CLASSIFYING TRAITS (II): THE ‘BIG FIVE’ DEVELOPMENT OF THE ‘BIG 5’ TAXONOMY: LEXICAL APPROACH FACTOR ANALYSIS

1. CLASSIFYING TRAITS (II): THE ‘BIG FIVE’ • DEVELOPMENT OF THE ‘BIG 5’ TAXONOMY: • LEXICAL APPROACH • FACTOR ANALYSIS • BIG 5: FORMAL DEFINITIONS & EXAMPLES OF TRAITS

2. ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BIG FIVE SEARCH FOR THE BASIC UNITS OF PERSONALITY What are the most basic dimensions of personality? Is this basic structure universal? --->Long-lasting debate over the number and nature of the fundamental dimensions of personality possible solution? LEXICAL APPROACH Fundamental Lexical Hypothesis “Those personality traits that are most salient and socially relevant in people’s lives have become encoded into their language; the more important such a trait, the more likely is it to become expressed as a single word” (Goldberg, 1982, p.204) -> DICTIONNARY: ideal point of departure to develop a comprehensive inventory of traits

3. FACTOR ANALYSIS • Statistical tool that looks at the correlations among many variables (e.g., trait descriptors) and groups these variables in clusters (called factors or dimensions). • Each factor (or dimension) includes all the variables that correlate (i.e., covariate) highly with each other (ie., co-exist in people). • Each dimension is interpreted as a psychological disposition or trait.

4. Example: Correlations among 6 traits

5. Factors obtained from these correlations:

7. Big Five: OCEAN

8. How about Vanilla ice-cream! Openness to Experience --------- Conventionality

9. I will do it tomorrow ! Laziness is warm. Laziness is comfort. Laziness is the promise of sleep. The promise of rest. Laziness demands a new day. A new day to do what you didn't do today. Conscientiousness----------- Unreliability

10. Extraversion ---------------- Introversion

11. Agreeableness ---------------- Hostility

12. Neuroticism ----------- Emotional Stability

13. TAXONOMIES Big Five Taxonomy = 5 Groups of traits

14. FORMAL DEFINITIONS OF BIG 5 DIMENSIONS & EXAMPLES OF TRAITS WITHIN EACH DIMENSION

16. BIG 5 DIMENSIONS: • BASIC BROAD CATEGORIES OF CO-OCCURRING TRAITS • HIERARCHICAL ORGANIZATION (EACH DIMENSION INCLUDES MANY SUB-TRAITS WHICH IN TURN CONTAIN NARROWER TRAITS)

17. ENGLISH NATURAL LANGUAGEO C E A N FACTORS FACETS O1 O2 O3 O4 O5 O6 E1 E2 E3 E4 E5 E6 N1 N2 N3 N4 N5 N6 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 TRAITS

18. BIG 5 DIMENSIONS: • BASIC BROAD CATEGORIES OF CO-OCCURRING TRAITS • HIERARCHICAL ORGANIZATION (EACH DIMENSION INCLUDES MANY SUB-TRAITS WHICH IN TURN CONTAIN NARROWER TRAITS)

19. USEFUL METAPHOR BIG 5 DIMENSIONS = The five continents of personality (ie., five basic domains that reliably organize the huge existing universe of personality traits)

20. PHYSICAL CRITERIA : BY CONTINENT

21. POLITICAL CRITERIA: BY NATION

22. ECONOMY CRITERIA: BY GDP

23. VERONICA’S CRITERIA: BY WHERE THE GOOD WINE IS !

24. THE ‘BIG FIVE’ (continuation) • EVALUATION OF THE BIG 5 • Advantages and disadvantages • Alternative # factors? Big Seven • CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF THE BIG 5 • Agreement between self- and observer-reports on the Big 5? (John & Robins, 1993)

25. EVALUATION OF THE BIG FIVE

26. Big 5 = economical and parsimonious sketch of someone’s personality (e.g. Ana is E+ N- C- A+ O+)

27. Ideally = super-detailed, in-depth portrait of personality (expensive!)

28. In reality = many personality theories/instruments have provided detailed but incomplete personality portraits based on theorists’ domain preferences (e.g., psychoanalytic measures provide a lot of info about N and C)

29. again ….. Big 5 = sketchy but parsimonious description of someone’s personality

30. Example of how the Big 5 can help organize and summarize personality findings from other studies:

31. Remember York & John four personality types ?

32. TYPES Integration of typologies and taxonomies

33. EVALUATION OF THE BIG FIVE

36. What happens if you don’t exclude evaluations, states, and social roles?

38. ‘BIG SEVEN’ : Big Five plus two independent evaluative dimensionsPOSITIVE VALENCEOutstanding Ordinary Impressive Average Excellent Not exceptional POWERExceptional Admirable Important ESTEEMNEGATIVE VALENCEWicked Awful Dangerous MORALITY Disgusting Vicious Treacherous (Tellegen & Waller, 1987; Benet-Martinez & Waller, 1995)

40. CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF THE BIG 5 • Construct validity =demonstration that a particular psychological concept (or trait) really exists and definition of what it is and what is not (how similar/different to other constructs is) • Construct-validation techniques: • correlate self-reports with observer-reports • correlate measures of construct of interest with other measures of similar or related constructs (convergent correlations) • correlate measures of construct of interest with other measures of different and unrelated constructs (discriminant correlations)

41. CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF THE BIG 5 Agreement between self- and observer-reports on the Big 5 and Big 7?

43. MAIN CONCLUSION : Agreement between self- and other- views on traits depends on personality domain (which Big 5 trait) As previous slide indicates: Higher for E, O, C Lower for N, PV, NV

44. More specific information about this issue …… • John & Robins’ (1993) study • 4 MORE CONCLUSIONS ABOUT DETERMINANTS OF SELF-PEER AGREEMENT: • SELF-PEER < PEER-PEER • LOW OBSERVABILITY (e.g., introspective) < HIGH OBSERVABILITY (e.g., loud) • HIGH EVALUATIVENESS < LOW EVALUATIVENESS • (e.g., hostile, weird)(e.g., frank, open) • HIGH/LOW DESIRABILITY < MEDIUM DESIRABILITY • (e.g., sexy, evil) (e.g., organized, energetic )