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Higher-order structures of personality
de Vries, R.E.
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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences
2020
DOI (link to publisher)
10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_466-1
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de Vries, R. E. (2020). Higher-order structures of personality. In V. Zeigler-Hill, & K. Shackelford (Eds.),
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-280998_466-1
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H
Higher-Order Structures of
Personality
Reinout E. de Vries
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam & University of
Twente, Amsterdam and Twente, The Netherlands
Synonyms
Big Five (B5); Big Two (B5); Five-Factor Model
(FFM); General Factor of Personality (GFP);
HEXACO model
Definition
A higher-order structure of personality refers to a
description of personality that is based on a clustering of a number of personality traits, usually
using factor analytic techniques.
Introduction
The idea that personality is structured hierarchically has been around since the 1940s. In 1947,
Eysenck proposed that personality can best be
described using four hierarchical levels: specific
responses, habits, lower-order traits, and higherorder traits. Specific responses are single acts in
specific situations. Habits are specific responses
that are similar across situations which are best
represented by items in a personality questionnaire. For instance, the item “I smile a lot” refers
to the habitual behavior of smiling across multiple
situations. Lower-order traits consist of habits
that are closely related. For instance, the items “I
smile a lot” and “I am full of energy” are closely
related and belong to a liveliness lower-order trait.
In questionnaires, these lower-order traits are
referred to as facets. Finally, higher-order traits
(or, in questionnaires, often called trait domains)
consist of a number of lower-order traits that are
related to each other, but not to other higher-order
traits. In Fig. 1, the theoretical and questionnaire
trait hierarchies are depicted.
One of the most important discussions in personality psychology concerns the number of independent higher-order traits (or trait domains) that
provide an optimal description of somebody’s
personality. Most dictionaries contain thousands
of words referring to behaviors that “distinguish
one person from another,” but to use all of these
words to provide a description of a person would
be far too cumbersome. Thus, both for practical
purposes – to provide an easily comprehensible
personality description of a person in an
assessment – and for research purposes, to efficiently measure personality, personality scholars
have been looking for the “holy grail” of optimally describing personality with a minimum
number of trait domains. The three criteria that
have guided personality scholars in this quest
have been the following: parsimony, effectiveness, and replicability. Parsimony refers to the
# Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
V. Zeigler-Hill, T. K. Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_466-1
2
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
Hierarchical Theoretical
Personality Structure
Hierarchical Questionnaire
Personality Structure
Higherorder Trait
Trait
Domain
Lower-order
Trait 1
Lower-order
Trait k
Facet 1
Habit
Habit
…
1.1
1.n
Habit
Habit
…
k.1
k.n
Item
Item
…
1.1
1.n
Specific Specific
responses responses
Specific Specific
responses responses
…
…
Facet k
Item
Item
…
k.1
k.n
Higher-Order Structures of Personality, Fig. 1 Hierarchical theoretical and questionnaire personality structure
use of as few as possible traits to describe
somebody’s personality; effectiveness refers to
the ability to adequately predict people’s behaviors and outcomes of behaviors using these items;
and replicability refers to whether the same personality traits are consistently uncovered in different countries and/or cultures. In the below
(section “The Three Criteria: Parsimony, Effectiveness, Replicability”), these three criteria are
further explained. Subsequently (in section “Personality Paradigms”), a short overview is provided of the paradigms used in the quest to find
the most parsimonious, valid, and replicable set of
personality domains. Next (in section “The Lexical Method”), the dominant method to uncover
the personality domains is described. Then
(in section “Trait Domains and Higher-Order
Trait Domains of Personality”), different higherorder structures are described and compared, and
finally (in section “Critical Evaluation of the Big
Two and GFP Higher-Order Structures”), a critical evaluation of the different higher-order structures is offered, followed by a concluding section
(“Conclusion”). Readers who are less interested in
the background of the discussion on the structure
of personality may consider going straight to
section “Trait Domains and Higher-Order Trait
Domains of Personality,” in which the main
higher-order structures are compared and
discussed.
The Three Criteria: Parsimony,
Effectiveness, Replicability
Parsimony
An important condition of parsimony is that the
traits that scholars use to describe personality are
mathematically independent. That is, scholars have
been looking for the minimum number of independent dimensions that describe a person’s personality.
As in geography, the use of independent dimensions
has the advantage that one can uniquely specify a
point in space using the fewest number of numerical
coordinates (cf., the Cartesian coordinate system).
For instance, the following two personality traits,
extraversion and agreeableness, are usually regarded
as mathematically independent (although some
researchers disagree, see below). That is, we should
be unable to say anything about a person’s agreeableness based on ones’ knowledge of his/her level
of extraversion. A person can be high on
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
extraversion and either high or low (or average) on
agreeableness or she/he can be low on extraversion
and either high, low, or average on agreeableness;
i.e., according to this view, extraversion and agreeableness are mathematically and statistically
unrelated trait domains.
The most parsimonious position would be to
describe personality using only one single trait
domain. Such a view has actually been proposed
by scholars who defend what has become known
as the General Factor of Personality (GFP; Irwing
2013; Musek 2007). A somewhat less parsimonious position would be to advocate two main independent trait domains. This position has been
advocated by scholars who defend the Big Two
(B2; DeYoung 2006; Digman 1997) of personality. Even less parsimonious are scholars who
advocate more trait domains. The two most commonly studied models that assume more than
two – independent – trait domains are the Big
Five (B5) model of personality (Goldberg 1990),
which suggests five independent trait domains,
and the HEXACO model of personality (Ashton
et al. 2014; Lee and Ashton, 2004, 2013), which
suggests six independent trait domains. It might
be possible to specify even a greater number of
personality dimensions, but, as is argued in the
replicability paragraph below, it has been impossible to cross-culturally replicate personality
models containing more than six independent
trait domains. A full description and explanation
of these four main models of personality is provided in section “Trait Domains and Higher-Order
Trait Domains of Personality.”
