Six Independent Factors of Personality Variation: A Response to Saucier

Transcription

1 European Journal of Personality DOI: /per.433 Six Independent Factors of Personality Variation: A Response to Saucier MICHAEL C. ASHTON 1 * and KIBEOM LEE 2 1 Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada 2 The University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA, Australia Abstract We address the concerns raised by Saucier about our proposed six-factor structure of personality. First, we dispute Saucier's new interpretation of the Negative Valence factor as a meaningful dimension of personality variation. We explain that Negative Valence terms may distort the structure of personality-descriptive terms, and that the substantive variance of Honesty is weakly correlated with Negative Valence. Also, we point out that our proposed six factors are like the BigFive) roughly orthogonal, and that the occurrence of rotational variants within this six-dimensional space is not problematic. We argue that in terms of comprehensiveness, parsimony, independence of factors, and replicability across languages, our proposed six-factor model so far seems to be the optimal structure of personality characteristics. Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTRODUCTION Saucier 2002) has raised many interesting questions and concerns regarding our proposed model and theoretical interpretation of personality structure Ashton and Lee, 2001). We respond to these questions and concerns below. Our response is divided into two sections: the rst deals with issues related to our dismissal of the `Negative Valence' factor, and the second deals with issues related to the importance of the Honesty factor and to our proposed six-factor structure more generally. NEGATIVE VALENCE AS A PERSONALITY FACTOR? Many of Saucier's 2002) criticisms of our paper are based on our decision to ignore the Negative Valence factor that has sometimes emerged in those lexical studies of personality structure that have included highly evaluative terms within their variable sets. We believe *Correspondence to: Michael C. Ashton, Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada. mashton@spartan.ac.brocku.ca Received 13 September 2001 Accepted 20 September 2001

2 64 M. C. Ashton and K. Lee that the inclusion of such terms has caused massive confusion regarding the structure of personality, so we shall discuss this issue at some length. The meaning of negative valence For many years, researchers interested in the structure of personality excluded primarily evaluative terms from lexical studies of personality structure. The reason for excluding these terms was that they did not describe traits of normal personality variation, and therefore could not be expected to de ne meaningful major dimensions of personality. In spite of this argument, Tellegen and colleagues did include primarily evaluative terms within their lexical studies of personality structure e.g. Tellegen, 1993). They interpreted the factor de ned by `positive valence' terms as indicative of very high self-esteem, and the factor de ned by `negative valence' terms as indicative of very low self-esteem. In our review Ashton and Lee, 2001), we pointed out that the inclusion of these terms is contrary to the logic of lexical studies of personality structure. The idea of these studies is to nd the major axes of personality description, so the inclusion of evaluative terms as potential signs of self-esteem or any other descriptive dimension of personality) is inappropriate; if factors related to self-esteem do exist, then they should be de ned by descriptive terms that indicate a person's level of self-esteem. Saucier 2002) criticized our reason for ignoring lexical studies that include primarily evaluative terms. He dismissed as an `unsubstantiated interpretation' the view of Tellegen and colleagues that the Negative Valence factor indicates an individual's tendency to view oneself negatively, and he argued that the primarily evaluative terms do in fact have descriptive content. By excluding these terms, we might miss some important dimension of personality description. Our response to Saucier's points is as follows. First, the view of Tellegen and colleagues that evaluative terms might reveal factors related to self-esteem was not merely an `unsubstantiated interpretation'. Instead, this view was the primary rationale for the inclusion of evaluative terms; in some sources, Tellegen and colleagues give the selfevaluation argument as the only reason for including these terms see e.g. Tellegen, 1993; Almagor, Tellegen and Waller, 1995). Apparently, the inclusion of evaluative terms was not based on the notion that the descriptive value of these terms, in and of themselves, had somehow been underestimated. This raises the question of how Saucier would interpret the Negative Valence factor. In the past, Saucier see e.g. Saucier and Goldberg, 1998; Saucier, 1997) has considered several possibilities. One possible explanation is that this factor represents truly negative self-evaluations, of the kind suggested by Tellegen and colleagues. A second possibility is that these terms are linked mainly by the fact that they are all heavily skewed, `low base-rate attributes', which may constitute a kind of infrequency scale. A related third possibility is that the factor de ned by these terms is a dimension of `faking bad'. Saucier and Goldberg 1998) suggested that all three explanations may be partly accurate, and Saucier 1997) seemed to favour the interpretations involving `low base-rate attributes'. In contrast to these earlier views, Saucier's 2002) recent interpretation of the Negative Valence factor is radically different. He has now suggested that the Negative Valence factor represents not simply an infrequency-like dimension, but rather a descriptive personality dimension of social deviance, which comprises narrower facets of psychopathy e.g. evil, dishonest, cruel, etc), psychosis e.g. insane), dementia e.g. senile), mental retardation

