CRITERIOS DE SELECCIÓN DE MAQUINARIA PESADA:

The origins of the trait model of personality are traceable to Gordon Allport (1937). Allport wanted to counter what he regarded as Freud’s excessive focus on hidden meanings and motives. Allport saw personality as the organising force within an individual that is responsible for determining

characteristic patterns of behaviour. Allport theorised that such patterns of behaviour are manifest in traits such as ambitiousness and friendliness. Allport believed in the value of identifying these traits. Yet he thought each individual’s personality too unique to be accurately described by a general reference to such traits. Allport believed that people are motivated both by the desire to reduce some drives (e.g., hunger and thirst) and increase others (e.g., sex), but that the unconscious and defence mechanisms were only relevant in unhealthy personalities. Like other personality theorists Allport believed it was possible to seek deep-seated explanations for personality. Unlike other theorists Allport believed that personality description is the correct focus for psychology and deeper probing of

43 personality is largely unnecessary (Allport, 1968). In order to determine the parameters of this

idiographic theory of trait personality Allport and Odbert (1936) undertook an examination of the terms used to describe personality within the English language. This investigation uncovered 4,500 trait adjectives from which to describe an individual’s personality.

The next real progress within the trait paradigm of personality theory had its genesis in the work of Raymond Cattell. Cattell strongly disagreed with Allport’s (1937) idiographic approach to personality and instead proposed a nomothetic approach. Cattell’s approach considered differences in personality sufficiently uniform as to allow the identification of broadly applicable descriptive traits. To this end Cattell (1943a) reduced Allport and Odbert’s (1936) list of English trait adjectives from 4,500 to 171 through the elimination of perceived synonyms. Cattell then obtained observer ratings for individuals on these adjectives. Based on these ratings Cattell was able to distinguish 36 clusters of correlations, or surface traits. Cattell defined surface traits as visible personality characteristic manifestations of the combination of two or more source traits. Cattell considered source traits the basic elements of personality and solely discernable through factor analysis. Through the use of factor analysis Cattell was able to identify sixteen source personality traits (Cattell, 1946). A derived

assessment of these traits is employed in the following chapter’s exploration of predictor intercorrelations (see section 3.1.3.2).

One benefit of employing Cattell’s theory of broadly descriptive traits is its consistency with the evolutionary approach to understanding human personality. According to Tooby and Cosmides (1990) the evolutionary constraints of selection pressures make personality types unavoidably unitary rather than individually unique. These selection pressures are shaped by the inherently social nature of reproduction and the constraints of genetic recombination. Such adaptive and genetic parameters preclude the development of the totally unique and distinct personality types proposed by Allport. Buss (1991) discusses a variety of publications consistent with Cattell’s trait approach to personality. These articles have attempted to identify the particulars of this unitary human nature from an

evolutionary perspective. In one example Wiggins (1990) argues that the motivational modes of agency (striving for power and mastery that distinguish one individual from another) and communion

44 (striving for intimacy, union, and solidarity with others) provide the necessary conceptual framework within which to understand interpersonal behaviour via trait differences. In another example it is argued that the basic human motivators responsible for personality trait development and differences are status and popularity (Buss, 1991). In yet another it is proposed that the anxiety trait is a species- typical adaptation that provides motivation for preventing social exclusion (Baumeister & Tice, 1990).

The trait approach’s consistency with the parameters of evolutionary theory is crucial to the legitimacy of its attempt to understand psychological mechanisms and manifestations (Dennett, 1995). Yet the parameters of trait theorists’ conceptualisation of the personality construct have not been as consistent. I.W.O. psychologists originally conceptualised the construct of personality as an all- inclusive reference to any traits or characteristics able to account for an individual’s behaviour in a given situation (Ryckman, 1993). The pioneers of personality research defined traits as relatively broad and permanent behaviour tendencies. The most important distinction among traits for such pioneers was between ability and non-ability traits (Ewen, 1988). Ability traits are those which are directly associated with one’s capacity to perform specific functions and are generally conceptualised in terms of intelligence. Ability traits are value-laden in that their relatively greater possession is considered inherently beneficial (cf. Reader, 2004). Non-ability traits are predispositions to behave in certain ways that are not directly associated with one’s capacity for performing some particular function. Unlike ability traits they are not inherently value-laden. This value neutrality is exemplified by the fact that diametrically opposed non-ability traits can be considered good or bad depending upon situational considerations. This ability/non-ability trait distinction contrasts sharply with

contemporary conceptualisations of personality traits. Almost without exception contemporary conceptualisations consider “ability” to be something other than a personality trait (Ewen, 2003).

Like biological evolution, the evolution of the personality trait construct into something excluding ability appears a consequence of convenience and efficiency rather than design. This change in conceptualisation can be traced be to “whole person” theorists’ recognition that dividing the construct of personality into its component parts would advance the cause of personality research (e.g., Cattell, 1957). Such compartmentalisation enabled investigators to select manageable components of

45 personality for study (Ewen, 1988; Highhouse, 2002; Mischel, 1981; Saklofske & Zeidner, 1995). Yet the artificial nature of the treatment of intelligence and non-intelligence components of personality as independent constructs appears to have been largely forgotten by subsequent generations of

researchers. As a result the term personality has come to be fairly consistently employed by

researchers and practitioners as a construct describing a compendium of traits or characteristic ways of behaving, feeling, thinking, and reacting distinct from intelligence (e.g., Barratt, 1995; Buss & Plomin, 1975; Eysenck, 1970; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985; Mischel, 1981; Necka, 2003). For the sake of convenience, it is this ubiquitous non-intelligence conceptualisation of personality that is used within this dissertation. This is not intended to endorse the artificial separation of ability and non-ability in conceptualisations of personality. The dissertation also often refers to integrity as a construct distinct from that of general personality. The rationale for this decision is primarily based upon its lack of inclusion in predominant models of personality. It is also based upon the similarity of integrity to intelligence test outcomes in respect of their value-laden nature. The next subsection examines the Big Five model of personality, which is the most commonly employed contemporary model of personality.