Personality Theory and The Nature of Human Nature

Robert Hogan & Ryne A. Sherman

Hogan Assessment Systems

Pre-print under review for special issue at Personality and Individual Differences
 Abstract

This overview of modern personality theory makes six points. First, personality theory is crucial

for understanding life. Second, life is largely about competition. Third, there is competition

within groups for individual status, and there is competition between groups for collective

survival. Fourth, academic psychology focuses on within group competition, but between group

competition can be more consequential. Fifth, successful within group competition depends on

social skill; successful between group competition depends on leadership. And finally,

personality determines/explains the outcome of both forms of competition.

 Personality Theory and The Nature of Human Nature

People are the deadliest invasive species in the history of the earth. People have the

potential to kill every living thing and, in certain instances have already done so (e.g., passenger

pigeons, western black rhinoceros, great auk) or are on their way to doing so (e.g., sea turtles,

elephants, tigers, polar bears). Given their frightful potential and world-wide presence, it would

be useful to know something about people. Personality psychology is the “go-to” discipline for

understanding people; personality psychology is the only discipline whose primary focus is the

nature of human nature. What does personality psychology tell us about human nature? The

answer depends on whom you ask; or more precisely, to which theory of personality you

subscribe.

Modern personality psychology began in Vienna at the end of the 19 th century, where an

amazing flowering of human creativity brought revolutions in a wide variety of fields including

architecture, music, physics, medicine, music, painting, literature, economics, and especially

philosophy. Personality theory started as a psychodynamic version of psychiatry—mental illness

was hypothesized to be a function of intra-psychic dynamics and the physical symptoms were

secondary. The pioneers of this new way to conceptualize psychic troubles included Pierre Janet

(who was French), Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Otto Rank, Erik Erikson, and

others. Personality theory was a vibrant intellectual activity for 70 years but by the early 1970s,

some prominent personality psychologists began to argue that personality theory was pointless,

that only data mattered. In retrospect, Walter Mischel’s (1968) critique of personality psychology

was more a symptom of the decline of personality theory than a cause—it reflected a changing

culture rather than creating one.

 The collapse of interest in personality theory created a hole in our ability to understand

human affairs. This is because personality theory is unavoidable: everything we do depends on

our assumptions about human nature. Even social psychology depends on (often untenable and

unspecified) assumptions about human nature. We need to make these assumptions explicit for

two reasons: (1) ideas have consequences—they drive everything we do; and (2) knowledge

proceeds more efficiently from error than from confusion—bad ideas can be corrected, but

unspecified assumptions lead to futility.

The Three Theories of Personality Psychology

There are three major theories of personality, with sub-types within each theory. The first

is the many versions of psychodynamic theory associated with clinical psychology. The second

is trait theory, which concerns cataloguing dimension of individual differences. The third is

interpersonal theory which largely concerns career coaching and development—i.e., applications

to everyday life. In the following paragraphs, we briefly describe the history of each theory,

identify its core assumptions, and evaluate the consequences of these assumptions.

Psychodynamic theory dominated personality psychology for 70 years and contains

many valid insights. For example, early experience shapes later personality, much social

behavior is unconsciously motivated, people are inherently irrational, and psychology can be

used for human betterment. The three major assumptions of psychodynamic theory are: (1)

everyone is somewhat neurotic; (2) the goal of life is to overcome one’s neurosis; and (3) the

goal of personality assessment is to identify the sources of one’s neurosis. The problem with

psychodynamic theory is the first assumption; everyone is not neurotic. Although most people

have issues that bother them from time to time, to be neurotic is to be dysfunctional on a

continuing basis and that is obviously not true for most people. In addition, as positive
psychology points out, the absence of neurosis does not guarantee happiness or success. Lastly,

diagnosing psychopathology is not the primary goal of personality assessment. Despite its

compelling subject matter, psychodynamic theory pointed personality psychology in the wrong

direction for 70 years. Positive psychology (Seligman, 2002) is a superficial, but natural, reaction

to the excesses of psychodynamic theory.

