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Assembling the elephant: Integrating perspectives in personality psychology
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ScienceDirect Physics of Life Reviews 11 (2014) 689–690 www.elsevier.com/locate/plrev
Comment
Assembling the elephant: Integrating perspectives in personality psychology Comment on “Personality from a cognitive-biological perspective” by Y. Neuman Nick Haslam ∗ , Elise Holland School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia Received 17 October 2014; accepted 17 October 2014 Available online 23 October 2014 Communicated by L. Perlovsky
Neuman [1] has made an ambitious attempt to integrate perspectives on the psychology of personality that usually run in parallel. The field calls to mind the fable of the blind men and the elephant: each perspective makes different claims about the person based on the aspect it apprehends. Neuman links cognition, affective neuroscience and psychodynamics in a bold effort to sketch the entire beast. However, his hefty framework has some elephantine elements, and is at times conceptually loose and baggy. Grounding personality in affective neuroscience has significant limitations. Several well-established personality dimensions have little if any affective component, notably Openness and Conscientiousness, the former chiefly associated with intellect and culture and the latter with self-control and inhibition. Neuman’s system fails to capture these dimensions, misrepresenting Conscientiousness (a trait overwhelmingly associated with positive outcomes in work, love and health) as pathological obsessionality and Openness (a trait involving cognitive virtues of imagination and curiosity) as a matter of affective trust. Panksepp’s model of sub-cortical emotion systems is limited as a basis for these more cognitive personality dimensions, which are precisely the ones that are most distinctively human [2]. Neuman spares Panksepp’s model the fierce criticism he directs at trait psychology, despite its much weaker empirical foundation and lack of consensus within its field. Even if his emotion systems rested on an empirical foundation comparable to the Big Five, they represent a model of humankind’s shared affective inheritance whereas personality represents the ways in which people differ. It is not self-evident that our common affective systems reveal the primary dimensions of our individuality. We share Neuman’s belief that the Big Five is an insufficient account of human personality, but his criticism is unbalanced. He attacks a straw man version of trait psychology, assailing it for failing to explain behavior and for being the prisoner of word meanings. These criticisms are specious. Traits are summary descriptions of psychological tendencies [3], not latent explanatory essences [4]. Similarly, the criticism that the Big Five, being initially derived from the lexicon, is simply an artifact of semantic overlap – a criticism prosecuted unsuccessfully before [5] – is DOI of original article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2014.09.002. * Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (N. Haslam). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2014.10.006 1571-0645/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
690
N. Haslam, E. Holland / Physics of Life Reviews 11 (2014) 689–690
belied by the substantial correspondence of trait structure across languages and well-validated links between traits and neurobiological structures and processes. Trait dimensions are descriptive maps, not explanatory theories, but they are maps that help us locate associations between personality and other phenomena. There is nothing circular or merely semantic about the correlation between Conscientiousness and longevity [6], for example. Although it is only a descriptive map, trait structure constrains explanatory models of personality. Any theory whose propositions violate what trait psychology tells us about the covariation of psychological attributes is in trouble. For example, Neuman’s implied two-dimensional model (trust X threat: see Table 3) departs markedly from the structure of individual differences revealed by decades of factor-analytic research (when two higher-order factors are extracted from the Big Five, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness load together, not in opposition as Neuman suggests, and they are on the same factor as Neuroticism, not separate [7]). Similarly, the fact that three of Panksepp’s emotion systems correlate very strongly with one another points to the Neuroticism/Negative Affectivity factor that has been a staple of trait psychology since Eysenck. When Neuman argues that Neuroticism can be explained by the correlation among the ANGER, FEAR and SADNESS systems he puts three carts before the horse: if multiple, redundant emotion systems can be encompassed by one Neuroticism factor then it makes more economical sense for the latter to account for them. We applaud Neuman’s effort to synthesize approaches to personality psychology. His effort would be more impressive still if, instead of dismissing a caricatured version of trait psychology, he integrated its insights as well. References [1] Neuman Y. Personality from a cognitive-biological perspective. Phys Life Rev 2014;11:650–86 [in this issue]. [2] Gosling SD, John OP. Personality dimensions in nonhuman animals: a cross-species review. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 1999;8:69–75. [3] Fleeson W. Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: traits as density distributions of states. J Pers Soc Psychol 2001;80:1011–27. [4] Haslam N, Bastian B, Bissett M. Essentialist beliefs about personality and their implications. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2004;30:1661–73. [5] Romer D, Revelle W. Personality traits: factor or fiction? A critique of the Shweder and D’Andrade systematic distortion hypothesis. J Pers Soc Psychol 1984;47:1028–42. [6] Hill PL, Turiano NA, Hurd MD, Mroczek DK, Roberts BW. Conscientiousness and longevity: an examination of possible mediators. Health Psychol 2011;30:536–41. [7] Digman JM. Higher-order factors of the Big Five. J Pers Soc Psychol 1997;73:1246–56.
