chapter 8, the big five
TRANSCRIPT
1
Chapter 8 of Strangers in a Strange Lab: How Personality Shapes Our Initial Encounters with Others, by William Ickes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
-8-
The Big Five
What, some of you might be asking, is The Big Five? (Hint: It’s not the fingers of your right
hand, Sausage Boy.)
The expression “The Big Five” is used to refer to five fundamental personality
dimensions. However, The Big Five are not—as I once suggested in a satirical moment—
the dimensions of Expansiveness, Greatness, Largess, Bloat, and Humongousness.1 Instead,
they are the dimensions of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism,
and Openness to Experience.2
Where did these dimensions come from and why are they called The Big Five? It’s a long
story, and it begins in the 1930s.3 Gordon Allport, a Harvard psychologist, has embarked
on a most ambitious project. His goal is to lay the foundations for what will become the
new and vibrant field of personality psychology.
Allport is literally inventing the field—making things up as he goes along—until he
gets stuck on two really formidable problems. The first problem is to map out the entire
1 Ickes, W., Wegner, D.M., and Vallacher, R.R. (2007). The Psych•Illogical Dictionary. Manuscript in search of a publisher.2 The simple trick to remembering them is to use an English word formed from the first letter of each of the Big Five dimensions as a mnemonic device. There are two such words, both related to water. That’s right: ocean and canoe.3 For a more detailed account, see John (1990).
2
domain of human personality traits: to “capture” all—or virtually all—of them and not
miss anything important. The second problem, which follows immediately if the first can
be solved, is to decide which of these many personality traits are the most important and
fundamental ones.
To solve the first problem, Allport, in collaboration with his colleague from
Dartmouth College, Henry Odbert, proposes to use “a psycho-lexical approach.”4 To put it
simply, they (or, more likely, a group of undergraduate minions) will scrupulously examine
all of the more than half-million words in the 1925 edition of Webster’s New International
Dictionary. From this colossal compendium of lexical lore, they will cull and categorize all
of the words that appear to refer to human traits. After an extravagant, extended, and
exhausting effort, approximately 18,000 candidate words are identified through this
process, but only a fourth of them (4,500) satisfy Allport and Odbert’s definition of a trait.
Okay, but what do you do with 4,500 trait words? There is little doubt that Allport
and Odbert have identified all—or virtually all—of the trait terms in the English language,
but where do you go from here? Because it’s 1936, there are no computers or electronic
databases with sort options, so it’s a daunting task to try to impose additional structure
onto this very long list of potential traits. As it turns out, Allport and Odbert decide that
they have already done enough. They simply publish their alphabetized list of 4,500 trait
words and leave it to others to do something more with them.
Flash forward to 1943. Raymond Cattell, a British-born personality psychologist
who is now one of Gordon Allport’s colleagues at Harvard, decides to tackle the formidable
4 Allport, G.W., and Odbert, H.S. (1936). Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study. Psychological Monographs, 47, (No. 211).
3
problem of determining which human traits are the most important and fundamental ones.5
His first step is to group the 4,500 trait terms identified by Allport and Odbert (plus 100-
odd terms of his own) into roughly 150 “bipolar clusters” based on their semantic meaning.
For example, words like careful, conscientious, reliable, and responsible are grouped
together to form one “pole” (the positive pole) of a broader and more abstract personality
dimension that has as its other (negative) “pole” a group of words such as careless,
undependable, unreliable, and irresponsible.
This is progress. Going from 4,500 trait words to about 150 broader and more
abstract personality dimensions6 is a good first step. But Cattell isn’t finished. He now
applies the new statistical procedure of factor analysis to a further-reduced set of 35
variables that seem to represent the broadest and most abstract personality dimensions.
Yes, you have a question? What is factor analysis? It’s a statistical procedure that is used to
find the underlying structure in people’s scores on a relatively large set of variables. By
applying statistical formulas to the “raw score” data, the factor analysis procedure groups
the set of variables into bipolar clusters and then identifies their underlying dimensions
mathematically (rather than subjectively).7
Computers and electronic databases still aren’t available in 1943, but Raymond
Cattell is an expert in factor analysis and he manages to get his data analyzed anyway.
