the relationship between attributional style, gender and the five-factor model of personality

The relationship between attributional style, gender andthe Five-Factor Model of personality

Arthur Poropat*

School of Management, Nathan Campus, Griffith University, Queensland 4111, Australia

Received 19 December 2000; received in revised form 10 December 2001; accepted 31 December 2001

Abstract

The Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality has taken a pre-eminent position among factorialdescriptions of personality but has been criticised for its largely atheoretical basis. In response it has beensuggested that the FFM reflects underlying cognitive–affective systems. Attributional style is one of anumber of such systems and has been shown elsewhere to be related to a number of well-established factorsof personality but with apparently different patterns for men and women. This study examined the rela-tionship between attributional style as assessed by the Attributional Style Questionnaire, gender, and theFFM Mini-Markers. The patterns of correlations between ASQ scales and FFM dimensions appeareddifferent for men and women, and three significant gender interactions were observed using multipleregression. Both internal attributional style for positive events and overall attributional style interactedwith gender to predict openness, and hopefulness interacted with gender to predict extraversion. Simila-rities and differences between these findings and those reported elsewhere are discussed. It is suggested thatfurther research exploring the cognitive–affective basis for the FFM is justified and that caution should beused in application of the FFM within applied settings. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Personality; Five-Factor Model; Attributional style; Gender differences; Multiple regression; Interactions

1. Introduction

One major emphasis within personality research has been the ongoing development andapplication of factor analytic models of linguistic trait descriptors (Costa & McCrae, 1992a).Much of this research is ultimately based upon Galton’s (1884) lexical hypothesis that there is anevolutionary advantage in being able to describe the most important ways in which people differ(Buss, 1991), and that therefore natural languages would reflect these differences within theirbasic structure (Allport & Odbert, 1936). Factor analysis of trait descriptors from this and

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other traditions aims to identify the basic structure of traits and hence that of personality bystatistically identifying factors of varying degrees of independence.Several factor systems for personality description have been developed, with the three mostimportant within the English-speaking world being the 16 personality factor system developed byCattell and his team (Cattell, 1943; Cattell, Eber, & Tatsuoka, 1970), Eysenck’s three factorapproach (Eysenck, 1970) and the Five-Factor Model (FFM: Goldberg, 1993; McCrae & Costa,1987). The FFM posits that there are five basic dimensions of personality which are consistentover time, namely extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, conscientiousness and open-ness or culture (Digman, 1990). Of these factor systems the FFM appears to have attained adominant position among researchers although it is fair to say that this status is still open toattack (Hough, 1992; Tellegen, 1993).The chief advantage of the FFM cited by its supporters is its ability to provide an organisingframework for investigating personality (e.g. Goldberg, 1993). A range of researchers have con-sequently used one of the several available FFM instruments to investigate issues such as per-formance at work (Hogan, Hogan, & Roberts, 1996), psychopathology (Costa & McCrae, 1992b)and team performance (Barrick, Stewart, Neubert, & Mount, 1998; Kichuk & Wiesner, 1998).The FFM has also been used to re-examine the structure of alternative models of personality (e.g.Murray’s needs model—Costa & McCrae, 1988; Myers-Briggs Type Indicator—McCrae &Costa, 1989; Eysenck Personality Questionnaire—McCrae & Costa, 1985; Clarke’s AVA (Activ-ity Vector Analysis) model—Goldberg, Sweeney, Merenda, & Hughes, 1996). Similar dimensionsto the FFM have appeared in research conducted in cultures based on languages other thanEnglish such as Filipino and French (McCrae, Costa, del Pilar, Rolland, & Parker, 1998), Italian(Caprara, Barbaranelli, & Comrey, 1995) and Korean (Hahn, Lee, & Ashton, 1999) and versionsof FFM assessments have successfully been developed in German, Dutch, Brazilian, Croatian,Hebrew, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish (Hendriks, Hofstee, & De-Raad, 1999).Despite this wide-ranging research effort focused on the FFM the model is far from being uni-versally accepted. Eysenck (1992, 1993), Cattell (1993) and Kroger and Wood (1993) have allraised concerns about the FFM but Block (1995) provides a particularly substantial critique.Block’s criticisms cover historical and behavioural limitations of the model, but especiallyemphasise the limitations of factor analytic techniques. Some of the limitations discussed byBlock include: biases introduced by selection of the original item-set; the fundamental inde-terminacy associated with attempts to identify the ’real’ factors within an item set (e.g. Are therethree, five or seven factors? Should factors be orthogonal or oblique? How should factors be rotatedif at all?); and the instability of factors from one sample to another, or from one situation to another.One of the themes of Block’s review of FFM research is that the model’s heavily empirical basisdoes not overcome its fundamentally atheoretical nature, a criticism also emphasised from a dif-ferent perspective by Eysenck (1992, 1993). McCrae and Costa (1996) attempt to address thisconcern by situating the FFM within a broader theoretical perspective wherein the FFM repre-sents basic personality tendencies which are reflected by attitudes, emotions, personal biographiesand self-concepts through interaction with external influences. Hogan (1996) takes a differentapproach suggesting that the traits represented by the FFM are indicative of an individual’sreputation, the impression the person gives to others. For Hogan (1996) traits such as thosewithin the FFM are ‘‘only indicators of underlying processes and themes’’ (p. 178) or the ‘‘inneraspects of the self’’ (p. 166).

