Cloninger's Psychobiological Model of Temperament and Character and the Five-Factor Model of Personality

Abstract

The relationships between Cloninger’s Temperament and Character dimensions [Cloninger, C. R. (1987). A systematic method for clinical description and classification of personality variants. Archives of General Psychiatry, 44 573‐588; Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, D. M., & Przybeck, T. R. (1993). A psychobiological model of temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50, 975‐990] and the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality are investigated in a randomised sample of 130 patients admitted to the Emergency Psychiatric Unit of a large university hospital. Cloninger’s psychobiological model identifies four dimensions of temperament (Novelty seeking, Harm avoidance, Reward dependence and Persistence) and three dimensions of character (Self-directedness, Cooperativeness and Self-transcendence). The FFM proposes the domains of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness as the basic dimensions underlying individual diAerences. Five-factor scores are obtained with the NEO-PI-R [Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). NEO-PI-R. Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources]; Cloninger’s personality dimensions are assessed with the Temperament and Character Inventory (Cloninger et al., 1993). The present study primarily focuses on the direct equivalence of Cloninger’s scales with the NEO-PI-R domains and facets. Considerable overlap with the FFM dimensions is demonstrated and the results show that each TCI factor is substantially covered by the FFM. 7 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.