Unfortunately, however, he doesn’t document the various analyses he conducts as carefully
as he might have, making it difficult for other researchers to check the accuracy of the
5 Cattell, R.B. (1943). The description of personality: Basic traits resolved into clusters. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38, 476-506.6 This number is an approximation. The exact count is something of a moving target given Cattell’s (1943, 1945a, 1945b, 1947) many conceptual and mathematical manipulations.7 Still confused? Then take a course in psychometrics (psyche = mind, metric = measurement).
4
findings he reports. Adding to that problem, Cattell has difficulty deciding how many of the
resulting “factors” (i.e., personality dimensions) are the most fundamental and important
ones. Just five of them? Twelve? Sixteen? Cattell can’t seem to make up his mind.
Flash forward again—this time to 1963. After twenty years of arguments in
psychology journals about which personality dimensions are really the most important
ones, a new hero emerges in the pages of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.
His name is Warren Norman, and he has just blazed his own well-marked trail across the
immense and arduous terrains that his predecessors have traversed.8 First, to make sure
that Allport and Odbert didn’t miss anything important, Norman has extracted all potential
trait terms (18,125) from the unabridged 1961 edition of Webster’s Third International
Dictionary, this time using even more stringent criteria to limit the final set of trait terms to
1,600. Second, following Cattell’s lead, Norman has sorted nearly all of these 1,600 “stable
trait” terms into 571 synonym sets.
Flash forward to the 1980s. Building on Warren Norman’s work, psychologist Lewis
Goldberg reports a series of meticulously conducted factor-analytic studies.9 The results of
these studies point to the fundamental importance of five broad dimensions of human
personality. Goldberg and his colleagues (along with many other researchers working at
the same time) note that it is hard to make a strong case for more than those five highly-
replicable dimensions. Although different researchers have assigned their own preferred
labels to each of the “Big Five” factors, they eventually agree to use the same standard
labels: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to
Experience. These labels are convenient shorthand for the five personality dimensions they 8 Norman, W.T. (1963). Toward an adequate taxonomy of personality attributes: Replicated factor structure in peer nomination personality ratings. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 574-583.9 See Goldberg (1981, 1990) and Peabody and Goldberg (1989).
5
represent: extraverted-introverted, agreeable-disagreeable, conscientious-careless,
emotionally stability-neurotic, and being open-vs.-closed to new experiences.
Brief characterizations of each of these dimensions are provided in Box 8.1.
Flash forward to the present. The Big Five has become the biggest bandwagon in
the history of personality psychology. Over 2,000 publications (books, book chapters, and
Box 8.1. The Big Five personality dimensions
Extraverted Introverted
Assertive Quiet
Outgoing Withdrawn
Energetic Reserved
Agreeable Disagreeable
Friendly Unfriendly
Warm Cold
Sympathetic Critical
Conscientious Careless
Reliable Unreliable
Organized Disorganized
Trustworthy Irresponsible
Emotionally stable Neurotic
Calm Tense
Relaxed Nervous
Content Worried
Open to experience Closed to experience
Curious Uninterested
Imaginative Unimaginative
Original Conventional
6
journal articles) make reference to the Big Five personality dimensions, and several
questionnaires—each designed to measure the Big Five dimensions—are being
aggressively promoted (and, in some cases, aggressively marketed) by their developers.
(For a version that you can take on line, go to the link for The Big Five Personality Test,
http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/, and follow the instructions.)
A couple of decades ago, the focus of Big Five research started to change. After 40 years of
factor-analytic studies that led to essentially the same conclusion, it began to seem
pointlessly repetitive to continue doing studies of this type.10 So a new wave of researchers
got involved, this time with the goal of seeing how well people’s behavior can be predicted
by their scores on the Big Five personality dimensions.
One sign of this change came in the 1990s, when industrial-organizational
psychologists reported that employees’ scores on the conscientiousness dimension could
be used to predict their future performance across a wide range of occupational settings.11
Agreeableness and emotional stability (the “positive” pole of neuroticism) proved to be
important too, but not as important as conscientiousness.12
A second and more conclusive sign of this change came in 2006, when psychologists
Daniel Ozer and Verónica Benet-Martínez published a review of studies relating people’s
scores on the Big Five to “consequential outcomes.” Although the number of articles they
cited (104) was not large, their review was important in linking people’s scores on the Big
Five dimensions to consequential outcomes such as happiness and subjective well-being,
10 Of course, some people kept on doing them anyway . . .11 See, for example, Barrick and Mount (1991, 1993) and Hogan and Ones (1997).12 See Hogan and Ones (1997, pp. 861-863).
