Jack Block wanted to construct a scientifically rigorous psychology of personality. In the 1950s and 60s, he made game-changing contributions to the field's debate over the validity of psychological testing. In recent years, he continued to produce empirical papers and to offer searing critiques of popular trends.
Jack Block wanted to construct a scientifically rigorous psychology of personality. In the 1950s and 60s, he made game-changing contributions to the field's debate over the validity of psychological testing. In recent years, he continued to produce empirical papers and to offer searing critiques of popular trends.
Jack Block wanted to construct a scientifically rigorous psychology of personality. In the 1950s and 60s, he made game-changing contributions to the field's debate over the validity of psychological testing. In recent years, he continued to produce empirical papers and to offer searing critiques of popular trends.
ISSN: 1047-840X print / 1532-7965 online DOI: 10.1080/10478401003648740 Jack Block, the Big Five, and Personality From the Standpoints of Actor, Agent, and Author Dan P. McAdams and Keegan Walden Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois Jack Block died before his target article could be published. Submitted to Psychological Inquiry by his son while Jack was in the hospital, the paper shows many of the earmarks of Jack Blocks long and bril- liant career as a personality psychologist. Passionate, contrarian, and doggedly analytical, the papers traits reect the mans. Jack Block wanted to construct a scientically rigorous psychology of personality that fully captures the complexity and coherence of human lives as they develop over time. To do so was his life- long professional goal, his most-valued professional project. Over the past six decades, Jacks storyas he lived it and wrote itreected the story of per- sonality psychology itself. In the 1950s and 60s, he made game-changing contributions to the elds de- bate over the validity of psychological testing and the challenge of response sets (J. Block, 1961, 1965). In the 1970s and 80s, he stood tall against the situation- ist attack (J. Block, 1977, 1981) while offering his own comprehensive theory of personality continuity and change (J. Block, 1971; J. H. Block & Block, 1980). In recent years, he continued to produce in- uential empirical papers (J. Block & Block, 2006; Shedler & Block, 1990) and to offer searing critiques of popular trends (J. Block, 1989, 1995, 2001.) His was a narrative of the bellicose rebel with a cause, the iconoclast who fought the status quo every step of the way. Analyzing the last musical works of classical com- posers, Simonton (1989) has shown that swan songs tend to be somewhat less complex and original than a composers earlier compositions but also more emo- tionally moving, and more popular in the long run. According to Simonton, a composers last piece often proves to be an elegant reprise of his or her musical genius. As far as we know, researchers have not ex- amined the swan songs of psychological scientists. In the case of Jack Blocks last composition, however, this journals target article seems to run contrary to Si- montons trend. Restless and edgy, the article offers a collection of perambulating and idiosyncratic rumi- nations regarding the role of the ve-factor model of personality in psychological science. The paper feels like a work in progress, uneven and incomplete, with ashes of new insight punctuating more quotidian pas- sages where Block recycles old and complicated argu- ments he has made before. There is nothing elegant or simple about it. It may be that Jack Block did not have time to iron out the papers rough edges before his life was cut off. But more likely, Jacks swan song, like so many of the inuential articles he wrote in his career, was always going to be a gritty and restless commu- niqu e from the battleeld. Jack Block was a ghter. He fought against the accepted truths and the conventional fashions of the discipline. Over the past 15 years, he fought against the Big Five. In what follows, we rst briey comment on the main criticisms Block levied against the Big Five in the target article. Whereas we are sympathetic to his contrarian approach, we suggest that he overlooked signicant achievements of the ve-factor approach to personality while occasionally holding the model to impossibly stringent standards. Second, we suggest that, in some ways, Jack Block did not go far enough in his critique. Our basic thesis is that the Big Five does what it does quite well: It provides an adequate and comprehensive perspective on personality from the standpoint of the social actor. What it does not do, however, and apparently was never intended to do, is to provide a way of understanding personality fromthe equally important standpoints of the motivated agent and the autobiographical author (McAdams & Olson, 2010). Taking on Jacks contrarian spirit, we suggest that the contemporary eld of personality psychology as a whole is constricted and short-sighted in the same way that the Big Five is. The Big Five does a reasonably good job of addressing what most personality psychol- ogists see to be the main concerns of the discipline. The big problem is that most personality psychologists set their sights too low. Blocks Critique of the Big Five Block enumerated ve broad criticisms of the ve- factor model of personality. He argued that the model (a) is lacking in theory, (b) relies too much on factor analysis, (c) leaves out important traits, (d) fails to take into consideration critical developments in trait measurement, and (e) may be superseded by a two- factor approach. 