Five-Factor Approach
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12/10/11 6:12 PM
Record: 1 Title: Authors: Other Publishers: A contrarian view of the five-factor approach to personality description. Block, Jack, U California, Dept of Psychology, Berkeley, US US: Psychological Review Company US: The Macmillan Company US: The Review Publishing Company PsycARTICLES
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A Contrarian View of the Five-Factor Approach to Personality Description
By: Jack Block Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley Acknowledgement: This article benefited greatly from the counsel of a number of colleagues. I must exculpate them regarding its remaining deficiencies. My especial thanks go to Lew Goldberg, David Harrington, Robert Hogan, Oliver John, Robert McCrae, Philip Shaver, and Auke Tellegen, among others. Preparation of this article was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 16080. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Jack Block, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-1650 During the last decade, the “Big-Five” approach has begun to loom large in the field of personality psychology. It is being said that “rapid progress has been made toward a consensus on personality structure” (Costa & McCrae, 1992d, p. 344). Goldberg (1992) has talked of “a quiet revolution occurring in personality psychology. … An age-old scientific problem has recently begun to look tractable. … Gradually, agreement has been growing about the number of orthogonal factors needed to account for the interrelations among Englishlanguage trait descriptors” (p. 26). The contention is that, via the mathematical method of factor analysis, the basic dimensions of personality description have been “discovered”: “Their number is five, and their nature can be summarized by the broad concepts of Surgency, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability versus Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience” (John, 1990, p. 96). Digman (1990) ,
12/10/11 6:12 PM
Record: 1 Title: Authors: Other Publishers: A contrarian view of the five-factor approach to personality description. Block, Jack, U California, Dept of Psychology, Berkeley, US US: Psychological Review Company US: The Macmillan Company US: The Review Publishing Company PsycARTICLES
Database:
A Contrarian View of the Five-Factor Approach to Personality Description
By: Jack Block Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley Acknowledgement: This article benefited greatly from the counsel of a number of colleagues. I must exculpate them regarding its remaining deficiencies. My especial thanks go to Lew Goldberg, David Harrington, Robert Hogan, Oliver John, Robert McCrae, Philip Shaver, and Auke Tellegen, among others. Preparation of this article was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 16080. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Jack Block, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-1650 During the last decade, the “Big-Five” approach has begun to loom large in the field of personality psychology. It is being said that “rapid progress has been made toward a consensus on personality structure” (Costa & McCrae, 1992d, p. 344). Goldberg (1992) has talked of “a quiet revolution occurring in personality psychology. … An age-old scientific problem has recently begun to look tractable. … Gradually, agreement has been growing about the number of orthogonal factors needed to account for the interrelations among Englishlanguage trait descriptors” (p. 26). The contention is that, via the mathematical method of factor analysis, the basic dimensions of personality description have been “discovered”: “Their number is five, and their nature can be summarized by the broad concepts of Surgency, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability versus Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience” (John, 1990, p. 96). Digman (1990) ,
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