3 A response to Saucier 65 e.g. retarded, stupid, dumb), and marginalization e.g. homeless). That is, Saucier suggested that individual differences in this dimension represent an inability or unwillingness to conform to social norms, which imply a need for treatment or institutionalization. Saucier could also have added visual impairment to this list, given that the term blind alsode ned the Negative Valence factor Saucier, 1997), and that it has alsobeen a condition associated with institutionalization.) We dispute both the coherence of this `social deviance' factor and its relevance to personality structure. First, we doubt that the proposed facets of social deviance would really show substantial positive intercorrelations, if they were measured by methods that would preclude the emergence of a `low base-rate attributes' factor. For example, suppose that we obtained `internal' ratings see e.g. Peabody, 1987) of the similarity of meaning of the terms evil, insane, senile, retarded, homeless, and blind. Some pairs of these facets might well be rated as being similar, but we doubt that there would be a high level of rated similarity between, for example, evil and senile, o r insane and blind, o r retarded and homeless. In contrast, if we obtained internal ratings for various facets of Honesty or any Big Five factor, there would likely be a strong positive manifold of similarity ratings among the facets of that factor. Completely apart from the issue of whether or not the above facets form a coherent factor, our second problem with Saucier's `social deviance' interpretation of the Negative Valence factor is that most of the proposed facets simply do not represent dimensions of normal personality variation. To understand this, rst consider the six axes that we have proposed as the basic factors of personalityðhonesty and variants of the Big Five factors. Each of these axes can be viewed as a dimension of personality variation, in the sense that people can be located at various points along a continuum from `extremely low' to `extremely high'. It would make perfect sense to describe someone as being exactly `average' in, say, some facet of Extraversion. In contrast to this situation, most of the proposed facets of `social deviance' are not dimensions, or continua, of normal personality variation. The vast majority of people have what is essentially a `zero' level of psychosis, dementia, senility, or organic mental retardation; it does not make sense, for example, to say that someone is `slightly below average', with respect to the population at large, in dementia or in senility. Of course, one could easily imagine a real continuum of `social deviance', de ned by descriptive terms such as rebellious or nonconforming, but this is not the phenomenon that Saucier has described.) Thus, the proposed facets of the `social deviance' factor derived from Negative Valence terms are fundamentally different from the facets of the established descriptive factors. One might argue that we could de ne personality a little more broadly, so that a dimension of normal personality variation would not need to show continuous variation throughout the population. However, there is something else that distinguishes constructs such as psychosis, dementia, senility, and retardation from the Big Five and Honesty, apart from the unusual distributions of the former constructs. This other difference is the fact that these Negative Valence constructs describe conditions that are pathological. As Saucier noted, these conditions can severely impair one's ability to function, often to the extent that institutionalization is required. Note that this is not necessarily the case for psychopathy, which need not be associated with impaired functioning, but we view many of the psychopathy-related terms as descriptors of normal personality variation.) Given that these constructs involve pathological conditionsðnot merely pathological levels of a normally occurring traitðthis essentially eliminates them from consideration as potential dimensions of normal personality variation.

4 66 M. C. Ashton and K. Lee In our view, the Negative Valence factor as described by Saucier probably combines variance due to a) true variance in undesirable, but descriptively meaningful, personality characteristics, b) true variance in rare but non-personality-descriptive conditions, such as blindness or homelessness this source of variance is presumably quite small), c) variance in the tendency to endorse very negative self-evaluations, and d) variance in the tendency to endorse low base-rate terms regardless of meaning i.e. infrequent responding), which may be due either to careless responding or to `faking bad', or both. We believe that c) and d) are primarily responsible for the emergence of this factor, even though some of the truly descriptive characteristics that de ne this factor may well covary e.g. cruel, mean, etc). Thus, our interpretation of the Negative Valence factor is quite close to the earlier view of Saucier 1997; Saucier and Goldberg, 1998), and markedly different from his new view. What terms should be excluded? At this point, we should emphasize that the only important aim of lexical studies of personality structure is to nd the major dimensions of normal personality variation. With this aim in mind, it should be possible to identify several types of term that have noproper place within these lexical studies. First, terms such as insane, senile, and retarded do not describe normal personality variation; instead, they describe conditions that are clearly pathological and that do not show wide variability throughout the population. Second, purely evaluative terms such as good-for-nothing, awful, wonderful, and excellent do not describe any speci c pattern of typical behavioural tendency, and so cannot de ne meaningful factors of personality description. Third, many terms that describe physical appearance e.g. beautiful, gorgeous) do not describe personality; note that even though physical attractiveness may be correlated with some aspects of personality, this does not qualify attractiveness-related terms as personality descriptors. Fourth, there