7
physical health and longevity, occupational choice and performance, and volunteerism and
community involvement.13
In that same year of 2006, Ronen Cuperman14 and I were trying to link people’s scores on
the Big Five dimensions to their behavior in initial, unstructured dyadic interactions.
Ronen had the participants in each session report to separate waiting areas, where he
collected Big Five measures from each of them before bringing them together as strangers
in our “waiting room” situation. He then unobtrusively videotaped their initial
interactions, using the procedures I described in Chapter 2. After doing this non-stop for
nearly three semesters, Ronen eventually acquired the data for a relatively large sample of
both same-sex (male-male, female-female) and opposite-sex (male-female) dyads.
What predictions would you make if you were conducting this study? Our first
prediction was actually quite easy to make: we expected to find more significant effects for
the predictors of extraversion and agreeableness than for the remaining Big Five predictors
of conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. This prediction was
justified by the strong consensus among Big Five researchers, supported by commonsense
intuition, that the dimensions of extraversion and agreeableness are particularly relevant
to people’s social behavior, whereas the other three dimensions are more relevant to other
aspects of their lives. Dean Peabody and Lewis Goldberg made this point explicit when
they argued in a 1989 article that extraversion is primarily about interpersonal power;
agreeableness is primarily about love; conscientiousness is about how people work;
13 And to scarier outcomes such as criminality and psychopathology. Not everyone is agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable.14 Remember Ronen? See Chapters 2 and 3.
8
neuroticism is about the kind of affect they experience; and openness to experience is
about the kind of intellect they display. 15
It was more difficult, however, to predict which behaviors would be linked to
extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and so on. Fortunately, however, we could
base our predictions on the findings of a previous dyadic interaction study by psychologists
David Funder and Carl Sneed.16 Like us, Funder and Sneed had collected Big Five data from
the members of a relatively large number of dyads whose initial interactions had been
captured on videotape. Unlike us, Funder and Sneed were interested only in how the dyad
members’ personalities influenced their own behavior (and not in how it influenced their
partner’s behavior). Their study also differed from ours in using groups of trained
observers to provide subjective ratings of each dyad member’s tendency to do such things
as initiate humor, express warmth, offer advice, dominate the interaction, and so on. In
contrast, the trained observers in our study used recording equipment to measure
objectively the frequency and duration of specific interaction behaviors such as talking,
looking, and smiling.
As a resource for helping us make specific behavioral predictions, Funder and
Sneed’s findings were a treasure trove. To give you some idea of the richness of the
findings they reported, I have summarized some of the more relevant ones (relevant for
present purposes, that is) in Table 8.1.
Correlations of rated behavior with the Big Five variable of:
15 Peabody, D., and Goldberg, L.R. (1989). Some determinants of factor structures from personality-trait descriptors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 552-567.16 Funder, D.C., and Sneed, C.D. (1993). Behavioral manifestations of personality: An ecological approach to judgmental accuracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 479-490.
9
Observed-rated behaviorExtraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openness
Is talkative
Speaks in a loud voice
Seems to enjoy interaction
Is reserved and unexpressive
Volunteers little information re self
Has awkward interpersonal style
Expresses warmth
Behaves in a cheerful manner
Laughs frequently
Seems interested in what partner says
Engages in constant eye contact
Shows signs of tension or anxiety
Has awkward interpersonal style
Appears relaxed and comfortable
Discusses philosophical issues
Expresses interest in fantasy, daydreams
.40
.31
.20
-.55
-.26
-.52
.27
.33
.36
.31
.27
.29
.36
.34
-.37
.24
.30
Table 8.1. Correlations of selected observer-rated behaviors with scores on the Big Five measures of extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience in the study by Funder and Sneed (1993).
According to these findings, as people’s extraversion scores increase, they tend to
talk more, speak louder, enjoy their initial interaction more, and disclose more, rather than
less, information about themselves. Extraverted people are also rated as being less
reserved and unexpressive and as having a less awkward interpersonal style than
introverted people.
A different pattern of behavioral correlates applies to the Big Five dimension of
agreeableness. As people’s agreeableness scores increase, they appear to enjoy the initial
10
interaction more, to behave in a more cheerful manner, to express more warmth, and to
laugh more frequently.
As people’s conscientiousness increases, their degree of attentiveness and
responsiveness to their interaction partner are perceived to increase. Specifically,
conscientious people seem be more interested in what their interaction partner has to say.
