Personality and Individual Differences 51 (2011) 986–990

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Personality and Individual Differences

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Which are the basic meaning dimensions of observable interpersonal behavior?

Daniel Leising a,⇑, Wiebke Bleidorn b,1
a
Department of Psychology, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
b
Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We investigated the basic meaning dimensions of overt interpersonal behavior in an observational multi-
Received 16 May 2011 rater multi-situation study. The interpersonal behavior of 99 participants in 17 different interpersonal
Received in revised form 30 July 2011 role-plays was videotaped and judged by three independent observers using 35 adjective-pairs. Principal
Accepted 3 August 2011
Components Analysis yielded three factors with Eigenvalues above chance level. The first two factors
Available online 10 September 2011
were easily identifiable as Agency and Communion, which represent the fundamental dimensions in inter-
personal theory (Wiggins, 1991). Unexpectedly, we also found a third, weaker factor pertaining to Emo-
Keywords:
tional Stability. Factor coefficients and factor scores of all three factors showed acceptable to good
Big Five
Agency
stability across observers and role-plays. Our study is the first to demonstrate the appropriateness of
Communion the Agency/Communion framework with observational data.
Emotional Stability Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Neuroticism
Behavior
Observation

1. Introduction Another conceptual framework for assessing interpersonal

A number of broad conceptual frameworks compete with each
other regarding which best represents the various possible mean-
ings of interpersonal behavior: One is the Interpersonal Circumplex
Model (Leary, 1957; Wiggins, 1979; Kiesler, 1983), which ad-
dresses interpersonal behavior in terms of two orthogonal dimen-
sions: Dominance and Affiliation. High Dominance implies high
status, power, control, and leadership, whereas low Dominance im-
plies submission, obedience, yielding and surrender. High Affilia-
tion implies love, nurturance, warmth and intimacy, whereas low
Affiliation implies coldness, distance, and (possibly) hostility. Wig-
gins (1991) expanded the Interpersonal Circumplex Model, by
using Bakan’s (1966) labels of ‘‘Agency’’ and ‘‘Communion’’ for
the two dimensions. Agency highlights a person’s motive and
capacity to ‘‘get ahead’’ (sometimes ahead of others). The Agency
dimension is considerably broader than Dominance, as it also per-
tains to characteristics such as competence, efficiency and activity
(cf. Abele-Brehm & Wojciske, 2007). Communion, on the other
hand, highlights a person’s motive and capacity to ‘‘get along’’ with
others (Hogan, 1983), and thus is quite similar to Affiliation.
⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Department of Psychology, University of Halle-
Wittenberg, D-06099 Halle (Saale), Germany. Tel.: +49 345 55 24377; fax: +49 345
55 27217.
E-mail addresses: Daniel.Leising@psych.uni-halle.de (D. Leising), Wiebke.
Bleidorn@uni-bielefeld.de (W. Bleidorn).
1
Tel.: +49 521 106 4540; fax: +49 521 106 6422.
behavior is associated with the Five Factor Model of personality
(e.g., John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008; McCrae & John, 1992). The Five
Factor Model suggests that five broad factors, namely Extraversion,
Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness to
Experience, suffice to capture most of the relevant personality var-
iance between people. The first two are clearly the most interper-
sonal of these dimensions (see, McCrae & John, 1992): Extraversion
distinguishes people who seek frequent, intense, and lively interac-
tions with others (= high Extraversion) from more seclusive people
who prefer lower levels of arousal and tend to keep a distance from
others. Agreeableness distinguishes people who are willing to
compromise and easy to get along with (= high Agreeableness)
from people who are more calculating and quarrelsome. McCrae
and Costa (1989) demonstrated that Extraversion and Agreeable-
ness may be considered alternative rotations of the two Interper-
sonal Circumplex dimensions, or vice versa: Both sets of
dimensions describe essentially the same two-dimensional do-
main of psychological functioning, which may be called the ‘‘inter-
personal plane’’. The only difference between the two frameworks
lies in the orientations of the ‘‘axes’’ of the plane: Extraversion is
essentially a mixture of high Dominance and high Affiliation,
whereas Agreeableness is a mixture of high Affiliation and some
submissiveness (= moderately low Dominance).
All of the above-named frameworks were largely established by
analyzing global retrospective descriptions of persons. Thus, they
essentially reflect the factor structure of traits or dispositions.
We are not aware of any study that ever addressed the question
of how many, and which, interpersonal meaning dimensions

