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General Factor of Personality

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

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Synonyms

GFP; The Big One; w

Introduction

Research on individual differences has always been aimed at finding the basic building blocks of intelligence and personality. In the area of intelligence, this has led to the emergence of the well-known general factor of intelligence, also referred to as the g factor. In the area of personality the possibility of a general factor has received scant attention. This however has changed and there now is a vast body of literature testing the viability of a general factor of personality (GFP) and its relation to numerous outcomes (for an extensive review see Van der Linden et al. 2016).

The notion of a GFP has emerged due to consistent observations that personality traits covary along a dimension of social desirability. This positive manifold is seen in the results of factor analyses where the first extracted factor loads on each of the separate traits in a predictable and systematic pattern. For example, given what is currently the most utilized...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL, USA

    Curtis S. Dunkel

  2. Department of Psychology, Education, and Child Studies (DPECS), Erasmus University Rotterdam,, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Dimitri van der Linden

Authors
  1. Curtis S. Dunkel
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  2. Dimitri van der Linden
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Curtis S. Dunkel .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Ashton Southard

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Dunkel, C.S., van der Linden, D. (2017). General Factor of Personality. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1225-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1225-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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