Trait theory began in the 1930s as an academic exercise in classification and is largely

defined by the writings of Gordon Allport (1937), Raymond Cattell (1943), Hans Eysenck

(1947), and their students. The goal of trait theory is to classify the structure of personality; the

units of analysis are “traits,” defined as (a) recurring behavioral tendencies; and (b) neuropsychic

structures. The behavioral tendencies can be observed; the neuropsychic structures are inferred

and believed to correspond to the behavioral tendencies. Trait theory makes three major

assumptions: (1) everyone has traits; (2) the goal of life is to discover one’s traits; and (3) the

goal of personality assessment is to measure traits. Despite the immense popularity of trait theory

in modern psychology, it has limited utility as a theory of personality for several reasons; here

we will mention three. First, trait theory describes behavior in terms of traits, and then explains

behavior in terms of traits (e.g., Mike Tyson is aggressive because he has a trait for

aggressiveness); this is a tautology—as Walter Mischel (1968) pointed out long ago. Second, the

search for the neuropsychic structures that explain the consistencies in behavior is a worthy

project, but it is a project for neuro-scientists, not personality psychologists (it is also a project

that has, thus far, yielded less than spectacular results). And third, the accepted taxonomy of

traits, the Five-factor model (Wiggins, 1996), is based on ratings of school children in Hawaii

(Digman, 1963) and Air Force enlisted men in Texas (Tupes & Crystal, 1961). Trait theory has

in fact produced an common language for describing the reputation of others and identified a
replicable structure underlying the trait terms. Nonetheless, it is not clear that the Five-Factor

Model is (a) the most useful model for describing or predicting human behavior. In fact, there is

compelling evidence showing that lower-order trait variables predict important outcomes better

than the higher-order variables of the Five Factor Model (Brown & Sherman, 2014; Luminent,

Bagby, Wagner, Taylor, & Parker, 1999; Paunonen & Ashton, 2001; Watson, 2001).

Interpersonal theory is based on the writings of William McDougall (1908), George

Herbert Mead (1934), Henry Stack Sullivan (1953), George Kelly (1955), Timothy Leary (1957),

and Jerry Wiggins (1996). The goal of interpersonal theory is to understand how people interact

with others and how those interactions influence subsequent interactions. Interpersonal theory

makes three major assumptions: (1) almost everything consequential in life occurs during social

interaction, or as part of preparation for future social interaction, (2) the goal of life is to find and

retain a productive place in one’s social network, and (3) the goal of personality assessment is to

describe and predict how people will behave in social interactions. Interpersonal theory differs

from trait and psychodynamic theory in three important ways. First, trait and psychodynamic

theory assume that the way we think about ourselves drives our social interaction whereas

interpersonal theory assumes that our social interaction drives how we think about ourselves

(others teach us how to think about ourselves). Second, trait and psychodynamic theory define

maturity as self-understanding whereas interpersonal theory defines maturity as the ability to

interact productively with others (i.e., as social skill). Third, trait and psychodynamic theory

ignore reputation, whereas interpersonal theory assumes that establishing and maintaining one’s

reputation is crucial for a productive life.

Socioanalytic Theory. Our perspective, Socioanalytic theory, integrates interpersonal

theory with evolutionary psychology. Socioanalytic theory makes three major assumptions: (1)
People always live in groups, and every group has a status hierarchy and a religion; (2) the goals

of life concern getting along, getting ahead, and finding meaning; and (3) the goal of assessment

is to predict individual differences in the ability to get along, get ahead, and find meaning. There

are huge individual differences in peoples’ ability to get along, get ahead, and find meaning and

there are huge payoffs in terms of fitness for being able to do so.

Evolutionary theory tells us that life is about competition. There is competition at the

individual level (within groups) for status, power, and social acceptance; this competition is

driven by sexual selection (Ridley, 1991). Then there is competition between groups for territory,

market share, political dominance, and ultimately survival. Warfare drives human evolution at

the group level (Turchin, 2006). There are major individual differences in the ability of

individuals to compete for status, and there are major differences in the abilities of groups to

compete for survival (e.g., the Rohingya). Although psychologists focus almost exclusively on

within group competition, between group competition is more consequential. What is good for

the individual may or may not be good for the group. Free riders—rent seekers who enjoy the

benefits of group living without contributing to its maintenance and functioning—represent one

such example (Cornes, 1986). On the other hand, what is good for the group is usually good for

the members. Success at within-group competition is a function of social skill, which includes

the ability to get along with others (to avoid expulsion from the group) and to get ahead (to

maximize one’s resources). Success in between-group competition is a function of leadership.

Socioanalytic theory concerns predicting and explaining effectiveness of both individuals and

groups.

Individual Effectiveness
 Within group competition takes place during social interaction—interaction is where the

action is. In order to interact, people need an agenda for the interaction and they need roles to

play. Overt agendas vary across interactions, but the covert agenda for most interactions concern

negotiations for belonging and status. Three components of personality shape interactions:

identity, reputation, and social skill. Our identities are the generic roles we take with us to each

interaction; they determine the roles we play and how we play them. After every interaction there

is an accounting process and people gain or lose a little bit of status; our reputations reflect the

outcome of this accounting process. Reputations are inherently evaluative and indicate how well

we are doing in the process of within-group competition. Social skill is what translates identity

into reputation. Dysfunctional people choose maladaptive identities, create bad reputations for

themselves, and lack the social skill needed to change the cycle. Competent people use their

social skill to create reputations that match their identities and maximize their social and

economic wellbeing.