are many miscellaneous terms e.g. blind, homeless) that are obviously not descriptors of personality. Recall that it is inappropriate to include any of the above non-personality-descriptive terms as signs of other personality constructs, such as selfesteem; according to the logic of the Lexical Hypothesis, factors related to this construct should be de ned by terms that describe high or low self-esteem Ashton and Lee, 2001; Boies, Lee, Ashton, Pascal and Nicol, 2001). Of course, there will be some cases in which a term serves some function other than personality description, but might also be considered a personality descriptor. In these cases, some element of subjective judgment may be necessary, but we believe that researchers can probably decide, with a fairly high level of consensus, which terms are suf ciently descriptive of personality to warrant inclusion within lexical studies of personality structure. That is, we believe that terms can be reliably rated with regard to the extent towhich they describe typical behavioural tendencies, versus the extent towhich they are merely used as terms of evaluation, insult, or praise, or as descriptors of some property other than a typical behavioural tendency. Honesty versus Negative Valence Saucier quite correctly pointed out that several versions of the Negative Valence factor have included terms that are related tolow Honesty e.g. dishonest, greedy). A few low- Agreeableness terms, such as violent and cruel, have alsode ned the Negative Valence

5 A response to Saucier 67 factor.) Although this fact is not new, it raises several important questions: why, if Honesty is a meaningful descriptive factor, do low-honesty terms sometimes load on Negative Valence? Moreover, when an Honesty factor emerges in analyses of descriptive terms only, does it merely represent a surrogate of Negative Valence? Conversely, does there really exist a substantive dimension of Honesty, independent of Negative Valence and the Big Five? First, let us explain why low-honesty terms and low-agreeableness terms sometimes load on the Negative Valence factor. Consider the fact that terms such as dishonest and cruel, although highly descriptive, tend to be very undesirable. Consequently, very few people are willing to make high self-ratings on these adjectives. Therefore, individual differences in self-ratings on these terms will partly represent trait variation in `dishonesty' or `cruelty', but will also partly represent variance in the tendency to endorse very undesirable terms, and in the tendency toendorse very low base-rate terms. Now, suppose that a lexical study includes not only undesirable descriptive terms, but also terms that indicate negative evaluation more purely e.g. good-for-nothing, terrible, etc). The undesirable descriptive terms e.g. cruel, dishonest) may correlate substantially with the purely negative-evaluation terms, because of shared variance due to desirability and infrequency. If these correlations are high enough, the undesirable descriptive terms may be `pulled' away from the descriptive factors that they would otherwise de ne on the basis of shared trait variance. That is, low-honesty terms may be `pulled' away from an Honesty factor, and low-agreeableness terms may be `pulled' away from an Agreeableness factor, to load instead on a Negative Valence factor. In the case of the Honesty factor, which tends to be represented by fewer terms than are the rst four of the Big Five, this loss of descriptive terms may be fatal: terms de ning the Honesty factor may be divided up among Negative Valence and various Big Five factors, especially Agreeableness. Consequently, low) Honesty may appear tobe merely an element of Negative Valence. The above explanation is based on the assumption that there exists a substantive dimension of Honesty, but it does not rule out the possibility that the Honesty factor might exist simply as a residual Negative Valence factor when purely evaluative terms are excluded from analysis. If this were true, then we would expect that the Honesty factor would be de ned only by terms that have low means and extreme skew), and that terms with low means and extreme skew) would de ne the Honesty factor exclusively. In this way, the Honesty factor would be analogous to the Negative Valence factor, which is de ned by extremely skewed, low base-rate attributes see e.g. Saucier, 1997; Saucier and Goldberg, 1998). Note that if this situation does occur within a given language, it does not entirely rule out the substantive explanation of the Honesty factor, because it is possible that descriptive terms belonging to a factor could also be the most skewed terms. However, such a nding would certainly cast serious doubt upon the substantive interpretation of the Honesty factor, within that particular language. The evidence from several languages does not support the hypothesis that Honesty is merely a surrogate of Negative Valence. In the Italian Trieste) study by Di Blas and Forzi 1999), descriptive terms having relatively high skew > 1.50) were excluded from analysis; therefore, the Honesty Trustworthiness) factor of that study was not de ned by terms having extreme skew. In the English studies by Peabody 1987; Peabody and Goldberg, 1989), an Honesty Values) factor emerged, even though these studies used judges' internal ratings of trait similarity, which do not share the problem of skewness. In our French study Boies et al., 2001), three of the ve terms

