Captain Psychology

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Reduction Mnemonics

Chpater 20. Reduction Mnemonics

      I was taking a college course on the psychology of human resources. It was offered by the school of business and taught by one of its more prominent faculty members. I was aware of the unwritten rule that psychology majors were not to dabble in real life applications but there I was venturing out into the unknown.

      The course had lots of new vocabulary; terms I had never heard before and familiar terms with new definitions. My notes turned into lists and my lists into long strings of words. I decided to use reduction mnemonics.

      I had no idea that’s what the techniques were called. I didn’t understand the theory underlying their use. And, unfortunately, no one told me how to avoid misusing them. In short, no one had told me what I’m about to tell you.

      Reduction mnemonics are a special group of memory tricks. They are mnemonic (a technical term for memory aids) in the sense that they (a) aid remembering and (b) must be learned. People don’t spontaneously use reduction mnemonic. Either they have been taught to use them or (as was my case) they see others use them.

      As a group, reduction mnemonics work in two ways. First, as the name suggests, they try to reduce encoding demands. They improve recall by limiting the amount of information needed to be recalled. They assume (correctly so) that remembering is easier if there is less to learn. Second, reduction mnemonics organize information into meaningful patterns. They know that an organized closet is easier to access than a cluttered one.

      Three words of caution before we look at the specifics of each technique.. First, these techniques won’t solve all of your problems. Although they are often hyped as mega-brain cures, there are limits to their usefulness. Reduction mnemonics are good techniques that can greatly increase your recall of unconnected facts but they are not perfect.

      Second, people don’t use them. People don’t use them spontaneously before they are trained. And surprisingly, people don’t use them after they are trained. Even after being specifically trained to use mnemonics, people don’t use them in real life. Students use them while in school but stop using them once out of school.  Further, social scientists who professional study memory are not more likely to use mnemonics than the general public.

      Third, people use them on the wrong tasks. Reduction mnemonics don’t work well on every day tasks. The memory tasks most people face are prospective (ie., future tasks). People want to know when to take their pills and where to meet someone for lunch. People are rarely required in real life to memorize lists of unrelated facts. But that’s where reduction mnemonics shine.

      Reduction mnemonics are artificial systems and, oddly enough, are best used in artificial situations. Most people (memory researchers included) use external aids (lists, calendars, etc.) to keep track of every day bits of information. Writing things down is easier. But school is full of lists of facts. And writing them down is not always an option.

      The emphasis on memorizing facts is partly the nature of school itself and partly reflects what we want graduates to be able to do. We believe that some facts should be readily available in memory. Doctors can look up some things but they should know from memory the names of bones, nerves and organs. When you go to them with the flu, you expect them to use their memories and not pull out a book to look up “conditions that cause low fever and muscle aches.” A lawyer needs to know legal jargon. A mechanic must learn engine parts, cooks must learn ingredients, and landscape architects must be able to recall the names of dozens of flowers.

      The following 5 types of reduction mnemonics can be useful whenever you have to learn lists of unrelated facts. They work well for anyone who needs to learn facts for school.

  1. Acronyms. This technique is simply taking the first letter of a series of words you want to recall and making them into one word. To remember the 5 principles of treating most sports injuries, you might create PRICE out of Protect, Rest, Ice, Compress and Elevate. To remember what to do when you see blood, you could remember RED (rest, elevate and direct pressure).

      Many doctors in training have used the same acronym to learn the 12 optic nerves. The nerves (olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducens, facial, auditory, glossopharyngeal, vagus, spinal accessory and hypoglossal) can be reduced to “On Old Olympus Towering Top, A Finn And German Viewed Some Hops.” Similarly, the acronym “Some Lovers Try Positions That They Can’t Handle” can help you recall the bones of the wrist (scaphoid, lumen, triquitrum, pisiform, trapezoid, trapezium, capitate and hamate).

