Chunk #23 — Evidence for the Existence of Positive and Negative Urgency — Urgency in Relation to Comprehensive Models of Personality — Factor analyses relating positive and negative urgency to comprehensive personality structure
There is good evidence that the five broad factors identified in the NEO-PI-R can be summarized along two, higher-order dimensions (Digman, 1997; Markon, Krueger, & Watson, 2005). The first superordinate dimension is called alpha, and is characterized by high levels of emotional instability and disagreeable disinhibition on the one end, and high levels of emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness on the other end. Digman (1997) described alpha as an abstract, high-level concept that perhaps marks successful or unsuccessful socialization. The second superordinate factor is called beta, and is characterized primarily by positive emotionality. In our second factor analysis, we required a two-factor solution and closely replicated alpha and beta. Because our findings replicated previous findings, we concluded that this sample was appropriate for examining the urgency traits’ relation to the NEO-PI-R measure of the FFM.
