MCCRAE AND COSTA

FIVE-FACTOR TRAIT THEORY

 Personality psychologist are more likely to attribute errant behavior to a person’s enduring traits
o Trait - makes people unique and contribute to the consistency of how they
behave in
different situations over time
 Focus of the study of many personality psychologists, but historically different
psychologists had their own particular list of personality traits they focused
on and
there was little consensus as to what the major dimensions of personality
were
 1980s - there are five major dimensions, namely extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,
neuroticism and openness to experience

Overview of Trait and Factor Theories

 Presently, most researchers who study personality traits agree that five, and only five, and no
fewer
than five dominant traits continue to emerge from factor analytic techniques - mathematical

procedures capable of sifting personality traits from mountains of test data

The Pioneering Work of Raymond B. Cattell

 Was an important figure in the early years of psychometrics
 Born in England ; spent most of his career in the United States
 Only had an INDIRECT influence on McCrae and Costa
o Share techniques and ideas, even if their approaches also had some real differences
 Inductive Method  approach used by Cattell and McCrae & Costa
 they began with no preconceived bias concerning the number or name of
traits
or types
 Deductive Method  they have preconceived hypothesis in mind before they begin to collect
data

o Cattell used three different media of observation to examine people from as many angles
as possible
 L Data - observations made by other people
 Q data - obtained from questionnaires and other techniques designed to allow people to
make subjective descriptions of themselves
 T Data - objective tests which measure performance such as intelligence, speed of
responding, and other such activities designed to challenge people’s maximum performance

 As OPPOSED to McCrae and Costa, the five bipolar factors is limited to responses on
questionnaires

o Cattell divided traits into COMMON TRAITS and UNIQUE TRAITS

 Also distinguished SOURCE TRAITS from trait indicators, or SURFACE TRAITS
 Cattell further classified traits into TEMPERAMENT, MOTIVATION and ABILITY
o Temperament - concerned with how a person behaviors
o Motivation - deals with WHY one behaves
o Ability - refers to HOW FAR or HOW FAST one can perform
o Cattell’s multifaceted approach yielded 35 primary, or first-order, traits, which
measure
mostly the temperament dimension of personality
 23 characterize the normal population and 12 measure pathological dimension
o The largest and most frequently studied of the normal traits are the 16
personality
factors found on the 16PF Questionnaire
 By comparison, the NEO-Personality Inventory of Costa and McCrae
yields
scores only on five personality factors
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY - FEIST OUTLINE/SUMMARY @MJBLara, 2016
BASICS OF FACTOR ANALYSIS
 One begins by making specific observations of many individuals
o Observations are then quantified in some manner
 Next step is to determine which of these variables (scores) are related to which other variables and
to what extent
o Known as CORRELATION COEFFICIENT
 Results of these calculations would require a table of intercorrelations, or a matrix
 Next is to do a FACTOR ANALYSIS
o Account for a large number of variables with a smaller number of more basic dimensions
o Traits  more BASIC dimensions
 Factors that represent a cluster of closely related variables
o We can identify a number of other factors, or units of personality derived through
factor
analysis
 Next is to determine the extent to which each individual score contributes to the various factors
o Factor loading  correlations of scores with factors
 Give us an indication of the purity of the various factors and enable us to
interpret
their meanings

 Traits generated through factor analysis may be either unipolar or bipolar

o Unipolar traits  scaled from zero to some large amount
 E.g height, weight, intellectual ability
o Bipolar traits  extend from one pole to an opposite pole, with zero
representing a
midpoint
 e.g. introversion vs. extroversion
 in order for mathematically derived factors to have psychological meaning, the axes on which
these scores are plotted are usually turned or ROTATED into a specific mathematical
relationship with each other
o advocates of the Five-Factor theory favor the orthogonal rotation

The Big Five: Taxonomy or Theory?

 Their work began as an attempt to identify basic personality traits as revealed by factor analysis
o Soon evolved into a taxonomy and the Five-Factor Model
o After additional, this model became a theory, one that can both predict and
explain
behavior

Biographies of Robert McCrae and Paul T. Costa, Jr.

