On the relationship between explicit and implicit self-concept of extraversion and neuroticism

Highlights

• It is unclear how implicit measures of personality relate to explicit measures.

• We focused on extraversion and neuroticism dimensions.

• Self-report personality questionnaires and IATs were used.

• Extraversion explicit-implicit measures were more strongly correlated.

• We show that the measures are related, but they do measure distinct constructs.

Abstract

Indirect methods such as the implicit association test (IAT) could complement traditional self-report questionnaires of personality traits. However, it is unclear whether IAT scores and self-report scores of nominally the same personality trait measure the same construct or overlapping but distinct constructs. To investigate how IAT and self-report personality scores relate to each other, we conducted a web-based data collection where participants completed self-report personality questionnaires (n = 432) and IATs for extraversion (n = 393) and neuroticism (n = 385). We found that extraversion self-report and IAT scores were more strongly correlated with each other than corresponding neuroticism scores. Overall, our findings suggest that although extraversion and neuroticism self-report and implicit measures are related, they do measure distinct constructs.

Introduction

Personality psychology relies heavily on well-established self-report (or “explicit”) methods that can be biased by factors such as distorted self-concept and social desirability (Perugini & Banse, 2007). Researchers have therefore developed indirect (or “implicit”) personality measures where attributes of the self-concept are inferred from reaction times with little or no bias from conscious self-reflection (De Houwer & Moors, 2010). However, it is unclear how implicit reflections of personality relate to explicit reflections. Explicit and implicit personality measurements are usually correlated (De Cuyper et al., 2017), but not very strongly or consistently (e.g. Siers and Christiansen, 2013, Steffens and König, 2006). This pattern can be interpreted in at least one of two ways. One possibility is that explicit and implicit methods tap into the same construct and their inconsistent correlations reflect methodological confounds. Another possibility is that explicit and implicit measures of personality reflect at least partially distinct constructs. In this study, we compare these possibilities in the context of two core personality dimensions: extraversion and neuroticism (Costa & McCrae, 1995).

A popular method for assessing implicit constructs ranging from self-esteem to attitudes is the implicit association test (IAT, Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). The IAT is also being increasingly used in personality psychology (De Cuyper et al., 2017). For instance, it has been used to assess personality traits, such as anxiousness and angriness (Schnabel et al., 2006), and to predict spontaneous personality-related behaviour (Steffens & König, 2006). The IAT has methodological limitations and can suffer from low reliability (Azar, 2008, De Cuyper et al., 2017). However, as long as it’s reliability is explicitly tested, the IAT holds promise as a measure of relatively context-independent constructs like the self-concept.

The IAT is a classification task where reaction times indicate the strength of the relationship between two concepts, such as the self-concept and concepts corresponding to personality traits. For example, implicit extraversion can be measured with an IAT relating two target categories – “self” and “others” – to two attribute categories – “extraversion” and “introversion”. During the task, participants sort words, such as “mine” or “outgoing”, to their respective categories of “self” and “extraversion”. In some blocks, the same physical response is used to categorize words into “self” and “extraversion”, whereas in other blocks the response is shared between “self” and “introversion”. A strong association between categories is assumed to decrease reaction times when the categories share a response and increase reaction times when they do not.

It is not entirely clear how implicit personality scores relate to explicit personality scores. On the one hand, many studies suggest that explicit and implicit personality measures tap into related but different constructs (De Cuyper et al., 2017). On the other hand, considering the current replication crisis in psychology (Maxwell et al., 2015), these studies require replication. There is some evidence of publication bias in this field (De Cuyper et al., 2017), and the sample sizes of past studies have often been small. For instance, the median study in the meta-analysis by De Cuyper et al. (2017) included 95 participants. Therefore, the question of whether explicit and implicit personality scores reflect the same or different underlying constructs still needs clarification.

In the present study, we focused on the core personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism, and conducted an extensive web-based data collection to increase statistical power compared to some previous studies which have shown inconsistent results (Schmukle and Egloff, 2005, Siers and Christiansen, 2013, Steffens and König, 2006). Using these data, we first assessed the strength of correlation between the explicit and corresponding implicit methods, expecting it to be low to moderate (e.g. Schmukle and Egloff, 2005, Siers and Christiansen, 2013). Second, we tested the fit of three structural equation models representing three possible relationships between explicit and implicit personality measures (see Fig. 2). Model 1, the same trait model, assumes that explicit and implicit measures tap into the same personality trait. Model 2, the different trait model, proposes instead that explicit and implicit measures reflect related but distinct traits. Model 3, or the multi-trait multimethod (MTMM) model (Widaman, 1985), tests the possibility that the same trait and different trait accounts are partially correct at the same time.