Personality trait dimensions can be categorized or grouped by organizing them into hierarchies, based on their inter-correlations. Broad domains such as those of the Big Five (Extraversion, Conscientiousness, etc.) each incorporating many linked traits, are located near the top of the hierarchy, and very specific patterns of behavior and experience (e.g. being sociable) are located near the bottom. The establishment of these hierarchies has been one of the main concerns of physiologists for close to a century. As mentioned in this research, there are various methods and theories of evaluating and categorizing the Big Five Personality Trait Theory, however, this present research will assess and categorize the Big Five Personality traits using the Big Five Aspect of personality which will be explained in this section as well as its measurement known as the “Big Five Aspect Scale” (BFAS) which will be explained in chapter three. The Big Five Aspect of Personality, developed by DeYoung, Quilty, and Peterson (2007) is a theory that additionally develops the Big Five Personality Traits by categorizing each of the five dimensions into to two “aspects”. The aspects represent a level of precision between the Big Five Personality Traits and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory ‘s facets.
A study conducted in large Canadian and German samples showed that there are two genetic factors that are responsible for the shared variance of the six facet scales that makes up the Big Five in the NEO-PI- (Jang, et al., 2002). Therefore, each of the Big Five domains happens to be theoretically dividable into two subdomains with distinct biological sources. This finding is sufficient enough to motivate research into an intermediate level of personality structure.
Depue and Collins (1999) assessed the literature on Extraversion and noted a major division within that specific domain, between “Agency”, which would make up for social dominance and the enjoyment of leadership roles, assertiveness, exhibitionism, and a personal sense of potency in accomplishing goals,” and “sociability”. A third note that aroused was the traditional conception of Extraversion as “impulsivity” but this was further debated that impulsivity is in fact a compound trait combining Extraversion with low Conscientiousness.
Additional empirical backing for such a division can be found in factor analyses of the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI; McCrae & Costa, 1985, which predated the NEO-PI-R and
which did not incorporate facet scales for Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) These analyses revealed that the Assertiveness and Activity facets of Extraversion divides in a distinct factor from the other four Extraversion facets (Church, 1994; Church & Burke, 1994). This division can be seen in one generally used instrument that is laxly based on the Big Five, the Hogan Personality Inventory. This instrument reflects the dividing the assessment of Extraversion between “Ambition” and “Sociability” scales (Hogan & Hogan, 1992).
Conscientiousness has been defined by Costa, McCrae, and Dye (1991) “as having both proactive and inhibitive aspects”, the proactive aspect which includes traits such as “need for achievement and commitment to work,” and the impulsive aspect that includes such traits as
“moral scrupulousness and cautiousness.” Pragmatic support for a similar division is offered by a research that performed factor analysis of scales from seven major personality inventories, which included only the scales recognized by their authors as theoretically related to Conscientiousness (Roberts, Chernyshenko, Stark, & Goldberg, 2005). The NEO-PI-R and the Abridged Big Five Circumplex scales from the International Personality Item Pool (AB5C-IPIP; Goldberg, 1999) are two instruments that were specifically intended to assess facets of the Big Five. Though Roberts et al (2005) found six factors in total, all but two of the NEO and AB5C facets were actually included within two factors, labeled as “Industriousness” and “Order”, signifying that, at least as defined in Big Five space, Conscientiousness has two primary subdomains. This finding is similar to that of Jackson, et al.(1996), who discovered that a factor solution splitting Conscientiousness into Achievement and Methodicalness was considered to be better than the standard Big Five solution in their instrument, the Personality Research Form.
In terms of the trait, Agreeableness, Ashton and Lee (2005) have noted that two facets of Agreeableness in the NEO-PI-R, Straightforwardness and Modesty, have rather weak loadings on Agreeableness. They confirmed that these two facets were indeed good indicators of a factor labeled “Honesty-Humility” in their six- factor model presented as an alternative to the Big Five.
This finding suggests that the traits of Agreeableness within the Big Five might be distinguishable into two subdomains. Possibly, instead of adding a sixth domain, as Ashton and Lee (Ashton & Lee 2005; Ashton et al., 2004) suggest, one could in its place distinguish between two aspects of Agreeableness at a level of personality organization between facets and domains.
The main debate about the Big Five is focused on how to depict the fifth factor referred to as “Openness”, “Openness to Experience” or “Intellect.” The compound label Openness/Intellect
has become very popular precisely because both labels evidently identify distinct but equally important aspects of the domain (DeYoung, Peterson, & Higgins, 2005; Johnson, 1994; Saucier, 1992). Johnson (1994) stated that two of the theoretical exemplifications of the Openness/Intellect domain, from a factoring perspective, are the Ideas and Aesthetics facets of the NEO-PI-R. Johnson characterized these as representing interests in truth and beauty, correspondingly, which may commence to establish a conceptual distinction between Intellect and Openness.
The different subdomains of Neuroticism have not been given much attention. In evaluating lexical studies of personality structure, nonetheless, Saucier and Goldberg (2001) recognized anxiety/fearfulness and irritability as distinctive trait clusters and implied that irritability is not always considered to be vague within the Neuroticism factor, though it is included within Neuroticism in the NEO-PI-R’s Angry-Hostility facet.
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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
This study used quantitative approach as a means to measure the effect of independent variables towards dependent variables. This chapter focused on the research methodology which comprised of five sections, specifically research framework, research procedure, data collection method, instrumentation, and data analysis method.