The Linear Approach to the Concept of Personality 237structures was higher than the match of either with the Dutch
structure, especially with regard to Factor V.
Plagued with feelings of intellectual inferiority, we took
drastic steps to better our lives. In constructing the item pool
for the FFPI (Hendriks et al., 1999), we expressly added 266
intellect items over the 1,045 constructed to cover the five
Dutch factors (see Hendriks, 1997, p. 19f ). However, only
two of these 266 were judged to be perfectly comprehensible
by our students of lower professional education, who did not
connect to words like reflect, analyze, and contemplate. In a
PCA of the whole item pool, based on responses of more so-
phisticated subjects, typical intellect items like Thinks ahead,
Uses his/her brains, Sees through problems, Learns quickly,
Is well-informed, and their counterparts had sizable sec-
ondary or even primary loadings on Factor III, conscientious-
ness; pure markers of V() were items like Follows the
crowd, Copies others, and Does what others do. Conse-
quently, Factor V() was interpreted as autonomy. We were
thus unsuccessful in our attempts to arrive at an intellect fac-
tor. The autonomy interpretation of Factor V reappears in
Italian data (see De Raad, Perugini, & Szirmák, 1997).
A powerful competitor—if only by virtue of the wide-
spread use of the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992)—to the
intellect conception of Factor V is its interpretation as open-
ness to experience. That construct does not come out of the
lexical approach; in fact, McCrae (1990, 1994) has used it re-
peatedly to argue the deficiency of that approach. The conse-
quent problem with such constructs, however, is that they do
not share the taxonomic status that is awarded by the lexical
paradigm. Furthermore, many of the NEO items in general,
and of the openness to experience scales in particular, would
not pass the comprehensibility test that was outlined earlier.
Brand (1994) predicted that both intellect and openness to
experience would correlate substantially with measured intel-
ligence (g) over the whole intellectual range of the popula-
tion. A special reason may be that subjects of modest IQ
would reject such items because they do not understand
them, and thus receive low scores.
Distinguishing Personality from Ability
The 5-D model seems to have contributed to a shifting em-
phasis from a narrow to a broad conception of personality.
That shift can hardly be objected to as such. Not only are both
intelligence and other personality traits stable and psycholog-
ically relevant, but they also combine with each other. An in-
telligent extravert may be found eloquent; a dull one may be
judged to be loudmouthed. In the study on 5-D profiles of
prototypical personality disorders (Hofstee, 1999) referred to
earlier, the narcissistic and antisocial profiles were relatively
close together, but that must be because the FFPI’s Factor V
has little to do with intellect: Sizable differences between the
two would be expected on measured intelligence (Millon,
personal communication, September 29, 1999). For a proper
assessment of personality, the inclusion of intelligence is
indispensable.
There is no good reason, however, to contaminate typical
behavior and maximum performance. On the contrary, there
are good reasons to separate the operations. One is that
objective measurement of intelligence is more scientific than
its assessment, however intersubjective that assessment may
be. Another is that methods are not neutral: Abilities and tests
of maximum performance are as closely associated as are
stylistic traits and assessments of typical behavior. To include
ability items in questionnaires can only obscure the view on
intelligence.
With respect to concepts of temperament and character,
state-of-the-art assessment would include a 5-D question-
naire as a baseline instrument, and novel concepts would
have to prove their added value against that background.
According to the same principle of parsimony, however, 5-D
factors have to prove their added value over measured intelli-
gence. Precisely because personality and intelligence belong
together, objective measures of intelligence should be in-
cluded in investigating the structure of personality. In view of
the scientific primacy of intelligence, its variance should be
partialled out of the questionnaire scores. While in the
process, attitudinal factors, which are out of bounds in most
definitions of personality, should be removed in the same
manner. They, too, are empirically correlated with certain
versions of Factor V, particularly with openness to experi-
ence (Saucier, 2002a). With these corrections, it is entirely
conceivable that little would remain of Factor V.THE LINEAR APPROACH TO THE CONCEPT
OF PERSONALITYThe “Magical Number Five,” in the words of Goldberg
(1992b), is intricately connected with applying PCA to large
numbers of trait variables. Forerunners have been pinpointed,
most notably Tupes and Christal’s (1961/1992) analyses.
However, Tupes and Christal’s denomination of the fifth fac-
tor in terms of culture is now obsolete. On the other hand, if
the magical number had been found to be six, one could have
referred to another Cattellian’s (Pawlik, 1968) set consisting
of I Extraversion, II Cooperativeness, III Deliberate Control,
IV Emotionality, V Independence of Opinion, and VI
Gefühlsbetontheit (which is difficult to translate; the order in
which the factors appear has been adjusted to the present