Effectiveness
To be effective in predicting behaviors or outcomes of behaviors, a personality model needs
to be valid. Psychologists have distinguished
between a great number of validity indices, two
of which are especially pertinent to the argument
put forward here: predictive validity and incremental validity. Predictive validity of personality
entails that personality traits need to be able to
better than chance predict behaviors or outcomes
of behaviors. Incremental validity of a personality
trait entails that a n-dimensional personality structure should offer significant higher predictive
3
validity than a n-1 dimensional personality structure. Above, we have made a distinction between
four models: the GFP, the B2, the B5, and the
HEXACO model of personality, which, respectively, advocate one (the GFP), two (the B2), five
(the B5), or six (HEXACO) higher-order trait
domains. If we compare the GFP with the B2,
according to the effectiveness perspective, the
B2 should be able to increment the predictive
validity in certain behaviors or outcome of behaviors when compared to the GFP. Similarly, the B5
should offer incremental predictive validity when
compared to the B2, and the HEXACO trait
domains should offer incremental predictive
validity when compared to the B5.
An example may make this clear. When using
the above two trait domains, extraversion and
agreeableness, one might want to predict how
“authoritarian” somebody will behave. According
to the GFP perspective, one dimension of personality is sufficient, and thus we should be able to
predict authoritarian behaviors from this one
dimension. In the GFP model, somebody with a
high score on the GFP is both highly extravert and
highly agreeable. However, according to scholars
who advocate that extraversion and agreeableness
are independent dimensions (which is actually the
case of B2, B5, and HEXACO scholars), authoritarianism is characterized by high levels of extraversion and low levels of agreeableness. If
extraversion and agreeableness are truly independent, spatially (using Cartesian coordinates), the
GFP dimension should be almost unrelated to
authoritarianism, and thus a two-dimensional representation of personality should be able to provide a better prediction of authoritarian behaviors
than the GFP model (see Fig. 2). That is, the GFP
should be unable to predict authoritarianism
(being unrelated to it), whereas both extraversion
and agreeableness should be able to predict
authoritarianism,
respectively,
positively
(extraversion) and negatively (agreeableness).
Consequently, extraversion and agreeableness
are believed to increment the predictive validity
in authoritarianism over and above the predictive
validity (if any) of the GFP, and thus the Big Two
model should be a more effective model than the
GFP model.
4
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
High
Extraversion
GFP
Authoritarianism
Low
Agreeableness
High
Agreeableness
Low
Extraversion
Higher-Order
Structures
of
Personality,
Fig. 2 Authoritarianism is unrelated to the General Factor
of Personality (GFP) but is positively related to extraversion and negatively related to agreeableness
Replicability
Replicability is a third important criterion in the
quest for the optimal description of personality,
and it entails the specification of the number of
trait domains that are cross-culturally similar. If it
would be true that trait domains are completely
culture-specific, it would be impossible to generalize personality from one culture or country to
another, and it would be impossible to obtain a
parsimonious and valid account of personality
cross-culturally. However, research has shown
that personality is actually for a large degree
culture-general or culture free. That is, crosscultural research on the trait domains uncovered
in different countries have shown that up to six
independent trait domains are consistently replicated in different countries (Ashton et al. 2004; De
Raad et al. 2014; Saucier 2009). That is, according
to these studies, there seems to be a maximum of
six cross-culturally replicable dimensions of personality in those languages in which a similar
research method has been employed. Note that
such a replicability of (a maximum of) six dimensions of personality does not directly attest to the
position that these six (i.e., HEXACO) dimensions offer the most parsimonious and valid
description of personality, but currently it seems
that beyond six dimensions of personality there
are no other significant enough trait domains that
can be used to describe personality accurately for
people across different countries.
The fact that trait domains are replicable across
countries has important implications for theory
and practice. It means that we can measure personality in different countries using similar questionnaires, which makes it easier to generalize
findings from one country to another. For
instance, if we want to know whether certain
personality traits, such as extraversion and agreeableness, are related to career success in different
countries, one can use the same questionnaires to
address this question in different countries. Finding different effects of these personality traits
might tell us something about the conditions
under which these personality traits have an
effect. More importantly for the argument put
forward here, it is much easier to generalize findings on the structure and content of personality
traits if trait domains are cross-culturally
congruent.
Personality Paradigms
But how does one arrive at a structure of personality? The answer to this question has vexed personality psychologists for more than a century, but
in the last 30 years, a clear dominant paradigm has
emerged, the so-called lexical paradigm (John
et al. 1988). The lexical paradigm of personality
maintains that people use words to describe personality traits that are important and that these
words will be noted down in a sufficiently
encompassing dictionary. If there are more
words for a trait and if there are more languages
that have words for a trait, the trait in question is
more likely to have significant evolutionary and
cross-cultural roots. The lexical approach provides a neutral way of sampling the personality
domain because – instead of relying on a subjective selection of personality concepts used by
psychologists to extract the main trait domains –
it relies on an objective selection of words from
the entire language community. The method to
uncover the main personality traits – which will
be more extensively described below – is to
extract all words that are relevant to personality
in different languages, to conduct factor analysis
on these words in the different languages, and to
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
compare the resulting trait domains across languages. By using factor analysis to uncover the
main independent dimensions of personality and
by checking whether these dimensions are replicable across languages and cultures/countries, the
lexical paradigm fulfills two of the
abovementioned criteria, i.e., parsimony and replicability. However, the lexical paradigm does not
address the effectiveness question of whether the
resulting trait domains offer sufficient (predictive
and incremental) validity.
A personality paradigm that does seem to
address the effectiveness question is the
so-called empirical paradigm (Wiggins 2003).
Among psychiatrists and clinical psychologists,
the empirical paradigm still plays an important
role, and one of the most widely used clinical
personality instruments, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), is based
on this approach. The empirical paradigm is
based on the method of contrasted groups in
which the answers to a set of personality items in
a group of clinical patients are compared with the
answers to the same items by a comparable
(in terms of age, gender, education, etc.. . . background variables) control group of non-patients.
