"To carve nature at its joints": On the existence of discrete classes in personality.

Abstract

In principle, units of personality may be of two varieties: dimensional variables, which involve continuously distributed differences in degree, and class variables, which involve discretely distributed differences in kind. There exists, however, a prevailing and rarely questioned assumption that the units of personality are continuous dimensions and an accompanying prejudice against class variables. We examine this prejudice, the arguments that generated it, and those that uphold it. We conclude that these arguments are applicable to class variables as they often have been explicated, in phenetic terms; by contrast, genetically explicated class variables are not vulnerable to these arguments. We propose criteria for conjecturing and present methods for corroborating the existence of class variables in personality. Specifically, we test a class model of a construct whose conceptual status makes it reasonable to evaluate whether or not the differences between individuals represented by this construct constitute discrete classes. Finally, we examine the implications for conceptualizing and investigating the nature and origins of personality.

Envy and jealousy as discrete emotions: A taxometric analysis

“…First, by locating nature's joints (Gangestad & Snyder 1985) it works against the confl ation of emotions that are in some ways alike, enabling scientifi c advances by unconfounding discrete phenomena. Second, it stimulates study of the undergirding of the category boundaries, such as necessary features or discrete cultural schemata, eliciting conditions or physiological mechanisms.…”

“…However, statistical methods for adjudicating between them are only beginning to see widespread use, largely through the popularization of Meehl and Golden's (1982) taxometric methods. To date there have been several taxometric investigations of psychopathological syndromes ( e.g., Golden & Meehl, 1979;Harris, Rice, & Quinsey, 1994;Haslam & Beck, 1994;Lenzenweger & Korfi ne, 1992;Trull, Widiger, & Guthrie, 1990;Tyrka, Haslam, & Cannon, 1995) and personality variables (Gangestad & Snyder, 1985;Strobe, 1989). Although all of these studies have tested for categories of people, taxometric analysis has also been used in a study of types of social relationship (Haslam, 1994).…”

Brokering Trust to Enhance Leadership: A Self-Monitoring Approach to Leadership Emergence

“…Research suggests that self-monitoring is a stable aspect of personality through the lifespan (Gangestad & Snyder, 1985;Jenkins, 1993, p. 84). A meta-analytic review of the literature on self-monitoring in the workplace concluded that this scale has sound psychometric properties, as evidenced by high levels of internal consistency, reliability, and predictive validity (Day, Schleicher, Unckless, & Hiller, 2002).…”

Komplexität modellieren

“…Thurstone und alle, die seiner ‚amerikanischen Schule' folgten, hielten das initiale orthogonale Faktorenmuster, das eine Zentroid-, Hauptachsen-oder Hauptkomponentenanalyse generiert, für "im allgemeinen nicht interpretierbar" (Überla, 1971, 175) (Fittkau, 1968, Butler, 1969 (Andresen, 1998, p. 74 Hamilton, 1960, Lumsden, 1961, Leventhal & Stedman, 1970 Gangestad & Snyder (1985) und Snyder & Gangestad (1985 (Gorsuch, 1974, p. 191 (Burt, 1954, p. 16). Burt nahm routinemäßig zwar auch eine Umwandlung der bipolaren Initialfaktoren zugunsten einer unipolaren Lösung vor, die er ‚Gruppenfaktorlösung' nannte.…”