Relationships between personality structure, structure of word meaning, and cognitive ability: a study of cultural mechanisms of personality

Native-born Estonian men (N=912), 17-68 years old, participated in a study on relationships between personality characteristics, dominant structure of word meaning ("everyday concepts" thinking or "scientific concepts" thinking), and level of cognitive ability. Individuals who primarily used everyday concepts thinking or who possessed relatively low levels of cognitive ability did not reveal a coherent Big Five personality structure, whereas individuals who primarily used scientific concepts thinking or possessed high levels of cognitive ability did. Thus, personality may be shaped by a cultural factor--word meaning structure. Earlier studies, which seem to support the idea that Big Five personality structure is a biologically determined human universal, suffer from serious sampling problems and insufficient data analyses.     

Factorial structure of pathological personality as evaluated by peers

This study explored how individuals apply features of personality disorders (PDs) to peers. Members of groups nominated peers who exhibited symptoms for each of the 10 PDs in the DSM-IV. Data were gathered in 2 samples: 1st-year college students (n = 1,440) and Air Force recruits (n = 2,075). The peer method reliably identified group members exhibiting specific PD features. Factor analyses identified a clearly interpretable structure relevant to the pathological personality constructs being assessed. The structure replicated well across samples and showed expected relationships to broader models of normal personality. However, cross-method correlations of factor scores were only moderate, suggesting that peer reports are reliably different from self-reports regarding the presence of pathological personality traits.     

The personality of meaning in life: Associations between dimensions of life meaning and the Big Five

The goal of the current study was to identify aspects of personality that are associated with different ways in which people find meaning in life. This was achieved using constrained principal component analysis (CPCA) on data from 322 university students, who completed the Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life questionnaire and the Big Five Aspects Scale. CPCA demonstrated that personality traits and life meaning are associated, but not redundant, with one another. Specifically, respondents with high scores on lower-level aspects of Openness to Experience tended to derive meaning from questioning, learning and challenging tradition, whereas those with high scores on aspects of Conscientiousness and Extraversion tended to derive meaning from success at work, health, and family. Results suggest that personality traits are associated with variations in the domains used to derive meaning in life, and demonstrate the utility of CPCA as an innovative statistical technique for the study of individual differences.     

Psychodiagnosis of personality structure: psychotic personality organization.

Recent developments in Rorschach psychology, including nomothetic approaches focused on scores, ratios, and indices and idiographic approaches focused on content emerging from psychoanalytic theory, offer the Rorschach clinician a rich and potent interpretive methodology. This article examines the structural diagnosis of personality organization with a focus on psychotic personality structure. Rorschach approaches to the differential diagnosis of psychotic personality organization are presented. The Rorschach is viewed as indispensible in the differential diagnosis of personality organization, especially in the so-called "borderline" cases.     

On the biological determination of personality structure

The controversy surrounding two particular problems has stymied the development of a consensus view concerning the structure of personality. First, there has been disagreement concerning the ‘independence’ of introversion-extraversion and measures of neuroticism. The other problem concerns the ‘duality’ of introversion-extraversion and whether it is even useful to retain this concept when it may only represent a ‘shotgun wedding’ of ‘sociability’ and ‘impulsivity’. Recent findings are discussed which relate to the neurophysiological underpinnings of personality. It is suggested that these findings, and the associated model, lie outside the circulus vitiosus of factor analysis and therefore that they provide a basis for resolving the independence and duality issues. It is argued that the tendency for introversion-extraversion to correlate with neuroticism only reflects a degree of coincidence and not equivalence. The psychological coincidence is conceived as resulting from the anatomical linkage of different neurophysiological subsystems which provide the substrata for the two personality dimensions. It is also argued that the ‘sociability’ and ‘impulsivity’ duality relates to distinct ‘sensitivity’ and ‘synergistic’ aspects of thalamocortical arousability. These distinct arousability dimensions nevertheless both contribute to the effectiveness of descending inhibitory projections that act on the brain-stem reticular formation and hence determine introversion-extraversion differences. In this scheme of things the three psychological dimensions are different but again there are anatomical linkage correlations reflecting coincidence rather than equivalence.     

Understanding the search for meaning in life: personality, cognitive style, and the dynamic between seeking and experiencing meaning.

Although several theories assert that understanding the search for meaning in life is important, empirical research on this construct is sparse. Three studies provide the first extensive effort to understand the correlates of the search for meaning in a multistudy research program. Assessed were relations between search for meaning and well-being, cognitive style, and the Big Five, Big Three, Approach/Avoidance, and Interest models of personality, with a particular emphasis on understanding the correlates of search for meaning that are independent of presence of meaning. Conceptual models of the relation between search and presence were tested. Findings suggest that people lacking meaning search for it; the search for meaning did not appear to lead to its presence. Study 3 found that basic motive dispositions moderated relations between search for meaning and its presence. Results highlight the importance of basic personality dispositions in understanding the search for meaning and its correlates.     

