OPEN TO EXPERIENCE - CLOSED TO INTELLIGENCE - WHY THE BIG 5 ARE REALLY THE COMPREHENSIVE 6

The quasi-consensual 'Big Five' personality variables of the Five Fact or Model (FFM) have typically been advanced and welcomed as dimensions that are purely orectic. By contrast, people's differences in general intelligence (g) are held to exist in some separate, noetic, cognitiv e 'domain'. However, the exclusion of g from the realm of personality cannot be sustained either theoretically or empirically. The FFM's 'fi fth' dimension (whether called Intellect (from lexical studies) or Ope nness (from questionnaire studies)) would be substantially correlated with g in the general population-across a normal population range of I Q and Mental Age. FFM fifth factors are thus loaded too highly by aest hetic, cultural, and theoretical interests, while qualities of tender- mindedness, sympathy, and trust are displaced to load on the Agreeable ness dimension. FFM Agreeableness thus becomes highly value-loaded: it literally pits 'love', 'empathy', and 'co-operation' against 'aggress ion', 'autonomy' and 'competition'. No such simple contrast is viable. Social theorists as varied as Adam Smith, Freud, Adler, and Lorenz ha ve all rejected the option. No fewer than six major, independent dimen sions of personality require recognition. These 'Comprehensive Six' ar e (g), neuroticism/emotionality (n), energy/extraversion (e), conscien tiousness/control (c), will/independence (w), and affection/pathemia ( a). These are essentially the same as those recovered most often in th e work of Cattell, so they furnish a six-dimensional model (SDM) havin g a long track record of cross-cultural validation. Several look inter pretable in terms of basic Freudian concepts; and, in the terms of fol k psychology, the SDM's 'Comprehensive Six' might be considered to ref lect individual differences in the qualities of the mind (g), the hear t (n), the soul (a), the spirit (e), the will (w), and the conscience (c).