Personality has been a topic of interest to people for quite a while and is still a controversial concept. Most of us have will have encountered some sort of personality type questionnaire before (cool, I am a rose, she is a lily, and he is... a bulbasaur?) However, most of those tests have not much use besides being entertaining. Psychology has in general mainly moved away from the concept of type-tests during the past 50 years or so (the only exception being the Myers-Briggs test, which assumes 16 different types and is based on theoretical assumptions about how people experience the world around them).
Instead of type-models psychology currently mainly uses so called "trait"-models. The assumption here is that there are some sort of characteristics on a continuum that can be used to - on a very general level - describe all peoples' behaviour. The two main accepted models are the "Big Five Personality" model and the "HEXACO" model (both are very similar and have significant overlap, but there is disagreement about whether 5 or 6 factors are more appropriate). The relevant point is that studies have shown that the factors (which have been identified using repeated large-scale studies) seem to be relevant in all cultural contexts, are long-term stable after the age of about 12 to 16 years, and have significant predictive power when explaining various other variables. These are the reasons why the model is accepted and used in various contexts in psychology. The factors referred to by the Big Five (spelling out OCEAN) and what they contain are: Open-Mindedness - Intellectual Curiosity, Aesthetic Sensitivity, Creative Imagination Conscientiousness - Organisation, Productiveness, Responsibility Extraversion - Sociability, Assertiveness, Energy Level Agreeableness - Compassion, Respectfulness, Trust Neuroticism - Tendency for Anxiety, Depression, and Emotional Volatility According to the model all people can be described by their levels on the continuum of each trait. Considering these individual and independent scores is seen as more appropriate than trying to fit people to set types. More information on the model and other citations can be found in Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. J Pers Soc Psychol, 113(1), 117-143. doi:10.1037/pspp0000096
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AuthorHi all, my name is Florian. I have played video games most of my life and had the chance to turn my hobby into a study: Thinking about games. Archives
July 2019
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