50 COMMENTARIES The Big Five approach emerged not from some personality theorists brilliant mind but from mindless number crunching. Because the models origins lie in statistical analyses of countless responses to adjecti- val and short-item questions on personality invento- ries, critics of the Big Five have repeatedly argued that the ve-factor model is atheoretical (J. Block, 1995; McAdams, 1992). All it does, they have claimed, is tell us howadjectival ratings intercorrelate. The ve-factor model fails to address the big theoretical questions in the eld of personality psychology: What are the ori- gins of basic dimensions of personality? How do they develop? How do they work in everyday behavior and experience and in human coping and adaptation? Once upon a time, this criticism made sense. But in recent years, a number of advocates of the Big Five ap- proach have developed provocative and sophisticated theoretical perspectives that attempt to address some of the big theoretical questions in the eld of person- ality psychology (e.g., McCrae & Costa, 2008; Shiner, 2006; Wiggins, 1996). One does not have to agree with every tenet set forth by these theories to appreciate the fact that the Big Five framework has moved well be- yond phenotypic trait ratings. Nonetheless, it is true that some researchers in the Big Five tradition still conne their inquiry solely to the obsessive scrutiny of adjectival intercorrelations, rotating and renaming factors to the point where it seems to be a repetition compulsion. For these researchers and the approaches they represent, Blocks critique regarding the atheoret- ical nature of the Big Five is still dead on. Block argues that Big Five researchers have substi- tuted a methodfactor analysisfor a theory. There is no doubt that the ve-factor model owes its very existence to the statistical power of factor analysis. And there is no doubt that factor analysis is a fallible tool. Block (this issue) writes, Although the method of factor analysis can be extraordinarily illuminating, by itself the method alone should not be empowered to make paramount and controlling decisions regarding the concepts to be used within the eld of personality (p. 6). We could not agree more. If the Big Fives value for personality psychology were solely limited to the replication of the ve-factor structure in one factor- analytic study after another, then the model would be in trouble. But we believe that this is no longer the case, and perhaps never was. Over the past 20 years, researchers have built up impressive nomological net- works of empirical ndings regarding extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and conscien- tiousness. Well-validated measures of these constructs have been shown to predict robust trends in behavior and such critical life outcomes as marital well-being and divorce, job success, mental health, and longevity (Lodi-Smith &Roberts, 2007; Ozer &Benet-Martinez, 2006; Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007). The impressive construct validity of the Big Five traitsmeasured in a range of ways, from adjectival ratings (e.g., John & Srivastava, 1999) to self-report inventories such as the NEOPIR (Costa & McCrae, 1992)renders nearly moot the fact that the overall model had its humble origins in factor analysis. What about those traits left out of the Big Five? For example, Ashton and Lee (2007) made a strong case for a six-factor solution to trait ratings, examin- ing data from seven different language cultures. Their HEXACO model looks to us a lot like the Big Five with an added factor of honesty/humility. It is well known, furthermore, that researchers working within the Big Five tradition do not all agree on how each of the ve trait domains should be named and conceptu- alized. Is it openness to experience or intellect or culture? And what should we do about impulsivity? This pesky and intrepid construct has travelled across the OCEAN, beginning long ago as a central feature of extraversion (remember Eysenck, 1973) and now variously identied as part of neuroticism or perhaps low conscientiousness/constraint. Block, therefore, is right to point out that the emer- gence of the ve-factor model of personality has not brought a full consensus to the eld of personality psychology. The Big Five may give short shrift to cer- tain trait constructs, especially those dealing with low base-rate behaviors, pathology, and perhaps the ethical dimensions of life. Furthermore, different ve-factor approaches conceive of the same ve differently (Goldberg, 1993; McCrae & Costa, 2008). Block ob- serves that nothing is quite settled yet. We observe the same thing, but it does not bother us very much. Dear Readers, let us not forget this: It was not very long ago that many highly respected psychological scien- tists doubted the very existence