Items that distinguish clinical patients from nonclinical controls in predicting a certain clinical
disorder, as diagnosed by a clinical psychologists
or psychiatrists, are retained to form a scale
together. The strength of the empirical approach
is its focus on the effectiveness of personality
items, although the reliance on (unreliable) clinical diagnoses has been noted as a weakness. However, the empirical approach has not been
concerned with finding the most parsimonious
and replicable description of personality, and it
can even be criticized on the grounds that it has
addressed the effectiveness (i.e., incremental predictive validity) of personality items, but not of
personality scales. Furthermore, it has often been
criticized for its reliance on instruments that use a
lot of overlapping (i.e., highly correlating and thus
non-parsimonious) personality scales.
Four other paradigms are also worth mentioning, i.e., the psychodynamic paradigm, the
personological paradigm, the interpersonal paradigm, and the biological paradigm (Wiggins
5
2003). The psychodynamic paradigm has
concerned itself with uncovering the unconscious
driving forces of behaviors that are rooted in
childhood and that are expressed in adult character traits. A method to uncover these driving
forces is the projective technique (e.g., the Rorschach inkblot test). Although there are still people active in this area of research, the
psychodynamic approach has so far failed to provide a parsimonious, effective, and replicable
account of personality. The personological paradigm has concerned itself with understanding personality functioning based on important
psychobiographical themes (e.g., recurrent episodes, turning points) in a person’s life history.
Some of the main concepts that have emerged
from this approach have to do with needs and
motives (e.g., affiliation (or intimacy), achievement, and power motives). Needs and motives
are often analyzed based on spoken or written
texts, and thus the paradigm relies extensively
on coding and inter-rater agreement. Often, the
personological paradigm has concerned itself
more with retrospectively understanding behavior
than the actual prediction of future behaviors,
although routinely speeches of nonincumbent
American presidents are analyzed to predict how
well they will perform. Although there is evidence
of the effectiveness (e.g., validity) of the personality constructs used in this approach, the
personological paradigm has not addressed the
question of parsimony and (cross-cultural) replicability of its constructs.
The interpersonal paradigm has concerned
itself with finding the most important dimensions
of interpersonal behaviors. The instrument most
closely associated with the interpersonal paradigm is the interpersonal circumplex (Wiggins
1996). The interpersonal circumplex is a circle
spanned by 2 main axes, control (or dominance)
and affiliation (or love), which divide the circle in
4 quadrants, 8 octants, or 16 segments. In Fig. 3,
the most well-known interpersonal circumplex is
shown using eight octants. Each of these octants is
a combination of the two interpersonal axes, and
each pertains to behavior that is fundamentally
interpersonal. Fundamentally interpersonal
means that each of the behaviors is (a) exhibited
6
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
AssuredDominant
GregariousExtraverted
ArrogantCalculating
ColdHearted
WarmAgreeable
AloofIntroverted
UnassumingIngenuous
UnassuredSubmissive
Higher-Order Structures of Personality, Fig. 3 The
interpersonal circumplex
in an interpersonal context and (b) indicative of
the relationship and/or interaction between the
interpersonal actors. A large body of research,
among other using dictionary words that refer to
interpersonal behaviors, has been conducted on
the interpersonal circumplex, and the interpersonal paradigm is generally seen as a highly
valid approach. Furthermore, the interpersonal
circumplex has been replicated in many different
countries. Although the interpersonal paradigm
thus seems to offer a parsimonious, valid, and
replicable description of personality, it does so
only for the interpersonal part of personality.
Nowadays, the interpersonal paradigm has been
integrated within the lexical approach of personality, with the two interpersonal axes regarded as a
plane within the multidimensional personality
space.
Last of all, the biological paradigm has
concerned itself with finding trait domains that
closely match evolutionary, temperamental, neuropsychological, and biopsychological functions.
The basis for this approach is both theoretical and
empirical. Theoretically, the biological paradigm
derives its trait domains from the functions that
personality fulfills in reaction to external stimuli,
which may have an evolutionary and biological
basis and which may express themselves in neurological and hormonal responses. Empirically,
the biological paradigm tries to link the uncovered
trait domains to neurological signals and hormonal responses, using, for instance, functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and hormone
assays. Zuckerman’s (2007) work on sensation
seeking and Eysenck’s (1983) three-dimensional
personality model, which includes the extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism trait domains,
are based on biopsychological models of personality. Although there is evidence that the biological approach is effective, it has not been able to
determine whether it offers the most parsimonious
and cross-culturally replicable description of personality. Nowadays, the personality traits that
have come out of the biological paradigm have
been incorporated within the personality space
spanned by the lexical trait domains.
The Lexical Method
As stated above, the lexical method has been – for
good reasons – the dominant approach to uncover
the main trait domains, and thus no discussion on
the structure and content of personality is complete without a description of this method.
Already in 1884, Francis Galton tried to obtain
an “idea of the number of the more conspicuous
aspects of character by counting in an appropriate
dictionary the words used to express them.” Many
since have followed Galton’s lead to uncover the
main trait domains by extracting words pertaining
to personality traits from a sufficiently
encompassing dictionary. Although nouns and
verbs may also convey information about personality traits, most scholars have restricted themselves to using adjectives. Adjectives seem to be
the most adequate carrier of personality information because they convey most adequately information about stable traits. Take the words dictator
(a noun), to dictate (a verb), and dictatorial
(an adjective). Whereas the noun dictator conveys
information about somebody’s (stereotypical) role
and the verb to dictate conveys information about
how somebody acts at a specific moment, the
adjective dictatorial is usually used to convey
information about how somebody behaves him-/
herself in general (e.g., “s/he is a dictatorial person” or “s/he tends to behave in a dictatorial
manner”), which is the most important condition
to be called a trait term. Thus, for most
researchers, adjectives have been the word-class
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
of choice to measure individual differences in
personality.
