consumed (r = .18, p < .01; r = .35, p< .001 respectively). A test for comparing correlation coefficients found that BAS Fun Seeking was more strongly associated with drug use than BAS Drive, thus was a better predictor of such behavior (z = 2.5, p < .OS). BAS Fun Seeking was also significantly positively correlated with drinking quantity (r = .24, p < .001) and binge drinking (r = .25, p < .005).
DISCUSSION
In this study Franken and Muris were able to demonstrate that college students' drug and alcohol use is related to their BIS/BAS personal ity characteristics.
More specifically, BAS Fun Seeking is positively correlated with the number of illegal substances one had used, the quantity of alcohol consumed per occasion, and the frequency of binge drink ing. BAS Drive is also positively correlated to
substance use; however, BAS Fun Seeking is a stronger predictor. BAS Reward Responsiveness, on the other hand, is not at all related to college students' alcohol and drug consumption.
The BIS scale was found to be negatively correlated - albeit weakly - to alcohol quantity and binge drinking, but not to drinking frequency. This finding makes sense, as it may well be that individuals high in BIS want to avoid hangovers and other punishing/negative effects of drinking.
This study demonstrates that Gray's two dimensional personality factors may be useful to study individual differences in substance use. As seen, some personality traits may be more useful than others when it comes to explaining certain outcomes.
Source: Franken, I. & Muris, P. (2005) BIS/BAS person ality constructs and college students' substance use, Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 1497-503. With permission from Elsevier.
lexical hypothesis the
idea that the major dimensions of personal ity can be derived from the total number of
aspect of an individual's personality can be described by existing words. This assumption is known as the lexical hypothesis.
descriptors in any lan guage system.
The first documented lexical study was conducted by Allport and Odbert (1936), who found as many as 17 953 words to describe psychological aspects by which individuals may be compared. These words may be thought of as personality adjectives, for instance "happy," "shy," "quiet," "stupid," "aggressive," and so on. Because
there are often different words to describe the same trait or aspect of personality, the total number of descriptors can be reduced substantially. Starting from a list of 4500 words, Cattell obtained 180, then between 42 and 46, and eventually 16 person ality traits. Factors from Cattell's taxonomy, the 16PF, are presented in Table 2.5.
Despite the wide range of behaviors covered by Cattell's 16 factors, moderate and high intercorrelations between several of these dimensions make it possible to reduce the taxonomy to fewer, higher-order factors; namely, QI, QII, and QVIII. This can be achieved through oblique rotation, a technique championed by Cattell that allows differ ent factors to be correlated. Despite the technical jargon, the idea underlying oblique rotation is rather simple. Many variables that refer to everyday events happen to be oblique or related. For instance, alcohol and drug consumption in adolescents refer to different but related behaviors; another example is religious and political views.
QI (exvia-vs.-invia) and QII (adjustment-vs.-anxiety) are comparable to Extraversion and Neuroticism, respectively, while QVIII (superego) seems to over lap with Eysenck's Psychoticism trait, referring to levels of ego strengths, discipline, and self-concepts. However, several researchers - including Cattell himself - failed to
PERSONALITY. PA�T I 53
Table 2.5 Factors in Cattell's 16PF
No. Factor 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Factor A Warmth (Reserved vs. Warm) Factor B Reasoning (Concrete vs. Abstract)
Factor C Emotional Stability (Reactive vs. Emotionally Stable) Factor E Dominance (Deferential vs. Dominant)
Factor F Liveliness (Serious vs. Lively)
Factor G Rule-Consciousness (Expedient vs. Rule-Conscious) Factor H Social Boldness (Shy vs. Socially Bold)
Factor I Sensitivity (Utilitarian vs. Sensitive)
Factor L Vigilance (Trusting vs. Vigilant)
10 Factor M Abstractedness (Grounded/Practical vs. Abstracted/Imaginative)
11 Factor N Privateness (Forthright vs. Private)
12 Factor 0 Apprehension (Self-Assured vs. Apprehensive) 13
14
Factor Ql Openness to Change (Traditional vs. Open to Change) Factor Q2 Self-Reliance (Group-Oriented vs. Self-Reliant)
15 Factor Q3 Perfectionism (Tolerates Disorder vs. Perfectionistic) 16 Factor Q4 Tension (Relaxed vs.Tense)
Source: Cattell, Eber, & Tatsuoka (1970).
replicate both the primary and secondary traits of the 16PF. Besides, Cattell argued that intelligence should be conceptualized as part of personality and assessed through self-report inventories, though most intelligence theories demand that abilities are measured through objective performance tests (see Chapters 5 and 6).
