Type Model

Introduction

The trait model is the most widely used in recruitment applications and clinical psychology. A trait can be any individual characteristic that you may think about, labeled with one word or a short expression.

Traits help answer questions about the attainment or proximity to a phenomenon or concept, such as the temperature: How hot is it out there? Or with skills: How skilled is this person? Or with creativity: How creative is this person? By doing so, trait measures focus on a phenomenon of interest, disregard the occurrences or expressions that are distant, and which, compared to the factor model, are eventually on the other side of the continuum.

Traits are easy to understand and use because they eventually correspond to how questions are naturally asked and answered. Traits are omnipresent. Except for clinical applications, traits usually require little explanation, can be learned fast, or may only require a reminder of their definition from the Internet.

Representation

With most techniques, the further the measurement is from the targeted trait, the more different it may be, in many ways. This is shown in the map representation on the right, where the red rim indicates the distance to the targeted behavior. The trait’s measure may be anywhere on the rim.

The intensity of a trait is typically represented on a decile scale. The maximum value of 10 indicates that the trait most probably and intensely applies to the person. The null value indicates that it doesn’t apply at all. The more the person is characterized by the trait, the more intense and the higher the measure is on the scale.

As in the example below on the right, 4.7 indicates the trait’s intensity on the decile scale. The illustration on the left more clearly shows, in a flat representation, that values away from the target are not at the opposite end of a continuum. They may be when the techniques actually measure factors and represent them as traits. This aspect is sometimes represented as a cone in a three-dimensional space.

As shown below, traits measuring social behaviors often come in groups, represented as a bar chart(left) or a spider chart (right). The higher the bar, the more intense the trait is. The two charts give a different impression of the traits' proximity. Traits that are close and on the same side of the spider chart appear closer than those on the other side. This is also how systems that use this representation organize traits around a wheel.

The charts suggest that traits are distinct, but treating them as factors reveals that they overlap and should be regrouped. The tendency has thus been to keep the number of traits to a minimum, close to four or five, as it emerged from factor model studies.

Everyone develops a sense of what most traits mean. But a trait’s measure will be defined and analyzed differently by different people. Additionally, a concept can manifest in various ways, a phenomenon that cannot be captured by a single trait.

Measure

A trait is measured on a continuum represented by a line with one pole, or a vector generally pointing upward, that locates how close the measure is to the phenomenon of interest as conceptualized by a person or a system. The phenomenon of interest is at the top of the vector; its absence is at the bottom, with a null value, suggesting that the phenomenon may not occur at all or in a way that’s totally off focus.

In the example on the right, the focus is on “how hot is it?” which is represented at the top of the vector. The bottom values, which may indicate whether it’s cold, freezing, or just tepid, are irrelevant to answering the question.

The trait model, with its continuum and bottom value, applies to many physical phenomena, such as mass, force, weight, length, speed, acceleration, mechanical power, and electrical power. It also applies to many concepts in social sciences, such as skills, competencies, abilities, experience, interests, and even cognitive abilities.

Traits’ Measurement and Use

Traits are used in recruitment, coaching, personal development, and to characterize what’s expected in jobs. They are also used for clinical assessment. For instance, the following are traits used in recruitment and coaching: Agreeable, Authoritative, Charismatic, Courageous, Creative, Exuberant, Flexible thinking, Honest, Leader, Loyal, Modest, Outgoing, Team player, etc.

When required by management, standardized surveys help recruiters save time by measuring traits expected for jobs and in candidates. Does one want to know whether a candidate can demonstrate leadership or creativity? The assessment technique will provide the answer. However, what’s really tested is the candidate's understanding of the concept being measured and its impact on their Effective behavior. However, the trait model cannot speak to the effort required to sustain it.

Clinicians are trained to understand and diagnose traits observed in clinical practice. Recruiters are also trained to interpret traits, but in work-related behaviors. Some techniques may measure both clinical behaviors and behaviors in the “normal” range, while others focus only on work behaviors and avoid clinical traits, enabling their use by non-clinicians.

Trait assessments are typically used before and after development to test a person’s learning of a new concept. Will the change being learned be consistent over time and be reflected in how people act, decide, and emotionally respond? The difference in scores between the first and second measures will tell how much the person learned the concept. However, as with candidates, the technique cannot speak about the effort required to sustain the trait being developed.

Adaptation Efforts

The trait model can inform about how close one is to a targeted destination. In our example with the San Francisco region, the destination could be Union Square. The departure may be anywhere within an 80-mile radius, including the Pacific Ocean, Stockton, Sonoma, or Santa Cruz. The effort required to reach the destination may vary widely, but the model cannot inform about it.

In social behaviors, as evidenced by a factor model with measures of adaptation and engagement, successful development will be reflected in how individuals perceive their adaptation and how they ultimately show up. The development will probably not affect the person’s natural behavior, which is relatively stable, and if the adaptation is impactful and engaging over time.

The trait models, by design, cannot—on the basis of the measure—evidence the efforts candidates or employees make to adapt their behavior to a job, from an emotional, cognitive, and social-behavioral standpoint, nor the amount and quality of support needed for the change to occur.

Factors versus Traits

Factor models are often understood as trait models because factor analysis solved the cumbersome problem of early trait theory by turning thousands of descriptors into a scientific system of measurement. It provided the mathematical evidence that personality includes stable, universal, enduring characteristics rather than temporary states or rigid categories.

Factors are factors; they are not traits. Factors have different attributes and potential than traits. As introduced above, factors are defined by two opposing poles or vectors. Some techniques measure factors but represent them as traits, treating the entire axis as a single trait. But the axis isn't just the high end; it should bring sensitivity to the underlying dimension, something the factor model does. Trait models create a linguistic "shorthand" that makes it seem as if only one end matters.

For example, if the factor is "Patient” vs. "Impatient", being “low" in patience isn't an absence of something; it's the presence of a different, opposing behavior (impatience). A trait is unipolar and can be viewed as a "fuel tank." You either have a lot of "patience" or very little. In the trait view, "Impatience" isn't a destination; it's just an empty tank of Patience. A factor model shows that "Low in patience" is its own active state. A trait model simply labels someone as "Not patient," failing to capture the active nature of their behavior. It ignores the "low end" as a distinct quality, thereby losing qualitative data. With the geolocation analogy, moving West isn't just "failing to move East." It is a specific direction with its own coordinates. Trait models "collapse" the scale, treating the zero point as a void rather than a distinct direction.

Modern researchers address the problem of the “low end” by using bipolar factor names (e.g., "Neuroticism vs. Emotional Stability") to ensure that both ends of the continuum have descriptive power. But they often fail to do so because the measures are obtained in ways that cannot capture all the meaning along the continuum, which, by design, are antagonistic, making them difficult to represent.