In the English language in 1936, Gordon
Allport and Henry Odbert extracted 17,953 adjectives (approximately 4.5% of the more than
400,000 terms in Webster’s 1925 New International Dictionary) indicative of individual differences. However, apart from relatively neutral
personality adjectives (e.g., friendly), some of
these adjectives were associated with temporary
moods (e.g., delighted); some were strongly evaluative (e.g., abnormal), whereas others were infrequently used (e.g., bovine) or referred to abilities
or physical individual differences. In 1967, Norman constructed a new list of 18,125 English
adjectives, of which 3,584 were deemed stable
trait terms (Norman 1967). Based on the frequency of use and to make a trait list manageable
to fill out for participants, most studies have since
employed between 300 and 600 adjectives to
uncover the main dimensions of personality.
Of course, 300 to 600 adjectives still seems an
unmanageable number. No sane psychological
assessor would like to provide feedback to a client
on more than 300 different traits. So how does one
go about to reduce this number of trait terms to a
manageable proportion? Personality scholars
have relied on two techniques to uncover the
main dimensions of personality, correlational analyses and factor analyses. Researchers use correlational analyses to obtain the strength of the
relations between pairs of trait terms, which can
vary between “ 1” (two trait terms are each
other’s exact antonyms) and “+1” (two trait
terms are each other’s exact synonyms), with “0”
denoting that trait terms are completely unrelated.
Subsequently, factor analysis is used to uncover
the main dimensions of personality by replacing
strongly (positively and negatively) related adjectives by a common factor.
An example will help to explain the usefulness
of these two techniques. Imagine we asked a number of people to rate themselves on 12 adjectives,
which are listed in the first column of Table 1.
(Note: The findings reported in Tables 1 and 2 are
based on a real Dutch lexical study. Preceding the
analyses reported in Tables 1 and 2, the scores
were within-person standardized (also called
7
“ipsatized”) to remove individual response
biases.) Some of these adjectives are more like
antonyms (e.g., introvert and exuberant), and
some are more like synonyms (e.g., shorttempered and fierce). People who rate themselves
as higher on introversion are thus more likely to
rate themselves lower on exuberance, whereas
people who rate themselves as higher on shorttemperedness are also more likely to rate themselves as fierce. This correlation of terms is
expressed in the correlation matrix shown in
Table 1, in which antonyms are negatively related
(e.g., the correlation between introvert and exuberant = 0.37) and synonyms are positively
related (e.g., the correlation between shorttempered and fierce is +0.39). Some of the adjectives are unrelated, such as the correlation
between introvert and sincere, which is precisely
zero. That is, it is impossible to say something
about the level of sincerity from somebody’s level
of introversion, whereas we are able to say something about somebody’s exuberance from a person’s level of introversion (e.g., somebody who is
highly introvert is unlikely to be exuberant).
The use of 12 traits to describe somebody’s
personality is still a lot, and preferably we would
like to narrow the number of traits down to a
manageable number. As shown in Table 1, a few
correlations are higher – row- or column-wise –
than the rest of the correlations in the row or
column. These correlations are on the diagonal
in bold and italic print. These higher correlations
denote that the words are either synonyms or
antonyms. Now we might replace these two
adjectives – synonyms or antonyms – with one
factor (also called dimension) through factor
analysis. Basically, a factor analysis assigns
items with high correlations to the same factor,
whereas it assigns items with low (close to zero)
correlations to different factors. That is, adjectives
that are highly correlated will have a high loading
on one and the same factor, whereas adjectives
that are unrelated will have loadings on different
factors. When factor analyzing the correlation
matrix in Table 1, six factors are derived which
are shown in Table 2. Note that all the adjectives
that were highly correlated (the bold and italic
numbers in Table 1) are now part of the same
0.37
0.15
0.20
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.05
0.12
0.04
0.05
0.00
1
1
–
–
0.03
0.18
0.04
0.06
0.04
0.07
0.12
0.02
0.08
0.05
2
2
–
0.39
0.23
0.12
0.06
0.04
0.07
0.06
0.01
0.07
3
3
0.06
0.04
0.04
0.04
0.01
0.17
0.06
0.05
4
–
4
0.33
0.16
0.05
0.01
0.03
0.09
0.18
5
–
5
Note: The data is based on a Dutch lexical study (N = 600) which contained 551 adjectives
1. Introvert
2. Exuberant
3. Short-tempered
4. Fierce
5. Stable
6. Oversensitive
7. Careful
8. Meticulous
9. Deep
10. Uncritical
11. Snobbish
12. Sincere
0.07
0.05
0.05
0.04
0.08
0.06
6
–
6
–
0.59
0.02
0.12
0.07
0.13
7
7
Higher-Order Structures of Personality, Table 1 Correlations between 12 selected personality adjectives
0.06
0.11
0.05
0.06
8
–
8
0.25
0.00
0.07
9
–
9
0.01
0.03
10
–
10
0.29
11
–
11
–
12
12
8
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
9
Higher-Order Structures of Personality, Table 2 Factor analysis (PCA) on the correlations of the 12 personality
adjectives
I
1. Introvert
2. Exuberant
3. Short-tempered
4. Fierce
5. Stable
6. Oversensitive
7. Careful
8. Meticulous
9. Deep
10. Uncritical
11. Snobbish
12. Sincere
II
0.78
0.85
0.03
0.21
0.02
0.04
0.02
0.02
0.16
0.09
0.00
0.02
0.18
0.01
0.83
0.79
0.20
0.06
0.05
0.01
0.13
0.19
0.06
0.02
factor in Table 2. For instance, introvert and exuberant, which were negatively related, are now
both part of Factor I, on which introvert has a
negative loading and exuberant has a positive
loading. By replacing the two adjectives by one
factor, we have obtained a more parsimonious
account of personality. In this case, the factors
represent the HEXACO factors of personality in
a somewhat different order, that is: I = extraversion, II = (low) agreeableness, III = emotionality,
IV = conscientiousness, V = openness to experience, and VI = honesty-humility.
