Cloninger's psychobiological model of temperament and character and the five-factor model of personality

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 psyc hobiological model of temperament and character. Archives of General Psychi atry, 50, 975-990] and the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality are inves tigated in a randomised sample of 130 patients admitted to the Emergency Ps ychiatric Unit of a large university hospital. Cloninger's psychobiological model identifies four dimensions of temperament (Novelty seeking, Harm avo idance, Reward dependence and Persistence) and three dimensions of characte r (Self-directedness, Cooperativeness and Self-transcendence). The FFM prop oses the domains of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroti cism and Openness as the basic dimensions underlying individual differences . Five-factor scores are obtained with the NEO-PI-R [Costa, P. T., Jr., & M cCrae, R. R. (1992). NEO-PI-R. Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychologic al Assessment Resources]; Cloninger's personality dimensions are assessed w ith the Temperament and Character Inventory (Cloninger et al., 1993). The p resent study primarily focuses on the direct equivalence of Cloninger's sca les 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 su bstantially covered by the FFM. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights r eserved.