The Big Five personality factors as a model for the structure of children's peer nominations

The validity and usefulness of the five‐factor theory of personality as a model for children's peer nominations is assessed. Eighty‐nine groups of ten school children, attending the same class, aged 9 to 12 years, nominated the pupil that was the most or the least typical example for 25 bipolar trait pairs, covering the ‘Big Five’ personality factors. Factor analysis of summed and transformed peer nominations for the total sample shows that children's nominations can be represented by three factors: Agreeableness, a combined Extraversion–Emotional Instability component, and a combined Intellect–Conscientiousness factor. A second study with a smaller but independent sample confirms the factorial structure of the peer nomination scales. The reasons for the less differentiated peer nomination structure of children and the relevance of multidimensional assessment of peer perception are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The meaning of Eysenck's personality constructs and scales for Zimbabwean male students

Two studies of the utility of Eysenckian scale constructs for male African university students are reported. One confirms the previous findings that the EPQ, with some item changes, remains substantially reliable across cultures. The second was based on a larger item pool and shows that: (i) the integrity of the Neuroticism factor is confirmed, though fear-of-success items might usefully be added for African students; (ii) Sociability is the most robust component of Extraversion for this group, though the relationship with Impulsivity remains, contrary to predictions based on knowledge of African socialization; (iii) a factor of Restraint, Responsibility and Seriousness-of-purpose emerges, which could be interpreted as the converse of Impulsivity, or as a reflection of African values or motivation in this particular item pool; (iv) Motivation-for-success items group factorially, though their endorsement may reflect Social Desirability. These findings are interpreted both as a confirmation of Eysenck's personality theory for educated Africans, and as indicating the need for further exploration of scales which take the local behavioural referents of the Eysenckian factors into account.     

Dispositional empathy and the hierarchical structure of personality

Personality psychology has recognized a fundamental 5-factor structure that has integrated and organized theory and research. Nevertheless, personality-like differences beyond that structure have been identified. In heretofore unrelated research, dispositional empathy has been an essential construct in understanding human development, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Addressing a gap in the literature, we map multidimensional dispositional empathy into 2 versions of the 5-factor space. Empathic concern is closely related to agreeableness, and personal distress is closely related to neuroticism. Perspective taking has complex, interstitial relationships with the 5 factors. In contrast, fantasy is not well explained by the 5 factors. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding dispositional empathy and for understanding the 5-factor structure, its correlates in emotional processes and experiences, and its limits.     

On ego development and the structure of personality

present a theory of ego development as composed of several substructures related so that achievement of a given stage in one substructure is necessary but not sufficient for achieving the corresponding stage of another. The postulation of an exact relation belies what is known of the texture of human behavior and is premature in the absence of precise measurement of the several substructures and precise matching of stages. An alternative, the empirical method of simultaneously constructing a measure of ego development and portraits of the several stages, which Snarey et al. criticize for lack of strict logical coherence, is in the best tradition of contemporary science. The stage portraits are “prototypes” or “fuzzy sets.” Any mental structure can be divided into substructures, but the most general, superordinate structure is likely to prove most useful.     

Suicidal behaviors and personality structure

In this paper we suggest the potential clinical usefulness of two projective tests (Rorschach and Object Relation Technique) and of a clinical interview focused on the pathway to suicide, life events, and major life difficulties to better define subtypes of patients attempting suicide. Thirty-three hospitalized subjects who had attempted suicide in the previous 6 months were examined using an in-depth assessment of the pathway to suicide. The aims of this study were: (1) to compare, within a clinical sample of suicidal attempters, the psychopathological, personality, and psychosocial characteristics of subjects with mood disorders alone, personality disorders and dysfunctional personality alone, and mood disorders with personality disorders and/or dysfunctional personality; and (2) to analyze the relationship between the method chosen and the clinical characteristics of the subgroups.     

Shared structure need not be shared set-structure

Recent semantic approaches to scientific structuralism, aiming to make precise the concept of shared structure between models, formally frame a model as a type of set-structure. This framework is then used to provide a semantic account of (a) the structure of a scientific theory, (b) the applicability of a mathematical theory to a physical theory, and (c) the structural realist’s appeal to the structural continuity between successive physical theories. In this paper, I challenge the idea that, to be so used, the concept of a model and so the concept of shared structure between models must be formally framed within a single unified framework, set-theoretic or other. I first investigate the Bourbaki-inspired assumption that structures are types of set-structured systems and next consider the extent to which this problematic assumption underpins both Suppes’ and recent semantic views of the structure of a scientific theory. I then use this investigation to show that, when it comes to using the concept of shared structure, there is no need to agree with French that “without a formal framework for explicating this concept of ‘structure-similarity’ it remains vague, just as Giere’s concept of similarity between models does ...” (French, 2000, Synthese, 125, pp. 103–120, p. 114). Neither concept is vague; either can be made precise by appealing to the concept of a morphism, but it is the context (and not any set-theoretic type) that determines the appropriate kind of morphism. I make use of French’s (1999, From physics to philosophy (pp. 187–207). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) own example from the development of quantum theory to show that, for both Weyl and Wigner’s programmes, it was the context of considering the ‘relevant symmetries’ that determined that the appropriate kind of morphism was the one that preserved the shared Lie-group structure of both the theoretical and phenomenological models. I wish to thank Katherine Brading, Anjan Chakravartty, Steven French, Martin Thomson-Jones, Antigone Nounou, Stathis Psillos, Dean Rickles, Mauricio Suarez and two anonymous referees for valuable comments and criticisms, and Gregory Janzen for editorial suggestions. Research for this paper was funded by a generous SSHRC grant for which I am grateful