      The words do not have to be real words. Nonsense words will also work. In you want to recall 8 criteria for evaluating theories, you could use CUSSIT (clear, useful, small number of assumptions, summarizes facts, internally consistent and testable hypotheses). You probably encounter hundreds of nonsense word acronyms every day. Common acronyms include: RDO (regular day off), PDA (personal data assistant), RAM (random access memory), R&D (research and development), and RADAR (radio detection and ranging).

      Usually the first letter of each word is used but sometimes selected letters form a new word, such as the statistical technique of ANOVA (ANalysis Of VAriance). The important thing is to make your acronym as memorable as possible. HMSEO for remembering the names of the Great Lakes is not as good as HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior). Similarly, DCBFE (my personal list of animals I’ll never own) is not as good as BCDEF (Birds, Cats, Ducks, Elephants & Fish). If the order of words doesn’t matter, rearrange the letters until you find an acronym that works for you.

      In that business class I took in college, I used acronyms extensively. I made them as memorable as possible and as full of personal meaning as I could. Then, on the day of the big test, I entered the room with the confidence that came from many hours of practicing my acronyms. And I promptly failed the test.

      Oh, I remembered the acronym. It went something like: TTFINLLMMOR. But I totally forgot what it meant.

      Acronyms reduce and organize facts. They “dehydrate” unrelated words into easier to recall packets. Long descriptions, such as “Light Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation,” can be reduced to “laser.” But they only work if you can remember its component parts. Remembering SMMFHR is only helpful if you’re able to expand it to Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing, Finance and Human Resources.  Take a hint from me: don’t put all your study time into learning the mnemonic. Make sure you spend time practicing expanding the memory hints as well.

  1. First Letter Blocking. A variation of acronyms is starting each target word with the same letter. The 3 C’s of diamonds selection, for example are clarity, color and carat. The 4H Club has head, heart, hands and health. And parties are best when they include family, friends, food and fun. Blockings are not as effective for recall as acronyms that make up real or meaningful words but the technique works better than nothing at all.

      They work because your memory treats even a long a series of identical letters as 2 small bits of information: the letter and how many there are. Because your mind automatically collapses multiple Z’s into one, it takes less memory to represent a sting of identical letters.

      Letter-blocking (words all begin with N) is widely used by speakers. It is easy to create a block of letters and speakers feel more organized when they have blocked their main points. Unfortunately, most people remember that the speeches points began with N but not the points themselves. Speakers would be better off expending the extra energy needed to create an acronym which related to the theme.

  1. Acrostics. Another variation on acronyms, an acrostic is a phrase, sentence or poem formed from selected letters. For example, the lines of a musical clef can be used to create: “Every Good Boy Does Fine.” These “sentences of words” are more difficult to create than acronyms but are just as effective.

      The acrostic is an old technique. Epicharmus (born 540 BC) is often called the inventor of acrostics. In some of his poems, the first letters of each line formed a word. This was not his only contribution to the arts. Epicharmus was also among the first to write comedies and use plots.

      Other literary acrostics include Proverbs 31 (an acrostic Hebrew poem describing the perfect wife as a “valiant woman”) and Edgar Allen Poe’s Elizabeth Rebecca poem. More modern uses include love songs (“L is for the way you look at me”) and school children’s works on baseball, Christmas, Mother, Spring and Australia.

      Creating an acrostic has 3 steps. First, list the target words (Mars, Venus, Earth, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto). Second, select the first letter of each target word (MVEMJSUNP). Third, select new words to form a sentence (My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles).

      Again the caution is to practice the target words (the ones you want to remember) as well as the cue words in the sentence. Also, if word order isn’t set, rearrange the parts to make the acrostic more memorable. For example, to remember the 5 reduction mnemonics, you could use the acrostic PANAF (peg-word, acronym, number-letter, acrostic and first letter blocking) or the acronym Pat Answers Never Are Free.

