Personality Traits Below Facets: The Consensual Validity, Longitudinal Stability, Heritability, and Utility of Personality Nuances

• Published in: Journal of personality and social psychology 2017-03, Vol.112 (3), p.474-490
• Main Authors: Mõttus, René, Kandler, Christian, Bleidorn, Wiebke, Riemann, Rainer, McCrae, Robert R
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Correlation analysis; Female; Genetics; Heritability; Human; Human Development - physiology; Humans; Individual Differences; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Middle Aged; Personality; Personality - genetics; Personality - physiology; Personality psychology; Personality Tests - standards; Personality Traits; Prediction; Quantitative psychology; Ratings & rankings; Reproducibility of Results; Social psychology; Validity; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0022-3514; 1939-1315
• DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000100

It has been argued that facets do not represent the bottom of the personality hierarchy-even more specific personality characteristics, nuances, could be useful for describing and understanding individuals and their differences. Combining 2 samples of German twins, we assessed the consensual validity (correlations across different observers), rank-order stability, and heritability of nuances. Personality nuances were operationalized as the 240 items of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). Their attributes were examined by analyzing item residuals, controlling for the variance of the facet the item had been assigned to and all other facets. Most nuances demonstrated significant (p < .0002) cross-method agreement and rank-order stability. A substantial proportion of them (48% in self-reports, 20% in informant ratings, and 50% in combined ratings) demonstrated a significant (p < .0002) component of additive genetic variance, whereas evidence for environmental influences shared by twins was modest. Applying a procedure to estimate stability and heritability of true scores of item residuals yielded estimates comparable with those of higher-order personality traits, with median estimates of rank-order stability and heritability being .77 and .52, respectively. Few nuances demonstrated robust associations with age and gender, but many showed incremental, conceptually meaningful, and replicable (across methods and/or samples) predictive validity for a range of interest domains and body mass index. We argue that these narrow personality characteristics constitute a valid level of the personality hierarchy. They may be especially useful for providing a deep and contextualized description of the individual, but also for the prediction of specific outcomes.