The five factor model and psychopathology in nonclinical samples

Abstract

The present study investigated the comprehensiveness of the Five-Factor Model for description of personality. The issue addressed was, specifically, whether a sixth psychopathology factor is needed to account for personality variation in nonclinical populations. Three samples provided questionnaire data for the present analyses, in employment selection settings: two female samples of 527 and 583 subjects, and one male sample of 266 subjects. The Revised NEO-Personality Inventory was administered to all the subjects. In addition, one female sample completed the Basic Personality Inventory, and the other two samples completed the Personality Assessment Inventory. Factor analyses of the data showed that a sixth factor, consisting primarily of psychopathological variables was needed to account for the variance.