Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIV. Dispositional Theories 14. Eysenck, McCrae, and
Costa’s Trait and Factor
Theories(^438) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
those who score high on the trait of neuroticism tend to be more anxious and less
self-satisfied, it makes sense that these people may be more likely to take the SAT
over and over again.
Michael Zyphur and colleagues (2007) conducted a study to see whether those
high on neuroticism were indeed more likely to retake the SAT. To test this prediction,
the researchers administered a self-report measure of neuroticism to 207 undergrad-
uate students and then examined the students’ transcripts for information on how
many times each student took the SAT prior to coming to college and what their
scores were. The results supported the researchers’ hypothesis in that those who
scored high on neuroticism were more likely to take the SAT multiple times. Inter-
estingly, the researchers also found that scores on the SAT tended to increase over
time so participants in the study tended to score higher the second time than the first
and higher still the third time they took the test. These findings are important: Some-
times high scores on neuroticism are viewed negatively because such people are
highly self-conscious, nervous, emotional, and generally worried about everything.
But in this study the anxious tendencies of those high in neuroticism were very adap-
tive because it led them to retake the SAT and score higher when they did.
When it comes to predicting academic performance from traits, the traits that
are most important depend on the outcome of interest because there are multiple
ways to do well. Conscientiousness is good for GPA but not that important for the
SAT. Openness is great for verbal ability but doesn’t matter much for mathematical
ability. And neuroticism, although generally related to greater feelings of anxiety and
self-consciousness, is associated with taking tests over and over again and doing a
little better each time.
Traits and Emotion
Personality traits affect more than success at school and other long-term outcomes.
Traits can also affect the mood a person experiences on a daily basis. If you look
carefully at the descriptors of each trait, particularly extraversion and neuroticism,
this is not surprising. To be high on extraversion is to be fun loving and passionate
(both positive feelings), whereas to be high on neuroticism is to be anxious and self-
conscious (both negative feelings). Therefore, researchers have long considered pos-
itive emotion to be the core of extraversion and negative emotion to be the core of
neuroticism (Costa & McCrae, 1980). But what has not been clear in most early
research on the topic is whether the trait of extraversion or neuroticism causes the
experience of positive and negative mood respectively or if it is the experience of the
emotions that causes people to behave in ways concordant with the traits. For exam-
ple, if people are in a good mood it makes sense that they might be more jovial and
talkative (i.e., extraverted behavior), but are they in a good mood because they are
acting extraverted or are they acting extraverted because they are in a good mood?
Similarly, if people are in a bad mood it makes sense that they might act a little self-
conscious and experience anxiety (i.e., neurotic behavior), but did the mood cause
the behavior or did the behavior cause the mood?
Murray McNiel and William Fleeson (2006) conducted a study to determine
the direction of causality for the relationships between extraversion and positive
mood and between neuroticism and negative mood. Specifically, they were interested
432 Part IV Dispositional Theories