心理学Essay范文：The Big Five Theory and Happiness

本文是心理学专业的Essay范例，题目是“The Big Five Theory and Happiness（大五理论和幸福）”，人格是心理学的一个重要方面，从特定的人格类型和行为到单一的特征。一种特质被描述为个性的一个方面，用来根据人们的特定特征对他们进行分类(Burger, 1997)，这些特征可以被整合到五大特征中。

THE BIG FIVE THEORY五大理论

Personality is an important aspect of psychology, ranging from certain personality types and behaviours to a single trait. A trait is described as an aspect of personality that is used to categorise people according to their particular characteristics (Burger, 1997), these characteristics can be integrated in the big five.

It should be considered that the theory behind the big five was developed by William Sheldon (1950, cited in Child, 1950, p.1)'s typology of personality using somotypes. This theory assumed that personalities developed from different individuals with different types of physiques.

Jung (1972) on the other hand, used the categorisation of people through their primary models of psychological functioning. Although, this theory was further developed by Gordon Allport (1937)'s classification of personality traits as Allport was more concerned with neither somotypes nor one's model of psychological functioning. He countered the theory created by Sheldon (1950, cited in Child, 1950, p.1) and focused on the individual differences of others as well as the context of the present rather than an individual's history through lexicosemantic processes in order to understand one's personality.

另一方面，荣格(1972)通过他们的主要心理功能模型来对人进行分类。尽管这一理论在Gordon Allport(1937)的人格特征分类中得到了进一步的发展，因为Allport更关注的不是体型，也不是一个人的心理功能模型。他反驳了Sheldon(1950，引用于Child, 1950, p.1)的理论，并通过词汇语义过程关注他人的个体差异以及当前的语境，而不是一个人的历史，以理解一个人的个性。

During a psychological study, Allport and Odbert (1936) expanded their list of terms through the identification of traits, and identified 4,500 personality traits through list of 18,000 terms that was described as "a semantic nightmare" (cited in Allport, 1937, p. 353-354).

Thus, Allport and Odbert (1936) founded the psycholexical approach to personality as they hypothesised that most relevant personality characteristics can be encoded in language.The traits were classified into three groups: cardinal traits, central traits and secondary traits. The cardinal traits describe one's most dominant characteristics, these traits shape an individual's behaviour.

Furthermore, the central traits depict the general traits that have been found within every individual to a certain degree. Moreover, secondary traits are exhibited under certain circumstances.

These include personal traits that may only be noticed by those closest to the individual such as family or close friends. However, while Sheldon (1950, cited in Child, 1950, p.1)'s theory was overtaken by Allport's (1937) lexical studies, it is important to consider that the last category of traits in Allport's (1937) theory included physical characteristics as well as terms that were of doubtful relevance to the comprehension of personality.

其中包括那些可能只会被最亲近的人注意到的个人特征，比如家人或亲密的朋友。然而,尽管谢尔登(1950中提到的孩子,1950年,第1页)的理论是被阿氏的(1937)词汇研究,重要的是要考虑到最后的类别特征Allport(1937)的理论包括物理特性以及术语的怀疑与人格的理解之间的关系。

It should also be considered that Mischel (1968, cited in Eysenck & Eysenck, 1980, p.191) conceptualised the person-situation debate, in which Mischel questioned whether the person or a situation is more influential in determining one's behaviour. However, this was debunked by Eysenck et al (1980) as they established that situations may become factors that influence an individual's behaviour.

Cattell (1943) continued the development of the big five through a multivariate 'factor analysis' by reducing the original 4,500 traits into 12 personality factors. These factors were also included in his 16 personality factor questionnaire, also called 16F (Cattell, Eber & Tatsuoka, 1970). Cattell's (1943) variables were reduced even further by Fiske (1949), as he made much more simplified descriptions using 22 of Cattell's variables. These factors were extracted from peer-assessments, self-ratings, and ratings by psychological stage members. However, Fiske (1949) found that he could not replicate the findings of Cattell's (1943) research after re-analysing the list of 4,500 traits.

卡特尔(1943年)通过多元“因素分析”继续发展大五人格，将最初的4500个性格特征减少为12个性格因素。这些因素也包含在他的16个人格因素问卷中，也被称为16F (Cattell, Eber & Tatsuoka, 1970)。卡特尔(1943)的变量被菲斯克(1949)进一步简化，因为他使用了22个卡特尔变量进行了更简化的描述。这些因素从同行评价、自我评价和心理阶段成员的评价中提取。然而，Fiske(1949)在重新分析了4500个性状后发现，他无法复制Cattell(1943)的研究结果。

Tupes and Christal (1961) found "five relatively strong and recurrent factors" (cited in Tupes and Christal, 1961, p.37). These factors included: Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and intellect. Thus, these factors later became "The Big Five" (Goldberg, 1981).

Furthermore, Eysenck (1971) first developed a two factor model but then founded a three-factor model as opposed to the five-factors which established the "Eysenck Personality Questionnaire" (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975). Their structure of personality consisted of three categories. The supertrait which was defined as clusters of personality traits that subsumed under their core traits, the personality traits, of which were a cluster of specific responses to stimuli as well as the habitual responses which were depicted as ways that individuals usually behave in situations.

