Five Factor Models of Personality Flashcards
what are the traits that make up personality according to the Five Factor Model (FFM) and big 5?
- Neuroticism
- Extraversion
- Openness
- Conscientiousness
- Agreeableness
what method does both FFM and Big 5 use?
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) = Statistical approach to go from lots of individual item responses to shared dimensions based on shared variance
- Both FFM and Big Five scalesconverge on a five-factor structure
- Findings from these can then be used to create subscales foreach trait
what Domains does the 5 factor model have? (questionnaire items) Costa and McCrae
Neuroticism:
- Anxiety, anger, depression, self-consciousness, impulsivity, vulnerability
Extraversion:
- Warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking, positive emotions
Openness:
- Fantasy, Aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, values
Agreeableness:
- Trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, tender-mindedness
Conscientiousness:
- Competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation
what Domains does the Big 5 have? (questionnaire items), Goldberg
Emotional stability:
- Calm, relaxed, stable, at ease, contented, unemotional, not envious
Extraversion:
- Extraverted, energetic, talkative, bold, active, assertive, adventurous
Intellect:
- Intelligent, analytical, reflective, curious, imaginative, creative,
Agreeableness:
- Warm, kind, cooperative, unselfish, agreeable, trustful, generous
Conscientiousness:
- Organized, responsible, conscientious, practical, thorough, hardworking, thrifty
what is factor loading?
- the extent to which the items fit onto a latent factor
- range from -1 to 1
- all PGSI items load very highly onto a single fatcor
what are the structural differences between FFM and Big 5?
- Trait hierarchy (FFM) or no hierarchy (Big 5)
- Trait: Neuroticism
- Facets: anxiety, anger, depression self-consciousness, impulsivity, vulnerability in FFM but no Big 5
what are the differences in measurement between the FFM and the Big 5?
- FFM measured via
questionnaire items to reflext the causal role in behaviour at the facet levels. 6 facets underlie each of the domains e.g. ‘I am easily frightened’ - Big 5 measured via adjectives e.g. clam, agreeable etc.
what are the differences in empirical basis between the FFM and the Big 5?
Big 5
- takes a lexical approach
- natural language is used to identify personality traits
- bottom up, originates from Galton
FFM
- personality theory
- questionnaires designed to tap into behaviours
- influenced by Eysenck, Cattell, Jung
- But lack of sufficiently comprehensive model (McCrae & John, 1992)
what are the differences in causality between the FFM and the Big 5?
FFM
- traits cause behaviour
Big 5
- no formal causal statement. They just represent natural language
what are the differences in origins between the FFM and the Big 5?
FFM
- biology → genetic, neurology, evolution
- traits are derived from biological (neurological) process, that have a genetic basis and are stable over time and across cultures (human universal)
Big 5
- natural language
- evolved a rich corpus of adjectives we use to describe our own and others behaviour. Analysis of this should provide a description of the main domain personality
claim 1: Five Factors/Domain are present in both adjectives and questionnaire items - is there evidence to support this? i.e. is there cross cultural evidence
- Consistently across studies adjectives load on to 5 domains and the FFM facets onto their target 5 domains
- McCrae and Terracciano found universal features of personality traits from oberver’s perspective from 50 cultures
- found that the facet is a marker of the domain. anxiety is a marker for Neuroticism but not any of the other FFM domains
FFM and Eysenck’s PEN model Costa & McCrae (1995)
- Factor analysis of NEO-PI-R – an index of the FFM - and Eysenck’s P-E-N together
- ## Eysenck’s psychoticism was better explained by C and A
evidence for biological genetics in the FFM model Loehlin et al (1998), Bouchard & McGue (2003), Weinschenk et al (2022)
- Twin Studies used to estimate the degree of genetic and environmental influence on a trait
E = .57 (G) .00 (S) & .44 (N)
A = .51 (G) .00 (S) & .49 (N)
C = .52 (G) .00 (S) & .48 (N)
N = .58 (G) .00 (S) & .42 (N)
O = .56 (G) .00 (S) & .44 (N) - Where G = genetic, S = shared environment and N, non-shared environment
- no shared environment effect on personality tends to be genetics and non shared environment
- Even recent studies using more elaborate designs, have found effect of S small, if not zero
what are genome-wide associations studies (GWAS)?