Personality research has traditionally focused on studying the self and identity, but that

search has not been productive. After 100 years, we still have no taxonomy of identities, no

agreed upon methodology for measuring identity, and no useful generalizations about identity to

report. Identity concerns the “you” that you know, and Freud would say (correctly) that the

“you” that you know is hardly worth knowing—because you made it up. Your identity is the

story you tell yourself about yourself, it is largely imagined and only loosely tied to reality. In

contrast, Socioanalytic theory focuses on reputation—reputation is the “you” that others know.

Reputation is easy to study by means of observer ratings. The Five-Factor Model (Wiggins,

1976) is a robust taxonomy of reputation and, over the past 20 years, we have accumulated an

abundance of findings regarding personality and many important life outcomes: marital
satisfaction, health status, academic performance, substance abuse, driving records, income,

social class, etc. (Roberts, et al., 2007; Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006). The best predictor of

future behavior is past behavior, reputation is the summary of peoples’ past behavior, therefore

reputation is the best data source we have regarding peoples’ future behavior. In our view,

assessment should focus on reputation and not identity. Let us clarify a key point here: although

reputation (i.e., how others evaluate you) is the best predictor of future behavior, this does not

mean that self-report assessments are useless. In our view, self-reports contain both identity

claims (i.e., views of yourself that might not be true) and reputational information (certain

identity claims are reliably associated with reputational outcomes). The reputational information

is important, and the identity claims often muddy the water. Moreover, self-reports that are

empirically tied to reputation (i.e., people with high scores on scale X are described by others as

Y) are enormously useful. For example, the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI: Hogan & Hogan,

2007) includes a scale called “Learning Approach.” People with high scores on this scale are

described by others as smart, up-to-date and well-informed. Our emphasis on reputation does not

imply that self-report tools are useless.

Nonetheless, we understand that identity research will not go away because people enjoy

navel gazing and find discussions of identity fascinating. Although the academic study of

identity has not been productive, there are three points about identity that are worth noting. First,

Erikson (1963) argued that maturity depends on achieving a stable sense of identity. He defined

identity in interpersonal terms—when behaving in ways that are most comfortable to yourself,

you are most valuable to those people whom you most value—and we agree with him. Second,

the Identity scale on Holland’s (1973) Self-Directed Search is the most valid scale on the

inventory, based on external correlates. Third, the Identity HIC on the Hogan Personality
Inventory is a highly valid component of the HPI based on external correlates. When identity is

defined as having a sense of where your life is headed and what that means to others—not who

you are but what you are trying to do—it is a meaningful and consequential concept.

Before ending this discussion of competition at the individual level, we should note how

Psychodynamic theory and Trait theory define self-awareness and how we define self-awareness.

Freud and Allport thought introspection and self-analysis leads to self-awareness, whereas we

think performance analysis leads to self-awareness. The distinction is the same as that between

Freud’s and Socrates’ definitions of self-awareness. The ancient Greeks valued self-knowledge:

the inscription over the tomb of the Cumaean Sybill was “Know Thyself.” But for the Greeks,

self-knowledge concerns understanding one’s performance capabilities and limitations. This is

how we define self-awareness. We use personality assessment to create “strategic self-

awareness” and enhance peoples’ ability to get along and get ahead.

Group Effectiveness.

Chimpanzee troops engage in genocide, ancient humans engaged in genocide, Native

Americans practiced genocide—human history is a record of constant warfare. The Old

Testament of the Bible is full of suggestions of the following variety: “When you capture a city,

put to the sword all the men in it…utterly destroy them…save alive nothing that breatheth…As

for the women and children, you may take them as plunder for yourselves” (Deuteronomy 2:10-

20). In the history of our species, if your tribe was overrun by another tribe, your opportunities

for reproductive success ended abruptly. This is the reason we believe between-group

competition trumps within-group competition. Success at within-group competition means

nothing if you lose the between-group competition.

 It seems clear that the success of armies, athletic teams, business enterprises, universities,

religious organizations—any collective activity—depends on the leadership of that collectivity.

But from WWII until the early 1980s, academic psychology thought individual differences in the

talent for leadership was a myth, that leadership was situational, and if you were successful in a

leadership role, you were just lucky. As of today, there is still no consensus regarding the

characteristics of competent leaders. In our view, the academic study of leadership suffers from

five major problems: (1) the wrong definition of leadership; (2) no attention to the consequences

of leadership; (3) no attention to the subordinates’ view of leadership; (4) no attention to

derailment; and (5) no attention to personality. Progress is being made, but these issues remain

salient. We now take them up in turn.

