PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCESSubstance and Artifact in the Higher-Order Factors of the Big FiveRobert R. McCraeNational Institute on AgingShinji YamagataUniversity of TokyoKerry L. JangUniversity of British ColumbiaRainer RiemannFriedrich-Schiller-University JenaJuko Ando and Yutaka OnoKeio UniversityAlois AngleitnerUniversity of BielefeldFrank M. SpinathUniversity of SaarlandJ. M. Digman (1997) proposed that the Big Five personality traits showed a higher-order structure with2 factors he labeled ␣ and ␤. These factors have been alternatively interpreted as heritable componentsof personality or as artifacts of evaluative bias. Using structural equation modeling, the authorsreanalyzed data from a cross-national twin study and from American cross-observer studies and analyzednew multimethod data from a German twin study. In all analyses, artifact models outperformed substancemodels by root-mean-square error of approximation criteria, but models combining both artifact andsubstance were slightly better. These findings suggest that the search for the biological basis ofpersonality traits may be more profitably focused on the 5 factors themselves and their specific facets,especially in monomethod studies.Keywords: Big Five, five-factor model, behavior genetics, cross-observer, cross-culturalIn 1997, Digman showed that across several data sets andinstruments, scales measuring the Big Five factors—as the higher-order dimensions of the five-factor model (FFM; McCrae &John, 1992) of personality traits are commonly called—tendedto show a consistent pattern of intercorrelations that could besummarized in terms of two even higher-order factors, which hecalled ␣, or socialization, and ␤, or personal growth. The formerwas defined by low Neuroticism (N) and high Agreeableness(A) and Conscientiousness (C); the latter was defined by Ex-traversion (E) and Openness (O). Digman interpreted thesefactors in terms of constructs from classic theories of person-ality. For example, he related the self-actualization theories ofRogers (1961) and Maslow (1954) to the outgoing, adventurous,and creative traits associated with ␤. Much of the appeal of hiswork lies in his efforts to integrate personality structure withpersonality theories.Independently, Becker (1999) reported higher-order factor anal-yses of German inventories that suggested two factors he labeledMental Health and Behavior Control. DeYoung, Peterson, andHiggins (2002) argued that these factors were a rotation of Dig-man’s (1997) factors, such that ␣ is intermediate between MentalHealth and high Behavior Control, whereas ␤ lies between MentalHealth and low Behavior Control. DeYoung et al. relabeled ␣ asRobert R. McCrae, Gerontology Research Center, Laboratory of Personal-ity and Cognition, National Institute on Aging; Shinji Yamagata, Departmentof Cognitive and Behavioral Science, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; Kerry L. Jang, Department of Psychiatry,University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; RainerRiemann, Department of Psychology, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena,Germany; Juko Ando, Department of Education, Faculty of Letters, KeioUniversity, Tokyo, Japan; Yutaka Ono, Health Center, Keio University; AloisAngleitner, Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld,Germany; Frank M. Spinath, Department of Psychology, University of Saar-land, Saarland, Germany.Shinji Yamagata is now at the Department of Sociology, Keio Univer-sity. Rainer Riemann is now at the Department of Psychology, Universityof Bielefeld.Robert R. McCrae receives royalties from the Revised NEO PersonalityInventory. This research was supported in part by the Intramural ResearchProgram of the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging.Portions of this article were presented at the 13th biennial meeting of theInternational Society for the Study of Individual Differences, July 2007,Giessen, Germany. Some of the data analyzed in this article were previ-ously reported elsewhere (Jang et al., 2006; McCrae, Costa, & Martin,2005; McCrae, Martin, & Costa, 2005; Yamagata et al., 2006).Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert R.McCrae, Gerontology Research Center, 5600 Nathan Shock Drive, Balti-more, MD 21224-6825. E-mail: [email protected] AUGUST 18, 2008; SEE LAST PAGEJournal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008, Vol. 95, No. 2, 442– 455In the public domain DOI: 10.1037/10.1037/0022-3514.95.2.442442Stability and ␤ as Plasticity and proposed neurobiological basesfor them. Jang et al. (2006) reported behavior genetic analyses ofdomain scales from the Revised NEO Personality Inventory(NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992) in Canadian, German, andJapanese samples that suggested that ␣ and ␤ might be herita-ble, although in the German and Japanese samples, ␣ wasdefined only by low N and high C. The presence of geneticassociations seems to imply that ␣ and ␤ are substantive factorsof personality, although Jang et al. pointed out that thesegenetic effects so far have been demonstrated in only oneinstrument, the NEO-PI-R.However, the view that ␣ and ␤ are substantive constructs ata higher order than the Big Five has also been challenged. Analternative is that they are method artifacts and that the fivefactors are themselves orthogonal. In support of that position,McCrae and Costa (1989) showed that there is slightly greatercross-observer agreement between orthogonal factor scoresthan between oblique factor scores or raw domain scores.Similarly, Biesanz and West (2004) compared self-reports, peerratings, and parental ratings on an adjective measure of the BigFive and concluded that “observed correlations among Big Fivetraits are the product of informant-specific effects” (p. 870);that is, different domains were correlated within each datasource but were unrelated across sources.Such informant-specific effects are generally interpreted asmethod artifacts, biases that contribute to observed scores be-cause of the method used rather than as a reflection of the truescore. Two accounts of the nature of these artifacts have beenproposed. McCrae and Costa (1995) reported a joint factoranalysis of the NEO-PI-R and Tellegen, Grove, and Waller’s(1991) Inventory of Personal Characteristics #7 (IPC7). TheIPC7 includes versions of the Big Five factors along with scalesassessing positive valence