ScienceDirect Physics of Life Reviews 11 (2014) 689–690 www.elsevier.com/locate/plrev
Comment
Assembling the elephant: Integrating perspectives in personality psychology Comment on “Personality from a cognitive-biological perspective” by Y. Neuman Nick Haslam ∗ , Elise Holland School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia Received 17 October 2014; accepted 17 October 2014 Available online 23 October 2014 Communicated by L. Perlovsky
Neuman [1] has made an ambitious attempt to integrate perspectives on the psychology of personality that usually run in parallel. The field calls to mind the fable of the blind men and the elephant: each perspective makes different claims about the person based on the aspect it apprehends. Neuman links cognition, affective neuroscience and psychodynamics in a bold effort to sketch the entire beast. However, his hefty framework has some elephantine elements, and is at times conceptually loose and baggy. Grounding personality in affective neuroscience has significant limitations. Several well-established personality dimensions have little if any affective component, notably Openness and Conscientiousness, the former chiefly associated with intellect and culture and the latter with self-control and inhibition. Neuman’s system fails to capture these dimensions, misrepresenting Conscientiousness (a trait overwhelmingly associated with positive outcomes in work, love and health) as pathological obsessionality and Openness (a trait involving cognitive virtues of imagination and curiosity) as a matter of affective trust. Panksepp’s model of sub-cortical emotion systems is limited as a basis for these more cognitive personality dimensions, which are precisely the ones that are most distinctively human [2]. Neuman spares Panksepp’s model the fierce criticism he directs at trait psychology, despite its much weaker empirical foundation and lack of consensus within its field. Even if his emotion systems rested on an empirical foundation comparable to the Big Five, they represent a model of humankind’s shared affective inheritance whereas personality represents the ways in which people differ. It is not self-evident that our common affective systems reveal the primary dimensions of our individuality. We share Neuman’s belief that the Big Five is an insufficient account of human personality, but his criticism is unbalanced. He attacks a straw man version of trait psychology, assailing it for failing to explain behavior and for being the prisoner of word meanings. These criticisms are specious. Traits are summary descriptions of psychological tendencies [3], not latent explanatory essences [4]. Similarly, the criticism that the Big Five, being initially derived from the lexicon, is simply an artifact of semantic overlap – a criticism prosecuted unsuccessfully before [5] – is DOI of original article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2014.09.002. * Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (N. Haslam). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2014.10.006 1571-0645/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
690
N. Haslam, E. Holland / Physics of Life Reviews 11 (2014) 689–690
belied by the substantial correspondence of trait structure across languages and well-validated links between traits and neurobiological structures and processes. Trait dimensions are descriptive maps, not explanatory theories, but they are maps that help us locate associations between personality and other phenomena. There is nothing circular or merely semantic about the correlation between Conscientiousness and longevity [6], for example. Although it is only a descriptive map, trait structure constrains explanatory models of personality. Any theory whose propositions violate what trait psychology tells us about the covariation of psychological attributes is in trouble. For example, Neuman’s implied two-dimensional model (trust X threat: see Table 3) departs markedly from the structure of individual differences revealed by decades of factor-analytic research (when two higher-order factors are extracted from the Big Five, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness load together, not in opposition as Neuman suggests, and they are on the same factor as Neuroticism, not separate [7]). Similarly, the fact that three of Panksepp’s emotion systems correlate very strongly with one another points to the Neuroticism/Negative Affectivity factor that has been a staple of trait psychology since Eysenck. When Neuman argues that Neuroticism can be explained by the correlation among the ANGER, FEAR and SADNESS systems he puts three carts before the horse: if multiple, redundant emotion systems can be encompassed by one Neuroticism factor then it makes more economical sense for the latter to account for them. We applaud Neuman’s effort to synthesize approaches to personality psychology. His effort would be more impressive still if, instead of dismissing a caricatured version of trait psychology, he integrated its insights as well. References [1] Neuman Y. Personality from a cognitive-biological perspective. Phys Life Rev 2014;11:650–86 [in this issue]. [2] Gosling SD, John OP. Personality dimensions in nonhuman animals: a cross-species review. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 1999;8:69–75. [3] Fleeson W. Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: traits as density distributions of states. J Pers Soc Psychol 2001;80:1011–27. [4] Haslam N, Bastian B, Bissett M. Essentialist beliefs about personality and their implications. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2004;30:1661–73. [5] Romer D, Revelle W. Personality traits: factor or fiction? A critique of the Shweder and D’Andrade systematic distortion hypothesis. J Pers Soc Psychol 1984;47:1028–42. [6] Hill PL, Turiano NA, Hurd MD, Mroczek DK, Roberts BW. Conscientiousness and longevity: an examination of possible mediators. Health Psychol 2011;30:536–41. [7] Digman JM. Higher-order factors of the Big Five. J Pers Soc Psychol 1997;73:1246–56.