The previous analyses cannot adequately
answer the question as to what number of dimensions optimally describes personality. The best
criterion to determine this number is to compare
the structure of personality in one language with
the structure of personality in another language
with both languages using the same lexical
method. There are some difficulties establishing
the replicability of the lexical structure of personality cross-culturally because it is often difficult to
accurately translate adjectives from one language
into another. Often there is some shift in meaning.
As a consequence, cross-cultural studies that use
the common set of words in their lexical study end
up with fewer adjectives, which favor models that
contain fewer trait domains. However, as noted in
the replicability section above, cross-cultural
studies have established that a maximum of six
trait domains are cross-culturally replicable
(Ashton et al. 2004; De Raad et al. 2014; Saucier
2009). The question then becomes whether these
III
0.09
0.10
0.21
0.10
0.74
0.84
0.09
0.00
0.07
0.07
0.11
0.18
IV
0.10
0.10
0.01
0.06
0.06
0.03
0.87
0.89
0.12
0.18
0.05
0.05
V
0.04
0.03
0.08
0.14
0.04
0.04
0.05
0.01
0.80
0.76
0.04
0.04
VI
0.11
0.13
0.05
0.10
0.22
0.12
0.10
0.01
0.09
0.10
0.80
0.76
six trait domains constitute the optimal model of
personality or whether more parsimonious and
equally effective models of personality exist. In
the next section, four models will be discussed:
the General Factor of Personality (GFP) model,
the Big Two (B2) model, the Big Five (B5) model,
and the HEXACO six-dimensional model of
personality.
Trait Domains and Higher-Order Trait
Domains of Personality
Having jumped to the conclusion that there is a
maximum number of six cross-culturally replicable trait domains in the previous section, readers
may wonder how scholars have arrived at one,
two, or five dimensions of personality. First of
all, it is important to realize that the finding that
there is a maximum set of six replicable trait
domains might not mean that this set of six is the
most parsimonious and valid personality account.
Second, six has not always been the most preferred number by personality psychologists.
Even stronger, at the time of this writing, when
asked, most psychologists would be more likely to
adhere to the Big Five for the most optimal
description of the structure of personality.
A brief history of the findings in lexical research
will explain why this is the case.
10
The Big Five and HEXACO Models in Lexical
Research
Although lexical studies have been conducted in
different countries, the United States have been
most dominant in pursuing the quest to uncover
the structure and content of personality. Already
in 1949, Donald Fiske noted five recurrent factors
of personality in three sources of data. Similarly,
in 1961, based on a combination of new and old
studies, Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal
noted that in all except one datasets five highly
similar factors emerged (Tupes and Christal
1961). However, because of computational limitations, these older studies were not able to base
their findings on all of the adjectives. In the beginning of the 1990s, two streams of research came
together that firmly established the Big Five as the
most dominant paradigm. Lewis Goldberg, who
was influenced by earlier lexical studies, was able
to use the increased computation power – which
finally permitted factor analyses on large
datasets – to his advantage. He can be credited
with establishing the so-called Big Five personality traits through a highly influential article in
1990. At approximately the same time, Paul
Costa and Robert McCrae published their highly
influential NEO Personality Inventory-Revised
(the NEO-PI-R; Costa et al. 1991), which was
derived from their Five-Factor Model (FFM) and
which was indirectly based on work by – and data
of – lexical researchers. Although there are some
differences between the two models, the five
broad factors in the B5 and the FFM are relatively
similar, and the following names are usually
assigned to these five main personality factors:
extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability
(versus neuroticism), conscientiousness, and
openness to experience (or intellect).
Although some lexical studies in other countries, notably the Netherlands, had been
conducted before the publication by Lewis Goldberg, the 1990s saw a number of publications
containing lexical studies in different countries.
In some of these studies, researchers noted that
there was a sixth personality factor that was not
well-covered by the Big Five. Around the turn of
the century, Mike Ashton and Kibeom Lee started
to collect these different lexical studies and
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
conducted a lexical study themselves in Korea.
After analyzing eight lexical datasets from seven
different countries, they discovered that all of
these studies contained an additional factor,
which they named honesty-humility (Ashton
et al. 2004). Furthermore, a reanalysis of the
American lexical dataset also confirmed the existence of the honesty-humility factor. They called
their model the HEXACO (from the ancient
Greek number ἕx (hex) = six) model of personality, which is an acronym of the following six factors: honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to
experience. Apart from the addition of the
honesty-humility factor, two factors in the
HEXACO model are rotated versions of the
respective Big Five factors, namely, emotionality
and agreeableness (Ashton et al. 2014). In the
HEXACO model, emotionality does not contain
the irritability component associated with low
emotional stability in the B5 model. This content
is shifted to low HEXACO agreeableness instead.
Emotionality does, instead, contain the sentimentality component usually associated with B5
agreeableness. Several other lexical studies in different countries have followed, offering further
cross-cultural confirmation for the existence of
the HEXACO trait domains (Ashton et al. 2014;
De Raad et al. 2014).
The Big Two and General Factor of Personality
Proponents of the Big Five and HEXACO models
argue that these five or six trait domains are at the
apex of personality, that is, that these trait domains
cannot be further reduced to a lower number of
trait domains – i.e., that there are no higher-order
factors of personality. A number of scholars have
challenged this assumption. In an analysis of
15 studies that employed the Big Five, John
Digman (1997) showed that the correlations in
these studies between the Big Five trait domain
scales could be explained by two higher-order
factors, which he labeled a and b. Subsequently,
research using multi-informant ratings of the Big
Five in 2006 by Colin DeYoung replicated these
Big Two higher-order factors and showed that
they were uncorrelated. DeYoung called the Big
Two trait domains, respectively, stability (a) and
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
11
plasticity (b). Stability refers to personality traits
that are hypothesized to underlie the regulation of
disruptive emotions and behaviors and consists of
three of the Big Five trait domains: emotional
stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
Plasticity refers to personality traits that are
hypothesized to underlie exploration and proactive behaviors and consists of the Big Five trait
domains extraversion and openness to experience
(Fig. 4).