Robert Roger McCrae
 April 28, 1949 ; Missouri
 Youngest of three children ; Andrew McCrae and Eloise Elaine McCrae
o Grew up with an avid interest in science and
mathematics  Entered MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY to study
philosophy
 After completing his undergraduate degree, he entered graduate school at BOSTON UNIVERSITY
o Major in psychology
o Found himself intrigued by the psychometric work of Raymond Cattell
 Became curious about using factor analysis to search for a simple
method for
identifying the structural traits found in the dictionary
 1960s and 1970s  WALTER MISCHEL was questioning the notion that personality traits are
consistent, claiming that the situation is more important than any personality trait
 McCrae’s work on traits while in graduate school was a relatively lonely enterprise,
being
conducted quietly and without much fanfare
o Well-suited to his own relatively quiet and introverted personality
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY - FEIST OUTLINE/SUMMARY @MJBLara, 2016
  1975  worked as a research assistant with JAMES FOZARD, an adult developmental psychologist
at the Normative Aging Study at the Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic in Boston
o Fozard referred McCrae to Paul T. Costa, Jr. who was at the faculty at
University of
Massachusetts at Boston
 After McCrae completed his PhD in 1976, Costa hired him as project director and co-
principal
investigator for his smoking and personality grant
o They worked together for 2 years, until they both were hired by the National
Institute on
Aging’s Gerontology Research Center
o Costa was hired as the chief of the section on stress and coping, whereas McCrae
took
the position of senior staff fellow

Paul T. Costa, Jr.

 September 16,1942 ; New Hampshire
 Paul T. Costa, Sr. and Esther Vasil Costa
 1964  Undergraduate degree in psychology at Clark University
 University of Chicago - where he obtained his Master’s (1968) and PhD (1970) in human
development
o His longstanding interests in individual differences and the nature of personality
increased
greatly at the University of Chicago
 Worked with SALVATORE R. MADDI with whom he published a book on humanistic
personality
theory
 After receiving his PhD, he taught for 2 years at Harvard and then from 1973 to 1978 at
University of
Massachusetts-Boston
 1978 - worked at the National Institute of Aging’s Gerontology Research Center
 1985 - became president of Division 20 (Adults Development and Aging) of the American
Psychological Association

 The collaboration between Costa and McCrae has been unusually fruitful
o 200 co-authored research articles and chapters
o Works:
 Emerging Lives, Enduring Dispositions (1984)
 Personality in Adulthood: A Five-Factor Theory Perspective
(2003)  Revised NEO Personality Inventory (1992)

In Search of the Big Five

 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Costa and McCrae were building elaborate taxonomies
of
personality traits, but they were not using these classifications to generate testable
hypotheses
o Using factor analytic techniques to examine the stability and structure of personality
o Initially focused on the two main dimensions of neuroticism and
extraversion
 Later added openness to experience

Five Factors Found

 It was not until 1985 did they begin to report work on the five factors of personality
o This work culminated in their new five-factor personality inventory: the NEO-PI
 Revision of an earlier unpublished personality inventory that measure only the
first
three dimensions: N, E and O
 The last two dimensions - agreeableness and conscientiousness - are still the
least
developed scales
  Costa & McCrae did not fully develop the A and C scales until the Revised NEO-
PI
appeared in 1992
 They continued their work of factor analyzing most every other major personality inventory
o Including Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Eysenck Personality Inventory
o Costa and mcCrae reported that Eysenck’sfirst two factors (N and E) are
completely
consistent with their first two factors

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY - FEIST OUTLINE/SUMMARY @MJBLara, 2016

  There were two major and related questions in personality research
o First, with the dozens of different personality inventories and hundred of different
scales,
how was a common language to emerge?
 Everyone had his or her own somewhat idiosyncratic set of personality
variables,
making comparisons between studies and cumulative progress difficult
o Second, what is the STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY?

 The major accomplishment of the Five-Factor Model has been to provide answers to
both
questions stated

 Since the late 1980sand early 1990s, most personality psychologists have opted for the
Five-Factor
Model
o Have been found across a variety of cultures
o Five factors show some PERMANENCE with age
 Adults - in the absence of catastrophic illness such as Alzheimer’s -
tend to
maintain the same personality structure as they grow older

