Person. indioid. Diff: Vol. 13,No. 6,pp. 675-681,1992 0191~8869/92 %5.00+0.

00
Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved Copyright 0 1992Pergamon Press Ltd

WHAT IS A BASIC FACTOR AND WHICH FACTORS ARE

MARVIN ZUCKERMAN
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, U.S.A.

(Received IO November 1991)

Summary-Criteria for a “basic factor” of personality include: (1) reliable identification of the dimension
factor across methods, genders, ages; (2) at least moderate heritability; (3) identification of similar kinds
of behavioral traits in non-human species; and (4) association of the trait biological trait markers. The
conventional five factor model has not gone far beyond the first of these. An alternative five factor model
has been developed from factor analyses of traits selected from psychobiological studies of personality;
it includes the basic factors of sociability, neuroticism-anxiety, impulsive unsocialized sensation seeking,
aggression-hostility and activity. Universal factors are likely to have biological bases. Personality traits
must be studied at all biological levels from the behavioral to the genetic.

CRITERIA FOR “BASIC TRAITS” OF PERSONALITY

How do we determine which are the basic dimensions of personality or temperament? Before we
can answer this question we must agree on what defines a “basic factor”. Part of the disagreement
between Eysenck (1992) and Costa and McCrae (1992) in the preceding articles stems from this
issue.
I have suggested some criteria for a basic trait of personality (Zuckerman, 1991). The first is
reliable identification of the dimension factor across methods, genders, ages, and cultures. The “big
five” model has achieved its “born again” prominence because of the identification of the factors
by many investigators in different cultures. But most studies have used trait ratings rather than
questionnaire scales, leading to the question of whether we are describing the general language
system of traits or the actual way social behavior is organized. When we develop a state scale for
Sensation Seeking using adjectives alone we found a paucity of appropriate single words to describe
this trait (Neary 1975, described in Zuckerman, 1979). We found a few like “daring, adventurous,
zany, curious, and playful”, but most were less specific referring to surgent or positive affect. Only
questionnaire items were capable of delineating the trait in terms of the specific and well replicated
four subfactors. Costa and McCrae (1992) comment on a similar paucity of adjectives describing
the trait of openness. Most of the adjectives they found referred to the cognitive elements of the
trait leading lexigraphical researchers to call the trait “intellect”. But perhaps Costa and McCrae
were unduly influenced by this conception in developing their own construct of openness. There
is no guarantee that the encoding of personality traits in language is proportional to the behavioral
importance of the traits or their biological relevance. This is why the questionnaire studies of
personality are more interesting. Questionnaires can designate actions more specifically than single
word ratings.
The second is at least moderate heritability for the trait. This is easy enough for most traits of
any breadth. Although some studies have shown less heritability for narrower traits like
masculinity-femininity, most broad personality traits yield heritabilities in the range of 40 to 60%
(Zuckerman, 1991). Some temperament theorists like Strelau (1983) have drawn a distinction
between temperament traits as primarily biologically based and personality traits as primarily
socially based, but the narrow range of heritability of traits does not allow for a distinction on this
basis alone. However traits such as sensation seeking (Fulker, Eysenck & Zuckerman, 1980),
constraint (Tellegen, 1985) and psychoticism (Rose, 1988) deserve more consideration as basic traits
because their heritabilities tend to fall at the maximum end of the range for personality traits. Little
genetic study has been done on the conventional “big five” except for extraversion and neuroticism
which have been studied in the context of Eysenck’s model.
The third criterion is identification of similar kinds of behavioral traits in non-human species,
particularly those which live in social groups or colonies. This criterion is important for two

675
a 676-678. oldalt kivágtam ...
 What is a basic factor and which factors are basic? 619

The disagreements between the various factor analytic studies probably depend on the particular
selection of variables and the tendency of factor loadings to wander from one factor to another
if they are not based on sufficiently large samples. Our selection of scales has been called
“idiosyncratic” because we have not included the standard markers for the “big five.” My
rationale for selection of markers in the first study were quite explicit. Most of the scales had
been widely used in genetic and psychobiological studies. There is a kind of “band-wagon”
effect for the “big five” which is intolerant of models that deviate even slightly from the prototype.
If our questionnaire dimensions are idiosyncratic they are an amazingly replicable kind of
idiosyncrasy.

