Instincts and personality

In this study we investigate the usefulness of the instinct-conception for personality trait-research. Of particular interest is the effectiveness-connotation of instincts for personality conceptualizations. In its kind, the study forms an indirect test of the so-called psycholexical approach and its main result, the Big Five personality trait factors. For this, 14,046 instinct-expressions, collected by Bernard, 1924 are taken as the starting-point. This large list of instincts is treated according to psycholexical principles, namely by classifying the most relevant instinct-expressions into the recently developed AB5C representation of the Big Five framework. The classification was performed through both primary and secondary factor pole identifications of each instinct-expression and for each Big Five factor. The majority of the personality-relevant instinct terms could be classified in the Big Five system, thus supporting the inclusive potential of the semantics of the Big Five.