1186 A. Poropat / Personality and Individual Differences 33 (2002) 1185–1201

Hogan’s perspective has interesting echoes in the ideas of Mischel and Shoda (1998). Mischeland Shoda propose that the apparent paradox of behavioural variability and consistency of per-sonality can be overcome by examining the cognitive–affective systems that underlie both globalpersonality and specific behaviours. For these writers personality theories need to explain howexperiences and behaviours are related to the psychological conditions in which they occur. Per-sonality traits or personal reputation would reflect chronic levels of activation and the stableinter-relationships among aspects of the cognitive–affective systems, and therefore have markedlevels of consistency. Responses to individual situations would show much more variabilitybecause they may activate only aspects of the overall system. It follows from this that directlyobserved consistencies within cognitive–affective systems, Hogan’s underlying processes orthemes, should be correlated with personality traits.Shoda and Mischel (1996) identify five distinct types of cognitive–affective units in what theycall the ‘personality mediating system’ (p. 416): encodings and categories; expectancies andbeliefs; affects; goals and values; competencies and self-regulatory plans. These units cover abroad range of cognitive and affective phenomena which may have any number of inter-rela-tionships and interactions. However among this potential multitude one of the examples of theseunits which Shoda and Mischel especially cite are the ways in which people encode negativeevents (Nolen-Hoeksema, Parker, & Larson, 1994). A considerable amount of research on thisand similar issues has been conducted under the heading of attributional or explanatory style,especially with the aim of understanding the nature of depression and, alternatively, personalcontrol (Peterson, Buchanan, & Seligman, 1995; Peterson, Maier, & Seligman, 1993). GivenShoda and Mischel’s framework it seems reasonable to examine the nature of links betweenattributional style as an exemplar of a cognitive–affective unit and FFM personality traits.Attributions are the thoughts and beliefs people hold about the relationships between variousobservations and events, especially those thoughts and beliefs that seek to explain causal rela-tionships (Munton, Silvester, Stratton, & Hanks, 1999). Research on attributions has a con-siderable history (cf. Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967), but much of the current research onattributional style has been inspired by work on the reformulated learned helplessness model(Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978). This tradition emphasises the ways in which peoplehabitually or consistently explain events or their attributional style (Martinko, 1995). Differentdimensions of attributional style for negative and positive events experienced by an individual areseen as causally related to depression (Peterson et al., 1995).Typically the dimensions of attributional style examined in research settings are: internal/external—whether attributions relate to causes inside or outside the self; stable/unstable—whe-ther attributions are about causes which will persist through time or not; and global/specific—whether attributions affect many or few situations in the person’s life (Peterson, Semmel, vonBaeyer, Abramson, Metalsky, & Seligman, 1982). According to the reformulated learned help-lessness theory an individual who tends to make internal, stable and global attributions aboutnegative events will feel pessimistic and be more prone to depression as a consequence (Peterson,Seligman, Yurko, Martin, & Friedman, 1998). On the other hand, people whose attributionalstyle is internal, stable and global for positive events are considered optimistic and this attribu-tional style appears to protect people from depression (Seligman, 1991).However, Carver (1989) argued that individual dimensions of attributional style should bereported separately because they appear to provide separate levels of prediction. The factor

