62 I. THEORETICAL  PERSPECTI vES AND  CONCEPT uAL uNITS
The A domain emphasizes Amity as the op -
posite of Enmity, in the sense of tending and 
befriending others, rather than seeing them 
as the enemy. N now stands for Negative- 
Emotion Regulation, emphasizing the posi -
tive view that students can learn to better 
manage the negative emotions they inevita -
bly encounter in their lives, with facets such 
as stress modulation to counter anxiety, tol -
erance of frustration, and self-  confidence 
to manage sadness and self-doubt. Finally, 
Open-  mindedness is already familiar from 
the work on the BFI-2 described above.
Finally, the measurement model adopted 
by Primi et al. (in press) is two-fold, as -
sessing both the self-  perceived skills (i.e., 
self- efficacy) of the students and their gen -
eral view of their typical behavior and ex -
perience (i.e., identity); those two levels of 
assessment were found to be substantially 
correlated. So far, the reception of the more 
intuitive and consumer-  friendly labels and 
definitions in Table 2.6 has been very posi -
tive among teachers, students, and school 
officials in Brazil. We are curious to see how 
widely these labels will be adopted.
Convergence between  the Big Five 
and Other Structural  Models
McCrae and Costa’s (1985a, 1985b, 1985c, 
1987) findings, like the cross-  instrument 
convergence described earlier, show that 
the factor-  analytic results from the lexical 
tradition converge surprisingly well with 
those from the questionnaire tradition. This 
convergence eventually led to a dramatic 
change in the acceptance of the five factors 
in the field. With regard to their empirical 
status, the findings accumulated since the 
mid-1980s show that the five factors repli -
cate across different types of subjects, raters, 
and data sources in both dictionary-  based 
and questionnaire-  based studies. Indeed, 
even more skeptical reviewers were led to 
conclude that “agreement among these de -
scriptive studies with respect to what  are the 
appropriate dimensions is impressive” (Rev -
elle, 1987, p. 437; see also McAdams, 1992). 
The finding that it does not matter whether 
Conscientiousness is measured with trait 
adjectives, short phrases, or questionnaire 
items suggests that the Big Five dimensions have the same conceptual status as other 
personality constructs. For example, Loeh -
lin et al. (1998) found that all five factors 
show substantial and about equal heritabili -
ties, regardless of whether they are measured 
with questionnaires or with adjective scales 
derived from the lexical approach.
One of the great strengths of the Big 
Five taxonomy is that it can capture, at a 
broad level of abstraction, the commonali -
ties among most of the existing systems of 
personality traits, thus providing an integra -
tive descriptive model for research. Table 
2.1 summarizes the personality dimensions 
proposed by a broad range of personality 
theorists and researchers. These dimensions, 
although by no means a complete tabula -
tion, emphasize the diversity of current 
conceptions of personality. However, they 
also point to some important convergen -
ces. First, almost every one of the theorists 
includes a dimension akin to Extraversion. 
Although the labels and exact definitions 
vary, nobody seems to doubt the funda -
mental importance of this dimension. The 
second almost universally accepted per -
sonality dimension is Emotional Stability, 
as contrasted with Neuroticism, Negative 
Emotionality, and Proneness to Anxiety. In -
terestingly, however, not all the researchers 
listed in Table 2.1 include a separate mea -
sure for this dimension. This is particularly 
true of the interpersonal approaches, such as 
those of Wiggins (1979) and Bales (1970), as 
well as the questionnaires primarily aimed 
at the assessment of basically healthy, well- 
functioning adults, such as Gough’s (1987) 
CPI, the MBTI (Myers & McCaulley, 1985), 
and even Jackson’s (1984) PRF. In contrast, 
all of the temperament-  based models in -
clude Neuroticism. There is less agreement 
on the third dimension, which appears in 
various guises, such as Control, Constraint, 
Super-Ego Strength, and Work Orientation 
as contrasted with Impulsivity, Psychoti -
cism, and Play Orientation. The theme un -
derlying most of these concepts involves the 
control, or moderation, of impulses in a nor -
matively and socially appropriate way (cf. 
Block & Block, 1980). However, Table 2.1 
also points to the importance of Agreeable -
ness and Openness, which are neglected by 
temperament-  oriented theorists such as A. 
H. Buss and Plomin (1975), Eysenck (1986), 