NEO-FFI (Five factor inventory, Borkenau and Ostendorf1993; Costa and McCrae1992).
The following study assessed the stability of the Big Five personalty traits, by asking people to watch a 10 minute emotion-inducing film, and then think of happy or sad times while listening to an appropriate piece of music.
Sad but true? - How induced emotional states differentially bias self-rated Big Five personality traits, 2014, Querengässer and Schindler
"Today’s most popular framework of personality traits are the Big Five (Costa and McCrae1985). The Big Five consist of five personality dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness for experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Personality shows a moderate degree of stability over time (Hampson and Goldberg2006; Lucas and Donnellan2011) and even has a genetic basis (Tellegen et al.1988) whilst still changing dynamically in relation to life events conceptually similarly and to the same magnitude as income (Boyce et al.2013). Though, research shows that Big Five’s retest reliability is not perfect: A meta-analysis of 848 stability coefficients from different manuals measuring one or more of the Big Five dimensions reports average coefficients varying between .69 and .76 (Viswesvaran and Ones2000). These results indicate that the remaining 42-52% variance derives from other influencing factors. Some external factors have already been identified: Namely, the source of information, for example self ratings versus ratings by external observers (Allik et al.2010), and the interview process, for example a comparison of face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews and self-rated questionnaires (Lang et al.2011). But questions about the instability of personality traits within-subject remain. In Viswesvaran and One’s own words (2000, p. 227): “The stability of personality traits … [has] been a major source of consternation for personality psychology.”"
Background
The Big Five are seen as stable personality traits. This study hypothesized that their measurement via self-ratings is differentially biased by participants’ emotions. The relationship between habitual emotions and personality should be mirrored in a patterned influence of emotional states upon personality scores.
Methods
We experimentally induced emotional states and compared baseline Big Five scores of ninety-eight German participants (67 female; mean age 22.2) to their scores after the induction of happiness or sadness. Manipulation checks included the induced emotion’s intensity and durability.
Results
The expected differential effect could be detected for neuroticism and extraversion and as a trend for agreeableness. Post-hoc analyses showed that only sadness led to increased neuroticism and decreased extraversion scores. Oppositely, happiness did not decrease neuroticism, but there was a trend for an elevation on extraversion scores.
Conclusion
Results suggest a specific effect of sadness on self-reported personality traits, particularly on neuroticism. Sadness may trigger different self-concepts in susceptible people, biasing perceived personality. This bias could be minimised by tracking participants’ emotional states prior to personality measurement.
"The conceptualization of personality suggests that its testing should not be influenced by temporary moods: People should respond to how they think and behave in general rather than how they feel in the current situation. However, being a systematic but fluctuating source of measurement variance, it is possible that emotional states bias response as other personal states (e.g., the activation of a certain social role) do (Donahue and Harary1998). Emotional states should also be considered as a source of such “patterned” measurement bias, as evidence derived from related areas of study would suggest."
The following study assessed the stability of the Big Five personalty traits, by asking people to watch a 10 minute emotion-inducing film, and then think of happy or sad times while listening to an appropriate piece of music.
Sad but true? - How induced emotional states differentially bias self-rated Big Five personality traits, 2014, Querengässer and Schindler
"Today’s most popular framework of personality traits are the Big Five (Costa and McCrae1985). The Big Five consist of five personality dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness for experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Personality shows a moderate degree of stability over time (Hampson and Goldberg2006; Lucas and Donnellan2011) and even has a genetic basis (Tellegen et al.1988) whilst still changing dynamically in relation to life events conceptually similarly and to the same magnitude as income (Boyce et al.2013). Though, research shows that Big Five’s retest reliability is not perfect: A meta-analysis of 848 stability coefficients from different manuals measuring one or more of the Big Five dimensions reports average coefficients varying between .69 and .76 (Viswesvaran and Ones2000). These results indicate that the remaining 42-52% variance derives from other influencing factors. Some external factors have already been identified: Namely, the source of information, for example self ratings versus ratings by external observers (Allik et al.2010), and the interview process, for example a comparison of face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews and self-rated questionnaires (Lang et al.2011). But questions about the instability of personality traits within-subject remain. In Viswesvaran and One’s own words (2000, p. 227): “The stability of personality traits … [has] been a major source of consternation for personality psychology.”"
Background
The Big Five are seen as stable personality traits. This study hypothesized that their measurement via self-ratings is differentially biased by participants’ emotions. The relationship between habitual emotions and personality should be mirrored in a patterned influence of emotional states upon personality scores.
Methods
We experimentally induced emotional states and compared baseline Big Five scores of ninety-eight German participants (67 female; mean age 22.2) to their scores after the induction of happiness or sadness. Manipulation checks included the induced emotion’s intensity and durability.
Results
The expected differential effect could be detected for neuroticism and extraversion and as a trend for agreeableness. Post-hoc analyses showed that only sadness led to increased neuroticism and decreased extraversion scores. Oppositely, happiness did not decrease neuroticism, but there was a trend for an elevation on extraversion scores.
Conclusion
Results suggest a specific effect of sadness on self-reported personality traits, particularly on neuroticism. Sadness may trigger different self-concepts in susceptible people, biasing perceived personality. This bias could be minimised by tracking participants’ emotional states prior to personality measurement.
"The conceptualization of personality suggests that its testing should not be influenced by temporary moods: People should respond to how they think and behave in general rather than how they feel in the current situation. However, being a systematic but fluctuating source of measurement variance, it is possible that emotional states bias response as other personal states (e.g., the activation of a certain social role) do (Donahue and Harary1998). Emotional states should also be considered as a source of such “patterned” measurement bias, as evidence derived from related areas of study would suggest."
method said:At the beginning of this condition the emotion was induced via a ten minute short film. To provide strong emotions with an unequivocal valence, we chose happiness as the positive and sadness as the negative emotion. Subsequently to the film, participants were asked to imagine happy or sad scenes from their own personal experience. Music was played in accordance with the emotion. Additionally, participants were asked to focus upon their physical reactions to the induced emotion, and increase them if possible. Participants then had three minutes to adopt the emotion. In this way we used visual, auditory, proprioceptive and cognitive means to induce the emotion.
As stimuli we chose an excerpt from the film ‘Philadelphia’ and Barber’s ‘Adagio pour cordes’ to stimulate the sad condition. A short report about the fall of the Berlin Wall including a reunion of a long divided family and Mozart’s ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’ was used for the happy condition. The same pieces of music were successfully used to induce emotions by Eich and Metcalfe (1989).