Humans often classify people as having “big personalities” or “no personalities.” These classifications have connotations, and grouping people into one of these categories has big implications for how we view that person. Although each of us has an innate sense of what it means for someone to have a big or no personality, we don’t have a standardized definition for either of these descriptors. Are there specific characteristics that we associate with people who we think of as having big or no personalities?
A study done at Ouachita Baptist University looks at patterns in character traits that we associate with people having big or no personalities. The study had one hundred and four participants that were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. There were sixty four females and forty males; seventy eight of the participants were caucasian, eight were African American, seven were Hispanic or Latino, five were Asian, and the rest were either multi- or non- identified. The study used multiple questions and data analysis methods to look for characteristics that align with big and no personalities. First, participants were asked to define what it means to have “big” and “no personalities.” Next, they were asked to name two fictional characters (from movies, TV shows, books, etc.), one that has a big personality and one that has no personality. Lastly, the participants used the Ten Item Personality Inventory to rate their own personality and the personalities of both fictional characters that they chose. This inventory breaks down personality into five major (predefined) domains (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to new experiences). To analyze the data, researchers first looked at participants definitions of big and no personality. They used the CQR-M procedure to group the responses into categories. The domains they created for no personality included four categories: boringness, low emotional expressiveness, low uniqueness, and reservedness, and the categories for big personality included eight categories: sociability, energy, uniqueness, emotional expressiveness, confidence and assertiveness, fun and humor, interestingness and complexity, and agreeableness. The next stage of analysis found that there is significant difference in the ten item personality index between characters with big and no personalities. According to the conclusions of the study, extraversion, agreeableness,and openness were much higher in characters who participants characterized as having big personalities. The researchers use these findings to assert that there is a common group of traits that people use to make judgments about whether someone has a big or no personality.
An important issue with this study is the limited sample. All participants came from Amazon Mechanical Turk, which is not representative of the population in the United States. Joining Amazon Mechanical Turk is elective and is likely to attract a specific demographic. The first major issue with the methods of this study is with the first stage of categorizing using the CQR-M procedure. During this part of the study, raters grouped the responses of participants (in which they defined big and no personalities) into larger categories. This is problematic because the people creating the categories have their own ideas about what it means for someone to have a big or no personality, and they might misinterpret or oversimplify participants responses to fit into their own predetermined boxes. There is was wide variety of how participants defined what big and no personalities are, and some of the things that were grouped together are highly questionable. The created domain of energy included words like “animated” and “lively” while the created domain of emotional expressiveness included traits related to extraversion. Should animated have been included under emotional expressiveness instead of energy? The line between these two domains seems very subjective, and similar questionable groupings were established for each domain.
This table shows the frequency of each domain description for people defined as having a lot of personality. Some of the domain categories had very low frequencies but were still used as a defining characteristics of people with “big personalities.”
One thoughtful step taken by the researchers was controlling for the role that each fictional character played (whether they were a protagonist, antagonist, supporting character, or incidental character). They found only one significant association between the character being incidental and the character being rated as having no personality. In the discussion section the authors argue that, because most of the nominated characters were protagonists and antagonists, that “main characters are simply more salient than non-main characters, and thus any differences may not be a reflection on the actual degree of knowledge about the character” (18). This defense of one of the limitations of their study is weak. If characters are incidental, by definition they do not have a major presence in the plot, so of course they will not have very developed personalities. To correct this problem, the study should have removed incidental characters from their data.
Overall, it is problematic to use this study to conclude that there are definable definitions for people having no personality and a big personality. We need to be mindful of trying to use these descriptors as if they have a standardized definition, because this study, although it claims to, does not prove that one exists.
Referenced:
Fayard, J. V., Clay, J. Z., Valdez, F. R., & Howard, L. A. (2019). What Does it Mean to Have “No Personality” or “A Lot of Personality”? Natural Language Descriptions and Big Five Correlates. Journal of Research in Personality. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2019.02.004, https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.02.004
Gosling, Samuel D, et al. “A Very Brief Measure of the Big-Five Personality Domains.” Science Direct, Elsevier, 2003, gosling.psy.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/JRP-03-tipi.pdf.
Data/Society/Decision-making Spring 2019 