BIOLOGICAL BASES

It is true, as stated by Costa and McCrae and others, that a taxonomy of basic personality traits
need not be demonstrably linked to biological mechanisms. There was a taxonomy of the species
based on superficial similarities in form and function before there was a biological theory of
evolution. But as biologists learn more about evolution they must revise their classification of
families of species. Not all creatures that swim are fish and not all traits that are related in function
have the same biological basis. I agree with Costa and McCrae that we should start with systems
derived from analyses of traits at the psychological level and then look down to the biological
mechanisms related to them. But in evaluating competing trait dimensions developed in this manner
we must go beyond the endless factoring of traits. In the last analysis, the determination of what
is a basic dimension of personality does not depend on factor loadings but on the predictive power
of the dimension for behavior and its biological basis. If these basic dimensions are universal as
claimed, then the probability is that they are based on the way in which our biology has evolved
to cope with the extraordinary range of social structures and physical environments on this planet.
Whether or not ES and Dis belong to the same dimension is less relevant than their foundation
in biological bases of personality. Both variables, incidentally, have the highest heritabilities among
the four SS scales (Fulker et al., 1980). Dis is the more powerful predictor of alcohol and drug
use and social deviance in longitudinal studies (Newcomb & McGee, 1991) while experience seeking
is the most strongly related to preferences among visual stimuli and art and music (Zuckerman,
1979). Dis is the SSS subscale most strongly and consistently related to a number of biological traits
including: augmenting-reducing of the cortical evoked potential and the deceleration vs accelera-
tion of heart rate in response to novel tones (Zuckerman, 1990), the enzymes monoamine oxidase
and dopamine-P-hydroxylase and androgen and corticosteroid hormones (Zuckerman, 199 1). Dis
is also the most culture-free scale, although it shows strong sex differences and age decline, perhaps
related to associated sex and age differences in MAO and gonadal hormones.
Perhaps narrower traits are closer to the biological levels than the broader traits. Narrow
impulsivity, for instance, is more closely related to cortical arousal and conditionability than the
broad trait of extraversion (Zuckerman, 1991). Regardless of how personality is organized at the
three or five factor levels, it would be a mistake to ignore factor components like Dis or narrow
impulsivity. We should not box ourselves into any big three or five as the end-all of personality
measurement. However, it would be useful to organize narrower traits within broader ones in a
hierarchal model as Costa and McCrae have done. Although Eysenck (1967) advocates a hierarchal
model he has not developed his measures in accordance with such a model. Eysenck and Eysenck
(1963) originally claimed that extraversion was composed of two positively correlated subfactors
and many investigators subsequently scored these two groups of items in the E scale of the Eysenck
Personality Inventory separately. However after the development of the P scale many of the items
on the E scale were drawn away from the E dimension axis. Rather than developing impulsivity
within the context of extraversion or psychoticism, they developed independent scales of impulsivity
(Eysenck & Eysenck, 1977) which proved to be related to more than one of the other super-factors
and therefore could not be fitted into a neat hierarchal model. Zuckerman et al. (1988, 1991) have
found that nearly all of the impulsivity scales they used (the Eysenck Imp scales were not used)
loaded primarily on the P dimension.
There once was a great oriental guru who was asked by a young, eager student: “what does the
world rest on?” The guru replied: “a giant turtle.” The student thought a bit and then asked: “Well
680 MARVINZUCKERMAN

Fig. 1

what does that turtle rest on?“, “An even larger turtle” the guru replied. The student pressed his
point again: “and what does that turtle rest on.” The guru somewhat testily replied: “Another large
turtle” . . . and before the inevitable question came, the guru added with finality: “and from there
on it is turtles all the way down.” But in another version of this story when the guru comes to
the seventh turtle, he adds: “and there it stops because seven is a magic number.”
Figure 1 shows my seven turtles of the psychobiology of personality: traits, social behavior,
conditioning or observational learning, physiology, biochemistry, neurology, and the final seventh,
genetics. Traits are based on aggregations of instances of social behavior or covert reactions. These
behavioral dispositions are based on conditioning and, of course, observational learning. Most
studies of traits and theories of their origins stop at this turtle. But there are turtles below.
Conditionability, and other kinds of learning depend on both information processing systems and
motivational systems in the brain. Centers for reward and punishment in the limbic brain may be
the basis for at least two of the major dimensions of personality (Gray, 1987). The neuronal path-
ways defining these systems depend on chemical neurotransmitters and a complex host of enzymes
that regulate their formation and breakdown in the neuron and the synaptic cleft. One of these
enzymes, monamine oxidase (MAO), has proven to be a marker for sociability and sensation seeking,
in both humans and monkeys. But many more remain to be investigated. Finally there is neurology
or the structure of the brain which, as we know from studies of brain damaged individuals, can
have marked effects on personality. And then we come to the magical seventh turtle, behavior
 What is a basic factor and which factors are basic? 681