One way they appear to express this greater interest and attentiveness is by making more
eye contact with their partner.
In contrast to the previous findings, interacting with a stranger seems to be
something of an ordeal for neurotic individuals. As the participants’ neuroticism scores
increase, they are seen as having a more awkward interpersonal style, showing more signs
of tension or anxiety, and appearing less relaxed and comfortable.
Finally, people who score high in openness to experience seek to share new
information and experience in their initial interactions with others. They are perceived as
engaging in more discussion of philosophical issues, and they appear to have a greater
interest in fantasy and daydreams.
Using these findings from the Funder and Sneed study as our “empirical precedents,”
Ronen and I made the following set of predictions for the behavioral and self-report
measures that we had assessed in our study:
Extraversion. The dyad members’ extraversion scores should be positively
correlated with the amount of talking that occurs, with the amount of personal self-
11
disclosure, and with the degree to which the dyad members rate the interaction as
“smooth, natural, and relaxed” as opposed to “forced, awkward, and strained.”
Agreeableness. The dyad members’ agreeableness scores should be positively
correlated with social behaviors that express interpersonal warmth and positive affect.
These behaviors should include smiling, laughing, and eye contact. Agreeableness scores
should also be positively correlated with the degree to which the interaction is rated as
enjoyable.
Conscientiousness. The dyad members’ conscientiousness scores should be
positively correlated with behaviors indicating greater attentiveness and responsiveness to
the interaction partner. These behaviors should include eye contact, verbal
acknowledgments (“Uh-huh,” “Right,” “I see”), and nonverbal acknowledgements (head
nods).
Neuroticism. The dyad members’ neuroticism scores should be positively correlated
with their perceptions of the interactions as being “forced, awkward, and strained,” and
negatively correlated with their perceptions of the interactions as being “smooth, natural,
and relaxed.
Openness to experience. In the Funder and Sneed study, higher scores on the
openness dimension were associated with interest in discussing intellectual and
philosophical topics, including fantasies and daydreams. We were unable to test those
associations with the data that we had collected. However, we could (and did) test the
prediction that people who scored higher on openness to experience would self-disclose
more and initiate more conversation sequences as a way of encouraging their interaction
partners to “open up” and share more of their unique experiences in return.
12
Our tests of these predictions were complicated by the fact that, unlike Funder and
Sneed, who were only interested in how the dyad members’ behavior was influenced by
their own personalities, we were interested in how the dyad members’ behavior was
influenced by their partner’s personalities as well. This interest dictated that we use the
special statistical analysis called the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (or APIM, for
short) that I first mentioned in Chapter 4.17
The first set of APIM results were actor effects, like those reported by Funder and
Sneed. These findings reveal how aspects of the dyad members’ own personalities (their
level of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to
experience) were related to their behavior during the initial interaction in which they
participated. The significant actor effects that Ronen and I found are reported in Table 8.2,
which uses essentially the same format as Table 8.1.
17 In an APIM analysis, the researcher can test for the presence of significant actor effects, partner effects, and actor X partner interaction effects (see Kenny, Kashy, and Cook, 2006). After reviewing the significant actor and partner effects that Ronen obtained in our study, I will introduce the concept of actor X partner interaction effects and then cite examples of these kinds of effects in our data.
13
Outcome measure
Actor effects: Associations of the actor’s behavior
with the actor’s score on the Big Five variable of:
Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openness
Number of speaking turns (talking)
Duration of talking
Conversation sequences initiated
Number of mutual gazes
Duration of mutual gazes
Number of smiles/laughs
Duration of smiles/laughs
Number of verbal
acknowledgements
Number of head nods
Percentage of first-person singular
pronouns (I, me, my, etc.)
Attempted to take the lead in the
conversation
Perceived the interaction as
“smooth, natural, and relaxed”
Perceived the interaction as
enjoyable
Tried to get “in sync” with partner
Felt self-conscious during
interaction
Felt comfortable interacting with
partner
Believed that partner liked him/her
Believed that partner wanted to
interact more with him/her
.23
.29
-.18
.25
.21
-.26
.18
.18
.19
.26
.21
.23
.24
.23
.22
.21
.27
.19
.25
.34
.25
.20
.19
Table 8.2. Associations (standardized betas) of the actor’s interaction behavior with the actor’s scores on the Big Five personality dimensions in the study by Cuperman and Ickes.
