16 Personality Factors - Relationship To Five Factor Models

Relationship To Five Factor Models

In the Fourth (1967) and Fifth (1993) Editions of the 16PF, there were five global factors that seem to correspond fairly closely to the "Big five personality traits." The Big-Five trait of Openness seems to be related to 16PF Openness/Tough-mindedness, The Big-Five trait of Conscientiousness to the 16PF Self-Control, the Big-Five Extraversion to the 16PF Extraversion, the Big-Five Agreeableness/Dis-Agreeablenss to the 16PF Independence/Accommodation, and the Big-Five Neuroticism to the 16PF Anxiety. In fact, the development of the Big-Five factors began by factor-analyzing the original items as the 16PF. and in 1963, W.T. Norman replicated Cattell’s work and suggested that five factors would be sufficient.

However, one big technical difference between Cattell's five Global Factors and popular five-factor models was Cattell's insistence on using oblique rotation in the original factor analyses that defined the traits, whereas Goldberg and Costa & McCrae used orthogonal rotation in their factor analysis, thus simplifying their analyses. Oblique rotation allows the factors to correlate with each other, according to the degree of relatedness found in the underlying data. However, orthogonal rotation restricts the factors from correlating with each other and forces them to be independent.

Although most personality traits are thought to be correlated to one degree or another, using orthogonal factor analysis makes the factors easier for different researchers to understand and to work on statistically in research because the factors are arbitrarily forced to have particular uncorrelated definitions. This is one of the reasons the Big-Five traits have definitions that are slightly different from the original 16PF global factors. Both systems show good correlations between their Extraversion factors; the Big-Five Neuroticism factor correlates fairly well with the 16PF's Anxiety factor; and Big-Five Conscientiousness correlates well with 16PG global Self-Control factor. However, the Big-Five Agreeableness trait is less well-correlated with the 16PF Independence-Accommodation factor, and the Big-Five Openness factor is more limited on scope than the 16PF Openness-Tough-Mindedness Trait. In particular, as seen in the table below, in the 16PF model the primary personality trait of Dominance (Factor E) is strongly located in the Independence/Accommodation global factor which represents a quality of fearless, original thinking and forceful, independent actions. However, other popular big five models consider Dominance as a facet of several Big-Five traits, including Extraversion, Dis-Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Thus the basic trait of Dominance is spread across a range of Big-Five factors with little influence on any one (Cattell & Mead, 2008). Below is a table that shows how the 16 primary factors are related to the five global factors of the 16 Personality Factor theory. Compare with the Hierarchical Structure of the Big Five. Also, note that factor B is considered separate from the other factors because it is not a part of the hierarchical structure of personality in the same way as the other factors.