Relating the Five-Factor Model of Personality to a Circumplex Model of Affect

Abstract

This chapter examines the relation between the Five Factor Model of personality and momentary affect in five languages, based on a pooled sample of 2070 (N for English = 535, N for Spanish = 233, N for Chinese = 487, N for Japanese = 450, N for Korean = 365). Affect is described with a two-dimensional space that integrates major dimensional models in English and that replicates well in all five languages.Personality is systematically linked to affect similarly (although not identically) across languages, but not in a way consistent with the claim that Positive Activation and Negative Activation are more basic; indeed, Pleasant versus Unpleasant and Activated versus Deactivated came closer to the personality dimensions. Model (FFM) as a consensual descriptive map for assessing personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992;Digman, 1990;Goldberg, 1993;Wiggins & Trapnell, 1997). Much of what psychologists mean by "personality" can be succinctly summarized by the FFM.In a narrow sense, the FFM represents an umbrella of replicable factor structures resulting from hundreds of validation studies conducted in different cultures (McCrae & Costa, 1997) and with different measurement devices (McCrae & John, 1992). The FFM was regarded as "the Christmas tree on which findings of stability, heritability, consensual validation, cross-cultural invariance, and predictive utility are hung like ornaments" (Costa & McCrae, 1993, p. 302). In a broader sense, psychologists are now moving beyond the descriptive structure of the FFM to the Five-Factor Theory (FFT) of personality . This theory promises to serve as a stimulus to an integrated understanding of personality, to organize myriad empirical findings into a coherent story, and to establish connections between personality and all other aspects of the human condition.The present chapter examines the link between the FFM and such momentary affective feelings as happiness, nervousness, and relaxation. One typically feels happy with good news, nervous before an interview, and relaxed on vacation: Affect obviously can be predicted from the immediate context. What is less obvious, one's affect can also be predicted from one's enduring personality traits (Diener, 1984; Larsen & FFM and Affect 4 Ketelaar, 1991;McCrae & Costa, 1991). It is this latter link on which we focus. The viability of the FFT relies partly on its ability to predict and explain affect (as well as behavior, cognition, and other psychological processes). Indeed, some personality dimensions might predict behavior via its associations with affect (Lucas & Fujita, 2000).Some writers believe that Extraversion and Neuroticism are fundamentally affective in nature (Lucas, Diener, Grob, & Suh, & Shao, 2000;Tellegen, 1985;Watson & Clark, 1997) and recent analyses point to the affective nature of the other dimensions of the Big Five as well (McCrae & Costa, 1991;Watson 2000).The study of affect too is enhanced through establishing its link to personality.For instance, our understanding of the nature of affect will depend on th...

On the Relationship Between Circumplexes: Affect and Wiggins' IAS

“…The superfactors of Extraversion and Neuroticism, for example, yield robust relations to affect (Costa & McCrae, 1980Diener & Emmons, 1984;Izard, Libero, Putnam, & Haynes, 1993;McCrae & Costa, 1991;Meyer & Shack, 1989;O'Malley & Gillett, 1984;Thayer, Takahashi, & Pauli, 1988;Warr, Barter, & Brownbridge, 1983;Watson & Clark, 1992, 1997Williams, 1981;Yik & Russell, 2001;Yik, Russell, Ahn, Fernández Dols, & Suzuki, 2002). The question that stimulated our study was how to describe the relation between a specific model of personality, Wiggins' (1995) IAS, and a specific model of affect, Yik et al's (2004) 12-PACS -both of which happen to be circumplexes.…”

Using affective parameters in a content-based recommender system for images

“…Because we model the individual user's preferences with emotive parameters we would like our sample to represent all the users in terms of their heterogeneity of attitude toward emotions. According to Westen (1999) and Yik et al (2002) personality accounts for the individual differences of emotions in motivation and decision making. We thus chose personality as the criterion of the sample's heterogeneity.…”

Chapter 4 Affect as a Psychological Primitive

“…Affect is a central feature in many psychological phenomena, including emotion (Barrett, 2006a,b; Diener, 1999; Russell, 2003), attitudes (e.g., Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994; Eagly & Chaiken, 1998; Ito & Cacioppo, 2001), stereotyping and prejudice (e.g., Cacioppo & Berntson, 2001; Forgas & Fiedler, 1996; Mackie & Hamilton, 1993; Moreno & Bodenhausen, 2001), verbal communication and negotiation strategies (e.g., Forgas, 1998, 1999a,b), judgment and decision-making (e.g., Forgas, 1995; Haidt, 2002; Slovic et al, 2002), predicting the future (e.g., Gilbert & Ebert, 2002; Gilbert et al, 1998), work motivation (e.g., Seo et al, 2004), psychopathology (e.g., Davidson, 2000; Davidson et al, 2002), well-being, (e.g., Davidson, 2004), health (Gallo et al, 2005), and personality (e.g., Revelle, 1995; Watson, 2000; Yik et al, 2002). Core affect provides a common metric (or what neuroeconomists call a “common currency”) for comparing qualitatively different events (Cabanac, 2002), and can serve as the basis for moral judgments of right and wrong (Greene et al, 2001; Haidt, 2001).…”