The General Factor of Personality

Janek Musek

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780128112090
• eBook ISBN: 9780128112496
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Personality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The General Factor of Personality improves our understanding of the personality structure and the relations between major personality dimensions, as well as major dimensions of the entire non-cognitive sphere of psychological variables. The results of the empirical testing and theoretical evaluations in this book contribute to the more comprehensive and precise theoretical framework of the General Factor of Personality (GFP) and that of the entire personality structure. Additionally, the book answers some unresolved questions concerning the nature of the GFP, including whether it is based more on correlations in real behavior or on other less substantial factors between lower-order dimensions of personality. This book is crucially important not only for theoretical reasons, but also for the tremendous practical and applied value of the assumed general dimension of personality. As a common denominator of all the most important fields of personality beyond cognition (Big Five, well-being, coping, emotionality, motivation, self-concept, self-esteem, control, wisdom and others), the GFP represents an extremely strong single predictor of the quality of life, mental health and well-being, career, academic success, and the quality of family and interpersonal relations. - Reviews the theoretical and methodological work on the General Factor of Personality (GFP) - Presents major research results in the field of GFP and the dimensional structure of personality - Provides a balanced and objective approach to the topic of GFP, addressing criticisms and controversies - Considers the practical and applied aspects of this research - Draws conclusions on the bioevolutionary model of GFP to give a more thorough understanding of biological bases of human personality

Section A

Breaking With Dogma

Outline

Chapter 1. The Rise of the GFP

Chapter 2. New Look at the Structure of Personality

Chapter 3. GFP in the Cross-Cultural Context

Chapter 4. The Basic Interpretations and Critical Aspects of the GFP

Chapter 1

The Rise of the GFP

Abstract

Chapter 1 introduces the general factor of personality (GFP), a relatively new concept in psychology. The first sections and subsections of the chapter are focused on the layperson correlates of the GFP, the presentation of historical precursors or forerunners of the conceptions related to the GFP, and the hierarchical organization of the personality structure. In the largest section of the chapter, the aims, rationale, and results of the initial study of GFP (Musek, 2007a) are reviewed. Several exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the existence of the GFP or the Big One within the Five Factor (Big Five) personality domain. A comprehensive theoretical model of personality structure was therefore proposed with the GFP at the apex of the structural hierarchy. The last section of the chapter reviews the results of some meta-analytic studies on the Big Five correlations where the existence of the GFP was also clearly demonstrated.

Keywords

Big Five; Five factors model; General factor of personality; GFP; Personality; Personality dimension; Personality structure

General Factor of Personality—A New Concept in Psychology

What Is GFP?

Everybody knows the expressions like “he/she is basically a good person,” “he is a good fellow,” “she is a wicked person,” and similar ones. All languages have many thousands of words denoting traits and other characteristics of personality. For example, Allport and Odbert (1936) collected about 18,000 words for personality characteristics from the 1925 Webster’s Dictionary. Yet, a variety of differences can be found among all terms denoting personality. They differ in the generality or extent of the meaning, in the frequency that they are used, and so on. Some are frequent, others rare, some are general, others more specific, some are almost or completely synonymous, some are more or less antonymous in relation to others. Above all, some personality terms have different, often metaphorical content. For the scientific use, the lexicon of personality terms must be drastically reduced to the traits or characteristics with precise, accurately defined meanings. However, this is not sufficient. It is obvious that some personality characteristics are very complex and general subsuming several others, which are more specific. “Intelligent” shares the meaning with characteristics as “clever,” “bright,” “smart,” “keen,” “insightful,” and “inventive” and subsumes the characteristics as having good “memory,” “reasoning,” “comprehension,” “logical thinking,” and others. “Extravert” shares or subsumes traits as “outgoing,” “sociable,” “socially active,” “gregarious,” “lively,” and so on. Thus, the realm of personality traits is structured across different levels of generality. It extends from a large number of very specific characteristics to the very reduced number of very general traits (see Fig. 1.1). The investigation of the structure of personality character...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Section A. Breaking With Dogma
• Section B. The Nature and Power of the GFP
• Section C. General Dimensions of Personality and Cognition
• Section D. The Perspective of the Multivariate Research in Personality
• Index