Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
Chapter 13
McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
Learning Objectives
After reading Chapter 13, you should be able to:
1.
Explain the basics of factor analytic procedures.
2.
Explain the importance of R. B. Cattell's pioneering work.
3.
Distinguish between the Big Five as a taxonomy and as a
theory.
4.
List and briefly describe each of the Big Five factors.
5.
Discuss the evolution of the five-factor theory.6. List and
briefly describe McCrae and Costa's three core components of
personality.
6.
List and briefly describe McCrae and Costa's three peripheral
components of personality.
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
7.
Briefly describe some of the cross-cultural research on McCrae
and Costa's Big Five factors.
8.
Critique the pros and cons of McCrae and Costa’s factor and
trait theories.
9.
Discuss the relationship of parsimony to factor and trait
theories.
I.
Overview of Factor and Trait Theories
McCrae, Costa and others have used factor analysis to
identify traits, that is, relatively permanent dispositions of
people. Robert McCrae and Paul Costa have insisted that the
proper number of personality factors is five—no more and no
fewer.
II. The Pioneering Work of Raymond B. Cattell
In Chapter 13, we saw that Gordon Allport used common
sense to identify both common and unique personality traits.
In comparison, Raymond Cattell used factor analysis to
identify a large number of traits, including personality traits.
Included in personality traits were temperament traits, which
are concerned with how a person behaves. Temperament traits
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
include both normal and abnormal traits. Of the 23 normal
traits, 16 are measured by Cattell's famous PF scale.
III. Basics of Factor Analysis
Factor analysis is a mathematical procedure for reducing a
large number of scores to a few more general variables or
factors. Correlations of the original, specific scores with the
factors are called factor loadings. Traits generated through
factor analysis may be either unipolar (scaled from zero to
some large amount) or bipolar (having two opposing poles,
such as introversion and extraversion). For factors to have
psychological meaning, the analyst must rotate the axes on
which the scores are plotted. Eysenck used an orthogonal
rotation whereas Cattell favored an oblique rotation. The
oblique rotation procedure ordinarily results in more traits than
the orthogonal method.
IV. The Big Five: Taxonomy or Theory?
A large number of researchers, including Robert McCrae and
Paul Costa, Jr., have insisted that all personality structure can
be subsumed under five, and only five, major factors.
V.
Biographies of Robert McCrae and Paul T. Costa, Jr.
Robert Roger McCrae was born April 28, 1949 in Maryville,
Missouri, the youngest of three children. After completing an
undergraduate degree in philosophy from Michigan State
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
University, he earned a PhD in psychology from Boston
University. Following the lead of Raymond Cattell, he began
using factor analysis as a means of measuring the structure of
human traits. After completing his academic work, McCrae
began working with Paul Costa at the National Institute of
Health, where he is still employed. Paul T. Costa Jr. was born
September 16 in Franklin, New Hampshire. He earned his
undergraduate degree in psychology from Clark University and
a PhD from the University of Chicago. In 1978 he began
working with Robert McCrae at the National Institute of
Aging, where he continues to conduct research on human
development and aging. The collaboration between Costa and
McCrae has been unusually fruitful, with well over 200 coauthored research articles and chapters, and several books.
VI. In Search of the Big Five
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Costa and McCrae, like most
other factor researchers, were building elaborate taxonomies of
personality traits, which they were using to examine the
stability and structure of personality. As with many other
factor theorists, they quickly discovered the traits of
extraversion (E), neuroticism (N), and openness to experience
(O).
A.
Five Factors Found
As late as 1983, McCrae and Costa were arguing for a threefactor model of personality, but by 1985 they begin to report
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
work on the five factors of personality, having added
agreeableness (A) and conscientiousness (C). Costa and
McCrae did not fully develop the A and C scales until the
revised NEO-PI personality inventory appeared in 1992.
Recently, the five factors have been found across a variety of
cultures and using a number of languages. In addition, the five
factors show some permanence with age; that is, adults tend to
maintain a consistent personality structure as they grow older.