Description of the Five Factors

 McCrae and costa agreed with Eysenck that personality traits are bipolar and follow a bell-
shaped distribution
 Neuroticism (N) and Extraversion (E) are the strongest and most ubiquitous personality traits
o People who score high on NEUROTICISM tend to be anxious, temperamental, self-
pitying,
self-conscious, emotional, and vulnerable to stress-related disorders
 Those who score low on N are usually calm, even-tempered, self-satisfied
and
unemotional
o People who score high on EXTRAVERSION tend to be affectionate, jovial, talkative,
joiners
and fun-loving
 Low E scorers are likely to be reserved, quiet, loners, passive, and lacking the
ability
to express strong emotion
 Openness to Experience (O) distinguishes people who prefer variety from those who have a need
for closure and who gain comfort in their association with familiar people and things
o they consistently seek out different and varied experiences
 people who are not open to experiences will stick with a familiar item, one
they
know they will enjoy
o also tend to question traditional values
 those who score low tend to support traditional values and to preserve a
fixed
style of living
o people HIGH in openness are generally creative, imaginative, curious, and liberal
and
have a preference for variety
 those who score low on openness to experience are typically conventional,
down-
to-earth, conservative and lacking in curiosity
 Agreeableness scale distinguishes soft-hearted people from ruthless ones
o Those who score in the direction of agreeableness tend to be trusting, generous,
yielding,
acceptant, and good-natured
  Those who score in the other direction are generally suspicious, stingy,
unfriendly,
irritable and critical of other people
 Conscientiousness describes people who are ordered, controlled, organized, ambitious,
achievement focused, and self-disciplined
o High on C are hardworking, conscientious, punctual and persevering
 People who score low on C tend to be disorganized, negligent, lazy, and
aimless
and are likely to give up when project becomes difficult

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY - FEIST OUTLINE/SUMMARY @MJBLara, 2016

Evolution of the Five-Factor Theory
 The five factors constituted nothing more than a taxonomy, a classification of basic
personality
traits
o By late 1980s, Costa and McCrae became confident that they and other researchers
had
found a stable structure of personality
 Was an important milestone - the field now had a commonly
agreed-on
language for describing personality
 McCrae and Costa (1996) objected to earlier theories as relying too heavily on clinical
experiences
and on armchair speculation
o “the old theories cannot simply be abandoned: they must be replaced by a new
generation of theories that grow out of the conceptual insights of the past
and the empirical findings of contemporary research”
 This tension was the driving force behind McCrae and Costa developing
and
alternative theory
 The new theory should be able to incorporate the change and growth of the field that has
occurred over the last 25 years as well as be grounded in that current empirical principles
that have emerged from research

Units of the Five-Factor Theory

 Behavior is predicted by an understanding of three central or CORE COMPONENTS and
three
peripheral ones
o CENTRAL COMPONENTS
1. Basic tendencies
2. Characteristic adaptations
3. Self-concept
 Peripheral components
1. Biological bases
2. Objective biography
3. External influences

Core Components of Personality

 There is a dynamic process which indicate a CAUSAL INFLUENCE
o The personality system can be interpreted either cross-sectionally (how the system
operates at any given point in time) or longitudinally (how we develop over the lifetime)
o Each causal influence is dynamic, meaning that it changes over time
1. Basic Tendencies
 One of the central components of personality, along with characteristic adaptations, self-
concept,
biological bases, objective biography, and external influences
 They define the individual’s potential and direction

 In earlier versions, different elements make up basic tendencies

o Include cognitive abilities, artistic talent, sexual orientation, and the
psychological
processes underlying acquisition of language
o In later publications, they focused almost exclusively on the personality traits
2. Characteristic Adaptations
 Acquired personality structures that develop as people adapt to their environment
o Principal difference between basic tendencies and characteristic adaptations is
their
FLEXIBILITY
 Characteristic adaptations can be influenced by external influences
 McCrae and Costa explained the relationship between basic tendencies and characteristic
 adaptations, saying that the heart of their theory “is the distinction between basic
tendencies and
characteristic adaptations, precisely the distinction that we need to explain the stability of
personality”

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY - FEIST OUTLINE/SUMMARY @MJBLara, 2016

  All acquired and specific skills are characteristic adaptations
o How quickly we learn is a basic tendency, what we learn is a characteristic adaptation
o Dispositions and tendencies are the direct influence on our characteristic
adaptations
 Characteristic responses are shaped and molded by basic tendencies
 What makes them CHARACTERISTIC is their consistency and uniqueness
 Basic tendencies are stable and enduring whereas characteristic adaptations fluctuate,
making
them subject to change over a person’s lifetime
o Characteristic adaptations differ from culture to culture
o Basic tendencies are stable, while characteristic adaptations fluctuate
3. Self-Concept
 Is a characteristic adaptation but gets its own box because it is such an IMPORTANT
adaptation  “consists of knowledge, views, and evaluations of the self, ranging from
miscellaneous facts of
personal history to the identity that gives a sense of purpose and coherence to life”
o They influence how one behaves in a given circumstance
 Does self-concept need to accurate?
o The conscious views of people have of themselves are relatively accurate
o Include personal myths as part of a person’s self-concept