A. Poropat / Personality and Individual Differences 33 (2002) 1185–1201 1187

structure of the major assessment of attributional style, the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ:Peterson et al., 1982; Peterson & Villanova, 1988), confirms this point. Factor analyses of the ASQhave derived two separate factors for both positive and for negative events. Stable/unstable andglobal/specific for positive events load together, as do stable/unstable and global/specific for negativeevents, while internal/external for positive events and internal/external for negative events remainseparate (Bunce & Peterson, 1997; Corr & Gray, 1996b; Haugen & Lund, 1998). The joint factorof stable/unstable and global/specific for positive events has been labelled ‘hopefulness’ while thecorresponding factor for negative events is called ‘hopelessness’ (Corr &Gray, 1996a). The internality/externality dimensions for positive and negative events are independent but may be related to locus ofcontrol (Rotter, 1990), although this is disputed (Peterson & Stunkard, 1992).Just as with the dimensions of the FFM, attributional style has been shown to predict a varietyof criterion variables such as sales performance (Corr & Gray, 1996a; Seligman & Schulman,1986), academic performance (Schulman, 1995; Yates, Yates, & Lippett, 1995), sports perfor-mance (Rettew & Reivich, 1995), leadership (Farquhar, 1995) job satisfaction (Phelps & Waskel,1994) and depression (Robins & Hayes, 1995). Some of these relationships mirror those betweendimensions of the FFM and these criteria, for example, sales performance is predicted by extra-version, agreeableness and conscientiousness (Hogan et al., 1996), while depression is linked toemotional stability (Nolan, Roberts, & Gotlib 1999; Rusting & Larsen, 1998).Given these common links to criteria of both theoretical and practical value it makes sense toexplore directly the relationship between attributional style as an example of a ‘cognitive–affectiveunit’ and the organising framework of the FFM. However, a literature search of psychology andmanagement journals reported only one study which examined this relationship. Musgrave-Marquart, Bromley, and Dalley (1997) used the Academic Attributional Style Questionnaire(AASQ: Peterson & Barrett, 1987) and the NEO PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992c) in a study onsubstance use among college students. As part of their study they reported a modest correlationbetween attributional style for negative events and conscientiousness, but with none of the otherdimensions of the FFM. However, Musgrave-Marquart et al. (1997) did not report on correla-tions between sub-scales of the AASQ and the FFM and therefore may have limited any rela-tionships by confounding independent factors.Despite this lack of research comparing the ASQ scales and the FFM, various studies havelooked at the relationship between the ASQ and measures of personality especially scales con-ceived as related to psychopathology. Colligan, Offord, Malinchoc, Schulman, and Seligman(1994) used ‘Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations’ (CAVE) to identify an optimism–pes-simism scale among the items of the MMPI. This scale was shown to be reliable and to have goodvalidity in terms of its relationship to the ASQ. A similar approach has been successfully used toscore Thematic Apperception Test protocols (Peterson & Ulrey, 1994), so it appears that attri-butional style is reflected in different types of personality assessment.In their validation study of the ASQ Corr and Gray (1996b) looked at both the structure of theASQ and its relationship to other variables. In particular they compared the ASQ with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). Positiveattributional style scales correlated negatively and negative attributional style scales correlatedpositively with the trait anxiety dimension of the STAI. On the other hand, positive attributionalstyle scales had no relationship to any of the variables of the EPQ in their group of volunteers butwas correlated with extraversion among the group of salesmen studied. Negative attributional


style scales were related to general dysphoria, i.e. they correlated with introversion, neuroticismand psychoticism. The findings with respect to negative attributional style are consistent withunderstandings of the scales used (cf. Eysenck 1970), but it is somewhat surprising that positiveattributional style was unrelated to extraversion in Corr and Gray’s (1996b) volunteer sampleconsidering that extraversion is often conceived of as positive emotionality [see Watson & Clark,(1997) for a review].Bunce and Peterson (1997) compared the ASQ with profiles on the California PsychologicalInventory (CPI), and also examined whether correlations with CPI scales were different for menand women. Their examination of gender differences on these scales was motivated by the dif-fering experiences of depression between men and women. In their study, hopefulness (stable andglobal for positive events) and hopelessness (stable and global for negative events) were related tosocial factors for men, but for women hopelessness was related to well-being. However, the Bunceand Peterson (1997) study can be criticised for failing to take into account the possibility ofincreased Type I errors when reporting a comparatively large number of correlations (228) andcomparisons of correlations between men and women (114), especially considering only three ofthese comparisons were reported to be significantly different. Nonetheless one of the conclusionsfrom their study, that examination of ASQ correlations with personality scales should take gen-der differences into account, deserves to be considered seriously.The FFM itself has yet to be effectively compared with the ASQ, even though the studies dis-cussed raise some implications. It would appear that extraversion is related to positive attribu-tional style but especially for men. Emotional stability (the opposite pole to neuroticism) shouldbe linked to negative attributional style because of their common relationship to depression(Nolan et al., 1999; Peterson et al., 1995; Rusting & Larsen, 1998). However, it is difficult topredict if openness will be related to the ASQ on the basis of the studies conducted so far.In light of this introduction the primary purpose of this study is to investigate the relationshipbetween one particular example of a cognitive–affective unit (Shoda & Mischel, 1996) as repre-sented by the ASQ measures and the factorial dimensions of personality identified within theFFM. Additionally this study will compare the ASQ and the FFM among men and women col-lectively as well as among men and women separately, in line with the approach of Bunce andPeterson (1997), which will provide a cross-sample comparison (Block, 1995) of the consistencyor otherwise of the underlying relationships.

