 2. History, Measurement, and Conceptual Elaboration of the Big‑Five Trait Taxonomy  69
to psychologists who are more interested 
in personality itself. However, the findings 
from the lexical approach are informative, 
because the lexical hypothesis is essentially 
a functionalist argument about the trait 
concepts in the natural language. These 
concepts are of interest because language 
encodes the characteristics that are central 
to human life and experience for cultural, 
social, or biological reasons. Thus, Saucier 
and Goldberg argue that lexical studies de -
fine an agenda for personality psychologists, 
because they highlight the important and 
meaningful psychological phenomena (i.e., 
phenotypic characteristics) that personal -
ity psychologists should study and explain. 
Thus, issues such as the accuracy of self- and 
peer descriptions and the causal origin of 
traits (i.e., genotypes) are left as open ques -
tions that need to be answered empirically. 
However, there may exist important charac -
teristics that people may not be able to ob -
serve and describe verbally; if so, the agenda 
specified by the lexical approach may be in -
complete and would need to be supplement -
ed by more theoretically driven approaches 
(Block, 1995; Tellegen, 1993).
Several theories conceptualize the Big 
Five as relational constructs. In interper -
sonal theory (Wiggins & Trapnell, 1996), 
the theoretical emphasis is on the individual 
in relationships. The Big Five are taken to 
describe “the relatively enduring pattern 
of recurrent interpersonal situations that 
characterize a human life” (Sullivan, 1953, 
pp. 110–111), thus conceptualizing the Big 
Five as descriptive concepts. Wiggins and 
Trapnell (1996) emphasize the interperson -
al motives of agency and communion, and 
interpret all of the Big Five dimensions in 
terms of their interpersonal implications. 
Because Extraversion and Agreeableness are 
the most clearly interpersonal dimensions in 
the Big Five, they receive conceptual priority 
in this model.
Socioanalytic theory (Hogan, 1996; see 
also Roberts & Nickel, Chapter 11, this vol -
ume) focuses on the social functions of self- 
and other-  perceptions. According to Hogan, 
trait concepts serve as the linguistic tools of 
observers (1996, p. 172) used to encode and 
communicate reputations. This view implies 
that traits are socially constructed to serve 
interpersonal functions. Because trait terms 
are fundamentally about reputation, indi -viduals who self-  report their traits engage 
in a symbolic-  interactionist process of intro -
spection (i.e., the individual considers how 
others view him or her). Hogan emphasizes 
that individuals may distort their self-  reports 
with self-  presentational strategies; another 
source of distortion are self-  deceptive biases 
(cf. Paulhus & John, 1998) that reflect not 
deliberate impression management but are 
honestly held, though biased, beliefs about 
the self.
The evolutionary perspective on the 
Big Five holds that humans have evolved 
“difference-  detecting mechanisms” to per -
ceive individual differences that are relevant 
to survival and reproduction (D. M. Buss, 
1996, p. 185; see also Botwin, Buss, & 
Shackelford, 1997). D. M. Buss views per -
sonality as an “adaptive landscape” in which 
the Big Five traits represent the most salient 
and important dimensions of the individu -
al’s survival needs (see also Lewis & Buss, 
Chapter 1, this volume). The evolutionary 
perspective equally emphasizes person per -
ception and individual differences: Because 
people vary systematically along certain 
trait dimensions, and because knowledge 
of others’ traits has adaptive value, humans 
have evolved a capacity to perceive those in -
dividual differences that are central to adap -
tation to the social landscape. The Big Five 
summarizes these centrally important indi -
vidual differences.
McCrae and Costa (1996, 2008) view the 
Big Five as causal personality dispositions. 
Their five-  factor theory (FFT) is a general 
trait theory that provides an explanatory 
interpretation of the empirically derived Big 
Five taxonomy. One central tenet of the FFT 
is based on the finding that all of the Big Five 
dimensions have a substantial genetic basis 
(e.g., Loehlin et al., 1998; Plomin, DeFries, 
Craig, & McGuffin, 2003; see also Krueger 
& Johnson, Chapter 9, this volume) and 
must therefore derive, in part, from biologi -
cal structures and processes, such as specific 
gene loci, brain regions (e.g., the amygdala), 
neurotransmitters (e.g., dopamine), hor -
mones (e.g., testosterone), and so on (e.g., 
Canli, 2006; see also DeYoung, Grazio  plene, 
& Allen, Chapter 8, this volume); it is in this 
sense that traits are assumed to have causal 
status. McCrae and Costa (1996) distin -
guish between “basic tendencies” and “char -
acteristic adaptations.” Personality traits are 