此外，艾森克(1971)首先发展了一个两因素模型，然后又建立了一个三因素模型，而不是五因素模型，即“艾森克人格问卷”(艾森克&艾森克，1975)。他们的人格结构分为三类。超特质被定义为一组人格特质它们属于核心特质，即人格特质，其中包括对刺激物的一系列特定反应以及习惯性反应被描述为个体在特定情境下的行为方式。

The big five also originated from the lexical hypothesis as its framework focuses on the descriptors used in any language system to capture the major dimensions of individual differences. The big five model of personality is considered a result of statistical research as it came after Cattell's (1943) initial lexical personality method and after Norman's (1967) list of 1431 major descriptors. It offers a descriptive rather than a causal class-action of individual differences.

As mentioned before, the big five model consists of five major personality traits/factors in its taxonomy.

The first is neuroticism which can be described as the tendency to exhibit negative emotions. Neurotic individuals can be characterised by their tendency to experience anxiety, as opposed to low neuroticism where individuals are described as emotionally stable.

The second dimension is extraversion, this is defined by the characteristics of assertiveness within an individual whilst the third dimension is openness to experience. This is depicted as individuals that engage in intellectual activities and is derived from the ideas of Coan (1974).

第二个维度是外向性，这是由个人自信的特点定义的，而第三个维度是经验的开放性。这被描述为从事智力活动的个人，源自Coan(1974)的思想。

Examples of individuals with a high score in this dimension may include poets and artists. The fourth factor, agreeableness is the extent to which one exhibits sociability or modest behaviour.

The last factor is conscientiousness, which is associated with responsibility and self discipline. Originally, the Eysenckian idea of psychoticism was shown through low scores of agreeableness and conscientiousness, but high scores in openness to experience (Goldberg, 1982; McCrae & Costa, 1987). However, Eysenck et al (1985) also conceptualised agreeableness as a combination of low psychoticism, low neuroticism and high extraversion rather than its own dimension of personality.

THE IPIP-50

The International Personality Item Pool (IPIP-50), a 50 item questionnaire, was established within a personality item-writing project organised by Hofstee and his colleagues as well as students of the University of Groningen, situated in The Netherlands (Hendriks, 1997; Hendriks, Hofstee, & de Raad, 2002).

国际个性项目池(IPIP-50)是一份50项问卷，是Hofstee和他的同事以及位于荷兰的格罗宁根大学的学生组织的一个个性项目写作项目(Hendriks, 1997;Hendriks, Hofstee， & de Raad, 2002)。

This research project included the lexical hypothesis, which was described as the conception that most the important individual differences between each individual can be encoded in natural language (Goldberg, 1981). To generate the personality descriptive items, the Groningen group amassed into three teams between them to follow the guidelines that were recorded by Hofstee (Hofstee et al, 2002).

The first source of the IPIP was derived from the AB5C model of personality (Hofstee, de Raad, & Goldberg, 1992), which organised adjectives from pairs of the original Big-Five personality factors that described the traits.

The teams drafted items individually before they were assessed by the whole team in order to determine whether these items were consistent with ten guidelines that were provided and accurately incorporated a facet of the AB5C model of personality. This process produced 909 items in total.

The second source of the item content was a list consisting of 1,557 personality-descriptive verbs (de Raad, Mulder, Kloosterman & Hofstee, 1988). The new list sampled the production of 136 items such as "insulting" and "cheerful". Subsequently, a list of 266 items were recorded for the content of "intellect". The personality item pool soon became an international measure of personality once the 1,311 items created by the teams were translated into American-English. Only the items that had English and German translations remained in the final draft of the item list.Therefore, the final pool of the 914 items concluded the establishment of the International Personality Item Pool.

项目内容的第二个来源是一个包含1557个性格描述动词的列表(de Raad, Mulder, Kloosterman & Hofstee, 1988)。新名单抽样了136个词，如“无礼的”和“愉快的”。随后，记录了266项“智力”的内容。一旦这些团队创建的1311个条目被翻译成美式英语，这个个性条目库很快就成为了一种国际个性衡量标准。项目清单的最后草案中只保留了有英文和德文译本的项目。因此，914个项目的最后一组结束了国际人格项目组的建立。

Upon using the International Personality Item Pool, I found that there were certain areas that seemed debatable. For example, although I was roughly aware of the questionnaire's intention, it was still difficult to interpret some of the statements used, such as to "have a soft heart." Thus, elements of contextual language may be needed in order to achieve a clear answer as a lack of clarity in the questions can impact the scores obtained.

Furthermore, while I acknowledge the fact that I can relate my results to my personality, it is still difficult to determine where I can truly learn more about my personality as I only acquired a raw score for every factor (not including neuroticism due to ethical considerations). Therefore, it is difficult to claim that my experience of the IPIP is reflective of my personality due to the fact that the results of the class were not standardised.

