4/ Broad domains each contain six facets: co-related but distinct behaviors.
For example, Extraversion splits into: Activity, Assertiveness, Excitement-seeking, Gregariousness, Positive emotion, & Warmth.
5/ @jordanbpeterson's paper suggests there is an "intermediate level of personality structure between facets and domains" called Aspects.
@jordanbpeterson writes: "Reasons exist to suspect that this level might be both interesting and important."
6/ Think of Aspects as two poles within Domains.
Conscientiousness: Industriousness & Orderliness
Agreeableness: Compassion & Politeness
Neuroticism: Volatility & Withdrawl
Openness: Intellect & Imagination
Extraversion: Assertiveness & Enthusiasm
7/ Aspects of the same domain differ from each other in fascinating ways.
Take Conscientiousness. Industrious people prefer productivity; orderly people prefer tidiness.
8/ Conscientiousness has "both proactive and inhibitive aspects."
Proactive striving for achievement v/s inhibitive instincts like caution.
9/ Agreeableness splits into Compassion & Politeness.
Compassion = emotional warmth
Politeness = reasoned cooperation
The former is based on feelings; the latter is "cognitively influenced."
10/ Neuroticism's two aspects are differing responses to threat.
Volatility = externalizing stress.
Withdrawal = internalizing stress.
Volatility manifests as hostility and panic. Withdrawal manifests as anxiety and depression.
11/ Openness is an amalgam of two desires.
Intellect desires truth.
Imagination desires beauty.
Imaginative people seek "aesthetics and fantasy" while intellectual people seek "ingenuity and ideas."
12/ Extraversion comes in two different forms:
Assertiveness: The desire to be important in social settings
Enthusiasm: The desire to be sociable
Assertive people are provocative & exhibitionistic.
Enthusiastic people are friendly and display positive emotions.
13/ Aspects make the Big Five Model richer conceptually, and more useful practically!
There are lots of interesting relationships between the aspects too.
Example 1: Assertiveness is negatively correlated with Politeness but Enthusiasm is positively correlated with it.
14/ Example 2: The negative correlation between Conscientiousness and Neuroticism is among "the most robust correlations in the Big Five."
But this is misleading.
Industriousness is negatively associated with Neuroticism, but orderliness is "significantly positively correlated"
15/ Domain to domain comparison was "suppressing" the more nuanced truth that is revealed by an aspects-level analysis.
From the paper: "Given two people with equal levels of Industriousness, the one higher in Orderliness is likely to show higher levels of Neuroticism. "
16/ @jordanbpeterson draws on previous research to show that aspects within a domain may have distinct genetic origins.
17/ For instance, within neuroticism, volatility may be rooted in the Fight or Flight(FF) response & withdrawal may be rooted in the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS).
FF may manifest in behavior as panic and hostility; BIS as chronic inactivity.
18/ Hope you enjoyed this breakdown!
This paper was hard but rewarding to read. Shoutout to @jordanbpeterson's co-authors: @LCQuilty and Colin G. DeYoung!
19/ Publishing next week: key ideas and insights from @JonHaidt's most cited academic paper!
1/ One line from an 1883 philosophy book gets to the heart of the matter: "Of all that is written I love only what a man has written with his blood" (Nietzsche). Writing comes not just from your brain but from your guts, balls, sinews, feelings, blood. AI has none of that
2/ Chesterton wrote in Heretics (1905) that if you want exciting art, you have to go to the ideologues. To the men who have actual convictions. Only a "doctrinaire" - someone with a doctrine, a POV, a set of values - can tell a story worth hearing. A data server has no doctrine
1/ Einstein fell seriously sick at 5. Bed-ridden. His father brought home a toy compass to entertain him. He was transfixed by the magnetic needle. It made him wonder—what were the "deeply hidden" forces controlling the needle...and the world? He spent his life chasing the answer
2/ The Wright brothers were gifted a toy helicopter when they were 7 and 11. They played with it until it broke, and then they built their own model. Years later they credited this toy for sparking off their life-long obsession with flight
Why do old buildings and weathered objects look so much more charming than the plastic creations of our time?
Because of a Japanese concept called Koko...
Thread:
1/ Charm is a hard thing to pin down - because it is not a thing but a spirit. The Japanese have thought about it for thousands of years. In the Zen philosophy of aesthetics, there is something called "Koko" - a certain weathered but attractive vibe that old objects develop
2/ Older things have history - which means they have stories, details, and finally, a MYSTERY, that a newly minted factory object simply cannot possess. Japanese art critic Yanagi Sōetsu put it well: "there is...a little something left unaccounted for"
• Never took a bath
• Never lost a fight
• Wrote one of Joe Rogan's all-time favorite books:
The Book of Five Rings (1645)
The book is 380 years old but its wisdom still holds up. A thread:
1/ Miyamoto Musashi was undefeated across 61 duels. An all-time record. He never married, never had children, and according to rumors, never combed his hair. He was a strange but profoundly wise man. Rogan says his book is "one of the most valuable things anyone has ever written"
2/ Have no favorite weapon. Musashi cautions fighters against over-reliance on one move or "special fondness for a particular weapon"
He writes: "Too much is the same as not enough"
Stay pragmatic, dont entertain "likes and dislikes," arm yourself with what you need for victory