genetics. While we can argue about direction of causation for the higher turtles, like physiology
and biochemistry, genetics is the egg from which the turtles emerge.
This is not a reductionist model. Each turtle is a distinct creature to be studied at its own level,
but for a complete understanding of any turtle one cannot ignore the next turtle down who forms
its foundation. When that turtle moves the turtles above it move whether they want to or not. But
a turtle on top may move without any effects on the turtles under it. We cannot hide within the
shell of our most familiar turtle and ignore the others.

REFERENCES

Angleitner, A. & Ostendorf, F. (1991). Temperament and the big five factors of personality. Paper presented at a conference
on “The development of the structure of temperament and personality from infancy to adulthood.” Wassenaar, The
Netherlands, 17-20, June, 198 1.
Buss, A. H. & Plomin, R. (1975). A temperament theory of personality development. New York: Wiley.
Costa, P. T. Jr & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Four ways five factors are basic. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(6),
653665.
Eysenck, H. J. (1967). The biological basis of personality. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Eysenck, H. J. (1992). Four ways five factors are nor basic. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(6), 667673.
Eysenck, H. J. & Eysenck, M. W. (1985). Personality and individual differences: a natural science approach. New York:
Plenum Press.
Eysenck, S. B. G. & Eysenck, H. J. (1963). On the dual nature of extraversion. British Journal of Social and Clinical
Psychology, 2, 4655.
Eysenck, S. B. G. & Eysenck, H. J. (1977). The place of impulsiveness in a dimensional system of personality description.
British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 16, 5768.
Fulker, D. J., Eysenck, S. B. G. & Zuckerman, M. (1980). The genetics of sensation seeking. Journal of Personality Research,
14, 261-281.
Gray, J. A. (1987). The neuropsychology of emotion and personality. In Stahl, S. M., Iverson, S. D. & Goodman, E. C.
(Eds), Cognitive neurochemistry (pp. 171-190). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Neary, R. S. (1975). The development and validation of a state measure of sensation seeking. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of Delaware.
Newcomb, M. D. & McGee, L. (1991). Influence of sensation seeking on general deviance and specific behavior problems
from adolescence to young adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 614628.
Rose, R. J. (1988). Genetic and environmental variance in content dimensions of the MMPI. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 55, 302-3 11.
Soubrie, P. (1986). Reconciling the role of central serotonin neurons in animal and human behaviour. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 9, 319-364.
Strelau, J. (1983). Temperament, personality, activity. London: Academic Press.
Strelau, J., Angleitner, A., Bantelmann, J. & Ruth, W. (1990). The Strelau Temperament Inventory- Revised (STI-R):
Theoretical considerations and scale development. European Journal of Psychology, 4, 209-235.
Tellegen, A. (1985). Structures of mood and personality and their relevance to assessing anxiety with an emphasis on
self-respect. In Tuma, A. H. & Maser, J. D. (Eds), Anxiety & the anxiefy disorders (pp. 681-706). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Windle, D. M. & Lerner, R. M. (1986). Reassessing the dimensions of temperament individuality across the life span: The
revised Dimensions of Temperament Survey (DOTS-R). Journal of Adolescent Research, 1, 213-230.
Zuckerman, M. (1979). Sensation seeking: beyond the optimal level of arousal. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Zuckerman, M. (1984). Sensation seeking: A comparative approach to a human trait. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9,
749-754.
Zuckerman, M. (1989). Personality in the third dimension: A psychobiological approach. Personality and Individual
Differences, 10, 391418.
Zuckerman, M. (1990). The psychophysiology of sensation seeking. Journal of Personality, 58, 313-345.
Zuckerman, M. (1991). Psychobiology of personality. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Zuckerman, M., Eysenck, S. B. G. & Eysenck, H. J. (1978). Sensation seeking in England and America: Cross-cultural,
age and sex comparisons. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46, 139-149.
Zuckerman, M., Kuhlman, D. M. & Camac, C. (1988). What lies beyond E and N? Factor analyses of scales believed to
measure basic dimensions of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 966107.
Zuckerman, M., Kuhlman, D. M., Thornquist, M. & Kiers, H. (1991). Five (or three) robust questionnaire scale factors
of personality without culture. Personality and Individual Differences, 9, 929-941.