B.
Description of the Five Factors
McCrae and Costa agreed with Eysenck that personality traits
are basically bipolar, with some people scoring high on one
factor and low on its counterpart. For example, people who
score high on N tend to be anxious, temperamental, selfpitying, self-conscious, emotional, and vulnerable to stressrelated disorders, whereas people with low scores on N tend to
have opposite characteristics. People who score high on E
tend to be affectionate, jovial, talkative, a joiner, and funloving, whereas low E scorers tend to have opposing traits.
High O scorers prefer variety in their life and are contrasted to
low O scorers who have a need for closure and who gain
comfort in their association with familiar people and things.
People who score high on A tend to be trusting, generous,
yielding, acceptant, and good natured. Low A scorers are
generally suspicious, stingy, unfriendly, irritable, and critical
of other people. Finally, people high on the C scale tend to be
ordered, controlled, organized, ambitious, achievementFeist, Theories of Personality, 8e
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
focused, and self-disciplined. Together these dimensions make
up the personality traits of the five factor model, often referred
to as the "Big-Five."
VII. Evolution of the Five-Factor Theory
Originally, the five factors were simply a taxonomy, a
classification of personality traits. By the late 1980s, Costa and
McCrae were confident that they had found a stable structure
of personality. In shaping a theory from the remnants of a
taxonomy, McCrae and Costa were insisting that their
personality structure was able to incorporate change and
growth into its tenets and to stimulate empirical research as
well as organize research findings. In other words, their FiveFactor taxonomy was being transformed into a Five-Factor
Theory (FFT).
A.
Units of the Five-Factor Theory
McCrae and Costa predict behavior through an understanding
of three central or core components and three peripheral ones.
The three core components include: (1) basic tendencies, (2)
characteristic adaptations, and (3) self-concept. Basic
tendencies are the universal raw material of personality.
Characteristic adaptations are acquired personality structures
that develop as people adapt to their environment. Self-concept
refers to knowledge and attitudes about oneself. Peripheral
components include (1) biological bases, which are the sole
cause of basic tendencies; (2) objective biography, which is
everything a person does or thinks over a lifetime; and (3)
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
external influence, or knowledge, views, and evaluations of the
self.
B.
Basic Postulates
The two most important core postulates are basic tendencies
and characteristic adaptations. Basic tendencies have four
postulates—individuality, origin, development, and structure.
The individuality postulate stipulates that every adult has a
unique pattern of traits. The origin postulate assumes that all
personality traits originate solely from biological factors, such
as genetics, hormones, and brain structures. The development
postulate assumes that traits develop and change through
childhood, adolescence, and mid-adulthood. The structure
postulate states that traits are organized hierarchically from
narrow and specific to broad and general. VIII.
Related Research
The five-trait theory of McCrae and Costa has drawn a
considerable amount of research, and isvery popular in the
field of personality. Costa and McCrae have developed a
widely used personality inventory: the NEO-PI (Costa &
McCrae, 1985, 1992). Traits have been linked to vital
outcomes such as physical health (Martin, Friedman, &
Schwartz, 2007), well-being (Costa & McCrae, 1980), and
academic success (Noftle & Robins, 2007; Zyphur, Islam, &
Landis, 2007). Traits have also been linked to more everyday
outcomes such as mood (McNiel & Fleeson, 2006).
A.
Personality and Culture
If personality has a strong biological bases, then the structure
of personality should not differ much from culture to culture.
The major traits do appear consistent in most countries of the
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
world (McCrae, 2002; Poortinga, Van de Vijver, & van
Hemert, 2000). Our biological makeup influences our
personalities on similar dimensions such as extraversion or
neuroticism; how and when traits are expressed are influenced
by cultural and social context. In short, personality is shaped
by both nature and nurture.
B.
