The General Factor of Personality

310 Pages·2017·5.74 MB·English

by  Janek Musek (Auth.)

THE GENERAL
FACTOR OF
PERSONALITY
JANEK MUSEK
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PREFACE
This book analyzes the results of the theoretical and empirical research on
the general factor of personality (GFP), which represents the most general
dimension of personality in the most recent paradigm of personality struc-
ture. The GFP is a measure of general personal and social adjustment and
can be defined as a dimension meaning high versus low emotional stability,
extraversion, consciousness, agreeableness, and intellectual openness. It
explains a great deal of human personality and is connected to important
psychological domains including emotionality, well-being, self-esteem,
motivation, coping, and others. Thus, the GFP can be conceived of as the
highest-order dimension of personality and related psychological domains,
which is a counterpart of the well-known g-factor in the domain of cogni-
tive abilities.
In the scientific psychological literature, this volume is the only existing
book that is entirely dedicated to the GFP. It is the first book addressing this
subject, and a substantial amount of interest for the book can be expected
among the experts and other potential readers. The concept of the GFP is a
crucial part of the knowledge of personality and personality structure. It is
expected therefore that the contents of the book will be of interest to scien-
tists investigating personality, students and lecturers of psychology, especially
personality psychology, professionals working with people (psychologists, psy-
chiatrists, social and counseling workers, educators), and all other potential
readers interested in the enhancement of their knowledge of human
personality.
Human personality is one of the most important subjects of psychologi-
cal research. Thus, the structure of personality is among the most investi-
gated fields in psychology. A very recent development in this research began
with the author’s introduction of the GFP in 2007 and the proposed model
of the personality structure with the GFP on the apex of the structural
hierarchy of personality dimensions. The subsequent research on the GFP is
reflected in the great number of articles in the scientific journals through-
out the world and the vivid discussion in the large number of national and
international scientific meetings, congresses, and conferences.
The book contains 11 chapters systematically focused on all major top-
ics and issues related to the GFP. The chapters include reviews of the theo-
retical and methodological work on GFP that already has been done, and
ix
x Preface
also many very recent research results, which are entirely new and so far
unpublished. The contents of the book integrate the research evidence con-
cerning the GFP across different aspects including the development of GFP
research, the resulting empirical evidence, the consequences for the struc-
tural modeling of personality (new paradigm in personality structure), the
biological and sociocultural backgrounds of the GFP, the basic explanations
and interpretations of the nature of GFP, the connections between the GFP
and other major psychological domains (affect, well-being, self-esteem,
motivation, coping, intelligence, emotional intelligence, wisdom, etc.), and
perspectives for further research of personality structure. The practical and
applied aspects of this research are also considered. The chapters of the book
also include discussion of the role of the GFP beyond the narrower scope of
personality in the broader evolutionary and cultural perspective.
The results of the empirical testing and theoretical evaluations revealed
in the current book could essentially contribute to the more comprehensive
and precise theoretical framework of the GFP and the entire personality
structure. The results of the research presented in the book should improve
our understanding of the personality structure and of the relations between
major personality dimensions, as well as our understanding of the relations
between major psychological dimensions of the entire noncognitive sphere
of psychological variables. The research results should also bring essential
answers to some still unresolved questions concerning the GFP and its
nature, including the very important question of whether the GFP is based
more on correlations in the real behavior or on other less substantial or even
artifactual factors causing the correlations between lower-order dimensions
of personality (like the Big Five).
Furthermore, the research of the GFP is crucially important not only for
theoretical reasons but also as concerns the tremendous practical and applied
value of the assumed general dimension of personality. Being a common
denominator of all of the most important fields of personality beyond
the cognition (Big Five, well-being, coping, emotionality, motivation,
s elf-concept, self-esteem, control, wisdom, and others), the GFP represents an
extremely strong single predictor of the quality of life, mental health and well-
being, job career, academic success, the quality of family and interpersonal
relations, etc.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Above all, I am thankful to my wife Alenka for her constant support and
careful proofreading of the manuscript and to my sons, Kristijan and Marijan,
for their encouraging and helpful suggestions during my writing.
I would like to thank Barbara Makinster for helping me in the process
of editing the book. Thanks to Elsevier, my publisher.
Further, I would like to express my gratitude to the colleagues and stu-
dents throughout the world for their research, which provided substantial
material for the contents of the book. Especially, I am grateful to my col-
leagues Andreja Avsec and Darja Kobal Grum in the Department of
Psychology at the University of Ljubljana. Also, I would like to express my
thanks to the Slovenian National Agency of the Sciences (ARRS) for partly
supporting my research.