6 68 M. C. Ashton and K. Lee with the highest positive loadings on Honesty, and also three of the ve terms with the highest negative loadings on Honesty, were not among the 30 most skewed of the total set of 388 terms; moreover, the single most skewed term, cruel, was more highly loaded on low Agreeableness than on low Honesty. Similarly, in our Korean study Hahn, Lee, and Ashton, 1999), based on 406 terms, three out of ve of the terms with the highest positive loadings on Honesty Truthfulness), and four out of ve of the terms with the highest negative loadings on that factor, were not among the 30 most skewed terms. The fact that the Honesty factor is usually not explainable as a dimension of extremely skewed, low base-rate attributes indicates that it is not merely an expression of Negative Valence. This latter result brings us to an interesting point: if some of the terms related to low Honesty and low Agreeableness share variance due to undesirable and/or infrequent responding, then this will tend to in ate the correlations between them. That is, shared variance due to`negative Valence' will tend toprevent terms that describe low Honesty e.g. dishonest) from de ning a factor separate from a factor de ned by terms that describe low Agreeableness e.g. cruel). In light of this, the repeated emergence of Honesty as a dimension separate from Agreeableness becomes even more impressive. The evidence from the standard lexical studies described above clearly suggests that Honesty is a meaningful descriptive dimension, but there is another way to evaluate our claim that Honesty is substantially associated with Negative Valence only because of variance in the tendency to endorse undesirable and/or low base-rate terms. If we measure Honesty in such a way that variance due to endorsement of undesirable, low base-rate terms is largely eliminated, leaving only the substantive variance of Honesty, then this measure of Honesty should be only weakly correlated with measures of Negative Valence that exclude Honesty descriptors. This prediction can be tested using data reported by McCrae and Costa 1995), who correlated a Negative Valence scale Tellegen, Grove and Waller, unpublished materials) with the facet scales of the NEO Personality InventoryÐRevised NEO-PI-R; Costa and McCrae, 1992). One of those facet scales, Straightforwardness, represents a reasonably good marker of the lexical Honesty dimension: Ashton, Lee and Son 2000) found that a parallel form of Straightforwardness Goldberg, 1999) correlated 0.51 with lexical Honesty, and less than 0.25 with all of the lexical Big Five factors, even in a ve-factor solution. The Straightforwardness scale possesses a relatively non-skewed distribution, with a scale mean for the adult normative sample that is not far from the theoretical midpoint 21.2 on a scale from 0 to 32; see Costa and McCrae, 1992, Appendix B). This scale should therefore serve as a fairly good measure of the substantive component of Honesty, one that is relatively uncontaminated by variance due to endorsement of undesirable and/or low base-rate items. The correlation between Negative Valence and Straightforwardness was only 0.10 N ˆ 273, McCrae and Costa, 1995, Table 3). Given that this measure of Negative Valence actually does contain a few terms that are relevant to Honesty, this correlation seems surprisingly low; we would have expected a somewhat spuriously) higher correlation as a result of this overlapping content. However, in any case, this result clearly con rms our prediction that measures of the substantive component of HonestyÐmeasures that are also relatively independent of the BigFiveÐare only weakly related to Negative Valence. It is the problem of variance in the tendency to endorse undesirable, low base-rate terms that causes low-honesty terms to be con ated with Negative Valence in lexical studies of personality structure.

7 A response to Saucier 69 Summary We can summarize our response to Saucier's 2002) advocacy of the Negative Valence dimension as follows. First, the interpretation of Negative Valence as a dimension of `social deviance' is entirely new, and completely contrary to the original and misguided) rationale for the inclusion of evaluative terms, which were intended to serve as signs of dimensions related to self-esteem. Second, we argue that Saucier's former interpretation of Negative Valence as a `low base-rate attributes' factor is probably more accurate, given that the terms representing the proposed facets of `social deviance' e.g. evil, retarded ) would be unlikely to show a strong positive manifold of rated similarity in internal rating studies. Third, most of these facets are not, in any case, dimensions of normal personality variation, given that they do not show continuous distributions throughout the population, and that they involve gross pathology. Fourth, the Negative Valence factor may distort the structure of personality as obtained in lexical studies, by `pulling' terms related to low Honesty and low Agreeableness away from their respective substantive factors, as a result of variance due to the endorsement of undesirable, low base-rate terms. Fifth, the Honesty factor has emerged even in cases when a Negative Valence interpretation of that dimension can be ruled out; moreover, questionnaire markers of Honesty are weakly correlated with Negative Valence. Therefore, Honesty is not Negative Valence. Finally, given that primarily evaluative terms do not, by de nition, describe any meaningful dimension of normal personality variation, the inclusion of these terms within lexical studies contributes absolutely nothing to our understanding of the structure of personality. In fact, those terms are likely even to distort our understanding of that structure. HONESTY AND THE SIX-FACTOR STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY Saucier 2002) also criticized our adoption of a six-factor structure of personality characteristics on several other grounds, which we shall organize as follows. 1) He invoked a `slippery slope' argument, whereby the adoption of an Honesty factor would logically be followed by the adoption of many other constructs as factors beyond the Big Five, thereby undermining the parsimony of that model. 2) He claimed that the Honesty factor had never occurred in a six-factor solution alongside the traditional Big Five dimensions. He suggested, with a view to comparisons with his proposed seven-factor solution, that 3) the six-factor solution was not suf ciently replicable across languages, failing to meet the criterion of universal replication, and that 4) the Honesty factor was not suf ciently independent of the Big Five to constitute a sixth major factor. We address these criticisms below. The slippery slope argument Saucier 2002) argued that, should we accept Honesty as a major dimension of personality in addition to the Big Five, we should also need to add other personality traitsðsuch as Religiousness, Spirituality, Prejudice, Humor, Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Culture, and TraditionalismÐbecause the degree to which these traits relate to the Big Five is as low as, or even lower than, that of Honesty. This criticism indicates a serious misunderstanding of our argument. Our suggestion of adding Honesty to the Big Five is not based on the rather weak correlations between Honesty and the Big Five. Instead, this proposal is based on the repeated emergence of