  1. Peg-Word systems. A more complicated reduction mnemonic is a list of cues which are easily visualized. The cues (memory pegs) are memorized over and over until they become second nature. Once the pegs have been stored in long-term memory, they can be used to “hang” things which need to be recalled. Each individual item needing recall is associated with a specific peg.

      There are several lists of pegs. Many books on memory tricks rely heavily on peg-word systems, so you can choose which pegs you want to learn. A common peg list uses relatively common words for pegs.  Instead of 1, 2 and 3, the “hooks” are bun (usually a hotdog bun), shoe and tree. Four would door, 5 is (bee) hive, 6 is sticks, and 7 is heaven (angel). For 8-10, the pegs are a gate, a mine (gold or coal), and a hen.

      If you wanted to make a mental list of 3 things to buy at the grocery store, you would hang each target on a peg. If you wished to be recall eggs, lettuce and orange juice, you’d hang each from a separate mental hook. Eggs could be mentally pictured on a hotdog bun. A head of lettuce would be pictured inside a shoe. And a quart of orange juice would be pictured hanging from a tree. If a harmonica was item 10, it would be associated with the hook “hen.” The combined picture would include both the target(harmonica) and the peg (hen).

      The next trip to the store new items would be associated in short term memory with the hooks. Once the hooks have been learned so well that they come easily, they can used and reused with new items. Using this system, the objects can be recalled in any order by remembering the combined image of the target and memory hook. And the system can be used for long or short lists.

      Peg-word systems are described in many memory training books but rarely used in real life. Most people who want to recall a list of items find it much easier to write them down. Remembering where the list has been placed is much easier than learning the pegs thoroughly or attaching images to them on a regular basis.

  1. Number-Letter mnemonics. Like peg-word systems, number-letter mnemonics closely embed the hint and the target. Each number is converted to an objects that has a similar shape. The number 1 is long and straight and does look something like a tie. And if you try you can imaging that a 2 looks like a swan, 3 is a tree, or that the number 10 looks like a bat and ball beside each other.

      The down side of this technique (peg-word systems is that they tend to be all or none aids. If you remember the picture of a priest riding a swan, you’ll likely recall the target is the beginning of a joke (“Two priests walk into a bar…” But if you forget which kind of animal it is or what is riding on it, you will remember nothing. There is no way to sound out solutions or get partial credit.

      Memory wiz Jerry Lucas (also known as Doctor Memory) uses this example of 3 times 3 equals nine to teach the times tables to children. Notice that tree times tree equals mine.

      This is one of the best uses of peg-target systems. Rather than re-using visual pegs to remember things you could write down, number mnemonics teach information you want children to keep in long-term memory. Similar systems are available for individual letters of the alphabet and for teaching phonics.

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Jung

You Want, Less Than You Need
Carl Jung (1875-1961) was the first outsider to join Freud’s inner circle. Jung was not Jewish, not born in or around Vienna, and wasn’t even Austrian. Carl Jung was bron and raised in Switzerland. He was an only child who was not good at relationships but did well in school. Carl was a loner, didn’t like competition, and was teased by his peers (he tended to faint under pressure).

Jung felt closer to his mother but he described her as having two personalities: humorous and unpredictable. Some suggest Jung’s interest in psychiatry was because his mother was schizophrenic. His mother may have been hospitalized when he was three but there is little evidence that it was for schizophrenia.

Was Jung schizophrenic? Carl Jung was certainly weird. But whether that weirdness was genius or mental illness is a matter of opinion. There are propoents on each side of the issue. Jung’s ideas are very scattered, which can be seen as artistic or symptomatic.Adding to the controversy, Jung referred to himself as having two personalities: the one in this life and the one from a previous centurty in which he was an old man. Similarly some see creativity or pathology in the breadth of his concepts and the incorporation of occult and mythology imagery.