Finally, I am grateful to all others who provided support, comments, or
otherwise assisted in the editing and design of the book.
xi
C HAPTER 1
hT e Rise o f the PFG
GENERAL FACTOR OF PERSONALITY—A NEW CONCEPT IN
PSYCHOLOGY
hW ta Is ?PFG
Everybody knows the expressions like “he/she is basically a good person,”
“he is a good fellow,” “she is a wicked person,” and similar ones. All lan-
guages have many thousands of words denoting traits and other character-
istics of personality. For example, Allport and Odbert (1936) collected about
18,000 words for personality characteristics from the 1925 Webster’s
Dictionary. Yet, a variety of differences can be found among all terms denot-
ing personality. They differ in the generality or extent of the meaning, in the
frequency that they are used, and so on. Some are frequent, others rare, some
are general, others more specific, some are almost or completely synony-
mous, some are more or less antonymous in relation to others. Above all,
some personality terms have different, often metaphorical content. For the
scientific use, the lexicon of personality terms must be drastically reduced to
the traits or characteristics with precise, accurately defined meanings.
However, this is not sufficient. It is obvious that some personality character-
istics are very complex and general subsuming several others, which are
more specific. “Intelligent” shares the meaning with characteristics as
“clever,” “bright,” “smart,” “keen,” “insightful,” and “inventive” and sub-
sumes the characteristics as having good “memory,” “reasoning,” “compre-
hension,” “logical thinking,” and others. “Extravert” shares or subsumes
traits as “outgoing,” “sociable,” “socially active,” “gregarious,” “lively,” and so
on. Thus, the realm of personality traits is structured across different levels of
generality. It extends from a large number of very specific characteristics to
the very reduced number of very general traits (see Fig. 1.1). The investiga-
tion of the structure of personality characteristics is therefore the first task
of personality psychology. In the decades of personality research, very gen-
eral traits (basic traits) have been successfully identified, for example, the
so-called Big Five in the Five-Factor Model of personality (FFM):
Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness.
Thus, the great majority of lay personality terms are covered by personality
The General Factor of Personality
ISBN 978-0-12-811209-0 © 2017 Elsevier Inc.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811209-0.00001-7 All rights reserved. 3
4 The General Factor of Personality
Figure 1.1 The hierarchy of personality characteristics. Diferent personality character-
istics occupy diferent levels of the hierarchical structure extending from the very gen-
eral dimensions at the top to the very specifc characteristics on the bottom of the
hierarchy.
traits or personality dimensions scientifically defined in psychology. Only
the Big Five, five very general dimensions of personality, contains about
50% of information concerning our entire personality.
It sounds surprising, then, that the most general layperson notion of
personality was not scientifically defined until very recently. In everyday
conversation we hear repeatedly: “Yes, this person is OK,” or “No, this
person is not OK.” What is then the meaning of the “OK personality” or
“not OK personality” in the more professional terms? The general factor
of p ersonality (GFP or “the Big One”; Musek, 2007a) represents the most
probable answer to this question. GFP is even more general as the Big Five,
for it denotes a dimension that comprises their shared or their common
variance. Thus, GFP as dimension of personality is a good candidate for the
scientific definition of “OK versus not-OK person,” the dimension of
personal and social adjustment in the most general sense of the meaning.
As Rushton and Irwing (2011, p. 132) made it clear, “high scores on the
GFP indicate what is meant by someone having a ‘good’ personality; low
scores indicate what is meant by a ‘difficult’ personality, in other words
someone who is hard to get along with. Individuals high on the GFP are
altruistic, agreeable, relaxed, conscientious, sociable, and open, with high
levels of well-being and self-esteem. Because the GFP defines clear positive
and negative poles, it provides potential for understanding the socially
‘advantaged’ (those with high levels of emotional intelligence) as well as the
socially ‘challenged’ (those more likely to suffer a personality disorder). The
GFP can be viewed as a dimension of social effectiveness.”
The Rise of the GFP 5
Hierarchical Organization of Personality Structure
All scientifically acceptable models agree that the structure of personality
is hierarchically organized. For decades, the structural models have been
the focus of personality research. Different models proposed a definite
number of the basic personality dimensions: 16 (Cattell, 1950), 7 (Big
Seven Model: Tellegen & Waller, 1987), 6 (HEXACO Model: Ashton, Lee,
& Son, 2000), 5 (Five Factor or Big Five Model: Digman, 1990; Goldberg,
1981, 1990; John, 1990; McCrae & Costa, 1987), 3 (Eysenck, 1970), or 2
(Digman, 1997). Recently, the accumulating empirical evidence demon-
strated the existence of the GFP, a single yet most general basic dimension
of p ersonality (Musek, 2007a). In the domain of the Five Factor Model,
GFP is characterized by high versus low Emotional Stability (reversely
scored Neuroticism), Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, and
Openness, and by high versus low higher-order factors of personality,
Stability (Alpha factor), and Plasticity (Beta factor). Since the introduction
of the GFP, numerous exploratory and confirmatory multivariate analyses
using different personality measures across different national and cultural
samples confirmed the existence of GFP. They will be discussed in detail
in this book.
