The Five-Factor Model in Fact and Fiction

Science and art have different criteria for truth. For science, it is seen in the conformity of ideas with observations—ideally, precise observations, made repeatedly, in telling circumstances. For art, truth is manifest through the experience of insight and a sense of deepened understanding. What is true for science is sometimes—but only sometimes—true in art, and vice versa. In this chapter we outline the facts about the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality as psychologists understand them today after decades of empirical research. We then consider personality traits in characters from literature, in particular Molière’s Alceste and Voltaire’s Candide. We are concerned both with what psychologists can learn from the study of personality in fiction and with how students of the humanities can benefit from an understanding of contemporary trait psychology. Psychologists in general have ambivalent feelings about these issues (Oatley, 1999). Personality psychologists may swell with proprietary pride when Harold Bloom writes