Peripheral Components
1. Biological Bases
 The Five-Factor Theory rests on a single causal influence on personality traits, namely biology
o Genes, hormones, and brain structures
o McCrae and Costa have not yet provided specific details about which genes,
hormones
and brain structures play what role in their influence on personality
 This positioning of biological bases eliminates any role that the environment may play
in the
formation of basic tendencies
o Should not suggest that the environment has not role - merely that it has no
direct
influence on basic tendencies
2. Objective Biography
 “everything the person does, thinks, or feels across the whole lifespan”
 Emphasizes what has happened in people’s lives (objective) rather than their view or perceptions
of their experiences (subjective)
o Every behaviors or response becomes part of the cumulative record
 Focus on the objective experiences - the events and experiences one has had over one’s lifetime
3. External Influences
 People constantly find themselves in a particular physical or social situation that has
some
influence on the personality system
o How we respond to the opportunities and demands of the context is what
external
influences is all about
 these responses are a FUNCTION of two things:
1. characteristic adaptations
2. their interaction with external influences
 McCrae and Costa assume that behavior is a function of the interaction between
characteristic
adaptations and external influences
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY - FEIST OUTLINE/SUMMARY @MJBLara, 2016
BASIC POSTULATES
 Each of the components of the personality system (except biological bases) has core postulates

Postulates for Basic Tendencies

 Four postulates:
1. Individuality - adults have a unique set of traits and that each person exhibits a unique
combination of trait patterns
 Precise among of OCEAN that is UNIQUE to all of us, and much of our
uniqueness
results from variability in our genotype
2. Origin - all personality traits are the result solely of endogenous (internal) forces, such as
genetics, hormones and brain structures
 The family environment plays no role in creating basic tendencies
 Such a claim is based mostly on the robust findings from behavioral genetics
that
the five dimensions of personality can be almost exclusively explained by
two
factors, namely (1) genetics and (2) non-shared environment
 Genetic influence is demonstrated by what behavioral geneticists
refer to
as heritability coefficients
 Evidence indicates that identical twins, even if reared in different
environments, show greater similarity in personality than other siblings
 NON-SHARED EXPERIENCES - siblings usually have different
experiences,
friends, and teachers
o E.g. parenting behaviors - a child born three or four years
after
another is being raised in a somewhat different environment
3. Development - assumes that traits develop and change through childhood, but in
adolescence their development slows, and by early to mid-adulthood, change in
personality nearly stops altogether
 Increases in agreeableness and conscientiousness might be helpful as
people age
4. Structure - traits are organized HIERARCHICALLY from narrow and specific to broad and
general
 McCrae and costa’s long-held position that the number of personality
dimensions
is five and only five

Postulates for Characteristic Adaptations

 Over time, people adapt to their environment “by acquiring patterns of thoughts, feelings,
and
behaviors that are consistent with their personality traits and earlier adaptations”
o Traits affect the way we adapt to the changes in our environment
o Our basic tendencies result in our seeking and selecting particular environments
that
match our dispositions
 Maladjustment - suggests that our responses are not always consistent with personal
goals or
cultural values
o E.g. when introversion is carried to an extreme, it may result in pathological social
shyness,
which prevents people from going out of the house or holding down a job
o These habits, attitudes, and competencies that make up characteristic
adaptations
sometimes become so rigid or compulsive that they become maladaptive
 Third characteristic - basic traits may “change over time in response to biological
maturation,
changes in the environment, or deliberate interventions”
 o Recognizes that although basic tendencies may be rather stable over the
lifetime,
characteristic adaptations are not

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY - FEIST OUTLINE/SUMMARY @MJBLara, 2016

Related Research
 Traits have been linked to vital outcomes such as physical health and academic success but
traits
have also been linked to more common, everyday outcomes such as mood

