Towards a synthesis of personality, temperament, motivation, emotion and mental health models within the Circumplex of Personality Metatraits

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Highlights

  • The metatraits constituting the CPM model reveal a circumplex structure.

  • The CPM metatraits exhibit theoretically predicted relations with the Big Five traits.

  • The CPM is a matrix for integrating constructs from various domains of psychology.

Abstract

The paper presents empirical verification of the Circumplex of Personality Metatraits (CPM) that overcomes some problems with the Big Five and enables the integration of various constructs and models developed within many sub-disciplines of psychology. Empirical verification of the model was conducted on a group of 1045 participants in two steps: (1) validation of the model (e.g., the circular arrangement of the metatraits, and relations with the Big Five); (2) verification of the synthesizing potential of this model by testing the predicted locations of temperamental traits, interpersonal traits, values, affects, and mental health constructs within the CPM. It has been found that the CPM can be treated as a matrix accommodating constructs described by circumplex, circular, and noncircular models.

Introduction

The Five Factor Model (FFM), also known as the Big Five, represents the predominant taxonomy of personality traits. It describes the structure of personality as organized within five broad dimensions: Neuroticism (vs. Emotional Stability; N), Extraversion (E), Openness to Experience or Intellect (O), Agreeableness (A), and Conscientiousness (C) (De Raad and Perugini, 2002, Goldberg, 1990, John et al., 2008, McCrae and Costa, 2003). Nowadays, these five personality traits/dimensions are usually interpreted as basic tendencies or dispositions, which form the foundation for characteristic adaptations and other components of personality (McAdams and Pals, 2006, McCrae and Costa, 2003; cf. DeYoung, 2015).

Nevertheless, the FFM is not free from criticism, stemming not only from other personality approaches questioning the usefulness of the very construct of “trait” (Block, 1995, Block, 2010, McAdams, 1992; cf. Digman, 1997), but also from the trait approach. In particular, it seems that the Big Five has not fully satisfied the integrative hopes associated with its fundamental position within personality. The relationship between the Big Five and different dispositions and constructs from other personality components (e.g., characteristic adaptations) takes the form of specific correlations that do not produce a very comprehensive and coherent picture. Also the orthogonality of the five dimensions has been questioned. It has been suggested that they could be reduced, in a hierarchical structure, to higher-order factors (also known as metatraits), giving rise to new proposals for the description of personality structure. One of such proposals is the Circumplex of Personality Metatraits (CPM) developed by Strus, Cieciuch, and Rowiński (2014a). This model overcomes many problems encountered under the FFM, and gives hope for a comprehensive integration of description of the personality trait structure with a number of other models referring to psychological variables, which are narrower, more specific, or dynamic. So far, the CPM and its integrative potential had only the status of theoretical speculations not validated by empirical research. This paper presents the first empirical verification of the CPM model and its integrative capacity.

Section snippets

From five traits to two (or one) metatraits

Over the past years, a considerable body of research has provided strong empirical evidence that the Big Five does not constitute the highest level of personality trait structure (cf. Goldberg, 1993). It has been found that two higher-order factors, Alpha/Stability and Beta/Plasticity (DeYoung, 2006, DeYoung et al., 2002, Digman, 1997), or indeed only one General Factor of Personality (GFP; Musek, 2007, Rushton and Irving, 2011) are located above the five basic dimensions and account for

The Circumplex of Personality Metatraits

The main claims of the CPM (Strus et al., 2014a) can be formulated as follows:

  • (1)

    The metatraits Alpha/Stability and Beta/Plasticity are orthogonal. The observed correlations between them (e.g., Bäckström, 2007, DeYoung et al., 2002, Musek, 2007) are artifacts resulting from evaluative bias or other method factors (cf. Anusic et al., 2009, Chang et al., 2012, DeYoung, 2006, McCrae et al., 2008, Simsek et al., 2012; cf. Danay and Ziegler, 2011, Simsek, 2012, Simsek, 2014).

  • (2)

    Alpha/Stability and

Current study

The goal of the presented study was twofold: empirical validation of the CPM model and verification of its theoretical synthesizing predictions. To that end, it was necessary to develop a measure of CPM metatraits. To date, Alpha and Beta have not been assessed directly, but rather extracted as latent variables from Big Five measures. However, there is a certain disproportion between the wide theoretical meaning of Alpha and Beta and their rather narrow operational meaning, rooted in the shared

Participants

Data for the presented study were collected from a total of 1045 Polish participants, 55% females and 45% males, aged 16–81 years (Mage = 30.3, SDage = 12.5), who were grouped in two samples. Sample 1 consisted of 869 subjects (55.6% females) aged 16–81 years (Mage = 29.4, SDage = 12.3), of whom 26.8% had higher education, 55.8% secondary education, 4.1% vocational education, and 5.2% primary education (educational data were not reported by 8.1%). Sample 2 consisted of 176 respondents (53.4% females)

Descriptive statistics

Table 2 displays means, standard deviations, skewness, and kurtosis for the CPM-Q scales, their correlations with age and educational attainment, as well as t-values comparing the scores of females and males. The results for all eight scales did not substantially deviate from normal distribution. Cronbach’s reliability coefficients indicated high internal consistency of the CPM-Q scales.

Correlations of the CPM metatraits with age are fully consistent with predictions based on the relations of

General discussion

The presented study is the first empirical verification of the CPM model proposed by Strus et al. (2014a), as well as of its integrative potential. Therefore, our two research objectives were empirical validation of the CPM structure and verification of its synthesizing theoretical predictions. To that end, we developed a measure for the metatraits identified in the CPM model. The resulting Circumplex of Personality Metatraits Questionnaire turned out to be a reliable and valid instrument which

Acknowledgments

The work on the paper was supported by Grant 2014/14/M/HS6/00919 from the National Science Centre, Poland.

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