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Full-Text Articles in Psychology

The General Factor Of Personality: A Critical Test, Livia Veselka, Caroline Just, Kerry Jang, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon Jan 2012

The General Factor Of Personality: A Critical Test, Livia Veselka, Caroline Just, Kerry Jang, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon

Andrew M. Johnson

The present study provides evidence supporting the presence of a General Factor of Personality (GFP), which has been proposed to represent the apex of the hierarchy of personality traits. Furthermore, the construct validity of this general factor is assessed to address recent criticisms suggesting that the GFP may merely be a statistical artefact rather than a genuine higher-order personality dimension. In this study, two samples of monozygotic (MZ) and same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins completed the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-IR), assessing individual differences in the Big Five traits of personality, and the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Problems–Differential Questionnaire (DAPP-DQ) measuring variance …


The Relationship Between Personality And Self-Report Abilities, Julie Schermer, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon, Kerry Jang Dec 2010

The Relationship Between Personality And Self-Report Abilities, Julie Schermer, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon, Kerry Jang

Andrew M. Johnson

The relationship between self-report abilities and personality was examined at both the phenotypic (zero-order) level as well as at the genetic and environmental levels. Twins and siblings (N = 516) completed self-report ability and personality questionnaires. A factor analysis of the ability questions revealed 10 factors, including politics, interpersonal relationships, practical tasks, intellectual pursuits, academic skills, entrepreneur/business, domestic skills, vocal abilities, and creativity. Five personality factors were examined, including extraversion, conscientiousness, dependence, aggression, and openness. At the phenotypic level, the correlations between the ability factor scores and personality factor scores ranged from 0 to .60 (between political abilities and extraversion). …


Phenotypic And Genetic Relationships Between Vocational Interests And Personality, Julie Harris, Philip Vernon, Andrew Johnson, Kerry Jang May 2006

Phenotypic And Genetic Relationships Between Vocational Interests And Personality, Julie Harris, Philip Vernon, Andrew Johnson, Kerry Jang

Andrew M. Johnson

Relationships between personality and vocational interest factors were examined at the phenotypic and genetic levels. Twins and siblings (N = 516) completed self-report personality and vocational interest scales. Following factor analyses of each scale, five personality and six vocational interest factors were extracted. At the phenotypic level, correlations between personality and vocational interests ranged from zero to .33. Heritability estimates of the scales showed that genetic components accounted for 0–56% of the variance for the vocational interest factors and 44–65% for the personality factors. Genetic correlations between the two areas ranged from zero to .50. The results suggest that personality …


A Behavior Genetic Investigation Of The Relationship Between Leadership And Personality, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon, Julie Harris, Kerry Jang Jan 2004

A Behavior Genetic Investigation Of The Relationship Between Leadership And Personality, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon, Julie Harris, Kerry Jang

Andrew M. Johnson

Phenotypic research on leadership style has long considered the importance of individual differences in personality when identifying the behaviors associated with good leaders. Although leadership and many personality traits have been separately shown to be heritable, these constructs have not been examined with genetically informative data to identify common sources of heritability in the two domains. A logical extension to current research, therefore, is to examine the extent to which factors of personality are predictive of leadership dimensions and the extent to which unique genetic contributions to the relationship between personality and leadership style may be identified. Adult twin pairs …


The Genetic Basis Of Substance Abuse: Mediating Effects Of Sensation Seeking, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon Dec 2003

The Genetic Basis Of Substance Abuse: Mediating Effects Of Sensation Seeking, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon

Andrew M. Johnson

Most modern theories of personality are structured hierarchically, with broad higher-order dimensions predicting narrower trait-level variables. This approach is necessarily reductionist, proposing to summarize the majority of trait-specific variability with a smaller number of larger dimensions. Not surprisingly, therefore, significant research has been directed to determining what might be considered to be the most basic dimensions of personality—both with regards to the identification of how many factors are needed to describe personality, and what these factors might be called (Costa & McCrae 1992a; [29] and [30]; Tupes & Christal 1992; Zuckerman 1992; [121] and [122]. While these omnibus factors of …


Individual Differences In Multiple Dimensions Of Aggression: A Univariate And Multivariate Genetic Analysis, Philip Vernon, Julie Mccarthy, Andrew Johnson, Kerry Jang, Julie Harris Feb 1999

Individual Differences In Multiple Dimensions Of Aggression: A Univariate And Multivariate Genetic Analysis, Philip Vernon, Julie Mccarthy, Andrew Johnson, Kerry Jang, Julie Harris

Andrew M. Johnson

Previous behaviour genetic studies of aggression have yielded inconsistent results: reported heritabilities for different types of aggressive behaviour ranging from 0 to 0.98. In the present study, 247 adult twin pairs (183 MZ pairs; 64 same-sex DZ pairs) were administered seven self-report questionnaires which yielded 18 measures of aggression. Univariate genetic analyses showed moderate to high heritabilities for 14 of these 18 measures and for a general aggression factor and three correlated aggression factors extracted from the measures. Multivariate genetic analyses showed sizeable genetic correlations between the different dimensions of aggression. Thus, individual differences in many types of aggressive behaviour …


Nature Vs. Nurture: Are Leaders Born Or Made? A Behavior Genetic Investigation Of Leadership Style, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon, Julie Mccarthy, Mindy Molson, Julie Harris, Kerry Jang Nov 1998

Nature Vs. Nurture: Are Leaders Born Or Made? A Behavior Genetic Investigation Of Leadership Style, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon, Julie Mccarthy, Mindy Molson, Julie Harris, Kerry Jang

Andrew M. Johnson

With the recent resurgence in popularity of trait theories of leadership, it is timely to consider the genetic determination of the multiple factors comprising the leadership construct. Individual differences in personality traits have been found to be moderately to highly heritable, and so it follows that if there are reliable personality trait differences between leaders and non-leaders, then there may be a heritable component to these individual differences. Despite this connection between leadership and personality traits, however, there are no studies of the genetic basis of leadership using modern behavior genetic methodology. The present study proposes to address the lack …