2. Method

2.1. Measures

2.1.1. FFMSaucier’s (1994) Mini-Markers were used to assess the FFM. These scales are an abbreviatedversion of Goldberg’s (1992) Big Five Markers which were specifically designed to measure theFFM and are considered the most clearly focused assessment of this model (Widiger & Trull,1997). Although briefer (each factor is assessed using eight rather than twenty items) the Mini-Markers have comparable reliability and fewer difficult items (Dwight, Cummings, & Glenar1997; Saucier, 1994) whilst being easier to administer.


2.1.2. Attributional styleThe ASQ (Peterson et al., 1982; Peterson & Villanova, 1988) was used within this study becauseit is both the most widely used assessment of attributional style and considered to be the mosteffective for administration to non-clinical populations (Reivich, 1995). In line with Carver’s(1989) recommendations sub-scales of the ASQ will be reported as well as composite scores. BothFurnham, Sadka, and Brewin (1992) and Corr and Gray (1996b) found that although stable andglobal attributions loaded on the same factors, internal/external attributions loaded on differentfactors. Consequently combined scores for global and stable scales for both positive and negativeevents will be examined and labelled hopefulness and hopelessness, respectively, as done in pre-vious research (Bunce & Peterson, 1997).

2.2. Participants and procedure

Participants were students in a first year introductory management course at the Nathan cam-pus of Griffith University. Inclusion in the study was voluntary, although completion of (andfeedback and discussion upon) the assessments described in the measures section formed a part ofthe learning process for the subject. Of the 282 students who initially enrolled in the course 239agreed to participate within the study. However, because the assessments were conducted at dif-ferent times only 167 participants provided useable data on both instruments, of which 68 weremale and 99 were female. No unscorable responses were provided by those students who chose toparticipate in the study. Participants ranged in age from 17 to 53 with an average age of 20.8years.

3. Results

Table 1 presents the a reliability coefficients and descriptive statistics for the Mini-Markers. Themeans of emotional stability and openness are lower and higher, respectively, than the otherMini-Marker scales because they have uneven numbers of negatively and positively scored items.The reliabilities reported in Table 1 are similar to those reported by Dwight et al. (1997) andSaucier (1994), and are consistent with the average reliabilities for FFM assessments reported by

Table 1Reliability coefficients and descriptive statistics for Mini-Marker scales

Reliability(Cronbach a)

Mean StandardDeviation

Extraversion 0.81 6.41 10.48

Agreeableness 0.79 15.14 8.76Conscientiousness 0.79 11.62 9.45Emotional stability 0.77 �19.71 10.21

Openness 0.81 30.32 9.68


by Viswesvaran and Ones (2000). Table 2 presents the a reliability coefficients and descriptivestatistics for the ASQ. Likewise these results are consistent with those reported by Bunce andPeterson (1997), Corr and Gray (1996b), and Peterson et al. (1982).Correlations between the Mini-Marker scales and ASQ scales for the entire sample are reportedin Table 3. Although gender was not significantly correlated with any of the ASQ scales it wasrelated to both agreeableness (�0.21: P<0.01; N=167) and conscientiousness (�0.19: P<0.05;N=167). No significant correlations between age and any of the ASQ scales was observed. Thenumber of correlations reported increases the chances of Type I error. Keselman, Cribbie, andHolland (1999) recommend that in cases where six or more statistics are reported on the samesample that the Benjamini and Hochberg (1995) False Discovery Rate (FDR) pairwise procedurebe applied. Consequently Table 3 and subsequent tables identify both conventionally significantstatistics and those which would be rejected after applying the Benjamini and Hochberg proce-dure.Within Table 3 combined composite positive and composite negative (CPCN), which is anoverall measure of attributional style, showed significant but low correlations with all Mini-Marker scales except openness, although the correlation with agreeableness is excluded by theFDR procedure. Scales for positive attributional style were positively related to emotional stabi-lity and a mix of scales for positive and negative attributional style were correlated with agree-ableness and conscientiousness. No sub-scales were correlated with either extraversion oropenness.Correlations between Mini-Marker scales and ASQ scales among men are reported in Table 4.The pattern of correlations in Table 4 is quite different to those in Table 3. Scales for positiveattributional style are positively correlated with both extraversion and agreeableness. Internal

Table 2Reliability coefficients and descriptive statistics for ASQ scales

Reliability(Cronbach a)