Traits and Academics
Erik Noftle and Richard Robins (2007) studied the relationship
of traits and academic performance. They found that
conscientiousness was the most important trait for predicting
GPAs in high school and college, but not for SAT scores. The
“Big 5” factors were not strong predictors of SAT math scores,
but openness was related to SAT verbal scores. These
differences are attributed to differences between aptitude and
achievement measured by SATs versus GPAs. Michael
Zyphur and colleagues (2007) studied the relationship between
neuroticism and retaking the SAT. Their findings are
important in that high scores on neuroticism are often viewed
negatively, but the anxious tendencies of those high on
neuroticism were very adaptive in this study, because these
tendencies led them to retake the SAT and score higher each
time they did.
C. Traits and Emotion
Though the relation between traits and moods has been clear in
terms of positivity vs. negativity to early researchers, what has
not been clear is causality: Does the trait cause the experience
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
of a positive or negative mood, or does the experience of that
mood and its emotions cause people to behave in ways
concordant with the traits? And similarly, does the mood
cause the behavior, or does the behavior cause the mood?
Murray McNiel and William Fleeson (2006) studied the
direction of causality for the relationships between
extraversion and positive mood, and neuroticism and negative
mood. They wanted to know if behaving in an extraverted
manner causes people to have positive feelings and behaving
in a neurotic manner causes them to have negative feelings.
Their results showed that when people act in a certain way,
their behavior does indeed influence their mood to fit the
behavior. On the other hand, Michael Robinson and Gerald
Clore (2007) have found recently that individual differences in
the speed of processing information can influence the
relationship between neuroticism and negative mood, such that
not everybody who scores high on neuroticism experiences
more negative emotion. They discovered that people who
process environmental stimuli faster do not need to rely on
neuroticism to interpret events and interpret their environment
objectively, whereas slower processors are more subjective in
their evaluations by relying on trait dispositions to interpret
events. So those high on neuroticism but fast at processing did
not report any more negative emotion than those low on
neuroticism. These results show that the early research
findings that extraversion is related to positive mood and
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
neuroticism to negative mood, while not inaccurate, do not
give the full picture of the complex relationship between traits
and emotions. In sum, even though your traits predispose you
to certain types of behavior, your actions can override those
dispositions.
IX. Critique of Trait and Factor Theories
The factor theories of Eysenck and of McCrae and Costa rate
high on parsimony, on their ability to generate research, and on
their usefulness in organizing data; they are about average on
falsifiability, usefulness to the practitioner, and internal
consistency.
X.
Concept of Humanity
Factor theories generally assume that human personality is
largely the product of genetics and not the environment. Thus,
we rate these two theories very high on biological influences
and very low on social factors. In addition, we rate both about
average on conscious versus unconscious influences and high
on the uniqueness of individuals. The concepts of free choice,
optimism versus pessimism, and causality versus teleology are
not clearly addressed by these theories.
Test Items
Fill-in-the-Blanks
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
1. Social psychologists explain behavior by the situation, whereas:
personality psychologists attribute behavior to enduring
______.
2. The five major dimensions of personality are extraversion,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, ________, and openness to
experience.
3. “Big Five” traits of personality and their widespread adoption
and acceptance owes much to the research and theory of
Robert McCrae and________
4. Presently, most researchers who study personality traits agree
that _____, and only _____, and no fewer than _____
dominant traits continue to emerge from factor analytic
techniques.
5. Hans J. Eysenck insisted that only _____ major factors can be
discerned by a factor analytic approach.
6. Allport’s major contribution to trait theory may have been his
identification of nearly ______ trait names in an unabridged
English language dictionary.
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
7. The Five-Factor Theory (often called_______) includes
neuroticism and extraversion; but it adds openness to
experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
8. Cattell and McCrae and Costa both used an _______ of
gathering data; that is, they began with no preconceived bias
concerning the number or name of traits or types.
9. The largest and most frequently studied of the normal traits are
the __ personality factors found on Cattell’s (1949) ____
Personality Factors Questionnaire (__ PF Scale).