and/or utility of per- sonality traits, writing them off as convenient ctions in the minds of observers (Mischel, 1968; Shweder, 1975). It should not be surprising, then, that a few short decades later, personality scientists have not yet quite reached full consensus on precisely what the ba- sic traits underlying all the consequential differences in human behavior and experience are. As we see it, the disagreements among different research teams regard- ing different trait models and the uncertainty regarding certain problematic trait constructs such as humility and impulsivity illustrate progress and healthy ferment in a dynamic scientic discipline. Block takes the ve-factor model to task for failing to incorporate nontraditional measurement models. Citing Loevingers (1957) classic paper on psycholog- ical constructs and their measurement, Block correctly identies the logic behind the Big Five as reective of a cumulative measurement scale, whereby the higher the score obtained, the higher the rating on the given trait. Block suggests that an alternative differential model of traits might be better. A differential model 51 COMMENTARIES is nonmonotonic, he argues, leaving room for the possibility that ideal scores on a given dimension may be found in the middle rather than at the high end of the scale. Blocks observation is both confusing and insightful, in our view. It is confusing in that the Big Five framework appears to be agnostic regard- ing whether a high score (on, say, extraversion) is ideal or good or bad or whatever. It appears to us that a cumulative logic could still produce nonmonotonic or curvilinear results, in that medium-level scores on a given trait might prove to be the best predictor of a given valued outcome. As we read him, Block seems to have muddled the distinction here between a high score and an ideal score on a trait, and relatedly the second distinction between a trait score itself and the score on some behavior or outcome to which the trait score may be empirically related. Nonetheless, Blocks comments on this issue do re- veal an interesting limitation of the Big Five approach. Take extraversion, for example. One would think that at some point on the scale, high extraversion becomes too high, in the sense that an extremely high score might show an especially negative correlatesuch as mania, being overly frenetic, or socially dominant to a fault. Yet empirical ndings generally paint an increas- ingly rosy picture for extraversion as scores go higher and higher. There seems to be virtually no downside to the high end. Although it may simply be true that high extraversion is simply wonderful for most people most of the time, another possibility is that the scales used to assess extraversion are not sensitive enough to cap- ture extreme expressions. The same could be said for agreeableness and conscientiousness, and perhaps for the low end of neuroticism (i.e., emotional stability). Recognizing Blocks good point on scaling, we should be fair and point out that this problem may go well beyond the Big Five itself and may indeed apply to nearly all self-report scales of dispositional traits. The same may be the case for other measurement-based criticisms that Block levies against the Big Five, such as problems of faking and the desire of researchers to develop the quickest, simplest, and most easily admin- istered personality scales. To the extent that the Big Five relies on self-report scales, the long litany of lim- itations regarding self-report may be invoked. But the same limitations apply to most personality research, given the elds strong reliance on self-report. In this regard, Block tends to hold the Big Five up to a high standard against which most of the rest of the eld of personality psychology also falls short. Although the critique, therefore, may be unfair, it also puts in bold and impressive relief the value of Blocks own alternative to self-report methodology in personality sciencethe Q-sort. Finally, we are somewhat less enthusiastic than is Block about recent efforts to reduce the Big Five to two supertendencies. Efforts to detect a Big Two un- derneath the not perfectly orthogonal Big Five are not new. Digman (1997) factor-analyzed intercorrelations from 14 studies to arrive at two very general factors. Capturing high agreeableness and conscientiousness and low neuroticism, Digman labeled the rst factor socialization. Society most values people who are nice, hard-working, and emotionally stable. Capturing high extraversion and openness, the second factor generally encompasses self-growth, the more surgent and seek- ing features of personality, Digman concluded. Picking up the same idea with new and more sophisticated sta- tistical procedures, DeYoung (2006) speculated that Digmans rst factor expresses variation in tendencies mediated by serotonin. Similarly, the second captures differences in dopamine activity. Future research in neuroscience will surely spell out how serotonin and dopamine functioning relate to the Big Two. Research already shows that extraversion it- self, along with approach-motive behavior, seems to be linked up with dopaminergic activity, though the relations appear to be complex (e.g., Depue & Collins, 