14
In most respects, our results were consistent with those reported by Funder and
Sneed, but there is an obvious exception that is worth noting. Funder and Sneed’s findings
emphasize talking as the key behavioral marker of extraverts (see Table 8.1). In their
study, extraverts were perceived by outside raters as talking a lot, in a loud voice, in an
expressive and unreserved way, and volunteering more than a little information about
themselves in the process. In contrast, our data show that extraverts are involved in more
episodes of mutual gaze (i.e., eye contact); and that talking a lot with a stranger is a
behavior that is associated with the Big Five trait of agreeableness rather than with
extraversion.
Can we reconcile this apparent discrepancy? I think we can. I believe that when
Funder and Sneed’s raters reported that extraverts were talkative, they were picking up on
a style of talking that is characteristic of extraverts and that makes them appear to be “big
talkers.” According to our data (see Table 8.2), extraverts have a direct and unself-
conscious interaction style. They make a lot of eye contact when they interact with a
stranger; they report feeling unself-conscious and comfortable during these initial
interactions; and their attention (as indicated by their reduced use of first-person singular
pronouns) seems to be directed outward rather than toward themselves. Rounding out
this picture, the extraverts in our study were self-confident to the point of being brash: they
reported that their partners liked them and wanted to interact more with them in the
future.
Still, it is important to note that, in terms of their actual measured behavior,
extraverts are not more “talkative” than introverts in the sense that they talk more often or
longer. If there is a key behavioral marker of extraversion, it is mutual gaze rather than the
15
frequency or duration of talking. But extraverts probably do give the impression of being
more talkative, as Funder and Sneed’s data suggest, because they have a more direct (high
mutual gaze), more unself-conscious, and more confident style of talking than introverts do.
In my opinion, the take-home message for Big Five theorists is that they should de-
emphasize the amount of talking and give greater emphasis to these newly-documented
aspects of the extraverted interaction style: its directness, its lack of self-consciousness, and
its confident assumption of being liked and accepted by the interaction partner.
With regard to the remaining Big Five dimensions, there are striking similarities
between our findings and those reported by Funder and Sneed. In both studies, agreeable
people appear as friendly, warm, and easy to interact with; conscientious people are ones
who make a lot of eye contact; and neurotic people feel (and look) self-conscious, and—
according to our data—work harder at trying to “get in sync” with a new acquaintance.
Finally, people who are open to experience are interested in other people’s experiences and
insights. In Funder and Sneed’s study, they seemed eager to explore intellectual and
philosophical topics; in our study, they were more likely to introduce new topics for
discussion when the previous ones had stalled out.
The predictions we made weren’t always on target, however. For example, we
found that agreeableness, rather than conscientiousness, was associated with providing
more partner acknowledgments in the form of verbal acknowledgments (Uh-huh, right, I
see, etc.) and nonverbal acknowledgments (head nods). And although openness to
experience was associated with initiating more conversation sequences, as we had
predicted, it was not associated with more personal self-disclosures.
16
Because the Funder and Sneed study examined actor effects, its findings helped us make
predictions about how the participants’ own scores on the Big Five dimensions should be
related to their behavior in the initial interactions that Ronen and I studied. However,
unlike Funder and Sneed, we didn’t limit ourselves to the study of actor effects; we studied
partner effects and actor X partner interaction effects as well. And because ours was the
first Big Five study to test for these effects, we had no empirical precedents to guide us. So,
as data miners, we found ourselves on new and uncharted ground.
If there were significant partner effects in our data, it meant that the actor’s
behavior was influenced by the partner’s personality. Here’s a simple example. If my
partner’s high level of agreeableness leads her to smile a lot (an actor effect), her
agreeableness-instigated smiling might lead me to smile at her in return (a partner effect).
Before long, the little man behind the curtain has recorded that I am smiling at her a lot,
and because the cause of my behavior can ultimately be traced back to my partner’s
personality, we refer to this type of influence as a partner effect.
As it turned out, Ronen and I found several significant partner effects in our data,
and the majority of them are reported in Table 8.3.