Similarly, this could potentially show that the IPIP can be problematic when used cross culturally due to the language used. However, due to the fact that it is a recognised measure of personality, it should not have any problems when used cross culturally. One of its advantages is that it does prove as a simple method to understanding and evaluating an individual's personality, particularly if it is used internationally. The more it is used internationally, the more the IPIP becomes a normalised measure of personality as it gains familiarity around different cultures.

类似地，这可能表明，由于使用的语言不同，跨文化使用IPIP可能会有问题。然而，由于这是一种公认的衡量个性的方法，在跨文化使用时应该不会有任何问题。它的优点之一是，它确实被证明是一种理解和评估个人个性的简单方法，尤其是在国际上使用时。IPIP在国际上使用得越多，它就越能成为衡量个性的标准，因为它对不同的文化越来越熟悉。

Additionally, the IPIP is in the form of a self-report study. I believe that self report methods are useful in terms of gathering information about a participant's emotions and cognition without the interference of an interviewer or experimenter. Thus, social desirability is eliminated.

Furthermore, the IPIP uses phrases to depict a short scenario or emotion that a participant might experience which is an advantage as participants would not have to physically experience those emotions, causing them less stress and this would also be preferable should the researcher want to include scenarios and gain information about an individual's cognitive processes without needing to observe their behaviour. However, an advantage of a self report method is that the only individual capable of accurately discussing and assessing their own personality is themselves.

THE APPLICATION OF THE BIG FIVE TO HAPPINESS把五大因素应用到幸福上

The big five can be valid in terms of happiness as those with higher scores of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and are more emotionally stable experience a higher level of satisfaction in life as there are more positive affects than negative (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Steel, Schmidt & Shultz, 2008). This shows that the big five is relevant in terms of happiness and can be measured by subjective well-being.

这五大因素在幸福感方面是有效的，即那些外向性、亲和性、责任心和情绪稳定程度较高的人在生活中体验到更高的满意度，因为积极影响多于消极影响(DeNeve & Cooper, 1998;钢铁，施密特和舒尔茨，2008)。这表明，这五大因素与幸福感相关，可以通过主观幸福感来衡量。

Similarly, highly neurotic people have the tendency to experience more chronic negative affect (Bolger & Schilling, 1991) and have especially intense reactions to negative events (Gross, Sutton, & Ketelaar, 1998). These findings are consistent as Luhmann & Eid (2009) also found a change in life satisfaction in highly neurotic individuals, thus we should consider that slightly neurotic individuals would experience less chronic negative affect. Therefore, direct effects of personality traits on both positive and negative affect may enable us to develop an understanding of why extraverted and emotionally stable individuals generally experience greater well-being.

Furthermore, subjective well-being may influence personality traits as an individual may lead a life with high levels of positive affect and satisfaction in life and due to the fact that a good mood generally leads to sociable behaviour (Fredrickson, 1998), this behaviour may be integrated into their self concept and other psychological systems. Thus, there may be an increase in certain traits such as extraversion, agreeableness and openness to explore.

On the other hand, there may also be an inverse effect. As previously mentioned, if one integrates a positive behaviour due to the increase of certain traits, it could also mean that an individual may internalise unpleasant affects and a pattern of socially withdrawn, cautious behaviour rather than sociable. These types of behaviour are often accompanied with negative moods, and would be shown as an increase in neuroticism and a decrease in extraversion, agreeableness and openness to experience.

The results of additional research conducted by Soto (2015) indicate that individuals with emotionally stable, conscientious, extraverted, and agreeable personalities tend to become happier over time and also implies that individuals with higher primary levels of well-being tend to become more emotionally stable, conscientious, agreeable, and introverted (less extroverted). Soto's (2015) research therefore develops the idea that the big five can be applicable to the happiness and well being of individuals.

Soto(2015)进行的其他研究结果表明，情绪稳定、尽责、外向和随和的个性倾向于随着时间的推移变得更快乐，同时也意味着初级幸福感较高的个体倾向于情绪更稳定、尽责、随和。内向(不那么外向)。因此，索托(2015)的研究提出了“大五”可以适用于个人的幸福和幸福。

In conclusion, the big five was a product of the lexical hypothesis, developed by Allport (1937) and developed by many more psychological researchers. It became a measure of one's individual differences as well as their personality traits through a scale. Individuals that wish to obtain their scores for the big five can undergo the IPIP as long as their scores are standardised. Additionally, the big five can be applied to an individual's life through happiness and well being. Research has indicated that a specific level of certain traits such as a high level of extroversion can determine whether an individual is more likely to become happier over time.

总之，大五人格是词汇假设的产物，该假设由Allport(1937)提出，并由更多的心理学研究者提出。它通过一个量表来衡量一个人的个体差异和个性特征。只要他们的分数是标准化的，想要获得前五名成绩的个人就可以参加IPIP。此外，大五可以通过幸福和幸福应用到一个人的生活中。研究表明，某些特征的特定程度，比如高度的外向性，可以决定一个人是否更有可能变得更快乐。

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