1999; Wacker, Chavanon, & Stemmler, 2006). Given that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors help to alle- viate depression and may lower levels of trait neuroti- cism, it is clear that serotonin is deeply implicated in personality traits. But it seems very unlikely that any simple neurotransmitter-by-trait relationship is going to appear. Imagining, furthermore, that such a neat correspondence might be the case for two fundamental supertraits underlying all of personality seems to beg credulity, though of course scientists can always hope. Beyond the neuroscience, it is not clear to us just what the two purported superfactors buy the eld of personality psychology when it comes to description and explanation. Lumping extraversion and openness together, for example, glances over what we see to be basic differences in behavioral style. Being socially dominant (a feature of extraversion) on one hand and expressing curiosity about newideas (a feature of open- ness) on the other may share some supercial variance, but these two features of personality seem fundamen- tally very different to us. Of course, the same might be said for facets within each of the Big Five factors. After all, different facets of agreeableness (e.g., altruism and straightforwardness) may also seem very different. We nd it ironic, therefore, that whereas Block (as well as others) has criticized the Big Five for being overly general and failing to capture the nuances of human behavior and experience, he should not levy the same criticism against an even more general and less nuanced two-factor approach. One reason for his reluctance to do so may be some surface similarity he observed between the two factors identied by Dig- man (1997) and DeYoung (2006) on one hand and Blocks long-cherished distinction, traced back to Pi- aget (1970), between fundamental processes of assim- ilation and accommodation on the other. It may be that 52 COMMENTARIES Block saw in DeYoungs new packaging of alpha and beta supertraits (socialization and self-growth)with the alluring imprimatur of neurosciencea clever way of capturing what he long believed to be two basic pro- cesses in personality. We, however, see the connection as a stretch. Actors, Agents, and Authors All in all, then, we believe that Jack Block may have gone a bit too hard on the Big Five. First, we believe that the ve-factor model has indeed generated impor- tant theoretical contributions in recent years. Second, we are not as concerned as Block was about the models origins in factor analysis, given demonstrated construct validity of the factors. Third, we nd the lack of full consensus regarding the names of the basic traits, and even their precise number, to be a sign of scientic dy- namism rather than confusion. Fourth, we agree with Block that measurement models for the ve factors are limited, but the criticism applies to the entire eld of personality psychology. Fifth, we are much less im- pressed than was Block with efforts to reduce the Big Five to a Bigger Two, feeling more skepticism than excitement about neat linkages between two purported super traits on one hand and corresponding differences in the working of serotonin and dopamine on the other. When it comes to the Big Five, then, we believe that, in one sense, Jack Block may have taken the contrarian line too far. In a second sense, however, he may not have taken it far enough. Despite our reservations about Blocks critique in the target article, we admire and identity strongly with his contrarian spirit. Whereas we do not share the specic concerns Block expressed regarding limitations of the Big Five, we do share a very strong contrarian feeling regarding the Big Fives adequacy as a model for all of personality psychology. Boiled down to the basics, our argument is simple, and it is not new: The Big Five is ne for traits; but there is more to personality than traits (McAdams, 1992, 1994, 1995; McAdams & Pals, 2006; Mischel, 2004; Sheldon, 2004; Singer, 2005). Even prominent Big Five enthusiasts (e.g., McCrae & Costa, 2008) concede that our argument is right. But being contrarian ourselves, we do not believe that most personality psychologists appreciate the full extent of the critique. As we briey show next, it is more sweeping and more contrarian than many think. In the target article, Block suggests that the Big Five taxonomy may leave out critical features of personality. He points to traits such as honesty/humility (Ashton & Lee, 2007) and sensuality/sexuality and bodily features such as physical attractiveness. Whether or not Block is correct about these kinds of traits, it is clear to us that the Big Five leaves out much more, for it leaves out all those features of personality that are not well captured under the hegemonic label of trait. What might these be? A common answer (McAdams, 1992) is this: The Big Five leaves out those contextualized and personalized features of personality that do not conformto broad and generalized trait attributions. But this answer is vague and misleading, for it implies that personality psychologists need simply to nd all those little traits out there that apply in very specic settings. As McCrae and Costa (2008) have shown, the Big Five lends itself to a hierarchical