8 70 M. C. Ashton and K. Lee Honesty as a sixth factor in standard lexical studies of personality structure in various languages; that is, Honesty consistently adds a substantial amount of new personality variance to the Big Five space. None of the other constructs listed by Saucier has repeatedly de ned a sixth factor within these lexical studies. Related to this, it is important to note that the content of Honesty is much broader than those personality traits that were listed by Saucier. Note also that at least two personality traits that Saucier listed, Machiavellianism and narcissism, are those that we have previously suggested to be facets of low Honesty: Ashton et al., 2000.) The Honesty factor found in previous lexical studies has been de ned by inter-related, but distinct, facets such as Sincerity e.g. sincere, frank), Fairness/Morality e.g. fair, just, moral ), Humility/ Modesty e.g. at the negative pole, arrogant, conceited, pompous), and lack of) Greed/ Materialism e.g. at the negative pole, greedy, grasping). Unless a proposed major dimension of personality adds substantial variance, encompassing diverse and reasonably distinct personality facets, one cannot justify the addition of the dimension to the Big Five and Honesty, which do meet these conditions. For the above reasons, accepting Honesty as the sixth major dimension of personality does not lead one to a path down a slippery slope. Honesty, the Big Five, and rotationalvariants Saucier 2002) also directed much attention to the rotational variants of the Big Five that emerge alongside the Honesty factor within six-factor solutions. In doing so, he gave the impression that rotational variations of the Big Five were often caused by addition of the sixth factor. On the contrary, these alternative rotations have usually occurred within fouror ve-factor solutions, prior to the emergence of the Honesty factor. For example, consider the Italian Rome) study Caprara and Perugini, 1994), which obtained factors related to irritability and sentimentality i.e. rotated variants of Agreeableness and Emotional Stability), and the French study Boies et al., 2001), which obtained factors related to excitability and fearlessness i.e. rotated variants of Extraversion and Emotional Stability). In both cases, these rotational variations occurred even in ve-factor solutions, before a clear Honesty factor had emerged. This is in any case not an important point, because it is the space de ned by the factors, not the axis locations within that space, that is the essential feature of our proposed six-factor structure. Saucier 2002) also suggested that the Honesty factor had never occurred alongside the Big Five factors, in the sense of factor axes very close to those obtained from English and German lexical studies. Again, given the interchangeability of factor axis locations within a given space, we do not consider this to be an important concern. However, we should point out, as a matter of fact, that there are several languages in which the Honesty factor has emerged along with factors quite similar to the traditional Big Five. One of these is the English language, in which an Honesty Values) factor has emerged in addition to the Big Five within studies of internal ratings based on synonym clusters Peabody, 1987; Peabody and Goldberg, 1989). Two other examples are German Angleitner and Ostendorf, 1989; Ostendorf and Angleitner, 1993) and Hungarian De Raad and Szirmak, 1994; Szirmak and De Raad, 1994), in which the Honesty factor has emerged alongside Big Five dimensions; in both cases, the Big Five differed from the ve-factor versions of these dimensions only insofar as some Agreeableness variance was absorbed by Honesty. In addition, we dispute the claim that the Hungarian and Korean Hahn, Lee, and Ashton, 1999) studies obtained two Extraversion factors; instead, the two factors mentioned by

9 A response to Saucier 71 Saucier are fairly close to the usual Extraversion and Emotional Stability axes, with only a small rotational shift, probably smaller than that of the French solution. Interested readers can verify our claim by consulting the original articles. Saucier's seven-factor solution Saucier 2002) also criticized our suggested six-factor structure of personality variation on the grounds that the six factors were not universally replicable, and that they are not orthogonal. Because these criticisms seem to involve an implicit comparison with Saucier's 2001) own recently suggested seven-factor model, we shall rst describe that seven-factor structure. Saucier 2001; see also Saucier and Goldberg, in press) compared the results of nonstandard lexical studies in Hebrew and Filipino, and concluded that these studies suggest a seven-factor structure of personality. Saucier 2001) has named the seven factors Negative Valence, Talent/Brilliance, Conscientiousness/Order, Altruism/Soft-Heartedness, Hostility/Temper, Fear/Vulnerability, and Gregariousness. In his reply to our article, Saucier 2002) has advocated this seven-factor solution as an alternative to the Big Five, and he has suggested that this seven-factor solution is preferable to the six-factor solution that we have proposed. We now explore some of the similarities and differences between the twostructures. First, as we have explained above, the Negative Valence factor de ned in this case by the English-translated