jsalvatier comments on On the Openness personality trait & 'rationality' - Less Wrong
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If people claim that it is an all encompassing model, then that would be a serious criticism. I don't actually know if researchers claim that, but it seems unlikely to me.
This is a weaker criticism than it seems. It stems from using classical stats. Latent factor (such as FA) models are less confusing from a Bayesian point of view. The particular indeterminacy they are talking about disappears when you specify a model and prior more clearly and try to update in a principled manner. A better criticism would be that the results of personality models might be sensitive to model assumptions. However, that sensitivity is an empirical matter and isn't established by referencing the indeterminacy of FA. Another good criticism of Big Five research might be that factor analysis is not a good tool because it could be hard to figure out how sensitive your results are to the particular analysis.
This doesn't seems like a criticism to me.
What I'd like to know, primarily, is whether the Big Five traits correlate with anything other than answers to questionnaire items: in particular, actual behavior.
Pointer to studies appreciated; Google hasn't turned up much. Some studies of job performance have C having the kind of influence you'd expect, then there's things like this.
I think Bryan Caplan talks about the Big Five some and is usually pretty clear thinking. He has a paper on the topic which gives some references for correlations between the Big Five and other things. For example:
And
I'd be interested in hearing if you find interesting results.
I am also interested in that. My impression from hearing people talk about such things is that yes, they do, but I don't actually know much about this area. That result is interesting.