There is no question that Jung was imaginative. He tended to see the world and himself in a larger context. Even his autobigraphy, which was published after his death, was as much mythology as historical truth. Jung had a vision of a ”monstrous flood” that would cover most of Europe, though not the mountains of Switzerland. The vision was followed by several weeks of recurring dreams about rivers and floods of blood. This was not a child’s dream; Jung was 38 at the time, but very vivid. When WWI began, Jung viewed his vision as having been a prediction. I like the idea of predicting the future. If you have a dream on Tuesday and something happens on Thursday, it’s interesting. But Jung’s vision was in the fall of 1913, and the start of WWI was in August of 1916. For me, it three years ruins the illusion.

Jung was pursued many arts. He painted, sculpted, drew and wrote. Although he explored many fields, he was always looking for themese and commonalities. For Jung, everything had a meaning. One of his therapeutic techniques (amplification) involved expanding every detail of a dream into associations. Instead of Freud’s free association (jumping from thread to thread), Jung prefered to elict multiple associations from the same item. The more associations that can be made, the easier it was to discover underlying themes. And the more themes that can be discovered, the easier it is to find archetitypes (overriding, universal themes that impact behavior).

One pair of architypes Jung repeatedly encoutered was persona (outward image) and shadow (inner self). Jung maintained that people protect themselves and influence others by presenting a persona that is more presentable than the reality in which they live. Although we don’t intentionally lie, we do try mask the realities of our inner pain. We do this, of course, unconsciously.

Jung differs from Freud on what is unconscious. For Jung, people have both a personal unconscious (undiscovered personal experiences) and a collective unconscious (undiscovered univeral experiences). The collective unconscious is a repository of all human knowledge, including our pre-human experiences. It is filled with primordial images: memories from out ancentral past. For Jung, the goal of life, and much of the fun and pain of life, is the discovery of what the universe is trying to tell us through this collection of symbols and images.

Also open to discovery is our personality types. Jung proposed four basic functions (sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling) that can be combined with two primary attitudes (introversion and extroversion) to create eight personality types. There are several personality tests based on Jungian assumptions, including the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the Rorschach inkblot test, and the more recent Myers-Briggs. These tests, like Jung’s theory, are quite creative and broad. Although critics point out the terrible test-retest reliabilities of the instruments, supporters point to the wealth of creative data they produce.

by

Adler

About 3500 years ago, the Chinese developed a system of personality based on when you were born. This zodiac incorporated the planets (5 elements), the months (12 animals), and (later on) the tide: yin and yang. This 60-year cycle explained what you were like, who to marry, and what would happen in the future. A thousand years later (about the time of Confucius), Hippocrates was explaining to the Greeks that personality types (humors) were based on four essential body fluids. Many ancients believed that your name determines your personality. The power of names was so great, parents carefully chose a name lest they temp the fates. Consequently, naming a baby “sloth” would be unacceptable, while naming a child “brave” or “mercy” would produce a person held that trait.

Ancient approaches often emphasized temperament over character. Temperament was thought to be the built-in characteristics a person has. You might have a generally sad personality (melancholy) or happy (sanguine). This temperament doesn’t mean you can’t be honest (character) but describes your general bent. If you’re a morning person, it’s the result of temperament. If you go to an early morning class even though you are a late night person, it’s a reflection of your character.

The first modern personality trait theorist was Gordon Allport. In the 1930’s, Allport and his students searched through dictionaries to find words that described personality. They started with 17,953 adjectives but settled on 4504 of them. Allport suggested that most of these traits were “common traits” (traits we all hold in common). Some might have a lot of a common trait but others might have only a smidge. But Allport also proposed that people can have individual traits unique to them. His morphogenic approach combined individual uniqueness (idiographic traits) and group comparison traits (nomothetic traits). You can compare yourself to others on “agreeable,” “friendly,” and “caring.” Plus you can have your own special nobody-in-the-world-is-like-me traits. Allport bridged the “lots of traits” and the “only a few traits” debate by combining them.

