In at least some observer ratings studies of non-human animal (e.g., chimpanzee) personality (plenty of controversy here; Sam Gosling at U of Texas is the "to go" person to for this literature), dominance has emerged as a sixth factor in addition to the Big Five. Its inclusion here along with the traditional FFM is certainly not without precedent:
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~ajf/pdf/King%20%26%20Figueredo%201997.pdf I'd rather read the article in full, which I've not yet done, before gauging the quality of the design and analyses, and the likelihood of replication. Have long found that judging articles from the Abstract is often a tricky business. ...Scott Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ph.D. Department of Psychology, Room 473 Emory University 36 Eagle Row, Atlanta, Georgia 30322 slil...@emory.edu<mailto:slil...@emory.edu>; 404-727-1125 From: Paul C Bernhardt [mailto:pcbernha...@frostburg.edu] Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 8:40 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] This one doesn't smell right Agreed that it has a lot of the indicators we use to question the validity of a finding. However, I think it is possible, even likely, that body odor could be connected to dominance. Testosterone is related to dominance and it spreads to a lot of body fluids. That some odor unique to testosterone levels would be perceptible and correlated with dominance scores would not shock me. But, your point is well taken that they appear to be on a bit of a fishing expedition in this one. Paul On Dec 8, 2011, at 8:31 AM, Michael Britt wrote: Lately we've been talking about the need to inject new journal review procedures (http://www.thepsychfiles.com/2011/11/ep-165-video-psychological-research-under-fire-what-can-we-do-about-it/). Well, this is a little "armchair review", but I saw this articled summarized on a website yesterday and I think something doesn't "smell" right about it (if you'll excuse the pun): Does Personality Smell? Accuracy of Personality Assessments Based on Body Odour Published in the European Journal of Personality (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/per.848/abstract) >From the abstract (bolding is mine): "...we investigated the relationship between body odour and the Big Five personality dimensions and dominance. Sixty odour samples were assessed by 20 raters each. The main finding of the presented study is that for a few personality traits, the correlation between self-assessed personality of odour donors and judgments based on their body odour was above chance level. The correlations were strongest for extraversion (.36), neuroticism (.34) and dominance (.29). Further analyses showed that self-other agreement in assessments of neuroticism slightly differed between sexes and that the ratings of dominance were particularly accurate for assessments of the opposite sex. " Here's what stands out for me: * They found significant (and weak) correlations in only 2 out o the big five * Using the "big five" scale sounds fine to me, but dominance isn't part of the big five - why was it included unless they were just looking for something to come out significant? Was dominance in their original hypotheses? If so, why? * Were other personality constructs also measured? If so, what were the results? * Just using the phrase "further analyses" raised my eyebrows (a fishing exhibition?) * "differed slightly between the sexes" - does "slightly" mean significant or not? I'll try to get ahold of the whole article, but this doesn't look like it would hold up to replication. Thoughts? Michael A. Britt, Ph.D. mich...@thepsychfiles.com<mailto:mich...@thepsychfiles.com> http://www.ThePsychFiles.com<http://www.ThePsychFiles.com/> Twitter: mbritt --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: pcbernha...@frostburg.edu<mailto:pcbernha...@frostburg.edu>. 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