Consequently, the existent hierarchical models of personality structure
should be modified to the essential extent. A comprehensive theoretical
model of personality structure was therefore proposed considering the posi-
tion of GFP at the highest level of the structural hierarchy (Fig. 1.2). Thus,
GFP
Secondary
factors
Primary factors
Facets
Questionnaire items
Figure 1.2 The hiehcrar y of eipm ri ylac ed en� d ep sr oilan t y hc carateristisc . GFP sa the
hihg est-oedr r id em sn io n er erp setn s the to p el ev l of the hiehcrar , y ol ew r el ev sl eb i gn
oipuc c e d ssbu eeuq tn yl yb seoc radn y fcatosr , rpiram y fcatosr , feca ts , dna sep ic c� euq s -
tioian er itesm .
6 The General Factor of Personality
the structural hierarchy of personality contains several levels of generality
and ends with the GFP at the apex (the pyramidal model of personality
structure).
THE HISTORICAL PREDECESSORS
Intuitive and Layperson Theory of Personality
As said before, every culture and language uses terms describing different
personalities in maximally robust and general terms: “good or bad person
(fellow, man, woman, guy, etc.).” Beyond any doubt, in the intuitive or lay-
person psychology the idioms depicting “good” or “difficult” personality
are widely used. A good example is the Latin American expression “simpa-
tico,” which means an agreeable, sociable, stable, and virtuous person. The
question arises, therefore, how to define the concept of most general human
personality traits in a more systematic and scientifically acceptable way. Here
starts the historical story of systematic search for the basic dimension of
personality represented by GFP.
Hippocrates, Galen, and Pavlov
The story began with Hippocrates. At first glance, the four types of tem-
perament—sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic—have nothing
to do with the recently discovered GFP. All types of temperament are cat-
egorical classes or nominal categories, which are incompatible with the
modern dimensional concept of GFP. Yet, is it really so? Empirically, it is
clear that the great majority of people cannot be strictly sorted into four
typological categories. The great majority of us are not pure types. Instead,
we all represent a mixture of those types.
Now, we shall inspect the main personality characteristics of
Hippocratic or Galenian types and their empirical combinations. The
sanguine type is emotionally stable and extraverted, the phlegmatic type
is also stable but introverted, the choleric type is unstable and extra-
verted, and the melancholic type is unstable and introverted, according
to the so-called Eysenckian circle (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1958). Thus, we
can imagine that all of us can be positioned on a very general dimension
extending from the sanguine type to the melancholic type (phlegmatic
and choleric being in between). This dimension is very close to the GFP,
provided that high GFP is represented by emotional stability and extra-
version and low GFP is represented by low emotional stability and
introversion (see Fig. 1.3).
The Rise of the GFP 7
Figure 1.3 Hopy theti lac orp ej ctio n of the GFP orca ss the secap of fo ru tepy s of tem -
ep emar tn , ed srcieb d yb Hiop tarc es , Gela ,n dna Polva . v GFP er erp setn s a oc tn i mun
exteidn gn for m the siugna en tepy h( ihg GFP ) to the em hcnal oil c tepy ol( w GFP ,) hp el g -
tam i c dna hc oel ri c tepy eb i gn i n eb tew e.n
Very similar comments can be said in connection with Pavlov’s neuro-
logical revitalization of the Hippocratic-Galenian typology. According to
Pavlov (1955), the sanguine type is characterized by high strength, mobility,
and balance of the nervous system in contrast to the melancholic type,
which has a weak, rigid, and unbalanced nervous system. Both remaining
types, phlegmatic and choleric, have a strong nervous system but differ con-
cerning mobility (phlegmatic rigid, choleric mobile) and balance (phleg-
matic balance, choleric unbalanced). Pavlovian sanguine type is therefore
representative for the high GFP and melancholic type for the low GFP; the
phlegmatic and choleric types are again in between.
Psychoanalysis: Freud and Jung
GFP may be considered as a dimension with characteristics that can be eas-
ily detected in everyday human life. Therefore, it seems very probable that
we can describe GFP in terms of personality theories of both great leaders