Mean StandardDeviation

InNeg 0.47 4.4 0.91StaNeg 0.61 4.1 0.81GloNeg 0.61 3.9 0.93CoNeg 0.71 4.1 0.64

Hopeless 0.72 4.0 0.74InPos 0.55 5.2 0.87StaPos 0.49 5.2 0.71

GloPos 0.61 5.1 0.90CoPos 0.77 5.2 0.68Hopeful 0.73 5.1 0.71

CPCN 0.73 0.51 0.47

InNeg, Internal Negative; StaNeg, Stable Negative; GloNeg, Global Negative; CoNeg, Composite Negative[InNeg+StaNeg+GloNeg]; InPos, Internal Positive; StaPos, Stable Positive; GloPos, Global Positive; CoPos, Com-posite Positive [InPos+StaPos+GloPos]; Hopelessness [StaNeg+GloNeg]; Hopefulness [StaPos+GloPos]; CPCN,

Combined Composite Positive and Composite Negative [CoPos�CoNeg].


attributions for positive events is negatively associated with emotional stability and openness,while global attributions for positive events is also associated with openness and agreeableness.Several scales of negative attributional style are negatively correlated with conscientiousness.Only extraversion and conscientiousness are significantly correlated with overall attributionalstyle.

Table 4Correlations of Mini-Markers and ASQ scales for men

Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Emotional stability Openness

InNeg �0.05 �0.16 �0.26* 0.06 0.11StaNeg �0.06 �0.06 �0.14 �0.03 0.03a

GloNeg �0.07 �0.04 �0.26* �0.06 0.17

CoNeg �0.07 �0.12 �0.27* �0.01 0.13Hopeless �0.07 �0.06 �0.22 �0.05 0.11InPos 0.28* �0.13 �0.01 �0.27* �0.26*

StaPos 0.38** 0.09 0.23 0.05 0.10GloPos 0.36** 0.35** 0.12 0.16 0.26*CoPos 0.41** 0.13 0.13 0.20 0.03

Hopeful 0.41** 0.26* 0.19 0.12 0.20CPCN 0.34** 0.17 0.29* 0.15 �0.08

a Correlations deemed non-significant using Benjamini and Hochberg’s (1995) FDR pairwise procedure. See Table 2for abbreviations. N=68.

* P<0.05.** P<0.01: P is two-tailed.

Table 3Correlations of Mini-Markers and ASQ scales for men and women


InNeg �0.07 �0.08 �0.18* �0.04 0.01

StaNeg �0.06 �0.16*a �0.01 �0.09 �0.09GloNeg �0.06 �0.06 �0.15*a �0.14 0.04CoNeg �0.09 �0.14 �0.16*a �0.13 �0.01Hopeless �0.07 �0.12 �0.10 �0.14 �0.02

InPos 0.00 �0.05 0.02 0.14 0.03StaPos 0.04 0.06 0.22** 0.12 0.13GloPos 0.02 0.21** 0.10 0.17* 0.19

CoPos 0.00 0.09 0.12 0.18* 0.14Hopeful 0.01 0.23** 0.17 0.16*a 0.19CPCN 0.22** 0.16*a 0.20* 0.22** 0.11

a Correlations deemed non-significant using Benjamini and Hochberg’s (1995) FDR pairwise procedure. See Table 2

for abbreviations. N=167.* P<0.05.** P<0.01: P is two-tailed.


The pattern of correlations between the Mini-Marker scales and the ASQ scales is differentagain for women, as shown in Table 5. The strong correlations between ASQ scales and extra-version among men are completely absent among women. For agreeableness, conscientiousnessand emotional stability the pattern of correlations is somewhat reversed from men to women, i.e.where a correlation exists with an ASQ scale for negative events for men, there will be a correla-tion with a scale for positive events for women and vice versa. Openness presents a slightly morecomplex picture with women showing correlations with sub-scales for both positive and negativeevents. The one pair of scales in the entire study which shows a significant correlation for bothmen and women, InPos and openness, has the sign of the correlation reversed from men towomen.Multiple regressions were conducted examining the interaction of gender and ASQ scales uponMini-Marker scales to determine whether observed differences in correlations between men andwomen were the result of interactions or the additive effects of gender and ASQ scales. Thesemultiple regressions are reported in Table 6. The ASQ scales were converted to standard scores inline with the recommendations of Aiken, West, and Reno (1991) for testing interactions, andgender was converted to a weighted effects variable to correct for the non-orthogonal sample sizes(Darlington, 1990; Wolf & Cartwright, 1974).Twenty-five regression models were tested. Of these 13 were statistically significant afterexcluding conventionally significant models using the FDR procedure. Extraversion was asso-ciated with gender but only when part of a model involving other variables, InPos and hope-fulness in particular. Gender provided the dominant contribution to models predictingagreeableness and conscientiousness although hopefulness and CPCN provided significant inde-pendent predictions of these personality scales. CPCN likewise contributed to a significantmodel predicting as emotional stability. Three significant interactions involving gender were

