The Three Competing Models

Introduction

For decades, researchers and the personality assessment industry have studied and refined various For decades, researchers and the personality assessment industry have studied and refined various methods for measuring personality in organizations. These methods are used for hiring, personal development, coaching, and more, including in clinical settings. We at GRI have reviewed these methods by analyzing their effects and benefits on individual and organizational performance, how they were developed, and by studying their users: traditional users like human resources managers, recruiters, coaches, and clinicians, as well as managers and executives.

In social matters, unlike in technology, change happens slowly. As for assessment techniques, particularly with personality, as their history shows, understanding their true potential takes time. This extended process may be due to a combination of factors: the abstract nature of the concepts being measured, the effort needed to learn these techniques, and the emotional attachment people develop toward them.

Assessment techniques can reveal their real capabilities through actual cases that genuinely matter. These cases usually come from organizations that care not only about performance in finance and production but also about how these outcomes are delivered from behavioral, cognitive, and emotional perspectives.

Using both qualitative and quantitative methods has helped us gain a detailed understanding of assessment techniques' capabilities and limitations: what they truly measure, how these measures are represented and used, and the questions they seek to answer. These topics are discussed below.

The Three Models

Three categories of models clearly emerge from analyzing the assessment techniques used in organizations and research labs, taking into account their characteristics and uses. 28 criteria have allowed us to differentiate assessment techniques that are particularly applicable to social behavior. The three categories appear as the biggest differentiators from both conceptual and practical standpoints.

The three models presented below offer different understandings of how people function from behavioral, emotional, and cognitive standpoints. Although each can be useful for addressing questions about people, they also have limitations. Seeing people in context, or not, and with varying nuances, the three models ultimately carry a different vision of how people can be understood, how they possibly show up, grow, and perform.

The analogy of a two-dimensional map is often used to illustrate the importance of accurately understanding or locating behaviors. We also use it to explain the differences among the three models, to understand the potential challenges and efforts required to move from point A to B. Above all, those models speak to action and, at least partially, account for how action unfolds as we navigate the map. The three models are the following. Each is detailed in a separate article. They are briefly presented below.

The Three Models

Model	Description
Factor	Behaviors are precisely measured by their coordinates on the map. The distance and effort required to cover distances on the map can be anticipated.
Trait	Behaviors are estimated by recouping small areas on the map. One knows we are more or less distant from it. Distances to be covered can only be roughly approximated.
Type	Being regrouped in broad categories, behaviors on the map appear as large areas, making it impossible to predict the distances to cover.

Factor Model

With the factor model, as the illustration on the right shows, behaviors are precisely measured, like knowing latitude and longitude on a map. When moving from one point to another on the map, it is possible to anticipate the route, calculate the distance, and select the best way.

The factor approach emerged in the 1950s but did not gain acceptance until research from the 1970s to the 1990s promoted a limited number of factors to explain behavioral traits. Systems based on factors work with a limited number of them. We believe at GRI that four is the optimal number. Some models in research work with two, three, five, and up to seven factors.

When used to understand behavior adaptation and individual growth, the factor approach identifies where development starts, where it ends, how it happens, and the effort required to sustain the adaptation.

Potential users for the factor model are executives, managers, and other users of types and traits (see below). Applications of the factor model in organizations include management, leadership, and organizational development, as well as uses related to types and traits (see below).

Trait Model

As illustrated by the red circle on the right, measures from a trait system indicate how far one is from a target, but that can be from different locations that we don’t know. Additionally, the route and time between locations can only be a rough but impractical estimate; we cannot know either.

The trait model was the first to be used in psychiatry and clinical practice in the late 1800s. It was soon employed for large-scale recruitments in the 1920s, and later for executive search. The number of traits that a system from this model can measure is unlimited. It can be as low as one trait in clinical applications. In organizational applications, one trait can be leadership, creativity, or honesty. In recruitment, the number may be as high as 30. This number can easily double or triple with batteries of tests.

Trait models are not built to understand a person’s development but measure the starting and end points of a development, not how it will occur. That’s another major difference with the factor model.

Potential users of trait systems include clinicians, recruiters, and coaches, but not executives and managers directly. Trait systems are used in organizations for recruitment and vocational guidance. They are also used like type systems (see below), but rarely cover the applications seen with the factor model (see above).

Type Model

Type models provide a rough measure of behaviors. With these systems, you are either in an area, as the red area indicated in the illustrationon the right, or you are out. A type provides a very rough understanding of where the journey starts and ends, like going from the East Coast to California, not how it can happen.

Although the first typologies date back to ancient times, their statistical evaluation is more recent, starting in the 1940s, and their use has grown significantly with the rise of coaching in the late 1980s. Some systems measure only one type (you either have it or do not). Others 4 or up to 20 or 30 types or themes, for what we refer to as multi-typologies.