Following Allport’s lead, Raymond Cattell reduced Allport’s list further. Cattell removed uncommon words and those he thought redundant. He whittled it down to 171 traits. Still following Allport’s lexical approach (personality can be described by dictionary words), Cattell added a statistical technique: factor analysis. Then, using factor analysis, he concluded there were only 16 traits. His personality test, the 16 PF (sixteen personality factors) is still in use today. Cattell’s factors included: affectia (outgoing vs. reserved), ego strength (emotional volatility), parmia (adventurousness), and surgency (a sort of happy-sad distinction).

Cattell wasn’t the only one using factor analysis. Hans Eysenck used the statistical technique to reduce personality to two dimensions: neuroticism and introversion-extroversion.  For Eysenck, personality was more a matter of temperament than character. He revived the humors of Hipprocates but reformulated the four humors into two dimensions: extroversion and neuroticism. Extraversion is a reflection of your physiological make up. He believed that your shy personality is the result of your brain is easily startled. Specifically, Eysenck targeted the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) and the reticular formation of the lower brain stem. Introverts, according to this view, don’t have the safety mechanism that extroverts do. When trouble comes, an extroverts brain becomes numb or zones out. This inhibition process protects the brain from trauma. In contrast, introverts feel all of the impact of the traumatic event and are overwhelmed by it.

Although nervous people aren’t always neurotic, Eysenck believed that they were more susceptible to problems, hence the tendency for people to have “nervous disorders,” “nervous breakdowns,” and “nervous ticks.” This nervousness is the result of temperament: built in physiologically. Since the sympatric nervous system causes arousal and emotional responsiveness, he hypothesized that people who scored high on his test of neuroticism had an underlying physiology that made them more likely to be excited by danger and stress. People who remain calm under stress have a sympathetic nervous system that is less responsive.

The tendency to believe personality is biologically based is not limited to the brain physiology.  In the 1940’s, William Sheldon proposed that personality and body types were linked. He categorized people as being endomorphic (soft and round), mesomorphic (muscular and rectangular) and ectomorphic (fragile and tall). According to this approach, soft and round folk were friendly and cuddly. But muscular mesomorphs were assertive and energetic. Ectomorphs might be thin and shy but they were smart. Sheldon’s theory was more phrenology than psychology, but you’ll still encounter people following his line of reasoning.

Henry Murray added to trait theory by hypothesizing two influences on people: needs and presses. Needs can be both processes and internal states (achievement, power, intimacy). Your need for intimacy pushes you toward people. Your need for achievement determines how hard to try. Just as hunger is a physiological need that pushes you to get food, psychological needs are internal pressures that compel action. Your behavior is not solely the result of your needs. The environment also impacts you. These environmental presses pressure you from the outside. You can be pressured by a press of danger, or deprivation. Your environment might press you to be friendly or compliant. You can be impacted by a rejecting environment, or one of loss or duty. Both a loss in your life and the birth of a child are presses. In some sense, you are trapped between internal drives and external presses.

Murray’s other main contribution to personality theory was the creation of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Although today it is widely used as a test of creativity, the TAT was designed to reveal latent needs (unexpressed needs). Composed of a series of magazine-sized cards, the test is a collection of abstract images on which a person can “project” their personality. You would be given a card and asked to describe what is going on now, what went on before, and what is going to happen in the future. Your stories would be written down verbatim, and later analyzed for themes. Murray, who was psychoanalyzed by Carl Jung, believed that these latent themes were the key to understanding how people really felt; the TAT was a key to understanding one’s personality.

The most recent trait theory is a multidimensional theory called the Big Five. This is a consensus theory, not the work of a single person. It is the culmination of work over three decades using factor analysis. The Big Five are summarized as OCEAN or CANOE: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

In the 19060’s, the Air Force routinely gave Cattell’s 16PF to its incoming officers. Two researchers (Tupes & Christal, 1962) analyzed these tests, looking for underlying factors. From their eight samples (they didn’t look at all of the scores), they concluded that the number of personality factors could be reduced substantially from Cattell’s sixteen. In six of the samples, they could reduce the number of factors to eight. In another sample, they found 5 factors. In the last sample, they identified 12 factors.