Defining Leadership.

Most research defines leadership in terms of the people at the top of organizations. But

who gets to the top of large, hierarchical, bureaucratic, male dominated organizations? People

with good political skills who win the within-group competition for status. A meta-analysis of

leader personality (i.e., the personality of people in leadership roles) indicates that leaders tend to

score low on Neuroticism and high on Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness (Judge,

Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002). Clearly these individuals have talent for acquiring status. But, do

they have any talent for leading their groups to success?

An alternative view of leadership, and one that we prefer, is to define leadership from the

perspective of group effectiveness. For the most part, people are biologically wired to behave

selfishly (Dawkins, 1976). However, people are also capable of altruism when altruism (a) serves

their long-term self-interest or (b) promotes the interests of those sharing their genetic material

(Fletcher & Doebeli, 2008; Hamilton, 1964a, b; Nowak, Tarnita, & Wilson, 2010; Trivers,
1971). Further, the history of human warfare and modern team sports indicates that cohesive and

coordinated groups outperform disorganized groups. Thus, in our view, the primary goal of

leadership is to persuade people to temporarily set aside their selfish desires for the good of the

group. In this view, leadership should be evaluated on the basis of the group’s performance, not

on the basis of one’s ability to gain leadership positions. Politicians are skilled at gaining

leadership positions; effective leaders are skilled at building and maintaining high-performing

teams.

When it comes to competition between groups, leadership plays a critical role (Hanson,

2001; Hogan & Kaiser, 2005; Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008). Obvious examples include:

 The recent and sustained success of the New England Patriots football team compared to

the recent and sustained failure of the Cleveland Browns football team

 The success of the Union Army over the Army of Northern Virginia in the US civil war

 The sustained success of Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum company compared to the colossal

failure of Enron

There are many such lists of competing organizations outperforming one another. Researchers

are finally beginning to understand that the leadership of an organization has consequences for

the members of the organizations. For example, economists (who are interested in the financial

consequences of personality) estimate that CEOs account for between 17% to 30% of the

variance in firm financial performance (Hambrick & Mason, 1984; Hambrick & Quigley, 2014;

Mackey, 2008; Quigley & Graffin, 2016; Quigley & Hambrick, 2014). CEO personality is more

important for firm performance than any other factor except the industry sector in which the firm

competes.
 If leadership is about building teams, then it is important to know how the teams react to

the leadership to which they are exposed. The team members are the consumers of leadership

and will react accordingly. Employee engagement can be easily assessed using survey

methodology. Over the past 20 years, overwhelming evidence shows that employee engagement

predicts every significant organizational outcome, positive or negative, including absenteeism,

turnover, productivity, quality, and customer service ratings. The lower the engagement levels,

the worse the outcomes, the higher the engagement levels the better the outcomes (Harter,

Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002). But most importantly for this discussion, the personalities of the

managers create the engagement levels of their staff. And, on average, what do those

personalities look like? The news is not encouraging.

Incompetent Leadership

Consider the following from various lines of survey research. A recent survey of the UK

public indicated that 22% of people hate their boss, 52% of people name their boss as their main

cause of dissatisfaction, 20% would forgo a pay raise if someone would fire their boss, and an

astonishing 12% of respondents admit to having imagined killing their boss (Whitfield, 2018). In

a similar US survey, 65% of Americans say they would prefer getting rid of their boss to

receiving a pay raise (Casserly, 2012). On this basis, we estimate that 65% to 75% of managers

in the U. S. economy, public and private sector, are incompetent and alienate their subordinates.

In an important piece of unpublished research, V. Jon Bentz, Vice President for Human

Resources at Sears during the 1970s, hired hundreds of new managers using an assessment

center (Bentz, 1985). All newly hired managers were bright and personally attractive. Bentz was

a meticulous record keeper; he found that 65% of these new managers failed (the number is

important). He found that the reasons for their failure nicely fit into 11 categories which, upon
closer examination, nicely paralleled the DSM III, axis 2 personality disorders. Thus, managerial

failure seems unrelated to intellectual competence (e.g., IQ), and directly related to interpersonal

competence. Personality is the core of interpersonal incompetence and thus the core of

managerial failure.

Effective Leadership

There is little agreement in the academic research regarding effective leadership (i.e., the

characteristics of people who can build and maintain high performing teams), though three lines

of research converge to define effective leadership: (1) Implicit leadership theory (Kouzes and

Posner, 2008); (2) Research on emergent vs. effective managers (Luthans, Hodgetts, &

Rosenkrantz, 1988); and (3) Research on organizational effectiveness (Collins, 2001).