0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.08.003
 D. Leising, W. Bleidorn / Personality and Individual Differences 51 (2011) 986–990
people would use spontaneously when they are asked to judge
other people’s overt, momentary interpersonal behavior. The goal
of the present study was to answer this question.
Borkenau and Ostendorf (1998) demonstrated that the Five Fac-
tor Model of personality may not only be used to conceptualize sta-
ble individual differences between people, but also changes within
individual persons (= states). For demonstrating this, they used ‘‘p-
factoring’’, which means that the correlations of items across sev-
eral measurement occasions (= ‘‘cases’’) were separately factored
for each person. However, Borkenau and Ostendorf used self-report
data only: Their participants reported their own states in terms of
adjectives for 90 consecutive days. The idea that states and traits
may be described in terms of the same items has recently gained
some new popularity within the ‘‘personality states’’-approach
(Bleidorn, 2009; Fleeson, 2001). For example, Fleeson (2001) con-
ceptualized personality in terms of ‘‘density distributions of
states’’: As a person’s states accumulate over time, they form a dis-
tribution. The mean of that distribution may be used as an estimate
of the person’s trait level, whereas measures of dispersion (e.g., the
standard deviation) may be used to assess how much the person’s
states vary across time and situations. However, like Borkenau and
Ostendorf (1998), Fleeson also used self-report measures (i.e.,
experience sampling) only.
We emphasize the issue of perspective (self- versus other-rat-
ings), because it is likely to make a difference in terms of the
dimensionality of person descriptions. Judgments of the same tar-
get person from different perspectives (e.g., from within versus
from outside) may differ systematically with regard to the kind
and amount of information on which they are based (cf. Beer & Wat-
son, 2008; Vazire, 2010). Most important, because more internal
phenomena like thoughts, intentions and expectations are difficult
or impossible to observe, they are unlikely to form separate factors
when a person is judged from outside, by strangers. Thus, if we are
to judge only the overt (i.e., visible, audible), momentary behaviors
of people who are interacting with others, and we have no prior
information about those people, and no opportunity to ask them
about their inner experiences, it is likely that the number of mean-
ing dimensions we use in our judgments will be rather limited. The
intriguing question that remains is: How many, and which, dimen-
sions will it be? To answer this question, we videotaped target per-
sons in several interpersonal role-plays, let unacquainted
observers judge the targets’ behavior by means of natural language
terms, and then applied exploratory factor analysis to the obser-
ver-ratings.
2. Method
2.1. Sample
The study was carried out at a mid-size university in the East of
Germany. We used-an ad hoc sample of ninety-nine research vol-
unteers (66 female) with a mean age of 23.0 years (SD = 3.8,
range = 18–36). About half of the participants were university stu-
dents, whereas the remaining participants came from the commu-
nity. Participation was denied to persons who were undergoing
psychiatric treatment, in order to protect them from the stress that
may be caused by participating in the somewhat challenging inter-
personal role-plays (see below). All participants received a finan-
cial compensation of 15 Euro. The study was advertised online
and by public notice on campus.
2.2. Procedure
The data were collected in the course of a larger research pro-
ject, in which the same participants were also assessed by means
987
of other measures. In the present paper, we will only refer to
assessments of the participants’ overt interpersonal behavior. Each
participant took part in 17 dyadic role-plays (‘‘standard interaction
tasks’’), to assess his or her habitual ways of dealing with challeng-
ing interpersonal situations. At the beginning of each role-play, the
participant received a written instruction containing an outline of a
hypothetical situation and a request to demonstrate some critical
target behavior. For example, in one role-play the participants
were asked to imagine that they had attended a very good party
the evening before, and now incidentally met the host of that party
again. Their task was to thank and commend the host for the great
party.
We used the following interaction tasks: (1) initiate a conversa-
tion, (2) apologize to someone, (3) thank someone, (4) assert a
claim, (5) confront someone, (6) present yourself positively, (7)
be self-critical, (8) show empathy, (9) reprimand someone, (10)
convince someone of doing something, (11) give instructions,
(12) pay a compliment, (13) ask for emotional support, (14)
encourage someone, (15) bargain with someone, (16) express your
affection for someone, and (17) ask for instrumental support. The
creation and selection of the role-plays was partly based on the
theoretical models we referred to above, and on experiences with
interpersonal role-plays that are reported in previous studies
(e.g., Leising, Sporberg, & Rehbein, 2006; Leising & Müller-Plath,
2009). More detailed descriptions of the individual role-plays
may be obtained from the first author.
In the role-plays, the participants interacted with one of three
confederates (two female, one male), who were advanced psychol-
ogy students. Participants were randomly paired with the confed-
erates, as the orders in which participants and confederates signed
up for time slots in the study were independent of each other. The
only restriction was that the male confederate would be the inter-
action partner for about half of the sample. As a consequence of the
random pairing, participant sex and confederate sex were uncorre-
lated. It was ensured that confederates and participants were unac-
quainted with each other. For each participant, the order in which
the individual role-plays were presented was randomized. A par-
ticipant interacted with the same confederate in all role-plays,
and the confederates gave scripted answers, in order to make the
situations as similar as possible for all participants.
The participants’ interpersonal behavior in the role-plays was
videotaped and then rated from video by three female observers,
all of whom were grad students in psychology. For their ratings,
the observers used 35 pairs of adjectives, which always appeared
in the same order (reported in Table 1). The observers watched
each video-clip once, judged the respective participant’s behavior
by means of the first 18 items, then watched the video-clip a sec-
ond time, and then judged the participant’s behavior by means of
the remaining 17 items. By using this procedure, we hoped to max-
imize the amount of actual behavioral information that would be
considered by the observers as a base for their judgments. It was
ensured that the observers had never met the participants they
rated before. The observers worked independently, and did not
communicate with each other about their judgments. Furthermore,
the observers were not aware of the research questions of the
study, and did not know how the items of the measure (see below)
related to the different dimensional models.
2.3. Measure
The Minimum Redundancy Scales (Ostendorf, 1990) consist of
adjective pairs that were carefully selected to assess the Big Five per-
sonality factors with as little semantic overlap as possible. Its five-
factor structure has repeatedly been demonstrated with large sets
of self-ratings of personality. In the full version of the measure, each
factor is assessed by nine pairs of adjectives (e.g., talkative–silent for
988 D. Leising, W. Bleidorn / Personality and Individual Differences 51 (2011) 986–990