DeYoung, who has been the most vocal proponent of the Big Two, has linked these two higherorder traits to evolutionary important biological
and neurological processes, which allow individuals to adapt their responses to achieve survival
and reproductive goals. According to him, the
serotonergic brain system is linked to the stability
trait domain because serotonin has been hypothesized to underlie the inhibition of disruptive emotions such as aggression (low agreeableness), fear
(low emotional stability), and impulsiveness
(low conscientiousness). The dopaminergic brain
system is linked to the plasticity trait domain
because dopamine has been hypothesized to
underlie the activation of behaviors such as proactive social behaviors (extraversion) and exploring new ideas (openness to experience).
These Big Two are – in turn – challenged by
scholars who go even a step further. GFP proponents maintain that all Big Five factors are
correlated and that a single higher-order factor
explains these correlations (Fig. 4; Irwing 2013;
Musek 2007; Van der Linden et al. 2010). High
scores on the GFP are associated with high scores
on all of the Big Five, i.e., emotional stability,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion,
and openness to experience. Theoretically, the
GFP has been linked to the life history (LH;
Rushton 1985) perspective, which maintains that
one evolutionary important continuum – the r/K
continuum – underlies most behavior. A fast
(r-selected) LH strategy is associated with earlier
and faster sexual development, greater impulsivity, and more risk-taking. A slow (K-selected) LH
strategy, in contrast, is associated with later and
slower sexual development, higher levels of prudence, and less risk-taking. Higher scores on the
GFP have been associated with a slower LH
Higher-Order Structures
of Personality,
Fig. 4 Higher-order
General Factor of
Personality (GFP, top) and
Big Two (bottom) structures
Higher-Order GFP Structure
GFP
Emotional
Stability
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Openness to
Experience
Facets
Facets
Facets
Facets
Facets
Higher-Order Big Two Structure
Plasticity (b)
Stability (a)
Emotional
Stability
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Openness to
Experience
Facets
Facets
Facets
Facets
Facets
12
strategy, and thus a slower LH strategy is thought
to be associated with higher levels of emotional
stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and
openness to experience.
Note that the above two models, the Big Two
and the GFP, do not argue that the Big Five and the
HEXACO are wrong, they just argue that these
five or six factor of personality are not at the apex
of personality and that most behaviors can be
parsimoniously explained by referring to these
two (Big Two) or one (GFP) factor. GFP proponents, for instance, maintain that this one personality factor is the most important predictor of
parental support, social effectiveness, and job performance and that no other trait domains can
explain much variance beyond this one factor
(cf. the effectiveness and parsimony criteria
noted in the introduction). In contrast, Big Five
and HEXACO proponents argue that the Big Two
and GFP models are in fact wrong and that the
findings are a result of the data used and the
(statistical) methods employed. This criticism of
Big Five and HEXACO proponents is discussed
below.
Critical Evaluation of the Big Two and
GFP Higher-Order Structures
The Big Two and GFP higher-order personality
structures have been criticized on a number of
grounds by Big Five and HEXACO scholars.
The main criticisms are (shortly) listed below.
Reproducibility and Social Desirability
It has been impossible to reproduce the Big Two
and GFP higher-order structures in HEXACO data
(De Vries 2011) and in Big Five data in which the
items were formulated more neutral with respect to
social desirability (Bäckström et al. 2012). Consequently, especially the GFP higher-order structure,
but also the Big Two, may be explained at least
partly by a method factor associated with socially
desirable
responding.
Socially
desirable
responding is a response tendency of respondents
to primarily react to the social desirability of items.
That is, across trait domains, respondents differ in
the extent to which they react to socially desirable
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
and undesirable items. Items that are written as
socially desirable statements are more likely to
receive positive ratings, whereas items that are
written as socially undesirable statements are
more likely to receive negative ratings by some
raters and not by others. The result is a large factor
associated with the social desirability of items
across trait domains which results in trait domains
that are correlated to each other. The correlations
between the trait domains are thus not a result of
real correlations between trait domains but are a
result of correlations between the socially desirable
responding components in the ratings of each of
the trait domains. Questionnaires that make items
more evaluatively neutral have trait domains that
are less strongly – or not at all – correlated, and
such questionnaires are, consequently, exempt
from such a general factor that provides the appearance of a higher-order personality structure.
The above has noteworthy consequences for
personality measurement. First of all, questionnaires should be designed to be as descriptively neutral as possible. Psychopathology
questionnaires, such as the Personality Inventory of the DSM-5, have been noted to yield a
very strong method factor because items are
generally formulated very negatively. Such
questionnaires are known to result in a very
strong general factor, which is almost entirely
due to response biases, such as socially desirable responding. A recommendation would
be – even for psychopathology – to use more
neutral and descriptive items instead to prevent
such response biases. Second, multi-informant
personality ratings (i.e., more than one person
provides his/her rating on the same person)
mitigate the effects of response bias method
factors and are thus superior to singleinformant ratings. In multi-informant Big
Five and HEXACO ratings, no evidence of
higher-order factors beyond these five or six
factors has been found (Ashton et al. 2017;
Chang et al. 2012).