10. Factor analysis is largely the collection and quantifying of
observations, and then demonstrating ________.
11. Traits generated through factor analysis may be either _______
or bipolar.
12. The advocates of the Five-Factor Theory favor the ________
rotation.
13. The Big Five began as a ___________________ ; that is, a
classification system.
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
14. Costa and McCrae's first two factors were neuroticism and
____________________.
15. Costa and McCrae's A factor represents __________________
16. Characteristic adaptations are among the ________________
components of personality.
17. Everything a person does across the lifespan is an objective
________________.
18. McCrae and Costa’s Five-Factor Model (FFM) can both predict
and ______ behavior.
19. Research suggests that the traits of the Big Five are
____________________ over time and consistent across
cultures.
20. According to McCrae and Costa, personality traits are fairly
consistent after the age of _____________.
True-False
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
_____1.
Personality psychologists are more likely to attribute
behavior to situational traits.
_____2.
Historically psychologists concur on a unique set of
personality traits that target the major dimensions of
personality.
_____3.
There are ten major dimensions of personality that have
been widely accepted by personality psychologists.
_____4.
Hans J. Eysenck insisted that only seven major factors
can be discerned by a factor analytic approach.
_____5.
The Five-Factor Theory (often called the Big Five)
includes neuroticism and extraversion; but it adds openness to
experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
_____6.
Traits are more stable than states.
_____7.
Cattell and McCrae and Costa both used an deductive
method of gathering data.
_____8.
Cattell used three different media of observation to
examine people called X data, Y data, and Z data.
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
_____9.
Cattell classified traits into temperament, motivation,
and ability.
_____10.
The largest and most frequently studied of Cattell’s
normal traits are the 16 personality factors found on Cattell’s
(1949) Sixteen Personality Factors Questionnaire (16 PF
Scale).
_____11.
Factor anaylsis is based solely upon the observations of
people’s behaviors.
_____12.
The advocates of the Five-Factor Theory favor the
orthogonal rotation to demonstrate fewer, meaningful traits.
_____13.
McCrae and Costa are currently the only researchers
seriously investigating the Big Five factors.
_____14.
McCrae and Costa do not consider the Big Five to be a
theory.
_____15.
According to McCrae and Costa, the Five Factor Model
and the Five Factor Theory are terms that can be used
interchangeably.
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
_____16.
Although they have published much together, Robert
McCrae and Paul Costa live nearly 3,000 miles apart.
_____17.
The A factor in the Big Five theory represents anxiety.
_____18.
People in the United States score considerably higher on
measures of extraversion than do people in Spain.
_____ 19. According to McCrae and Costa, the ultimate source of
human behavior is childhood experience.
_____ 20. McCrae and Costa believe that personality traits are
nearly completely determined by early adolescence.
Multiple Choice
______1.
Personality psychologists are more likely to attribute
behavior to_________.
a.
day to minute situation
b.
enduring traits
c.
cognitive displacement
d.
overt emotionalism
______2.
A trait is best described as
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
a.
a cluster of surface factors.
b.
a temporary attitude toward a person or event.
c.
a relatively permanent disposition of a person.
d.
an environmentally determined hypothetical construct
that shapes an individual's behavior and thought.
_____3.
Mathematically, the technique of reducing a number of
variables to a smaller number is called
a.
induction.
b.
the experimental method.
c.
variance.
d.
factor analysis.
_____4.
Today most researchers who study personality traits
agree that __, and only __, and no fewer than __ dominant
traits continue to emerge from factor analytic techniques.
a.
3
b.
5
c.
7
d.
16
_____5.
Which of the following statements is true?
a.
Traits are of two kinds—dispositional and hypothetical.
b.
Traits are more permanent than states.
c.
Traits represent a broader concept than factors.
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
d.
Traits cannot be extracted through the use of factor
analysis.
______6.
Hans J. Eysenck insisted that only __ major factors can
be discerned by a factor analytic approach.
a.