Traits and Academics

 Erik NOftle and Richard Robins (2007)
o Measured traits and academic outcomes of more than 10,000 students
 Self-report questionnaires on the Big Five and asked about their SAT scores,
high
school and college GPAs
o The most important trait for predicting both high school and college GPA
was
conscientiousness
 Students high in conscientiousness are those who, day in and day out, tend
to
make time for studying, know how to study well, and have good
attendance in
class, all of which contribute to doing well in school
 The Big Five traits were not strong predictors of scores on the math section of the SAT, but
openness was related to scores on the verbal section
o Those who score high on openness are imaginative, creative, and can think
broadly,
which can be useful approaches to difficult questions on a test
 Conscientiousness is not a good predictors for SAT scores as SAT is more aptitude and based on
one single test, whereas GPA is more achievement and the product of years of work
 Those who score high on Neuroticism tend to be more anxious and less self-satisfied.. thus, it makes
sense that these people may be more likely to take the SAT over and over again

 Michael Zyphur and colleagues (2007)

o Examined whether those who are high in neuroticism were more likely to retake
the SAT
 Administered a self-report measure of neuroticism to 207 persons and
then
examined the studetns’ transcripts for information of how many times
each student took the SAT
o Those who scored high on neuroticism were more likely to take the SAT multiple times
 Scores on the SAT tend to increase over time so participants in the study
tended to
score higher the second time than the first
 Anxious tendencies of those high in of those high in neuroticism were very
adaptive because it lead them to retake the SAT and score higher than they did

Traits, Internet Use, and Well-being

 Internet use is associated with higher levels of depression and poorer well-being in
teens  Van de As and colleagues (2009)
o Gathered data from 7,888 teens ranging from 11-21years old
 Participants had to complete the Big Five and queried about their internet
use,
loneliness, self-esteem, and depressive moods
 Daily internet use in itself is not directly associated with low well-being
o Any risks of Internet use in terms of well-being are more related to individuals’ tendencies
to use the Internet COMPULSIVELY - to feel unable to stop surfing, be preoccupied with
the Internet, or to have internet use interfering with other duties
o More introverted, less agreeable, and more neurotic adolescents and young adults
were
more likely to score high on compulsive use, and this compulsive use was, in turn,
more
strongly predictive of feelings of loneliness and having depressive symptoms
 Those who tend to be introverted, neurotic and less agreeable might find
face to
 face social interaction less rewarding than their more extraverted, agreeable,
and
emotionally stable peers
 Hypothesized that these young people may end up in a vicious cycle of ever
greater Internet use that may become compulsive, setting themselves up for
lower
well-being

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY - FEIST OUTLINE/SUMMARY @MJBLara, 2016

Traits and Emotion
 Personality traits affect more than success at school and other long-term
outcomes  Traits can also affect the mood a person experiences on a daily basis
o To be high on extraversion is to be fun loving and passionate (both positive
feelings)
whereas to be high on neuroticism is to be anxious and self-conscious (both
negative
feelings)
 Researchers have long considered positive emotion to be the core of
extraversion
and negative emotion to be the core of neuroticism
 Murray McNiel and William Fleeson (2006)
o Examined the causality for the relationships between extraversion and positive
mood and
between neuroticism and negative mood
 One person in the group was instructed to act “bold, spontaneous, assertive
and
talkative”, one person was instructed to act “reserved, inhibited, timid and
quiet”,
and third person received no instructions
 After the group discussion, the participants who were instructed to act
extraverted
or introverted rated their own mood, whereas the neutral observer rater the
mood
of his or her group members
o Participants reported higher positive mood when they were instructed to act
extraverted
than when they were instructed to act introverted
 This suggests that regardless of your natural level of extraversion, just acting
in an
extraverted manner can make you feel better than if you act introverted
 McNiel and Fleeson (2006)
o Effects for neuroticism and negative mood
o As predicted, participants reported being in a worse mood when they acted
neurotic
than when they did not
 Hence, if you are in a bad mood but want to be in a good mood, act extraverted
 Robinson & Clore (2007)
o There are individual differences for the speed with which people process incoming
information, and these differences might influence the relationship between
neuroticism and negative mood
 Speed differences was measured through the STROOP TASK
o Neuroticism should predict daily negative mood, but Robinson and Clore predicted
that
this would be the case only for those who were relatively slow at the categorization
task
(stroop)
 Those who are fast at processing things in their environment do not need to
rely on
traits such as neuroticism to interpret events and thereby cause negative
mood  Fast processors objectively interpret their environment whereas slow
processors are
more subjective in their evaluations by relying on trait dispositions to interpret
events

In summary…
 Even if your traits predispose you toward certain types of behavior, your actions can subvert
those
dispositions