Five Factor Models of Personality

Question 1

what are the traits that make up personality according to the Five Factor Model (FFM) and big 5?

Answer 1

1. Neuroticism
2. Extraversion
3. Openness
4. Conscientiousness
5. Agreeableness

Question 2

what method does both FFM and Big 5 use?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

what Domains does the 5 factor model have? (questionnaire items) Costa and McCrae

Answer 3

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

Question 4

what Domains does the Big 5 have? (questionnaire items), Goldberg

Answer 4

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

Question 5

what is factor loading?

Answer 5

• 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

Question 6

what are the structural differences between FFM and Big 5?

Answer 6

• Trait hierarchy (FFM) or no hierarchy (Big 5)
• Trait: Neuroticism
• Facets: anxiety, anger, depression self-consciousness, impulsivity, vulnerability in FFM but no Big 5

Question 7

what are the differences in measurement between the FFM and the Big 5?

Answer 7

• 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.

Question 8

what are the differences in empirical basis between the FFM and the Big 5?

Answer 8

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)

Question 9

what are the differences in causality between the FFM and the Big 5?

Answer 9

FFM
- traits cause behaviour

Big 5
- no formal causal statement. They just represent natural language

Question 10

what are the differences in origins between the FFM and the Big 5?

Answer 10

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

Question 11

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

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

FFM and Eysenck’s PEN model Costa & McCrae (1995)

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

evidence for biological genetics in the FFM model Loehlin et al (1998), Bouchard & McGue (2003), Weinschenk et al (2022)

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

what are genome-wide associations studies (GWAS)?

Answer 14

• 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

Question 15

evidence for molecular genetics: genome-wide associations studies (GWAS) as evidence of FFM having a genetic basis Terracciano et al (2010)

Answer 15

• 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

Question 16

evidence for neurological basis of personality

Answer 16

• 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

Question 17

Structural MRI of the FFM, DeYoung et al (2010)

Answer 17

• 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

Question 18

does personality show stability over time? Srivastava et al. (2003)

Answer 18

• both men and women show reliable changes in personality traits as they age

Question 19

does personality show stability over time? (Specht et al, 2011)

Answer 19

• 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

Question 20

The WEIRD Problem (Gurven et al., 2013)

Answer 20

• 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

Question 21

The Tsimane, Gurven et al (2013)

Answer 21

• 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

Question 22

does the big 5 have temporal stability, Deary (1996)

Answer 22

• 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”

Question 23

critiques of Big 5 and FFM ,Block (1995)

Answer 23

• 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.

Question 24

crtitique of facets and items in FFM/Big 5

Answer 24

• 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)

Question 25

other critiques of FFM/Big 5

Answer 25

• 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

Question 26

McCrae et al (1996) critique fo the FFM

Answer 26

• 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

Question 27

Eysenck (1992) crtique of FFM/Big 5

Answer 27

• some factors (Agreeableness & Consciensciousness in particular) better seen as facets of Neuroticism and Psychoticism .
• Lack of biological mechanism behind Big Five.

Question 28

Digman (1997) criticism of Big 5

Answer 28

• 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

Question 29

Neural bases critique, Allen et al (2022)

Answer 29

• 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.

Question 30

Neural bases critique- Multiple comparisons (Bennett et al. (2009))

Answer 30

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