Structures of Personality Traits

Abstract

Abstract Over the past decades, the concept of personality has been subject to implicit redefinition through a set of operations labeled “Big‐Five Taxonomy” or “Five‐Factor Model” of personality. A first module of the set of operations that constitute this paradigm consists of the questionnaire construction of personality, whereby someone's personality is defined through answers to standardized questions. A second, more specific, operational module contains the lexical approach that consists of selecting items from a corpus of language, particularly a dictionary of that language. A third operational characteristic consists of reliance on the linear model, particularly principal component analysis of Likert item scales. This is probably the most constitutive operation of the paradigm. A fourth set of operations contains models for structuring, interpreting, and communicating trait information. The major rivals are the hierarchical and the circumplex models of personality structure. I judge structure models by their capacity to produce clear and communicable trait concepts. I conclude with sketching a family of models that may serve as a base for capturing personality structure. It consists of a hierarchy of generalized semicircumplexes, with one general p ‐component of personality at the top and including 2‐D circumplex, giant three, 5‐D, and other‐dimensional structures.