- GWAS studies Examine the whole genome and look for associations with genes – exploratory analysis
- need very large sample sizes (10-100 of thousands)
- Multiple comparison rate is extremely high (millions and millions of t-tests)
- Corrected p-value needs to be very small (to -log 10)
- Any association found needs to be replicated and examined in targeted studies
evidence for molecular genetics: genome-wide associations studies (GWAS) as evidence of FFM having a genetic basis Terracciano et al (2010)
- concluded a number of genetic mutations associated with variations in personality
- N (SNAP25 – rs362584)
Region linked to ADHD and psychiatric disorder - E (CHD13 & CHD23)
(Calcuim dependent adhesion genes) – 13 – Heart and 23 = neuro-sensory - O (CNTNAP2 – re10251794)
Linked to autism and complex schizophrenia phenotype - A (CLOCK– encode for circadian rhythms)
A is linked to morningness - C (DYRK1A0)
Linked to Alzheimers and Downs Syndrome
evidence for neurological basis of personality
- While there is a genetic component to traits
- Genes -> Brain -> Behaviour
- Structural MRI: Show that traits are associated with brain regions associated with the behaviours linked to that trait
- Functional MRI: Show that brain activity on a tasks varies as a function of a trait
Structural MRI of the FFM, DeYoung et al (2010)
- mapped personality traits to behaviours and tried to match them to a specific brain region
e.g. neuroticism is associated with sensitivity to punishment and sensitivity to rewards and shown to be associated with the amygdala, mPFC and mid-cingulate
does personality show stability over time? Srivastava et al. (2003)
- both men and women show reliable changes in personality traits as they age
does personality show stability over time? (Specht et al, 2011)
- The four people A, B, C & D are assessed on a trait at 3 time points.
- They all increase in score at each time point
- However, at each time point they have the same relative rank, D is always higher
than C, C higher than B and B higher than A → get systematic shifts but tend to stay relative compares to the population so even if have low agreeableness it will increase but still be low compared to others - Rank order: N = .73, E = .74, O = .72, A = .68, C = .64
The WEIRD Problem (Gurven et al., 2013)
- Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) (Henrich et al., 2010).
- All cross-cultural FFM work on WEIRD sample
- If it true Universal we should see the FFM in preliterate, hunter-gather tribes
- also gender biases this is especially evident in neuroimaging studies of personality, where samples are often based on male-only/female-only participants
The Tsimane, Gurven et al (2013)
- examined the FFM in the Tsimane are forager-horticulturalist in lowland Bolivia
- Live in extended family clusters (villages of 30 to 500)
- found no evidence of FFM, reliabilities are low, no stable factor structure and Big 5 Inventory
does the big 5 have temporal stability, Deary (1996)
- investigate if personality remained consistent over time even tho vocab and norms have changes
- Re-analysed data from 1915 pre-Big 5 (no selection bias)
1915 factors and items - Factor 1: Not Modest (AGREEABLENESS)
“desire to impose his will on other people (as opposed to tolerance)” - Factor 2: EXTRAVERSION
“degree of bodily activity in pursuit of pleasures (games, etc.)” - Factor 3: CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
“conscientiousness (keenness of interest in the goodness and wickedness of actions)” - Factor 4: Being(AGREEABLENESS)
“desire to be liked by his associates” – altruism, compliance - Factor 5: OPENNESS
“originality of ideas” - Factor 6: NEUROTICISM
“occasional liability to extreme depression”
critiques of Big 5 and FFM ,Block (1995)
- problems with using factor analysis to determine personality
- Adjectives selected to fit the model
- You get out of a factor analysis what you put in. If you select items or adjectives to reflect five factors, that is what you’ll see
- Ones that don’t fit model removed
- Items not loading onto factor does not equal unimportant.
crtitique of facets and items in FFM/Big 5
- many of the facets and items do not cleanly load onto a single factor
- FFM/Big Five are based on exploratory factor analysis, where the factors are rotated to ensure five factors are separate (orthogonal)
other critiques of FFM/Big 5
- When these are tested with the researcher specifying which items belong onto certain factors in a confirmatory factor analysis, five factor models do not fit as well
McCrae et al (1996) critique fo the FFM
- McCrae et al (1996) argue CFA models too restrictive in specification, and items correlated due to self-report (self report bias not content related)
- Studies using more powerful methods (e.g. Marsh et al, 2010) suggest this is because the factors are correlated
Eysenck (1992) crtique of FFM/Big 5
- some factors (Agreeableness & Consciensciousness in particular) better seen as facets of Neuroticism and Psychoticism .
- Lack of biological mechanism behind Big Five.
Digman (1997) criticism of Big 5
- Big Five factors highly correlated.
- Instead proposes two superfactors (alpha and beta)
- Alpha = A, C, ES (reverse of N) - socialisation
- Beta = E, O – personal expression/restriction
Neural bases critique, Allen et al (2022)
- Current neuroimaging studies are descriptive rather than mechanistic.
- Exploratory in nature – no hypotheses
- Non-specific results and overlapping correlations
- No behavioural manipulations
- Possible solutions: reliance on rich description, strong theories, large samples, and careful behavioural experimentation.
Neural bases critique- Multiple comparisons (Bennett et al. (2009))
multiple comparison
- Subject: One mature Atlantic Salmon participated in the fMRI study. The salmon was not alive at the time of scanning.
- Task: The salmon was shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations with a specified emotional valence. The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing.
- Results: Several active voxels were discovered in a cluster located within the salmon brain cavity obviously due to noise as salmon dead so no brain activity
- have to account for individual differences and confounding facotors (movement, vascular response..)
- multiple comparisons in brain-wide association studies