Table 5Correlations of Mini-Markers and ASQ scales for women


InNeg �0.07 0.02 �0.08 �0.15 �0.11StaNeg �0.06 �0.26* 0.11 �0.16 �0.20*a

GloNeg �0.03 �0.05 �0.07 �0.22* �0.07

CoNeg �0.08 �0.13 �0.03 �0.26** �0.18Hopeless �0.06 �0.17 �0.01 �0.23* �0.15InPos 0.07 0.06 0.06 0.03 0.26*

StaPos 0.08 0.04 0.22* 0.17 0.15GloPos 0.12 0.14 0.11 0.16 0.13CoPos 0.11 0.10 0.15 0.14 0.22*

Hopeful 0.12 0.11 0.18 0.19 0.16CPCN 0.13 0.16 0.13 0.27** 0.28**

a Correlations deemed non-significant using Benjamini and Hochberg’s (1995) FDR pairwise procedure. See Table 2for abbreviations. N=99.

* P<0.05.** P<0.01: P is two-tailed.


observed: both InPos and CPCN interacted with gender to predict openness, and hopefulnessinteracted with gender to predict extraversion.McClelland and Judd (1993) suggest that because of the statistical problems associated withdetecting interactions in field research, it is inappropriate to dismiss small interactions obtained instudies such as this one. When a significant interaction has been observed these writers recom-mend reporting an estimate of the amount of variance which would have been accounted for bythe interaction if the study had been conducted using a statistically optimal design. ConsequentlyTable 6 lists adjusted interaction R2 for each of the statistically significant interactions reported.

Table 6Multiple regressions examining the interaction of attributional style and gender upon FFM dimensions

Independent

variables

Dependent

variable

ASQ

bGender

bInteraction

bMultiple

R

R2 Adjusted

Interaction R2a

InNeg, gender and Extraversion �0.63 �0.14 0.18 0.154 0.024interaction Agreeableness �0.05 �0.20* �0.09 0.233 0.054*b

Conscientiousness �0.14 �0.18* �0.08 0.262 0.069**Emotional stability 0.07 0.09 0.10 0.145 0.021

Openness �0.02 0.12 0.11 0.164 0.027

InPos, gender and Extraversion 0.15* �0.17* 0.10 0.235 0.055*interaction Agreeableness �0.02 �0.20* �0.09 0.226 0.051*b

Conscientiousness 0.03 �0.20* �0.04 0.197 0.039

Emotional stability 0.13 0.07 0.12 0.203 0.041Openness 0.04 0.13 �0.26*** 0.284 0.081** 0.253

Hopelessness, gender and Extraversion �0.06 �0.14 �0.01 0.154 0.024interaction Agreeableness �0.12 �0.20* 0.05 0.241 0.058*

Conscientiousness �0.08 �0.19* �0.11 0.242 0.058*

Emotional stability �0.15* 0.10 0.09 0.192 0.037Openness �0.04 0.12 0.13 0.179 0.032

Hopefulness, gender and Extraversion 0.24** �0.16* 0.15* 0.317 0.100*** 0.182interaction Agreeableness 0.17* �0.22** 0.08 0.278 0.077**

Conscientiousness 0.18* �0.20** 0.01 0.263 0.069**Emotional stability 0.16* 0.08 �0.03 0.185 0.034

Openness 0.18* 0.11 0.03 0.218 0.048*b

CPCN, gender and Extraversion 0.21** �0.14 0.10 0.282 0.079**

interaction Agreeableness 0.16* �0.21** 0.01 0.261 0.068**Conscientiousness 0.19* �0.20** 0.08 0.289 0.083**Emotional stability 0.22** 0.09 �0.06 0.240 0.058**

Openness 0.13 0.12 �0.17* 0.238 0.057* 0.190

a Adjustments to Interaction R2 calculated in accordance with recommendations of McClelland and Judd (1993).See Table 2 for abbreviations.b Multiple regressions deemed non-significant using Benjamini and Hochberg’s (1995) FDR pairwise procedure.* P<0.05.** P<0.01.*** P<0.001: P is two-tailed.


The size of this adjustment is consistent with McClelland and Judd’s (1993) argument and withthe case study reported in their article.

