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Haven't seen this in the comments yet, so I'll offer some extra information on the Big Five approach. Essentially, it is a linguistic approach to personality.

by abnry 7y ago

Haven't seen this in the comments yet, so I'll offer some extra information on the Big Five approach. Essentially, it is a linguistic approach to personality. The original 5 categories were found by asking people if they would describe themselves with a certain adjective. They did this for hundreds of adjectives. After doing a Factor Analysis, surprisingly, the found 5 independent groups of adjectives. In each group, the adjectives correlate with each other. So for instance, someone you would describe as assertive you would also be likely to describe as proactive. Both of these traits happen to correlate with describing someone as extroverted. The particular group is then given the Big Five name. So technically speaking, extroversion is a whole class of attributes you would be likely to describe someone as. To me, the amazing thing about the Big Five is that we can reliably extract information about types of people using ordinary language.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
Thank you, that's a great explanation. To be honest though I don't find it surprising that factor analysis would find high correlations between some traits. Actually, this is really concerning if that's the basis of the whole thing. You can find correlations anytime you look for them. How were these correlations validated? I mean- how do we know that the big-5 don't just model noise in the analysed datasets?
- abnry 7y ago
  I don't know the details of the approach (though someday I would love to study them) but I gather that the correlations are very strong and that it has been replicated many times (including in different languages). Though what is key is that the correlations are weak between groups of traits. You can find large question banks they've used too. I think that even using disjoint sets of attributes/questions you will still get the same groupings. EDIT: To add just a bit more, of all the replication scandals in psychology today, the Big Five is one of the few frameworks that has withheld the storm.

by abnry 7y ago

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

Thank you, that's a great explanation. To be honest though I don't find it surprising that factor analysis would find high correlations between some traits. Actually, this is really concerning if that's the basis of the whole thing. You can find correlations anytime you look for them. How were these correlations validated? I mean- how do we know that the big-5 don't just model noise in the analysed datasets?

abnry 7y ago
I don't know the details of the approach (though someday I would love to study them) but I gather that the correlations are very strong and that it has been replicated many times (including in different languages). Though what is key is that the correlations are weak between groups of traits. You can find large question banks they've used too. I think that even using disjoint sets of attributes/questions you will still get the same groupings. EDIT: To add just a bit more, of all the replication scandals in psychology today, the Big Five is one of the few frameworks that has withheld the storm.