structure, whereby a few factors may subsume a larger number of smaller facets, which in principle might subsume even smaller and more circumscribed personality traits. As you go from broad factors to narrow facets to even (in theory) narrower subfacets for the Big Five hierarchy, it is still traits all the way down. What Big Five enthusiasts, Jack Block, and the ma- jority of personality psychologists in the world all have in common is their acceptance of trait discourse as the primary way to think and talk about personality. From this widely shared perspective, personality com- prises broad individual differences in social behavior (socio-emotional functioning) that express themselves in more-or-less consistent ways across different situ- ations and over time. In that human beings evolved as social animals that live in complex groups, person- ality traits capture those widely observed differences that individuals show with respect to their social per- formances (Goffman, 1959; Hogan, 1982). These dif- ferences begin to appear very early in life, as expres- sions of temperament. Over time and with extensive environmental input, fundamental temperament dispo- sitions evolve into readily discernible and measurable dispositional traits. This is what the Big Five and all other trait paradigms in personality psychology are per- fectly positioned to assessthe dispositional traits ob- served and inferred (by self and others) in the social performances of actors. From birth onward, the rst and foundational layer of personality is dispositional traitspersonality from the standpoint of the social actor (McAdams & Olson, 2010). As children grow and develop, their basic dispo- sitional traits continue to evolve. But in the middle or late childhood years, a second layer of personality begins to form. Research in developmental and cogni- tive psychology shows that as children develop a clear and self-conscious understanding of themselves as purposive and goal-directed agents in the world, they begin to formulate personal goals, strivings, projects, plans, and the like for their own lives (Mroczek & Little, 2006). Little goals at rstto win Jessicas friendship, or to get an A in my social studies class. Bigger goals later on. Goals are about what motivated agents want and value and what they strive to obtain in particular domains and contexts of life. The entire psychology of goalsthe planful and teleological nature of goal striving, the particularity of goals, the accompanying values and strategies that form a 53 COMMENTARIES psychological superstructure around goals, the fact that goals are exquisitely sensitive to temporal and developmental contexts, ebbing and owing and con- stantly changing over timeis fundamentally different from, and therefore not reducible to, the psychology of traits (Freund & Riediger, 2006; Little, 1999; Roberts, ODonnell, & Robins, 2004). Like any trait scheme, the Big Five is not epistemologically equipped to take on goals and their vicissitudes. Traits may shed some light on howactors behave in their pursuit of goals. For example, individuals high in conscientiousness may pursue their goals in a more systematic and dutiful manner. But traits are agnostic on what the goals are; on what, in particular, agents want and value; how those wants and values apply to some domains but not others; and how what agents want and the plans and strategies they articulate to get what they want, and avoid what they do not want, change and develop over time in response to developmental demands, cultural imperatives, and changing environments. Goals and their psychological accoutrements begin to layer over dispositional traits as individuals move through childhood and into adolescence. This second layer of personality takes up more and more psycho- logical space as people grow older. If you want to understand the personality of a 5-year-old, then you can settle on assessing traits, for that is all there is. With respect to personality, a 5-year-old is a social ac- tor only, not yet a full-edged motivated agent whose goals and values dene who he or she is. (This is not to say that 5-year-olds do not behave in a goal-directed manner; it is only to suggest that they do not yet have full-edged, self-consciously articulated goals that ex- plicitly guide their behavior from day to day and de- ne who they are for themselves and others.) But by the time a person has moved into his or her teenaged years, self-dening goals and their accompanying fea- tures have emerged as a second layer of personality, expressing a second perspective from which to under- stand the person. Personality is no longer only about consistent individual differences in actors social per- formances. It is nowalso about consequential variation in how motivated agents understand and pursue their own particular goals and values, situated in time and social context. What does 20-year-old Laura want? Try to answer that question with a trait statement. Uh, well, she wants to be extraverted. Or, she wants to be high on agreeable- ness. Or, well, you know, I dont really know what she wants, but I bet that she will have a hard time getting it, whatever it is, because she is high on neuroticism. These responses are psychologically lame because