4. Discussion

The results of this study show that the relationship between ASQ measures and the FFMdimensions within the study population are low and follow a confusing pattern when both menand women are included in the analysis. However, when examined for men and women separatelythe relationships are generally stronger, more clearly interpretable and the patterns of correla-tions for each gender are both different and complementary. As predicted measures of attribu-tional style for positive events were positively correlated with extraversion and agreeableness butonly for men. Measures of attributional style for negative events were negatively correlated withemotional stability, but only for women, whereas they were negatively correlated with con-scientiousness among the male participants. Only openness had a significant correlation with thesame scale of attributional style in both the male and female samples, but whereas the correlationwas positive for women it was negative for men.This apparently neat pattern among the correlations received only moderate support from themultiple regression analyses. The only significant interactions were between either internal attri-butional style for positive events or overall attributional style with gender in the prediction ofopenness, and between hopefulness and gender in the prediction of extraversion. Although moresensitive than ANOVA (Aiken et al., 1991) or Fisher transformations (Papoulis, 1990), multipleregression can be somewhat insensitive in detecting interaction effects when variables are mea-sured with some degree of unreliability (Aiken et al., 1991), a problem only exacerbated by con-ducting research in the field where sub-optimal designs are virtually unavoidable (McClelland &Judd, 1993). Therefore interactions between other attributional style scales and gender in theprediction of FFM variables cannot be ruled out but it is likely that in similar populations thatthe interactions between gender and these variables would be relatively small. On the other hand,the significant interaction effects observed are of similar magnitude to the main effects of thepredictor variables despite the problems identified, and the interactions become moderately largewhen appropriately adjusted.Much of the stated motivation for Bunce and Peterson’s (1997) study of gender differences inpersonality correlates of attributional style lay in an appreciation of gender differences in theexperience of depression (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1987) and the lack of evidence supporting differentrelationships between attributional style and depression for men and women. Consequently theseresearchers suggested that there may be different correlates of explanatory style for men andwomen. In the Bunce and Peterson (1997) study attributional style for negative events was asso-ciated with level of sociability for males but not for females. CPI sociability loads strongly on theFFM factor of extraversion (an observed loading of 0.85: Fleenor & Eastman, 1997) yet in thecurrent study extraversion correlated with attributional style for positive events, and there was asignificant interaction involving hopefulness and gender which predicted extraversion. In contrastto the Bunce and Peterson (1997) study the findings of the current study are consistent with theview that positive emotionality forms the basis for extraverted self-assessment (Watson & Clark,1997), at least for men.


Bunce and Peterson (1997) also observed a difference in correlation between men and womenwith respect to socialisation and negative explanatory style, and good impression and positiveexplanatory style. The CPI scales of socialisation and good impression both load strongly on theFFM conscientiousness factor (observed loadings of 0.68 and 0.82, respectively: Fleenor & East-man, 1997). The pattern of correlations observed here provides some support for Bunce andPeterson’s (1997) observations in that conscientiousness is correlated with negative attributionalstyle for men but not women, while it correlated with positive attributional style for women butnot men. However, these differences did not translate into a significant gender–attributional styleinteraction and it may be that the differences in correlation between the genders observed in thecurrent study are due to sampling error or to a main effect due to gender.Although this was a different sample to those used in Corr and Gray’s (1996b) ASQ validationstudy, these results help to make sense of the pattern of correlations they reported. Corr andGray (1996b) used two samples in their research. The first, a volunteer sample, included equalnumbers of men and women. Among this combined group CoNeg and its sub-scales were nega-tively correlated with extraversion and positively correlated with neuroticism (emotional stability)and psychoticism. However, there was no correlation between measures of positive attributionalstyle and the EPQ scales. On the other hand, among Corr and Gray’s (1996b) employment sam-ple which consisted of only men, scales of attributional style for positive events were positivelyassociated with extraversion and negatively associated with neuroticism (emotional stability),while negative attributional style had some positive associations with psychoticism. Although thepattern of correlations for the combined sample is different to that presented here, the correlationsamong the men in this sample and the men in Corr and Gray’s (1996b) second sample showsimilarities. Both have significant associations between positive attributional style and extraversion.Psychoticism is associated with both agreeableness and conscientiousness in the FFM (McCrae &Costa, 1985) so the observed correlations between conscientiousness and negative attributional stylein this study provide a partial replication of the Corr and Gray findings. Given the interactionsobserved in the current study and differences between correlations in the Bunce and Peterson (1997)study it should be expected that different gender distributions would result in different correlationsbetween ASQ scales and personality variables. Consequently further exploration of relationshipsbetween attributional style and personality variables should consider gender interactions.One caution that should be emphasised in interpreting and extrapolating from these resultsrelates to the sample population itself. Although there is a long tradition of using undergraduatestudents in psychological research the age distribution alone is clearly unrepresentative of thegeneral population and it is likely that the sample is also unusual in terms of intellectual abilityand social background. Similar comments could be made about other recent research such asBunce and Peterson (1997), and Haugen and Lund (1998) which also used undergraduates asresearch participants. In comparison, Corr and Gray’s (1996b) first sample consisted of volun-teers from the general population but their average age was not greatly different from thisstudy—27.33 years (a difference of 5.58 years). Their second, workforce sample was older andhad an average age of 31.55 years. Further research examining the relationship between ASQscales and personality variables would be useful in extending this and other research and con-firming these relationships in other populations.Despite these limitations this research provides support for the general approach to personalityresearch proposed by Mischel and Shoda (1998) and raises issues of significant theoretical weight.