As for the trait model, the type model doesn’t provide information to understand a person’s development. Unlike trait systems, a type system cannot measure the starting and end points of a development, nor how the development will occur. These are major differences with the trait and factor model.

Uses of type systems typically include coaching, team building, and counselling. Types are not used in recruitment or other uses of the traits and factor models, but only rarely for very rough approximations.

=Measurement The preferred technique for measuring social behavior is the questionnaire. However, in our analysis, we had to differentiate the techniques that are forced scenarios from those that are free scenarios.

In the first case, forced-scenarios, the items are propositions that invite the participant to score on a five- to ten-point Likert scale, depending on the technique. In the latter case, the free-scenarios, the technique leaves the participant free to choose the situation or scenario associated with the items to be selected or rejected. The items are typically adjectives. We used to refer to free versus forced-choice techniques, but the distinction using “choice” was limited to a few techniques only (namely, DISC-like techniques). The other expression used was “projective,” which, in psychoanalysis, refers to the unconscious self and to items that people unconsciously describe, such as inkblots. But this distinction was inappropriate in our context.

The techniques that have adopted the free scenario strategy, which there are a dozen on the market in the 2020s, and which is the one adopted at GRI, have enabled measuring adaptation and engagement levels in addition to behaviors. It has also helped measure and distinguish between Natural, Role, and Effective behaviors, which other techniques that use the force scenario approach don’t.

Interestingly, it is the free-scenario strategy that has helped the factor approach to personality emerge. Then the fixed-scenario took over for measuring the factors being evidenced. The fixed-scenario naturally led to measuring traits and types, and does not take the environment into account the same way that the techniques using the free-scenario strategy do.

Representation

The distinction of three models: Factor, Trait, and Type, has primarily been established based on the representation and use of assessment techniques. The intrinsic qualities predispose the techniques for what can be done with them. Statistics used are of critical importance. How the techniques are published and distributed, and who uses them for what, is also important to consider. Ultimately, the GRI’s general framework helped uncover that the techniques’ representational quality enables what can be done with it, which falls into the three distinct categories highlighted.

The techniques are used to both measure and represent behaviors, but the two aspects, measurement and representation, need to be considered separately, because a technique may use one model for measurement, but its representation may be based on one or a combination of the other two models.

For instance, some techniques measure factors and are thus factor-based. Whatever scales they use, which may vary greatly between the decile and standard deviation scales, they convert the measures of factors into traits or types and use the results as such, rather than using the factors themselves. The same happens with techniques that measure traits, which are represented as types.

The techniques are used as they are represented, not for what they measure. Because of the combinations we see among the models, we differentiate them based on how they are both measured and represented, but primarily on how they are represented.

Adaptation

Adaptation is an important aspect of what the three models deal with, because the object of their measure and representation, behavior, is in ongoing flux. There is constantly something happening out there: a critical or minor event, radical change, disruption, crisis, drama, etc., and also from inside: joy, sadness, health issues, lack of sleep, just a bad or exceptional day, psychological challenges, etc., that constantly ask us to act, the same way actors do on stage.

Additionally, there are always expectations, including from management or HR, and, at a broader level, from our role in the organization, to behave in a certain way and adapt our behavior accordingly.

This important aspect of adaptation has repercussions for how one envisions a person’s growth, provides understanding and support, and ultimately, how the person takes on an assignment or a job and performs, including on an emotional level. Development happens differently for everyone, an aspect revealed or not and with varying degrees of accuracy by the three models.

Distinct Benefits of the Factor Model

The factor model, with roots dating back to the era of Taylor, has emerged progressively since the 1950s. In social behavior, a major obstacle to their use has been the availability of trait and type models that are easy to understand and use. These two other approaches, however, have drawbacks and limitations that need to be better understood.

The factor model offers a nuanced snapshot of individual behaviors, including most preferred and predictable behaviors, the efforts required to adapt, and engage in the job. It also provides a refined understanding of the behaviors expected at the job, team, and organizational levels, which can be represented the same way as with people, helping to see and manage the gaps between the levels.

With critical nuances and representations that other models cannot handle, the factor model can better serve executives and managers in developing their social skills, coaches and recruiters to work more effectively with them, and researchers investigating and testing new models that evidence people flow and adaptation efforts. In a similar way, type models have helped coaches and trait models have helped clinicians and recruiters for decades to serve management and organizational needs, but with limited capabilities.

The real competing models to the three models, though, are executives’ and managers’ private techniques. Social behavior is the component of personality that’s the most universal, prevalent, intuitive, and subjective, and the one that takes the longest to educate. By bringing unparalleled precision and utility, including at a strategic level, the factor model provides the missing piece for social skills metrics to enhance decision-making and communication.