Blended Variables and Circumplexity of
Personality
An observant reader may counter that DeYoung
did find two higher-order factors of personality in
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
his multi-informant data (see section “Trait
Domains and Higher-Order Trait Domains of Personality”). How is this possible? An explanation
of such findings is provided by Mike Ashton and
colleagues (Ashton et al. 2009). They argue that it
all depends on which facets of personality are
included in the questionnaire. Some traits can be
thought of blends of two trait domains. Blended
facets are facets that are determined by more than
one trait domain. For instance, in section “The
Three Criteria: Parsimony, Effectiveness, Replicability,” it was noted that authoritarian behaviors
can be predicted by two trait domains: extraversion and agreeableness. We could thus construct
an authoritarianism personality facet that is a
blend of (high) extraversion and (low) agreeableness. If many facets are included that are similarsigned blends of two factors, factor analysis may
conclude that there exists a higher-order factor of
personality, whereas in fact it is a result of the
overrepresentation of similar-signed blended
facets over opposite-signed blended facets. If –
using the previous example – we would include in
a questionnaire many similar-signed blended
facets that are combinations of high extraversion
and low agreeableness (e.g., authoritarianism,
dominance, aggressiveness) or low extraversion
and high agreeableness (lenience, submissiveness, soft-heartedness) and if we left out
opposite-signed blended facets that are combinations of high extraversion and high agreeableness
or low extraversion and low agreeableness, we
would get a general factor that runs from high
extraversion/low agreeableness to low extraversion/high agreeableness. The argument by Mike
Ashton and colleagues is thus that the overrepresentation of some blends in a questionnaire
(especially blends that are highly desirable or
highly undesirable) may give the appearance of a
general factor, which in fact would not be there if
similar-signed blends would be compensated by
an equal number of opposite-signed blends. The
inclusion of a few such blends has been found to
effectively eliminate the correlations of the trait
domains in the Big Five or the HEXACO, obviating the need to include GFP or Big Two higherorder factors.
13
The most important assumption from the
above argument is that personality is
circumplexical, i.e., that it is possible to create
circumplexes (see section “Personality Paradigms”) from combinations of (two) personality
factors. In the Big Five, this implies that we
should be able to create 10 circumplexes; in the
HEXACO
model,
this
would
imply
15 circumplexes (e.g., H with E, H with X,
H with A, . . ., C with O). As an example of such
a circumplex structure, Wim Hofstee and colleagues created the Abridged Big Five
Circumplex (AB5C; Hofstee et al. 1992), in
which – based on the two highest factor loadings –
adjectives were assigned to one or a combination
of two factors. That is, if an adjective had only one
high factor loading and no secondary factor loading, the adjective was a pure trait adjective. If an
adjective had high loadings on two factors, the
adjective was deemed to be a blended (also called
“interstitial”) trait adjective.
Critics of the circumplex approach may note
that some spaces in some of the personality
circumplexes are empty and thus that either such
blends of behaviors do not exist or they are relatively seldom. In turn, it can be argued that even if
(blended) behaviors are relatively rare, it does not
mean these behaviors are impossible. From a
higher-order structure perspective, such possible
but underrepresented blended behaviors are
negated. This may seem parsimonious, but it
may not always be effective.
Factor Structure and Statistical Criteria
Another important criticism of the higher-order
structure approach is that factor analysis will
always provide evidence for higher-order factors
even if two trait domains are entirely uncorrelated.
Mathematically, it is easy to prove that two
uncorrelated but reliable scales load highly (e.g.,
0.71) on a factor that bisects the two scales (see
Fig. 1). Consequently, high loadings do not provide sufficient evidence that a general factor
exists. Statistically, a more important criterion is
whether the higher-order factors explain a sufficient amount of variance in the personality data. In
their general critique of the General Factor of
Personality, William Revelle and Joshua Wilt
14
(2013) showed that this is not the case. A GFP in
all of the (mostly Big Five) datasets examined
explained on average only 37% of the variance,
which is meagre when compared with a mean of
74% explained by general factors in cognitive
ability tests and which is arguably not too much
higher than the theoretical 20% of the variance
that should be explained by one of the Big Five
factors. That is, because of the overrepresentation
of some trait adjectives or facets, a first factor
from factor analyses is always going to explain
more variance than subsequent factors.
Theoretical, Empirical, and Practical
Considerations
Theoretically, empirically, and practically, both
the GFP and the Big Two model suffer from a
number of problems (De Vries et al. 2016). Theoretically, the association of the GFP with the Life
History account has been tenuous at best. Recall
that high levels of the GFP were associated with a
slow (K-selected) LH strategy and that low levels
of the GFP were associated with a fast (r-selected)
LH strategy. Recall also that high levels of extraversion and openness to experience were associated with high levels of the GFP. Theoretically,
this does not make much sense, because risktaking, which is characterized by high levels of
extraversion and openness to experience, is indicative of a fast instead of a slow LH strategy.
Consequently, the GFP perspective does not
align well with the LH theory.
The empirical findings with respect to the link
between the Big Two – stability and plasticity –
and two neurobiological markers, serotonin and
dopamine, have also been tenuous. For instance,
findings have supported the link between the serotonergic 5-HTTLPR polymorphism with extraversion and not between the dopaminergic
DRD4 polymorphism and extraversion. Although
the dopaminergic DRD4 polymorphism has been
linked to openness to experience, it has also been
linked to conscientiousness, again in violation of
the theoretically proposed links. In general, the
link between neurobiology and personality is
incredibly complex, involving more than 100 neurotransmitters and hormones, which each react to
many different stimuli and each of which interact
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
in complex ways, making it hard – if not
impossible – to easily generalize findings. More
research is clearly needed.
Practically, there are also some problems with
both higher-order models. There are currently no
questionnaires that measure the three concepts,
GFP, stability, and plasticity. Each one of these
three concepts relies on the measurement of the
(Big Five) trait domains. Especially with the GFP,
it is questionable whether a short instrument can
be constructed that is descriptively accurate and
that is a reliable (and valid) measure of the GFP.
A construct that has been proposed to measure
plasticity is proactivity. However, proactivity has
also been found to be correlated to conscientiousness, which in the Big Two model is part of
stability. Clearly, to be of practical relevance,
these two higher-order models need to come up
with instruments that measure the respective constructs proposed.
Recapitulation: Parsimony, Effectiveness,
Replicability
Big Two and GFP researchers have argued that
these respective two higher-order structures provide the most parsimonious accounts of personality, that they are effective in explaining most of the
variance in important criteria, and that the structures are replicable across instruments. Arguably
(but note the measurement issues above), the GFP
and Big Two do indeed provide a parsimonious
account of personality. However, the question is
whether the variance captured by these two
models is not mostly due to (socially desirable)
response biases and to the over representation of
some blended traits. Replicability is another issue.
