Big Five—(also known from the abbreviation—OCEAN or CANOE)

10. Big Five—(also known from the abbreviation—OCEAN or CANOE)

In the previous chapter, I wrote about the 16 primary personality factors discovered by Raymond Bernard Cattell. Finding these factors is connected with a fascinating story of human personality research based on language. This story was created by Cattell and his predecessors, who were, among others, researches mentioned in the previous chapter:
— Francis Galton,
— George E. Partridge,
— M. L. Perkins,
— Ludwig Klages,
— Franciszka Baumgarten (or Franziska Baumgarten-Tramer),
— Gordon Allport,
— Henry S. Odbert.

So, getting to determine 16 primary personality factors was a great job that Cattell himself and his predecessors did. The inspiration for the lexical personality research passed from one researcher to another, creating one large work in total. Work that lasted over 60 years.

However, the history of language-based on personality research does not end with Cattell. Cattell inspired the subsequent researches to continue their work on this topic.

The further history is very rich and has been created by many scientists until the present time. Also, now it is still created by many researches. In this chapter, I will show only a small fragment of this story. And this story will only concern the so-called—Big Five. Apart from the Big Five, other personality typologies were created based on lexical studies.

One of the first scientists who made the history of the Big Five was Donald W. Fiske.

My attention to Fiske’s work was drawn by the so-called Rating Scale. He constructed it in 1949.

This Scale includes 22 variables based on Cattell’s work and brief descriptions of these variables.

I presented Cattell’s variables in the previous chapter. These variables form opposing pairs of different terms.

Fiske chose variables with such characteristics that can be relatively easy to observe in own or someone else’s behavior. According to Fiske, it was easier to assess our own personality or others thanks to these easy observable traits.

Fiske conducted a study involving 128 clinical psychology trainees. This study lasts a week. During this time, trainees and psychologists in groups of several people observed and classified each other using the “Rating Scale”.

Personally, I was very interested in this Scale. Particularly interested, I found the definitions of particular terms, from which 22 variables were made. So, I think the “Rating Scale” is worth recalling.

Finally, Fiske, based on his studies, research, and analysis, identified five primary factors, which are:

• Confident self-expression
• Emotional control
• Conformity
• Social adaptability
• Inquiring intellect

In the case of Cattell’s typology, which I described in the previous chapter, we have 16 personality factors. Fiske, therefore, reduced the number of factors, considering that these primary factors are only 5.

Later, in 1961, this number was confirmed in Ernest C. Tupes' and Raymond E. Christal's research. They conducted 8 personality studies among officers and students of the Air Force Officer Candidate School (OCS) in the USA. They wrote about the purpose of their research as follows:

Tupes and Christal finally identified 5 primary personality factors as well. According to them, these primary factors appeared in each of the eight studies they conducted.

“Tupes and Christal stated that there are “five relatively strong and recurrent factors and nothing more of any consequence” (1961, p. 14).

They described these factors as follows:

Tupes’s and Christal’s work was funded by the US Government. Determining the primary personality factors, among other things, was to be used in the study of the pilots’ personalities for specific tasks or recruitment. Admittedly, their work was not used to study pilots’ personalities. However, their work was a great inspiration to other personality researches.

One of them was Warren T. Norman, who, in my opinion, summed up the effect of Tupes’s and Christal’s work in an interesting way. It means he presented the outcome of their work as a table, which I recall below.

Warren T. Norman has proven to be an extremely diligent researcher. He undertook to verify the lexical research that had been carried out earlier.

According to him, the taxonomy of personality traits should be adequately comprehensive, precise, and well-constructed. This is a necessary condition for the personality trait taxonomy to be used in scientific communication, estimation, and personality theory construction.

Therefore, Norman decided to correct what in the works of his predecessors was done not very precisely and was difficult to replicate. All in all, he conducted the lexical research from scratch. And he did it in a precise and transparent way, that is, in the way, which could be verified and replicated.

Like the precursors of lexical research, Norman uses a dictionary. It was Webster’s Third New International Dictionary from 1961. Norman chose terms relating to personality and behavioral traits. As a result of his selection, Norman chose 18,125 terms. In total, it turned out that these terms were only 171 more than on the Allport and Odbert list, which I mentioned in the previous chapter.

I found an interesting summary of Norman’s selection of terms in an article written by Oliver P. John, Alois Angleitner, Fritz Ostendorf. In this article, we can find the following table:

After selecting the terms above, Norman began an impressive and precise well-documented work to reduce the above list of 18,125 terms.

Finally, Norman, strictly keeping the best scientific standards, distinguished the following five primary personality factors.

• Extraversion
• Emotional stability
• Conscientiousness
• Agreeableness
• Culture.

One of the famous researches associated with the Big Five worked with Norman. He is also the author of the name “Big Five”. This researcher is—Lewis R. Goldberg.

We owe to Goldberg, among other things, the continuation of Norman’s work. Overall, Goldberg’s scientific career is very rich, and he has published many scientific publications.

Apart from his scientific achievements, Goldberg is also unique in his approach to the knowledge about personalities. He believes that it should be easily accessible.

The confirmation of this open Goldberg’s approach to knowledge about personalities is, for example, the open domain—International Personality Item Pool. We can find it at this web address:
https://ipip.ori.org

This domain is open to anyone and can be freely used for research, private, and business purposes.

Unfortunately, a relatively small number of scientists or knowledge promoters believe that knowledge should be readily available. That is why I really like Goldberg’s approach to life. I think he deserves great admiration, recognition, and support for this attitude. May there be more and more people associated with science who have the knowledge about the availability of knowledge that Goldberg has.

For those who would like to see and listen to Lewis R. Goldberg, I recommend an interview that is on the YouTube channel:
#62 Lewis Goldberg: The Development and Scientific Relevance of the BIG FIVE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNVpiFbAk-A

Unfortunately, this is the only interview with Goldberg I have found on the internet. So, it is all the more valuable.

Coming back to the Big Five, many articles and books have been written about it so far. Then, I will no longer refer to other researches who worked or work on the Bit Five.

As a summary, I will use the table, which can summarize research on the Big Five. I found it in the book “Personality Traits” by Gerald Matthews, Ian I. Deary, and Martha C. Whiteman.

In the table above, the letters E, N, C, A, O indicate the Big Five factors. Initially, Roman numbers (I, II, III, IV, and V) were used to mark individual factors. However, letter markings, which are more intuitive to use, are becoming increasingly popular. The above letter therefore means:

• E—Extraversion
• N—Neuroticism (equivalent of Emotional Stability)
• C—Conscientiousness
• A—Agreeableness
• O—Openness (equivalent of Intellect or Culture).

The above letter marking can often be found in the abbreviation OCEAN OR CANOE. This makes it easier to remember the factors that make up the Big Five.

I will use one more quote to summarize this chapter.

I think that now, when I had very briefly and selectively presented the history of the Big Five, I will move on to arranging the primary 5 factors on Mandala of Characters.

From the names mentioned above of individual factors, I decided to choose the following names:

• Surgency or Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
• Emotional Stability or Neuroticism
• Intellect or Culture, or Openness to experience.

When I was arranging the Big Five personality factors on Mandala of Characters, I decided to place them where, I think, they fit best. I analyzed the personality traits with which these factors are described, and I just tried to find some “essence” or “general outline” of the individual factors.

I am aware that such an interpretation of these factors may be debatable. At this point, however, it seems to me that this approach to the Big Five’s factors makes sense. Among other things, because—as we can see in the diagram above—these factors additionally describe the places on Mandala in which they are located.

References: