Cloninger's psychobiological model of temperament and character and the five-factor model of personality

The relationships between Cloninger's Temperament and Character dimensions [Cloninger, C. R. (1987). A systematic method for clinical description and classification of personality variants. Archives of General Psychiatry, 44 573-588; Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, D. M., & Przybeck, T. R. (1993). A psychobiological model of temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50, 975-990] and the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality are investigated in a randomised sample of 130 patients admitted to the Emergency Psychiatric Unit of a large university hospital. Cloninger's psychobiological model identifies four dimensions of temperament (Novelty seeking, Harm avoidance, Reward dependence and Persistence) and three dimensions of character (Self-directedness, Cooperativeness and Self-transcendence). The FFM proposes the domains of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness as the basic dimensions underlying individual differences. Five-factor scores are obtained with the NEO-PI-R [Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). NEO-PI-R. Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources]; Cloninger's personality dimensions are assessed with the Temperament and Character Inventory (Cloninger et al., 1993). The present study primarily focuses on the direct equivalence of Cloninger's scales with the NEO-PI-R domains and facets. Considerable overlap with the FFM dimensions is demonstrated and the results show that each TCI factor is substantially covered by the FFM. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.