terms bad, corrupt, insane, stupid, and ignorant) is not a meaningful descriptive dimension of personality variation. We therefore discard this dimension and focus on the remaining six, descriptive factors, but we keep in mind the possibility that Negative Valence may have distorted somewhat the structure of those dimensions, particularly by absorbing an element of Honesty variance e.g. corrupt). Next, the Talent/Brilliance and Conscientiousness/Order dimensions are reasonably close to the Big Five Intellect/Imagination and Conscientiousness dimensions. In addition, the Gregariousness factor de ned by the terms talkative, chatty, and noisy versus quiet, silent, and serious) is fairly close to Extraversion. One of the remaining factors, Hostility/Temper de ned by the terms impatient, shorttempered, hot-tempered, irritable, and grouchy), represents a combination of low Agreeableness and low Emotional Stability. This dimension is therefore very similar to one of the three axes that we considered in our theoretical account of the Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Honesty factors. It is with regard to the remaining two factors that this similarity breaks down somewhat. To complete the six-factor space that we have suggested Ashton and Lee, 2001), the two remaining factors would be expected to contain terms related to a) emotionality, sensitivity, and sentimentality i.e. high Agreeableness and low Emotional Stability), and b) fairness, sincerity, and humility i.e. Honesty), respectively. In fact, Saucier's Altruism/ Soft-Heartedness factor is de ned by the terms humble, generous, kind, and helpful versus conceited and sel sh, and the Fear/Vulnerability factor is de ned by the terms fearful, scared, weak, and cowardly versus active and courageous. Thus, the Altruism/Soft-Heartedness factor seems to represent a broad Agreeablenesslike factor, which presumably relates to all three of the altruism-related constructs that we have proposed; interestingly, it does contain humility-related content that has frequently de ned the Honesty factor. The Fear/Vulnerability factor seems to represent a somewhat introverted variant of low Emotional Stability. To make this structure resemble ours more

10 72 M. C. Ashton and K. Lee closely, it would be necessary to add some sentimentality-related content to the Fear/ Vulnerability factor, and to reduce the Altruism/Soft-Heartedness factor somewhat, to a narrower but still rather broad) Honesty dimension. We believe that these structures are fairly similar overall, and might not be very dif cult to reconcile. Universality versus broad replicability Saucier 2002) criticized our suggestion of a six-factor solution on the grounds that it was not universally replicable. Whereas Goldberg 1981) proposed the Big Five as potential lexical universalsðthat is, as personality dimensions that could be found in any languageðthe six-factor solution that we have proposed has emerged from only about 70% of the languages in which standard lexical studies of personality structure have been conducted. Saucier suggested that by relaxing the criterion of universal replication, many other competing structures could also be considered viable. Let us rst consider whether any of the three proposed modelsðour newly proposed six-factor structure, Saucier's 2001) six factors i.e. excluding Negative Valence), or the Big FiveÐmeet the criterion of universal replication. First, our own six-factor structure has not replicated universally, having failed to emerge in the standard lexical studies of Czech Hrebickova, 1995) and English Saucier and Goldberg, 1996). With regard to Saucier's six factors, if we view these as variants of the six dimensions that we have proposed, then the same conclusion obviously applies. If instead we view Saucier's sixfactor solution as one that explicitly excludes the variance of an Honesty factor, then it is clearly less replicable, given that an Honesty factor has emerged in the six-factor solutions obtained in most languages. Finally, the Big Five also fail to meet the universality criterion, as ve-factor solutions have failed to produce an Intellect/Imagination factor in both Hungarian De Raad and Szirmak, 1994 Szirmak and De Raad, 1994) and Italian Trieste) Di Blas and Forzi, 1998, 1999). Therefore, we already know that there is no universally replicated structure involving more than four factors. The above evidence might lead to the suggestion that we should adopt a four-factor solution, which seems to have replicated fairly well within standard lexical studies. However, adopting such a solution would mean discarding a great deal of the variance in many important personality traits related to Intellect/Imagination and Honesty. Thus, if our aim is to obtain a reasonably comprehensive model of personality structure, the criterion of universality must, unfortunately, be abandoned. The failure to nd a model of personality structure that is both comprehensive and lexically universal is somewhat disappointing. However, we should point out a few reasons why lexical studies might not be suf ciently powerful to recover, in every case, all of the major dimensions of personality. First, some of the major dimensions will be `smaller' than others, in the sense of being represented by somewhat fewer terms; note that factors do differ in size even within rotated solutions. Second, languages may differ in the extent to which these smaller dimensions are represented as personality-descriptive terms that are relatively independent of the other dimensions. Third, lexical studies may differ in the extent to which their variable sets under- or over-represent the terms that would strongly and univocally de ne the smaller major factors. As a result of these and other sources of error, it is understandable that some of the major dimensions of personality will sometimes fail to emerge as factors within lexical studies of personality structure. Lexical studies are probably best regarded as `blunt instruments' that will, individually, provide only very rough approximations to the structure of personality.

