There is a debate on predictability of a personality trait by another personality trait like prediction of epistemic curiosity by openness to experience? Some researchers say, first order traits can predict second order traits? Some say that a trait can not predict or impact another trait. What is your say about this?
The idea here is that there may be a hierarchy of personality traits, with some more specific/narrow in scope and others broader/more general. Remember that most of the research into traits has been dominated by the factor analytic approach. Factor analysis is a set of statistical methods that work to identify "latent" variables in data sets. But the researcher has some latitude in terms of the parameters they establish for the analysis. So you can aim for the smallest possible number of factors or for a better "fit" that requires a larger number of factors. (If you are using personality inventories for your data, the factors are the traits.) But to get a large number of factors, the factors usually won't be independent of one another - they will intercorrelate to some degree.
So here's what happens: You run a factor analysis on the item level with relatively loose criteria and identify a number of factors (traits). These are "primary" or "first order" factors. You then score the inventory for each trait and run a second factor analysis on those scores. This will identify a much smaller number of
"higher order" or "second order" factors.
As an example: Your initial analyses might identify sociability, dominance, and activity as personality traits. But because they all correlate with one another, factor analyzing scores on scales measuring them will yield a single higher-order factor, usually named Extraversion.
First order traits and second order traits refer to factor analysis. First order traits are the result of a factor analysis of traits with a non orthogonal méthod allowing factors to be correlated. Second order traits are the result of a second factor analysis of the corrélation matrix of the first order factors. In this case first order factors traits and second order factor traits are correlated and so, first order factor traits can predict second order traits. However if we used an orthogonal method of factor analysis there is no second order fatcors , and first order factors of traits are uncorrelated. This is just a question of the type of factor analysis used....and the question of the relations between éléménts of traits, the elements used in the first order factor analysis is just an empircal question of the correlations observed between these elements in a population of subject.
Francis GENDRE
It has become common practice to use structural equation modeling to derive personality traits. The Big Five personality characteristics represent one level in a hierarchy of traits. They can be combined into higher order factors consisting of two or more traits.
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