2.11
THE FIVE FACTOR MODEL
(BIG FIVE)
If personality psychology were to advance from a preliminary clas sification of traits to the prediction of real-life outcomes and other psychological constructs, it would be essential to establish a consen sus concerning the number and nature of traits that are necessary to describe the basic psychological differences between individuals. The system that appears to have won the vote of most differential psychologists (including mine and, I hope, yours by the time you fin ish reading this book) is the Five Factor Model, also referred to as the Big Five personality traits.
Five Factor Model a
trait theory of per sonality positing that there are five major and universal fac- tors of personality; namely, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness (also known as the Big Five).
54 PE-RSONALITY AND l'IJDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Raymond Bernard Cattell was born in Hilltop, a small English town near Birmingham, on 20 March 1905. At the age of 7 he moved to Devon with his family, where he quickly developed a passion for sailing and science. In 1921, Raymond was the first of his family to go to university, opting to study chemistry at the Univers.ity of London. He was an excellent student, receiving a magna cum laude (Latin for"with great honour," which is the equiva lent of a high first in England) BSc at the age of 19.
After seeing much destruction in the First World War, Cattell decided to do a PhD in psychol ogy in order to apply some of the tools of science to understanding and solving some of the suffer ing and problems of humans around him.
In 1937, Cattell was invited by Edward Thorndike to work at Columbia University. In 1938, Thorndike recommended him for the prestig ious G. Stanley Hall professorship at Clark University, where he was appointed at the age of 34.
�ue to his chemistry background, Cattell was rigorously devoted to the scientific method in psychology. Thus, he developed factor analyti cal methods for exploring the basic dimensions of personality, rather than using what he called "verbal theorizing" (qualitative methods). One of the most important results of Cattell's factor analytic explorations was his 16 factor theory of human personality (see Table 2.5 for an example of some of these traits and associated questions). In 1941, Cattell was invited by Gordon Allport to join Harvard University. There, he conducted the foundations of much of his later work, such as his work on intelligence, which includes a distinc tion between fluid and crystallized intelligence. The former is the ability to find meaning in con fusion and solve new problems independently of acquired knowledge; the latter is the ability to use skills, knowledge, and experience based on pre vious experience or education. From this, Cattell developed the investment model of ability, argu ing that crystallized ability emerged out of the investment offluid ability in a topic of knowledge.
PHOTO 2.6: Raymond Cattell (1905-98)
Table 2.6 Four of the 7 6 personality factors from Catte/l's model, and examples of positively ( + ive keyed Q) and negatively (-ive keyed Q) keyed questions for each
+ive keyed Q -ive keyed Q +ive keyed Q -ive keyed Q +ive keyed Q -ive keyed Q +ive keyed Q -ive keyed Q Warmth
I enjoy bringing people together I don't like to get involved in other people's problems
Reasoning
I tend to analyze things
I get confused easily Emotional Stability
I am not easily frustrated I have frequent mood swings Vigilance
I suspect hidden motives in others I believe that others have good intentions
Cattell died peacefully in his Honolulu home on 2 February 1998, just one month short of his 93rd birthday. In his will, Cattell left his remain ing funds to build a school for underprivileged children in Cambodia.
PER�ONALITY PART I 55
Like Cattell's 16PF, the Big Five personality framework originated from the lexical hypothesis; that is, the assumption that the major dimensions of individual differences can be derived from the total number of descriptors in any language system. After Cattell's initial version of a lexical-based personality model, Norman (1967) - based on Tupes and Christal (1961/1992) -identified 1431 major descriptors, which could be collapsed into a more fundamental list of 75 adjectives. Thus the Big Five model of personality is the result of statistical rather than theoretical or experimental research, and offers a descriptive rather than causal classification of individual differences, although in recent years behavior-genetic studies have provided evidence for the bio logical influences of the Big Five personality dimensions (discussed in Chapter 7).
Despite the lack of theoretical rationale for the etiology or origin of traits identi fied by the Five Factor model, and some isolated but persistent opposition (notably Block, 1995, 2001), there has been a good deal of consensus and empirical evidence to support the identification of the Big Five as the major dimensions of personality (Funder, 2001). Differential psychologists have also seemed to agree on the psycho metrical advantages of the Big Five taxonomy proposed by Costa and McCrae (1985, 1992), often concluding that the Five Factor Model is "universal."
According to the Five Factor taxonomy, there are five major personality traits or factors; namely, Neuroticism, Extraversion (as we have seen, these two dimensions are also present in Eysenck's, Cray's, and Cattell's systems), Openness to Experience added by Costa & McCrae, 1978), Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Hence the widely used abbreviations of NEOAC or OCEAN. Table 2.7 presents the com plete supertraits and primary traits (facets) of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory ' EO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992) with their respective checklist.