ocean 5

so if there wasn't a dominant theory about personality, would half of the people who we define as having mental illness still be considered ill?
i love psychology, but psychologists are always trying to figure us out, you know?
in the '80s, researchers Costa & McCrae came up with yet another psychometric approach to personality that is now a dominant view. they say there are 5 major variables of personality that are replicable across time and across cultures.

Openness (willing to try new things)
Conscientiousness (regard for others)
Extroversion (level of sociability)
Agreeableness (pleasant to interact with)
Neuroticism (guilty, worrisome, anxious)

so this is it. they've boiled us down to 5 traits, or a combination thereof.
by asking their research participants to answer a questionnaire, which they have never published. huh.
so if we can only be these traits, even in any combination, people who exhibit other traits are what? mentally ill? outside of "the norm"? makes you wonder. well, it makes me wonder.
there were others that were quite popular pre Costa & McCrae, like Eysenck who came up with 3 personality prototypes: neuroticism (unstable & introverted, worried, guilty, moody); psychoticism (extroverted but emotionally unstable, seeks out social interactions but volatile and moody); extroverted (lively, social, responsive, good at seeking out harmonious relationships)...this means i'm psychotic.
like Cattell, who said there are 16 factors of personality that are source traits--the root of our behaviour

i'm thinkin i'm a bit of a critic of the trait theories
Walter Mischel is too.
he says behaviour is determined by the situation rather than personality.
situationism. i like that.
maybe if we all wanted to go to parties all the time, we'd all be extroverted and highly sociable.
maybe if we were all confronted with voices in our heads, we'd be introverted and talk out loud to ourselves.
maybe if we weren't confined to fit into 5 personality traits, other traits wouldn't seem so extraordinary.
if we were all the same, nobody's behaviour would be out of the ordinary.
what fun is that?