the language of traits is not well suited for answering ques- tions of human motivation and value. The Big Five has virtually nothing to say about this second layer of per- sonality. But it is not the Big Fives fault! And it is not the fault of traits. Traits are great when you want to ac- count for broad differences in the social performances of actors. Traits, however, dont do motivated agents. Traits are like a hammer when you need a screwdriver. When their birthdays come around next year, most per- sonality psychologists should ask for a bigger toolbox. While were at it, let us mention that 20-year-old Laura has probably already begun to experience the emergence of a third layer of personalityif, that is, Laura lives in a cultural context that resembles modern societies (Giddens, 1991), wherein people of Lauras age are challenged to develop what Erikson (1963) long ago described as an identity. Identity means many things in adolescence and adulthood, but a primary feature of the identity challengeand one that has profound implications for personality structure and functionis to develop and internalize an evolving, self-dening life story, which explains how the person came to be and where his or her life may be going in the future (Hammack, 2008; McAdams, 2006, 2008; McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007). To their psycho- logical repertoire of social actor and motivated agent, young adults living in modern societies typically add the perspective of the autobiographical author. Begin- ning in the third decade of life and continuing forever after, most people present a personality that has three layersan internalized life story layered over person- alized goals layered over dispositional traits. Psycho- logically speaking, they now continue to perform as actors on the social stage, striving to achieve their most cherished and valued goals as motivated agents, while making sense of it all through the stories of their lives that they author in their heads (McAdams & Olson, 2010). Empirically speaking, measures of different layers of personality can showpsychologically interesting re- lations to each other. For example, studies have shown that certain dispositional traits captured in the Big Five scheme are related to particular content themes and structural features in life stories (McAdams et al., 2004). Similarly, motivational goals and associated val- ues are often reected in broader life-narrative themes (McAdams, 1982; McAdams et al., 2008; McAdams, Hoffman, Manseld, & Day, 1996). Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of research interest in life stories (now often referred to as narra- tive identity) in the elds of personality, developmental, life-span, social, cognitive, and cultural psychology, and in a number of disciplines outside of psychology proper. Personality researchers have developed reli- able methods to analyze life-narrative accounts for fea- tures of content, structure, and process, translating rich, idiographic stories into scores and scales amenable to nomothetic research (for a review see McAdams, 2008). There is a growing appreciation of the relevance of life stories for personality, and budding recognition that internalized life stories themselves may be integral parts of personalitya third layer, as we have argued 54 COMMENTARIES here. Nonetheless, too many personality psychologists still dismiss life stories as peripheral to the main stuff of personality, which they nearly always suggest is traits. In a similar manner, the study of goals, values, and those features of personality that spring from the per- spective of the person as a motivated agentwhat we characterize as the second layertends not to enjoy the attention it deserves among contemporary personality researchers. In sum, we take issue with the particulars of Jack Blocks critique of the Big Five. But we deeply admire and identify with his contrarian spirit. As we see it, the main problem with the Big Five is not the Big Five itself but personality psychologys embrace of the Big Five as a comprehensive model for the entire eld. If we see human beings as solely actors on a social stage, then the ve-factor model is good enough. But if we wish to consider personality in a broader and deeper manner, from the standpoints of the person as moti- vated agent and autobiographical author, then the Big Five falls short. Fromour own contrarian point of view, a full accounting of personality requires analysis from the standpoints of actor, agent, and author. By focusing most of their attention on the rst of these three, per- sonality psychologists continue to shrink away from the elds historical mandate to study the full gamut of human personality, in all of its richness and complexity. Acknowledgments The production of the article was aided by a grant to the rst author from the Foley Family Foundation to establish the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University. Note Address correspondence to Dan P. McAdams, De- partment of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2120 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208. E-mail: dmca@northwestern.edu References Ashton, M. C., &Lee, K. (2007). 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