What is Personality - Part 4 - The Current Model

4. All Together

When psychologist Donald Fiske tried to replicate Cattell's work, he didn't find 16 personality factors — instead, he found only 5, repeatedly, across three different studies.

Fiske named these 5 factors Confident Self-expression, Social Adaptability, Conformity, Emotional Control, and Inquiring Intellect. These were the first Big Five.

Two other psychologists, Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal, also attempted to replicate Cattell's study. They again found only 5 factors, which they called Surgency, Agreeableness, Dependability, Emotional Stability, and Culture. These were the second Big Five, though you can already see some resemblance to the previous five names.

Later, Warren Norman and other psychologists, inspired by Tupes and Christal's study, conducted their own research and, once again, found 5 factors. This time they kept most of the names from the previous study, changing only one — Dependability became Conscientiousness. Norman also added more words to Allport and Odbert's original list, since a new dictionary with more relevant expressions had been produced.
Since then, the 5 factors have continued to reappear across several independent studies (Borgatta, Digman, and Inouye).

Lewis Goldberg, initially skeptical of the finding, conducted his own studies from the lexical hypothesis through to factor analysis, also finding 5 factors. Since then, Goldberg has made immeasurable efforts in promoting personality psychology, carrying out countless studies and making all data available online as open-source.
In a parallel line of research, McCrae and Costa studied the work of various personality psychologists, analyzed the different personality measurement instruments that existed, and also arrived at 5 major factors, named Neuroticism (the opposite of emotional stability), Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. Using items from these different instruments, they developed the NEO-PI-R, one of the most scientifically validated personality assessment instruments.

It's worth highlighting that this last one, the work of McCrae and Costa, was a separate effort from the lexical hypothesis that began with Galton, Allport, and Odbert. And although both reached the same conclusion — that human personality can be described as falling somewhere along 5 Major Traits — the two research processes are in fact different. The lexical hypothesis is referred to as the Big Five Model, and McCrae and Costa's approach is referred to as the Five-Factor Model. However, the terms Five-Factor and Big Five tend to be used interchangeably.
McCrae and Costa, through factor analysis of their personality inventory, divided each of the 5 factors into 6 more specific facets, making 30 specific facets and 5 global factors.

4.1. Personality Assessment from This Perspective

Several measures were used by these authors in their research.
The NEO-PI-R stands out, as it is the personality assessment instrument with the greatest validity and the largest body of research linking different traits to real-world outcomes. This inventory has only the disadvantage of being copyrighted, meaning it is only available to researchers and psychologists who are licensed to use it.
On the other hand, Goldberg promoted the development of several Big Five measures (some of which have been validated for use in Portugal) and also developed the IPIP-NEO, an inventory analogous to the NEO-PI-R that measures the 5 global factors and the 30 specific facets.

Building on the IPIP-NEO, John Johnson developed the IPIP-NEO-120, also as a reliable measure of the 5+30 factors. The IPIP-NEO-120 is one of the instruments I am currently adapting for use with the Portuguese population. So, there will be an opportunity to participate in the study and complete the questionnaire, with provisional results.

References