17
Outcome measure
Partner effects: Associations of the actor’s behavior
with the partner’s score on the Big Five variable of:
Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openness
Open and relaxed body posture
Number of speaking turns (talking)
Number of gazes
Duration of gazes
Number of mutual gazes
Duration of mutual gazes
Number of smiles/laughs
Duration of smiles/laughs
Number of verbal
acknowledgements
Number of head nods
Perceived rapport with partner
Rated the partner as self-conscious
Rated the interaction as enjoyable
Felt comfortable interacting with
the partner
Rated the partner as likable
.17
.23
.29
-.17
.18
.19
.22
.26
.25
.18
.19
.20
.25
.21
.19
.25
.34
.19
.20
.14
Table 8.3. Associations (standardized betas) of the actor’s interaction behavior with the partner’s scores on the Big Five personality dimensions in the study by Cuperman and Ickes.
These findings can be interpreted as follows. The more extraverted their partners
were, the more the participants looked at their partners and acknowledged their comments
with verbal acknowledgements such as “uh-huh,” “right,” and “yeah.” But they also tended
to smile less, suggesting that having a highly extraverted partner might have required them
to adopt the somewhat uncomfortable role of being a good and patient listener.
18
In contrast, the more agreeable their partners were, the better the participants
seemed to like it. As their partners’ level of agreeableness increased, the participants
talked, looked, and smiled more; gave their partners more verbal and nonverbal
acknowledgments; rated the interaction as more enjoyable; said they felt greater comfort
and rapport with their partners; and rated their partners as more likable. Clearly, highly
agreeable partners make a very good first impression, eliciting both a high level of
involvement and positive emotional reactions from the new acquaintances with whom they
are paired.
According to the data, as their partner’s level of conscientiousness increased, the
participants made more eye contact with them but were also more likely to rate them as
being self-conscious. Because highly conscientious people are usually concerned about
trying to do everything right, they may have created a lot of opportunities for mutual gaze
by being visually attentive to their new acquaintance and continually trying to do the right
thing. Not surprisingly, perhaps, they may also have communicated their feelings of self-
consciousness while doing so.
The partner’s level of neuroticism was also correlated with how much their new
acquaintances looked at them. But these were unreciprocated glances, not instances of eye
contact—a finding which suggests that highly neurotic partners called more attention to
themselves while showing no discernable tendency to either make or avoid eye contact
while they were being looked at.
Finally, as their partner’s level of openness to experience increased, the participants
displayed a more open and relaxed body posture. Apparently, having a partner who
appears to be open to you—and sincerely interested in learning about your experience—
19
has the effect of making you feel accepted enough to adopt a more open and relaxed body
posture.
In addition to the actor and partner effects that we have just considered, the data from our
study revealed several actor X partner interaction effects. When effects of this type are
found, it typically means that certain actor-partner combinations get along significantly
better (or significantly worse) than the results for the actor and partner effects would lead
us to expect. As in the case of the actor and partner effects that we have just considered,
most of the significant actor X partner interaction effects were found for the Big Five
predictors of extraversion and agreeableness.
With regard to extraversion, there were several actor X partner interactions, and
they all appeared to be telling us the same thing: dyads whose members were similar on
the dimension of extraversion (i.e., those composed of two extraverts and those composed
of two introverts) had better interactions than dyads whose members were dissimilar on
the dimension of extraversion (i.e., those composed of an extravert paired with an
introvert. These differences are illustrated in the set of graphs that appear in Figure 8.1.
As the graphs in this figure show, the participants talked more, felt more rapport, and
wanted to interact with each other more in the dyads where they were both introverted or
both extraverted than in the dyads where one person was introverted and the other person
was extraverted.
20
22
24
26
28
30
32
34
36
Actor introverted Actor extraverted
Num
ber
of s
peak
ing
turn
sPartner introverted
Partner extraverted
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Actor introverted Actor extraverted
Per
ceiv
ed r
appo
rt w
ith p
artn
er
Partner introverted
Partner extraverted
4.5
5.0
5.5
6.0
6.5
7.0
7.5
Actor introverted Actor extraverted
Wan
ts to
inte
ract
mor
e w
ith p
artn
er
Partner introverted
Partner extraverted
Figure 8.1. Actor X partner interactions for extraversion in the study by Cuperman and Ickes (2008).
21
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Actor disagreeable Actor agreeable
Num
ber
of v
erba
l ack
now
ledg
emen
tsPartner disagreeable
Partner agreeable
3537394143454749515355
Actor disagreeable Actor agreeable
Per
ceiv
ed r
appo
rt w
ith p
artn
er
Partner disagreeable
Partner agreeable
3.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
5.5
6.0
6.5
7.0
7.5
Actor disagreeable Actor agreeable
Wan
ts to
inte
ract
mor
e w
ith p
artn
er
Partner disagreeable
Partner agreeable
Figure 8.2. Actor X partner interactions for agreeableness in the study by Cuperman and Ickes (2008).
