Personality can be defined in terms of enduring individual differences in emotional, interpersonal, experimental and motivational styles. The five factors of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness provide a comprehensive taxonomy of personality traits for the description of personality in aging men and women. As part of an ongoing series of studies on these basic dimensions, section investigators examined relations between normal personality traits as measured by the NEO Personality Inventory and measures of motivation and personality disorders. Two measures of Murray's needs--the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule and the Adjective Check List--were correlated with the NEO-PI in both student and adult (BLSA) samples, and showed a meaningful pattern of relations. A second adult sample was used to examine correspondences between personality disorders as measured by the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory and normal personality dimensions. Results suggested that the five-factor model might provide a useful dimensional alternative to the categorical model traditionally used in psychiatric diagnosis.
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