Using undergraduates instead of Air Force personnel, another researcher (Norman, 1963) found five factors. Norman had students rate their peers on 20 of the variables Tupes and Christal used (four from each of the five factors). Through factor analysis, he found five factors (which critics suggest is not surprising since he started with 4 examples of each of the five factors). In another study (Norman, 1967), 1431 words were rated on the original five dimensions, resulting in 75 semantic clusters. These clusters were later used with others words but again five factors were found (Goldberg, 1980); again not a surprise to the critics: start with clusters based on five dimensions and end with five dimensions.

Another research team (McCrae & Costa, 1976) began with a two-trait model (neuroticism and extraversion) but later added “openness to experience.”  Still later, they added agreeableness and conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1985). In their personality test (NEO, each of the five factors are composed of six subscales (facets). So extroversion is really a combination of gregariousness, activity, assertiveness, warmth, positive emotions, and seeking excitement. And agreeableness is subdivided into trust, modesty, compliance, altruism, tendermindedness and straightforwardness.

 

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Trait Notes

About 3500 years ago, the Chinese developed a system of personality based on when you were born. This zodiac incorporated the planets (5 elements), the months (12 animals), and (later on) the tide: yin and yang. This 60-year cycle explained what you were like, who to marry, and what would happen in the future. A thousand years later (about the time of Confucius), Hippocrates was explaining to the Greeks that personality types (humors) were based on four essential body fluids. Many ancients believed that your name determines your personality. The power of names was so great, parents carefully chose a name lest they temp the fates. Consequently, naming a baby “sloth” would be unacceptable, while naming a child “brave” or “mercy” would produce a person held that trait.

Ancient approaches often emphasized temperament over character. Temperament was thought to be the built-in characteristics a person has. You might have a generally sad personality (melancholy) or happy (sanguine). This temperament doesn’t mean you can’t be honest (character) but describes your general bent. If you’re a morning person, it’s the result of temperament. If you go to an early morning class even though you are a late night person, it’s a reflection of your character.

The first modern personality trait theorist was Gordon Allport. In the 1930’s, Allport and his students searched through dictionaries to find words that described personality. They started with 17,953 adjectives but settled on 4504 of them. Allport suggested that most of these traits were “common traits” (traits we all hold in common). Some might have a lot of a common trait but others might have only a smidge. But Allport also proposed that people can have individual traits unique to them. His morphogenic approach combined individual uniqueness (idiographic traits) and group comparison traits (nomothetic traits). You can compare yourself to others on “agreeable,” “friendly,” and “caring.” Plus you can have your own special nobody-in-the-world-is-like-me traits. Allport bridged the “lots of traits” and the “only a few traits” debate by combining them.

Following Allport’s lead, Raymond Cattell reduced Allport’s list further. Cattell removed uncommon words and those he thought redundant. He whittled it down to 171 traits. Still following Allport’s lexical approach (personality can be described by dictionary words), Cattell added a statistical technique: factor analysis. Then, using factor analysis, he concluded there were only 16 traits. His personality test, the 16 PF (sixteen personality factors) is still in use today. Cattell’s factors included: affectia (outgoing vs. reserved), ego strength (emotional volatility), parmia (adventurousness), and surgency (a sort of happy-sad distinction).

Cattell wasn’t the only one using factor analysis. Hans Eysenck used the statistical technique to reduce personality to two dimensions: neuroticism and introversion-extroversion.  For Eysenck, personality was more a matter of temperament than character. He revived the humors of Hipprocates but reformulated the four humors into two dimensions: extroversion and neuroticism. Extraversion is a reflection of your physiological make up. He believed that your shy personality is the result of your brain is easily startled. Specifically, Eysenck targeted the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) and the reticular formation of the lower brain stem. Introverts, according to this view, don’t have the safety mechanism that extroverts do. When trouble comes, an extroverts brain becomes numb or zones out. This inhibition process protects the brain from trauma. In contrast, introverts feel all of the impact of the traumatic event and are overwhelmed by it.