22
With regard to agreeableness, the actor X partner interactions took a
characteristically different form. They revealed that the initial interactions of two
“disagreeable” people were distinctively poor compared to the initial interactions of the
other dyad types. These differences are illustrated in the set of graphs that appear in
Figure 8.2. As the graphs in this figure show, the participants acknowledged each other’s
comments less often, felt less rapport, and wanted to interact with each other less in the
dyads where both people were “disagreeable” than in the dyads where both people were
agreeable or in those where an agreeable person was paired with a disagreeable one.
Note that the actor X partner interactions for agreeableness answer the specific
question that was first posed in Chapter 2. Which dyad types get along the best in initial
interactions—those composed of two agreeable people, those composed of two
disagreeable people, or those in which an agreeable person is paired with a disagreeable
one? According to Figure 8.2, the answer to this question is: dyads in which one or both
partners are agreeable. The members of these dyad types get along reasonably well. In
contrast, the members of dyads in which both partners are disagreeable don’t get along
well at all.
Note also that the actor X partner interactions for both extraversion and
agreeableness answer the general question posed in Chapter 1. Which pairs of people get
along the best in initial interactions—those with similar personalities or those with
dissimilar personalities? According to Figures 8.1 and 8.2, the answer to this question is: it
depends on the trait. When the trait is extraversion, dyads whose members have similar
personalities (two extraverts or two introverts) have better initial interactions than dyads
whose members have dissimilar personalities (an extravert paired with an introvert).
23
However, when the trait is agreeableness, things are more complicated. Personality
similarity is associated with uniquely poor interactions for two disagreeable people, but it
seems to be irrelevant for agreeable people, who can get along reasonably well with both
agreeable and disagreeable partners, at least in the context of a brief, initial interaction.18
In other words, the overall pattern of data suggests that sometimes personality
similarity helps the partners’ interaction; sometimes it hurts their interaction; and
sometimes it is more or less irrelevant to their interaction. All possible outcomes can
occur, as we will see more clearly in Chapter 11.
Before we get to that chapter, however, we have a couple of other places to visit
first. We’ll be passing through the badlands of shyness and self-consciousness (Chapter 9)
and the variegated landscapes of self-monitoring (Chapter 10). As we traverse these
challenging terrains, my advice to you is to hunker down (shyness), keep an eye on yourself
(self-consciousness), and be prepared to respond appropriately as the situation changes
(self-monitoring).
Recommended readings
Allport, G.W., and Odbert, H.S. (1936). Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study. Psychological
Monographs, 47, (No. 211).
Cattell, R.B. (1943). The description of personality: Basic traits resolved into clusters.
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38, 476-506.
18 How do agreeable people manage to do this? The answer is found in the actor effect data in Table 8.2. These data show that agreeable people talk, smile, and laugh more, and provide their new interaction partners with more verbal and nonverbal acknowledgements. Apparently, their charm offensive works as well on “disagreeable” strangers as it does on more agreeable ones—at least in the short term.
24
Cuperman, R., and Ickes, W. (2008). Big Five predictors of behavior and perceptions in
initial dyadic interactions: Two extraverts show positive synergy, two
“disagreeables” show negative synergy. Manuscript under editorial review.
Funder, D.C., and Sneed, C.D. (1993). Behavioral manifestations of personality: An
ecological approach to judgmental accuracy. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 64, 479-490.
Goldberg, L.R. (1990). An alternative “description of personality”: The Big-Five factor
structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1216-1229.
John, O.P. (1990). The “Big Five” factor taxonomy: Dimensions of personality in the natural
language and in questionnaires. In L.A. Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of personality:
Theory and research (pp. 66-100). New York: The Guilford Press.
Norman, W.T. (1963). Toward an adequate taxonomy of personality attributes: Replicated
factor structure in peer nomination personality ratings. Journal of Abnormal and
Social Psychology, 66, 574-583.
Ozer, D.J., and Benet-Martínez, V. (2006). Personality and the prediction of consequential
outcomes. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 401-421.
Peabody, D., and Goldberg, L.R. (1989). Some determinants of factor structures from
personality-trait descriptors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 552-
567.