Factorial personality variables are something of a black-box approach to understanding beha-viour, because they typically focus on self-descriptions rather than underlying processes.Although there has been research on the EPQ designed to elucidate the biological and cognitivesubstrates of its factors (Matthews & Gilliland, 1999) the same could not be said of the FFM to asimilar extent. Although this study is not definitive with respect to the nature of the underlyingprocesses the relationships observed here it does provide further understanding of the nature ofseveral of these variables. These relationships fit readily into the logical format Mischel andShoda suggest, namely an if. . .then. . .structure. An example of one of these relationships identi-fied within this study is ‘‘if [I am male] and [I make hopeful attributions about positive events]then [I am more likely to see myself as extraverted]’’.The if–then relationships observed in this study involve a reasonable degree of specificity—onegender with a particular explanatory style is more likely to produce a particular personality self-assessment. Exploring these substrates of FFM variables is a very large undertaking consideringthe range of alternative cognitive–affective variables discussed by Mischel and Shoda (1998).Further exploration of the links between cognitive–affective variables and personality as theyproposed is clearly justified by this study and gender effects should be included in future research.With regard to attributional style, the motivation for designing the ASQ in the first place was todevelop a measure of psychological processes which underlie aspects of personal distress espe-cially depression (Peterson et al., 1982). As previously mentioned evidence from research oncoping suggests that women tend to use different strategies to those adopted by men for dealingwith distress. For example women make more use of coping strategies such as self-blame andventing on others (Hanninen & Aro, 1996) whereas men are four times as likely to resort to bingedrinking (Tyssen, Vaglum, Aasland, Gronvold, & Ekeberg, 1998). As Bunce and Peterson (1997)suggested, these differences in coping strategies may reflect differences in relationship betweenattributional style and personality variables. From the Bunce and Peterson (1997) study it wouldappear that for men a more pessimistic attributional style is reflected in reduced concern forcomplying with social rules and less effort on maintaining a good impression. Although the pat-tern of correlations observed here would support this interpretation, the lack of a significantinteraction between gender and negative attributional style in the prediction of conscientiousnessleaves this relationship interesting but unclear. It may be that there is a gender interaction but thishas not been observed in this sample.The significant interactions observed in this study are instead linked to attributional style forpositive events in predictions of extraversion and openness. Extraversion has been observed tohave two facets: surgency or dominance and sociability or affiliation (Watson & Clark, 1997).After a review of the literature on masculinity and femininity as psychological constructs Lippa(2001) stated that the construct of masculinity is closely associated with dominance as an aspectof extraversion and it is also linked to openness. This conclusion is consistent with the interac-tions observed within this sample. Brody (1997) has observed that different rewards for socialbehaviours exist within an English-speaking culture for men and women, especially with regards tostatus-seeking and dominance. It may be that men are more likely to be rewarded for expressing anoptimistic perspective and positive emotionality through extraverted behaviour whereas women maynot be similarly rewarded, leading to different relationships between these variables among men andwomen. The interactions observed and the different pattern of correlations for each gender serve as areminder of the complexity of individual dynamics underlying personality as measured by frameworks


such as the FFM. Attributional style itself has a complex relationship with self-assessment measureswhich suggests a need for further exploration of both its nature and causation.This leads to a final point made on the basis of this study, which is that some caution about theuse and interpretation of FFM assessments is warranted. An examination of Table 3 in isolationwould lead to very different conclusions than those that emerge from looking at men and womenseparately. Including a consideration of gender produces a more nuanced appreciation of therelationship between cognitive–affective units such as attributional style and the FFM. It is alsoclear that combining men and women in the sample can mask and confuse relationships, a findingconsistent with Block’s (1995) criticisms of the FFM, and a point of concern for those who useFFM assessments in clinical and organisational settings. Simple reliance upon personality mea-sures such as the FFM may be misleading and discriminatory—for men it may measure some-thing quite different to what it measures for women. Further research comparing the FFM withother cognitive–affective variables such as the categories people use to understand their world,their goals and expectancies, or the skills and self-regulatory abilities they bring to situations, aswell as criteria such as work performance, needs to consider gender and possibly other socialdifferences in correlations before accepting the FFM as an unbiased and valid predictor. On theother hand, such research will contribute to the depth of understanding of personality and pro-vide guidance for valid application of personality assessments.

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted with the support of Griffith University. My thanks go to Dr. ElizabethJones for her support and comments on an early draft of this article, and to the editors of Personalityand Individual Differences and to an anonymous reviewer who provided useful comments andrecommendations. This article is considerably improved as a consequence of this feedback.

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