Although nervous people aren’t always neurotic, Eysenck believed that they were more susceptible to problems, hence the tendency for people to have “nervous disorders,” “nervous breakdowns,” and “nervous ticks.” This nervousness is the result of temperament: built in physiologically. Since the sympatric nervous system causes arousal and emotional responsiveness, he hypothesized that people who scored high on his test of neuroticism had an underlying physiology that made them more likely to be excited by danger and stress. People who remain calm under stress have a sympathetic nervous system that is less responsive.

The tendency to believe personality is biologically based is not limited to the brain physiology.  In the 1940’s, William Sheldon proposed that personality and body types were linked. He categorized people as being endomorphic (soft and round), mesomorphic (muscular and rectangular) and ectomorphic (fragile and tall). According to this approach, soft and round folk were friendly and cuddly. But muscular mesomorphs were assertive and energetic. Ectomorphs might be thin and shy but they were smart. Sheldon’s theory was more phrenology than psychology, but you’ll still encounter people following his line of reasoning.

Henry Murray added to trait theory by hypothesizing two influences on people: needs and presses. Needs can be both processes and internal states (achievement, power, intimacy). Your need for intimacy pushes you toward people. Your need for achievement determines how hard to try. Just as hunger is a physiological need that pushes you to get food, psychological needs are internal pressures that compel action. Your behavior is not solely the result of your needs. The environment also impacts you. These environmental presses pressure you from the outside. You can be pressured by a press of danger, or deprivation. Your environment might press you to be friendly or compliant. You can be impacted by a rejecting environment, or one of loss or duty. Both a loss in your life and the birth of a child are presses. In some sense, you are trapped between internal drives and external presses.

Murray’s other main contribution to personality theory was the creation of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Although today it is widely used as a test of creativity, the TAT was designed to reveal latent needs (unexpressed needs). Composed of a series of magazine-sized cards, the test is a collection of abstract images on which a person can “project” their personality. You would be given a card and asked to describe what is going on now, what went on before, and what is going to happen in the future. Your stories would be written down verbatim, and later analyzed for themes. Murray, who was psychoanalyzed by Carl Jung, believed that these latent themes were the key to understanding how people really felt; the TAT was a key to understanding one’s personality.

The most recent trait theory is a multidimensional theory called the Big Five. This is a consensus theory, not the work of a single person. It is the culmination of work over three decades using factor analysis. The Big Five are summarized as OCEAN or CANOE: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

In the 19060’s, the Air Force routinely gave Cattell’s 16PF to its incoming officers. Two researchers (Tupes & Christal, 1962) analyzed these tests, looking for underlying factors. From their eight samples (they didn’t look at all of the scores), they concluded that the number of personality factors could be reduced substantially from Cattell’s sixteen. In six of the samples, they could reduce the number of factors to eight. In another sample, they found 5 factors. In the last sample, they identified 12 factors.

Using undergraduates instead of Air Force personnel, another researcher (Norman, 1963) found five factors. Norman had students rate their peers on 20 of the variables Tupes and Christal used (four from each of the five factors). Through factor analysis, he found five factors (which critics suggest is not surprising since he started with 4 examples of each of the five factors). In another study (Norman, 1967), 1431 words were rated on the original five dimensions, resulting in 75 semantic clusters. These clusters were later used with others words but again five factors were found (Goldberg, 1980); again not a surprise to the critics: start with clusters based on five dimensions and end with five dimensions.

Another research team (McCrae & Costa, 1976) began with a two-trait model (neuroticism and extraversion) but later added “openness to experience.”  Still later, they added agreeableness and conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1985). In their personality test (NEO, each of the five factors are composed of six subscales (facets). So extroversion is really a combination of gregariousness, activity, assertiveness, warmth, positive emotions, and seeking excitement. And agreeableness is subdivided into trust, modesty, compliance, altruism, tendermindedness and straightforwardness.