11 A response to Saucier 73 We suggest that the optimal structural model for personality description can be found by comparing, or `superimposing', the results of lexical studies in several languages. By searching for some solution that replicates across most studies, we can probably nd a satisfactory structure. Our comparison of standard lexical studies suggested rather clearly that a six-dimensional space was the optimal representation, because a similar six-factor space has replicated across a majority of languages. In contrast, the available seven-factor solutions from standard lexical studies have differed across languages. For example, the seventh factor in French was sophistication; in German, creativity; in Italian Rome), sarcasm; in Korean, `laid-back' relaxedness.) Note that there is no justi cation for accepting the Big Five alone as the major dimensions, because the sixth factor has replicated nearly as frequently across languages as has the fth, and with somewhat more consistency of content see Ashton and Lee, 2001, Table 1). Orthogonality Saucier 2002) also raised concerns regarding the apparent lack of orthogonality of the factors in our proposed six-dimensional space, noting that orthogonal factors are usually preferable over oblique factors. We agree with Saucier about the desirability of orthogonal factors, but we believe that the addition of the Honesty factor to the space of the Big Five does not cause a serious departure from the near-orthogonality of the Big Five; moreover, we believe that any slight departure involved is fully justi ed. We now discuss our reasons for these beliefs. First, correlations between Honesty and the variants of the Big Five that are obtained in six-factor solutions are often rather low, only slightly exceeding correlations among the Big Five themselves. For example, Ashton et al. 2000) reported the correlations among Korean adjective marker scales of the Big Five and Honesty N ˆ 670). Four correlations exceeded 0.20: Honesty correlated 0.33 with Emotional Stability and 0.26 with Agreeableness, and Extraversion correlated 0.28 with Intellect and 0.25 with Agreeableness. To give another example, we have now computed adjective scales consisting of the highest-loading adjectives from the six French lexical factors see Boies et al., 2001, Table 2), using the ve highest positive- and negative-loading adjectives for each factor except the nearly unipolar Imagination factor, for which we used eight positive- and two negative-loading adjectives). In this case N ˆ 415), Agreeableness correlated 0.29 with Honesty and 0.21 with Conscientiousness, and Extraversion correlated 0.24 with Emotional Stability and 0.21 with Imagination. The above analyses suggest that at least some expressions of the Honesty factor are nearly independent of the Big Five, but, even if correlations between Honesty and the Big Five are slightly higher than correlations among the Big Five, this leaves us with a choice between two alternatives. On one hand, we can adopt Honesty as a sixth factor of personality, and accept some small additional departure from the ideal of perfect orthogonality. On the other hand, we can reject Honesty as a sixth factor of personality, and thereby ignore a large and widely replicated factor that is likely to have great predictive value and that may be of crucial theoretical signi cance for understanding the nature of the Big Five. Obviously, we think that the former alternative is preferable. At this point it is useful to consider whether Saucier's 2001) proposed dimensions are more truly orthogonal than those that we have proposed. Apparently, questionnaire scales that correlate very highly with the adjective scales constructed by Saucier 2001, Table 6) are moderately intercorrelated: for example, in the NEO-PI-R adult normative sample

12 74 M. C. Ashton and K. Lee N ˆ 1000), Angry Hostility correlated 0.43 with Vulnerability, and 0.34 with Altruism Costa and McCrae, 1992, Appendix F). This suggests that Saucier's six descriptive factors would probably show intercorrelations similar in size to those that occur among the Big Five and Honesty. Therefore, it does not seem that Saucier's proposed structure provides an advantage, in this regard, over the six-factor model that we have suggested. Summary We now summarize our responses to Saucier's 2002) non-negative-valence-related criticisms of our proposed six-factor structure of personality. First, the `slippery slope' argument against the sixth factor is invalid, because Honesty is a broad dimension that is the only non-big Five construct to have repeatedly emerged as a sixth factor in lexical studies of personality structure. Second, although the factor axis locations within the proposed six-factor space are somewhat arbitrary, we note that previous six-factor solutions have sometimes produced vectors that are very close approximations to the traditional Big Five axes. Third, it is already established that there is no universally replicated personality structure involving more than four factors, but the comprehensiveness and replicability of our proposed six-factor structure are superior to those of any structure that omits any of those six sources of variance. Fourth, introducing the Honesty factor does not seriously violate the orthogonality assumption that underlies the Big Five, and any minor, additional departure from orthogonality is fully justi ed by the replicability and size of the sixth factor. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that the six-factor model proposed in our recent article remains the best approximation to the structure of personality characteristics. When representative selections of the personality-descriptive terms of a language are factor analysed, the usual result is a solution containing six roughly orthogonal factors that include variants of Honesty and the Big Five. Arguments in favour of a Negative Valence factor, or against the inclusion of the Honesty factor, are rejected. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We thank Reinout de Vries for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. REFERENCES Almagor M, Tellegen A, Waller NG The Big Seven model: a cross-cultural replication and further exploration of the basic dimensions of natural language trait descriptors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69: 300±307. Angleitner A, Ostendorf F Personality factors via self- and peer-ratings based on a representative sample of German trait descriptive terms. Paper prepared for the First European Congress of Psychology, Amsterdam. Ashton MC, Lee K A theoretical basis for the major dimensions of personality. European Journal of Personality 15: 327±353.