Implicit leadership theory. Implicit leadership theory is based on the assumption that,

because leadership has been such an important factor in human history, people have a rough

intuitive sense of the characteristics of good leaders. Kouzes and Posner devised a simple but

effective way to summarize those intuitions: ask people to describe the best and the worst bosses

they ever knew. The results, aggregated over millions of responses, suggest that people believe

good leaders share four characteristics. First, effective leaders have integrity—they keep their

word, they do not play favorites, they do not self-deal, and they live up to their obligations.

Because lying, along with money, is the mother’s milk of politics, many politicians quickly lose

their credibility as leaders. Second, team captains are usually the best players on the teams,

professional sports coaches are usually former athletes, etc. Consequently, effective leaders need

to have real expertise in whatever business a team’s major focus might be. Newly minted officers

in the military have credibility issues because they lack deep knowledge of operations at the

daily level, and experienced enlisted personnel tend not to take them seriously as a result.
Subordinates are more likely to have faith in leaders who know something about the business

that they are leading. Third, the fate of any organization depends on the outcomes of all the

decisions that are made on a daily basis. Good leaders need to be able to make sound, defensible

decisions quickly and on the basis of limited information. Making good decisions also involves

changing bad decisions when it becomes apparent that they are wrong—good leaders can admit

their mistakes. Finally, good leaders project a vision and create persuasive stories about why

what the team or group is doing is important. In summary, implicit leadership theory offers a

great deal of evidence to indicate that effective leaders are perceived as having integrity,

competence, good judgment, and vision.

Emergent versus Effective Leaders. Luthans and his colleagues (1988) gathered

comprehensive data on 457 managers from several organizations over a four-year period. At the

end of the study, they collected performance data on the managers. They found two groups of

high performers: (1) those who advanced rapidly in the organization; and (2) those whose teams

performed well. There was a 10% overlap in the groups (r = .30). The important finding

concerned how the two groups spent their time. The people who advanced rapidly spent their

time networking. The people whose teams performed well spent their time working with their

teams. These two types of managers map directly on to the concepts of leadership emergence and

effectiveness previously discussed. Emergent managers are regularly identified as high potential

employees, while effective managers are overlooked because they do not stand out and play

organizational politics. It is the is process of promoting emergent managers, and overlooking

effective managers, that creates the high rate of managerial failure in corporate affairs.

Organizational Effectiveness. Collins and his colleagues (2001) studied the Fortune 1000

companies to identify companies with 15 years of mediocre financial performance and then 15
years of superior performance. He found 11 companies that fit this profile. For comparison

purposes, he also identified 11 companies, in the same industry, who showed only mediocre

performance across the same time period. Analyses revealed that the cause of the turnarounds

was the arrival of new CEOs. But the crucial finding is not that CEOs matter, but rather what

kind of CEO matters. And the answer is the CEO personality is what mattered. In particular, the

11 successful CEOs were: (1) fiercely competitive and hard-working; and (2) humble, modest,

and understated. That is, this group of high-performing CEOs were, in Luthan’s (1988) terms,

effective not emergent. Thus, the available evidence indicates that effective leaders are (a)

trustworthy, (b) competent, (c) have good judgment, (d) project an appealing vision, and (e)

blend fierce ambition with personal humility. Thus, leadership effectiveness is a function of

personality.

Last Thoughts

Personality psychology began as an applied activity (Stagner, 1937) and at its best it

remains an applied activity directed at solving real problems for real people. The key problems

for personality research concern predicting and explaining the outcomes of within and between

group competition. Career success (the result of within-group competition) and organizational

effectiveness (the result of between-group competition) are the most crucial issues in life. How

can personality psychology help people have more successful careers? Mostly by creating

strategic self-awareness and eliminating self-defeating behavior. How can personality

psychology help organizations become more effective? Mostly by helping them hire effective

leaders.

Personality assessment is not an exact science; neither is drilling for oil, but both have

important practical consequences. Personality assessment provides essential information about

performance potential; well-constructed personality measures predict occupational performance

better than IQ, but do not discriminate against minorities, and the longer the tenure on the job,

the better personality predicts performance. Personality predicts leadership better than any

known alternative. Many people outside our profession equate personality assessment with the

MBTI and ignore the accumulated data on the validity of assessment. This is a challenge for all

personality psychologists. The future of personality psychology depends on its ability to solve

practical problems. We suggest that personality psychologists adopt theoretical perspectives

aimed at doing so.

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