Open to experience—closed to intelligence: Why the ‘Big Five’ are really the ‘Comprehensive Six’

Abstract

The quasi‐consensual ‘Big Five’ personality variables of the Five Factor Model (FFM) have typically been advanced and welcomed as dimensions that are purely orectic. By contrast, people's differences in general intelligence (g) are held to exist in some separate, noetic, cognitive ‘domain’. However, the exclusion of g from the realm of personality cannot be sustained either theoretically or empirically. The FFM's ‘fifth’ dimension (whether called Intellect (from lexical studies) or Openness (from questionnaire studies)) would be substantially correlated with g in the general population—across a normal population range of IQ and Mental Age. FFM fifth factors are thus loaded too highly by aesthetic, cultural, and theoretical interests, while qualities of tender‐mindedness, sympathy, and trust are displaced to load on the Agreeableness dimension. FFM Agreeableness thus becomes highly value‐loaded: it literally pits ‘love’, ‘empathy’, and ‘co‐operation’ against ‘aggression’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘competition’. No such simple contrast is viable. Social theorists as varied as Adam Smith, Freud, Adler, and Lorenz have all rejected the option. No fewer than six major, independent dimensions of personality require recognition. These ‘Comprehensive Six’ are (g), neuroticism/emotionality (n), energy/extraversion (e), conscientiousness/control (c), will/independence (w), and affection/pathemia (a). These are essentially the same as those recovered most often in the work of Cattell, so they furnish a six‐dimensional model (SDM) having a long track record of cross‐cultural validation. Several look interpretable in terms of basic Freudian concepts; and, in the terms of folk psychology, the SDM's ‘Comprehensive Six’ might be considered to reflect individual differences in the qualities of the mind (g), the heart (n), the soul (a), the spirit (e), the will (w), and the conscience (c).