The general factor of personality: : A general critique

• Autores: William Revelle, Joshua Wilt
• Localización: Journal of Research in Personality, ISSN-e 1095-7251, Vol. 47, Nº. 5, 2013, págs. 493-504
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Recently, it has been proposed that all non-cognitive measures of personality share a general factor of personality. A problem with many of these studies is a lack of clarity in defining a general factor. In this paper we address the multiple ways in which a general factor has been identified and argue that many of these approaches find factors that are not in fact general. Through the use of artificial examples, we show that a general factor is not:

    1.

    The first factor or component of a correlation or covariance matrix.

    2.

    The first factor resulting from a bifactor rotation or biquartimin transformation.

    3.

    Necessarily the result of a confirmatory factor analysis forcing a bifactor solution.

    We consider how the definition of what constitutes a general factor can lead to confusion, and we will demonstrate alternative ways of estimating the general factor saturation that are more appropriate.