252 Structures of Personality Traits
personality up to a particular level. In this manner, the family
model may become a model family.
CONCLUSION
This probe into the credentials and future of the 5-D approach
to personality ends in cautious optimism. Because of its re-
liance on the questionnaire method, the 5-D paradigm stays
at the phenotypic level; however, an efficient and coherent
description of personality is indispensable also for research
on genotypic and other determinants of individual differ-
ences. The exploitation of the lexical axiom, with its rich his-
tory dating back into the nineteenth century, in combination
with PCA of large data sets that became feasible only in the
last decades of the twentieth century, has provided a firm base
for efficiently and coherently describing personality differ-
ences. Of the several and diverging taxonomic models that
have arisen in the 5-D tradition, I used elements to design the
contours of an integrative structure that may serve scientific
and applied communication.
In the process, the penetrating evaluative aspect of per-
sonality description exerted its influence. Its pervasiveness
constitutes a fundamental and often frustrating problem
to the field. I have chosen to adopt the strategy recommended
to bridge players who find themselves in a squeeze: Relax
and enjoy it. Desirability cannot be circumvented or sup-
pressed without sacrificing the first principal component of
personality description. So it might as well be squarely faced
and put in the most central position. Giving in to the desir-
ability component of personality will in all likelihood be
rewarded with a more coherent, stable, and internationally
replicable conception of personality structure.
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