Rielage and Cheng 2002)(7).



1. Ando, J., Suzuki, A., Yamagata, S., Kijima, N., Maekawa, H., Ono, Y. and Jang, K. L. 2004. Genetic and environmental structure of Cloninger’s temperament and character character dimensions, Journal of Personality Disorders 18: 379–93
2. Gillespie, N. A., Cloninger, C. R., Heath, A. C. and Martin, N. G. 2003. The genetic and environmental relationship between Cloninger’s dimensions of temperament and character, Personality and Individual Differences 35: 1931–46
3. Paris, J. 2005. Neurobiological dimensional models of personality: a review of the models of Cloninger, Depue, and Siever, Journal of Personality Disorders 19: 156–70
4. Ball, S. A., Tennen, H. and Kranzler, H. R. 1999. Factor replicability and validity of the Temperament and Character Inventory in substance-dependent patients, Psychological Assessment 11: 514–24
5. Herbst, J. H., Zonderman, A. B., McCrae, R. R. and Costa, P. T. 2000. Do the dimensions of the Temperament and Character Inventory map a simple genetic architecture? Evidence from molecular genetics and factor analysis, American Journal of Psychiatry 157: 1285–90
6. Markon, K. E., Krueger, R. F. and Watson, D. 2005. Delineating the structure of normal and abnormal personality: an integrative hierarchical approach, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 139–57
7. Ramanaiah, N. V., Rielage, J. K. and Cheng, Y. 2002. Cloninger’s temperament and character inventory and the NEO Five–Factor Inventory, Psychological Reports 90: 59–63



Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Trait Differences Fleeson Corr II 231
Intrapersonal Personality Trait Differences/Density Distribution Approach/Study/Fleeson/Rauthmann/Schmitt: Fleeson’s (2001)(1) definition of traits as density distributions of states comes with several assumptions (…).The first assumption predicts that individuals express their personality trait-levels on all behavioral levels. This means, for example, that even a person with an extremely low extraversion trait-level (level 1 on a 7-point scale) sometimes shows extremely extraverted behavior (level 7). [This can occur] in reaction to pronounced differences between situations or because of different temporarily activated goal-processes within a person. Second (…) it was assumed that the average behavioral manifestation of a trait is highly stable and predictable even though each single behavioral manifestation is not. (…) intra-individual density distributions of states can be used to index the individual trait-level to some degree. [And third] the shape of the density distribution of states entails unique details of an individual’s personality. State variability (…) reflects a person’s responsiveness (sensitivity, reactivity) to situational cues and characteristics. >Situations, >Behavior, >Dimensional approach.
II 232
[The first study by Fleeson (2001)(1)] revealed that the individual personality state variability was lower as compared to the total personality state variability, but not much, with the individual standard deviation roughly amounting to .90 and the total stand deviation roughly amounting to 1.20. This result clearly
II 233
confirms Fleeson’s claim that personality states and their variability across situations contain important personality information over and above personality trait-levels. [The results also showed] that personality states can vary across situations as much as affective states do. [Fleeson also found] that ‘individuals differ from themselves over time at least as much as they differ from each other at the average level’ (Fleeson 2001(1), p. 1016). [Fleeson’s second assumption was also supported]. [He found that the] average correlation between randomly selected states ranged from .28 (Conscientiousness) to .54 (Intellect), with the average correlation across all Big Five constructs amounting to .39.
The third assumption predicted that, in addition to the mean of the state density distribution, its shape as described by the standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis would vary systematically and in a stable manner between individuals. This assumption received mixed support. (…) the average correlation of state variability across traits was .38 suggesting that individuals differ not only in their trait-specific situational reactivity but also in their general reactivity.
II 234
(…) Study 2 [by Fleeson (2001)(1) simply] replicated the results of Study 1.
II 235
Study 3 tested whether high state variability, high stability of this variability and high stability of the average state were, at least partly, due to idiosyncratic scale usage. Despite differences in material, results were similar to those of Study 1 and 2. Importantly, average within-person state variability (quantified by the standard deviation) amounted to about 70% of the total variability across all participants and measurement occasions and was similar in size to the trait variability between individuals. Moreover, the two most important parameters of the individual state density distribution – level (mean) and variability (standard deviation) – were again very high (…) across individuals and constructs.
II 236
VsFleeson: First, most research has used people’s self-reports of personality states in experience sampling. These may approximate, but are not actual behavior. Second, the exact underlying processes and mechanisms (which can be biophysiological, perceptual, cognitive, motivational, intentional, volitional, regulatory, behavioral, or social-interactional) that constitute, drive, generate, or explain density distributions are poorly understood as of yet. Third, it was initially not quite clear what exactly a trait is and how density distributions ‘capture’ traits. Lastly, while a density distribution approach is based on the same principles as Classical Test Theory (where a ‘true’ trait score may be buried in a distribution of scores measured at different occasions), it is not a formalized theory of traits, states, or their relations. >Personality traits.

1. Fleeson, W. (2001). Towards a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: Traits as density distributions of states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 1011–1027.

Rauthmann, John F.; Schmitt, Manfred: “Personality Traits as State Density Distributions Revisiting Fleeson (2001)”, In: Philip J. Corr (Ed.) 2018. Personality and Individual Differences. Revisiting the classical studies. Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne: Sage, pp. 224-244.


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018
Twin Studies Behavioral Genetics Corr I 288
Twin studies/behavioral genetics/personality traits/Munafò: the logic of twin studies is that if a behavioural trait is more similar in pairs of MZ (monozygotic) twins than it is in pairs of DZ (dizygotc) twins, then that trait must presumably be under a degree of genetic influence.
Corr I 289
The proportion of variation in phenotype that is due to variation in genotype is expressed as the heritability of a trait (h2) – a heritability coefficient of 0.50 means that 50 per cent of the variation in that trait is due to genotypic variation. When we talk about the relative influence of genotype and environment on phenotype we are talking about the relative influence of variability in the former on variability in the latter. Accurate estimates of h2 can be arrived at using structural equation modelling, which assumes that there are three distinct influences on phenotypic variation, comprising additive genetic effects (A), common or shared environmental effects (C), and unique or non-shared environmental effects (E). Such models are often referred to as ACE models.
>Heritability/Behavioral genetics.
Twin studies consistently report a higher degree of similarity on measures of personality between MZ twins than between DZ twins, suggesting substantial heritability of these traits. For example, data from Canada and Germany (Jang, Livesley and Vernon 2002)(1) on twins who completed the NEO-PI-R indicated correlation coefficients of approximately 0.45 for MZ twins, and 0.20 for DZ twins.

1. Jang, K. L., Livesley, W. J. and Vernon, P. A. 1996. Heritability of the big five personality dimensions and their facets, Journal of Personality 64: 577–91


Marcus R. Munafò,“Behavioural genetics: from variance to DNA“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.)2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018


No results. Please choose an author or concept or try a different keyword-search.