First of all, as noted above, scholars have been
unable to replicate the GFP and the Big Two in the
HEXACO personality inventory; the trait
domains in the HEXACO personality inventory
only weakly correlate with each other, with some
correlations actually being in the “wrong” direction. From a GFP perspective, this would be
impossible. What’s more, when a single factor
was forcibly extracted from the HEXACO questionnaire, it was entirely unrelated to another single factor from the NEO (Five-Factor Model)
personality inventory (De Vries 2011). That is, a
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
GFP, but also the Big Two, is hard to replicate in
some datasets.
The third criterion, effectiveness, hinges on
whether models that incorporate more trait
domains are better able to explain behaviors and
criteria than the GFP and Big Two higher-order
structures. Not enough empirical evidence is currently available in which the GFP and the Big Two
are directly compared to the Big Five and the
HEXACO models on criteria apart from the ones
mentioned above (parental support, social effectiveness, and job performance), but based on the
circumplex structure of personality and the discussion pitting the HEXACO model against the
Big Five model, it is safe to assume that the Big
Five and the HEXACO model will indeed explain
additional variance in important criteria beyond
the GFP and Big Two. As our example in Fig. 2
showed, if the domains of the Big Five or of the
HEXACO trait domains are generally unrelated –
which they are, if conceptualized as much as
possible evaluative neutral – it will be impossible
for a GFP to explain all the variance in criteria that
are oriented perpendicular to the GFP. A similar
line of reasoning is true for the Big Two. In the
discussion pitting the HEXACO model against
the Big Five, results are generally in favor of the
HEXACO model. That is, even in cross-source
data, the HEXACO model has been much better
than the Big Five model able to explain all kinds
of outcomes associated with counterproductive
behaviors, such as criminality, delinquency, sexual harassment, counterproductive work or academic behaviors, ethical leadership, (lack of)
cooperation, cheating, manipulative behaviors,
narcissism, and psychopathy (Ashton et al. 2014;
De Vries et al. 2016). Even if the effectiveness of
the GFP and the Big Two would be equal to the
Big Five – which is most likely not true – still the
HEXACO model would outperform these two
higher-order models on the criteria noted above.
Note that much of it depends on what criteria
are selected. As our example in Fig. 2 showed, a
GFP-type broad bandwidth dimension that would
run from high extraversion and low agreeableness
to low extraversion and high agreeableness would
be perfectly aligned with authoritarianism, and
thus no other factor would be able to provide
15
incremental validity. However, a GFP that is associated with high extraversion and high agreeableness is unable to explain any variance in
authoritarianism. Consequently, the alignment of
the (higher-order) trait domain with the behavior
or criterion in question is of utmost importance for
the question whether the GFP/Big Two or the Big
Five/HEXACO trait domains are most effective.
The provisional evidence that some criteria, such
as parental support, social supportiveness, and job
performance, are supposedly optimally aligned
with the GFP does not provide any evidence that
for all criteria, the GFP provides the best (most
parsimonious and most effective) model.
Conclusion
Personality psychology has come a long way
since Francis Galton suggested the lexical
approach in 1884, and the debate on optimal
description of the structure of personality is still
ongoing. The consensus that emerged in 1990,
which saw the rise of the Big Five model of
personality, has since been challenged by
HEXACO scholars who claimed to have uncovered an additional trait domain on the one hand
and scholars who posited even higher-order trait
domains of personality, i.e., the Big Two and the
GFP. Based on parsimony considerations, the Big
Two and the GFP might seem to offer benefits
compared to the Big Five and HEXACO models,
but based on effectiveness and replicability considerations, the Big Five and HEXACO models
appear to be preferable. Although the Big Five
model is most often used and can be considered
the ruling paradigm, current research tends to
offer more support for the HEXACO model.
That is, in terms of (cross-cultural) replicability,
the cross-cultural replicability of the HEXACO
model is comparable to that of the Big Five
model, but the six dimensions of the HEXACO
model provide the maximum replicable personality space. Furthermore, in terms of effectiveness,
through the addition of honesty-humility, the
HEXACO model is much better than the Big
Five model able to explain all kinds of outcomes
associated with counterproductive and delinquent
16
behaviors. These outcomes have a great societal
impact, and thus the exclusion of honestyhumility from models of personality results in a
significant attenuation of the prediction of these
outcomes.
How then can we interpret the GFP and Big
Two higher-order structures? The most common
interpretation offered by Big Five and HEXACO
scholars is that the GFP and Big Two are not
higher-order structures but can be considered
blended (also called interstitial) traits.
As noted above, blended traits are traits that are
blends of two or more other traits. A well-known
example is sensation seeking, which is a combination of high openness to experience (e.g., curiosity), high extraversion (e.g., energy), and low
emotionality (e.g., lack of fearfulness). Another
blend is altruism, which is a combination of high
honesty-humility, high agreeableness, and high
emotionality. And – as noted above – yet another
one is proactivity, which is a combination of high
extraversion, high conscientiousness, and high
openness to experience. If considered as a substantial factor, the Big Two can be considered a
blend of high emotional stability, high agreeableness, and high conscientiousness (stability) and
high extraversion and high openness to experience (plasticity), whereas the GFP can be considered a blend of all of five domain traits (note that
both models have only studied higher-order structures in the Big Five). Accordingly, these two
models should be best able to predict variables
that are perfectly aligned with the respective combinations of variables.
To summarize, based on parsimony, effectiveness, and replicability considerations, empirical
evidence seems to favor the HEXACO model of
personality as the most optimal model of personality. After having spent decades on uncovering
the model of personality that occupies the apex of
the personality hierarchy, more effort should be
spent mapping and replicating the many facetlevel traits in the personality space spanned by
these six dimensions of personality and studying
their predictive validity in different cultures.
Higher-Order Structures of Personality
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