3
b.
5
c.
16
d.
18,000
______7.
Cattell and McCrae and Costa both used an (a)
_________ of gathering data.
a.
deductive method
b.
comparison method
c.
intuition method
d.
inductive method
______8.
Cattell’s famous personality scale is called the _______.
a.
NEO-Personality Inventory
b.
FIRO-B
c.
MBTI
d.
16 PF Scale
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
______9.
The advocates of the Five-Factor Theory favor the
_______ rotation of factor analysis.
a.
orthogonal
b.
triangulated
c.
oblique
d.
hexagonal
_____10.
McCrae and Costa’s Five-Factor Model (FFM) can both
______ and _____ behavior.
a.
forecast, foretell
b.
predict, explain
c.
identify, analyze
d.
measure, hypothesize
_____11.
The Five Factors have been found across cultures and
show some permanence with _____.
a.
race
b.
age
c.
gender
d.
sexual orientation
_____12.
The fifth factor of the Big Five is _______ and describes
people who are ordered, controlled, organized, ambitious,
achievement focused, and self-disciplined.
a.
conscientiousness
b.
agreeableness
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
c.
neuroticism
d.
extraversion
_____13.
The A in McCrae and Costa's theory stands for
a.
anxiety.
b.
aggression.
c.
agreeableness.
d.
activity.
_____14.
Currently, the Big Five can most accurately be called
a.
a model.
b.
an armchair speculation.
c.
a taxonomy.
d.
a theory.
_____15.
Factor C in the Five-Factor theory is
a.
consistency.
b.
cooperation.
c.
conscientiousness.
d.
compromise.
_____16.
People who score low on ______________ tend to be
quiet and reserved.
a.
intelligence
b.
psychoticism
c.
compromise
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
d.
_____17.
extraversion
According to McCrae and Costa, the ultimate
contributor to personality is
a.
biology.
b.
self-concept.
c.
childhood experience..
d.
the ability to adapt to new experiences.
_____18.
A person's view of what he or she is like is called _____.
a.
self-concept.
b.
objective biology.
c.
external influences.
d.
characteristic adaptations.
_____19.
According to McCrae and Costa, the Big Five factors
comprise a person's
a.
characteristic adaptations.
b.
objective biography.
c.
basic tendencies.
d.
external influences.
____20.
The theories of McCrae and Costa and of Eysenck rate
a.
high on biological determinants of personality.
b.
high on teleology.
c.
low on their ability to generate research.
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
d.
high on free will vs. determinism.
Short Answer
I. Define a unipolar trait.
2.
List and elaborate on McCrae and Costa's five factors.
3. Explain the difference between the Five Factor Model and the
Five-Factor Theory.
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
4.
Explain the difference between the self-concept and objective
biography.
5.
List and discuss McCrae and Costa’s predicting of behavior by
an understanding of three central or core components and the
three peripheral ones.
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Chapter 13 McCrae and Costa’s Five Factor Trait Theory
Answers
Fill-in-the-Blanks
True-False
Multiple Choice
1.
traits
1.
F
1.
b
2.
neuroticism
2.
F
2.
c
3.
Paul Costa
3.
F
3.
d
4.
five
4.
F
4.
b
5.
three
5.
T
5.
b
6.
18,000
6.
T
6.
a
7.
the Big Five
7.
F
7.
d
8.
inductive method
8.
F
8.
d
9.
16
9.
T
9.
a
10.
correlations
10.
T
10.
b
11.
unipolar
11
F
11.
b
12.
orthogonal
12.
T
12.
a
13.
taxonomy
13.
F
13.
c
14.
extraversion
14.
F
14.
d
15.
agreeableness
15.
F
15.
c
16.
core
16.
F
16.
d
17.
biography
17.
F
17.
a
18.
explain
18.
F
18.
a
19.
stable
19.
F
19.
c
20.
30
20.
F
20.
a
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