13 A response to Saucier 75 Ashton MC, Lee K, Son C Honesty as the sixth factor of personality: correlations with Machiavellianism, Primary Psychopathy, and Social Adroitness. European Journal of Personality 14: 359±368. Boies K, Lee K, Ashton MC, Pascal S, Nicol AAM The structure of the French personality lexicon. European Journal of Personality 15: 277±295. Caprara GV, Perugini M Personality described by adjectives: generalizability of the Big Five tothe Italian lexical context. European Journal of Personality 8: 357±369. Costa PT Jr, McCrae RR NEO Personality InventoryÐRevised NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five- Factor Inventory NEO-FFI) Professional Manual. Psychological Assessment Resources: Odessa, FL. De Raad B, Szirmak Z The search for the `Big Five' in a non-indo-european language: the Hungarian trait structure and its relationship to the EPQ and the PTS. European Review of Applied Psychology 44: 17±24. Di Blas L, Forzi M An alternative taxonomic study of personality-descriptive adjectives in the Italian language. European Journal of Personality 12: 75±101. Di Blas L, Forzi M Re ning a descriptive structure of personality attributes in the Italian language. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76: 451±481. Goldberg LR Language and individual differences: the search for universals in personality lexicons. In Review of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 2, Wheeler L ed.). Sage: Beverly Hills, CA; 141±165. Goldberg LR A broad-bandwidth, public-domain, personality inventory measuring the lowerlevel facets of several ve-factor models. In Personality Psychology in Europe Vol. 7, Mervielde I, Deary I, De Fruyt F, Ostendorf F eds). Tilburg University Press: Tilburg, The Netherlands; 7±28. Hahn D-W, Lee K, Ashton MC A factor analysis of the most frequently used Korean personality trait adjectives. European Journal of Personality 13: 261±282. Hrebickova M The Structural Model of Personality Based on the Lexical Analysis: A Czech Replication Study of the Five-Factor Model Based on a Comprehensive Taxonomy of Personality- Descriptive Adjectives. Institute of Psychology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic: Brno. McCrae RR, Costa PT Jr Positive and Negative Valence within the Five-Factor Model. Journal of Research in Personality 29: 443±460. Ostendorf F, Angleitner A A German replication study of the Five-Factor Model based on a comprehensive taxonomy of personality-descriptive adjectives. Paper presented at the Sixth Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences, Baltimore, MD. Peabody D Selecting representative trait adjectives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52: 59±71. Peabody D, Goldberg LR Some determinants of factor structures from personality-trait descriptors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57: 552±567. Saucier G Effects of variable selection on the factor structure of person descriptors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73: 1296±1312. Saucier G Going beyond the Big Five. Invited address presented at the 109th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA. Saucier G Gone too farðor not far enough? Comments on the article by Ashton and Lee. European Journal of Personality 16: in press. Saucier G, Goldberg LR Evidence for the Big Five in analyses of familiar English personality adjectives. European Journal of Personality 10: 61±77. Saucier G, Goldberg LR What is beyond the Big Five? Journal of Personality 66: 495±524. Saucier G, Goldberg LR. in press. Lexical studies of indigenous personality factors: premises, products, and prospects. Journal of Personality. Szirmak Z, De Raad B Taxonomy and structure of Hungarian personality traits. European Journal of Personality 8: 95±117. Tellegen A Folk concepts and psychological concepts of personality and personality disorder. Psychological Inquiry 4: 122±130.