Table 1
Principal components analysis of ratings of overt interpersonal behavior (averaged across observers and situations).

Item MRS-Scale German English translation Factor

1 E Gesprächig–Schweigsam Talkative–silent .930 .085 .083
25 E Offen–Zugeknöpft Frank–restrained .926 .034 .151
33 C Fleißig–Faul Hardworking–lazy .919 .219 .124
15 C Übergenau–Ungenau Scrupulous–unscrupulous .912 .096 .118
11 O Kreativ–Unkreativ Creative–uncreative .912 .024 .227
17 O Originell–Konventionell Original–conventional .909 .085 .199
23 O Phantasievoll–Phantasielos Imaginative–unimaginative .892 .024 .227
3 C Gründlich–Unsorgfältig Thorough–careless .882 .140 .233
7 E Kontaktfreudig–Zurückhaltend Sociable–reserved .872 .020 .226
*
6 Entschlossen–Lasch Determined–slack .867 .298 .271
19 E Gesellig–Zurückgezogen Gregarious–aloof .825 .156 .187
*
35 Schüchtern–Durchsetzungsfähig Timid–assertive .712 .297 .542
34 ES Selbstvertrauend–Hilflos Self-confident–helpless .671 .240 .636
5 O Intelligent–Unintelligent Intelligent–unintelligent .664 .190 .559
9 C Geordnet–Ungeordnet Orderly–disorderly .662 .301 .530
*
12 Dominant–Unterwürfig Dominant–submissive .629 .595 .431
29 O Gebildet–Ungebildet Educated–uneducated .606 .185 .588
8 A Nachsichtig–Barsch Lenient–harsh .041 .955 .080
32 A Höflich–Grob Polite–rude .153 .954 .128
26 A Weichherzig–Rücksichtslos Softhearted–ruthless .061 .953 .134
20 A Friedfertig–Streitsüchtig Peaceful–quarrelsome .084 .951 .136
2 A Gutmütig–Reizbar Good-natured–irritable .068 .946 .071
14 A Selbstlos–Selbstsüchtig Self-forgetful–selfish .085 .913 .004
*
24 Stolz–Bescheiden Proud–unassuming .399 .814 .264
*
18 Eigenständig–Angepasst Self-sufficient–conforming .133 .799 .250
13 E Anschlussbedürftig–Einzelgängerisch Joiner–loner .240 .789 .314
31 E Impulsiv–Selbstbeherrscht Impulsive–self-controlled .425 .722 .338
27 C Ordentlich–Unachtsam Neat–sloppy .568 .681 .306
21 C Gewissenhaft–Nachlässig Conscientious–negligent .611 .668 .227
22 ES Gefühlsstabil–Labil Stable–unstable .467 .087 .820
16 ES Entspannt–Überempfindlich Relaxed–tense .084 .500 .772
*
30 Unabhängig–Abhängig Independent–dependent .391 .484 .670
28 ES Sicher–Unsicher Secure–insecure .666 .238 .666
4 ES Robust–Verletzlich Robust–vulnerable .409 .577 .630
10 ES Selbstzufrieden–Selbstmitleidig Self-satisfied–self-pitying .420 .566 .567

Note: Original items from the Minimum Redundancy Scales (MRS). The ‘‘Item’’ column contains the order in which the items were presented.
In the table, items were re-ordered to facilitate factor interpretation. E = Extraversion, ES = Emotional Stability, C = Conscientiousness, A = Agreeableness, O = Openness.
*
Additional items (not included in MRS). Boldface: Highest loading per item.

Extraversion (E); softhearted–ruthless for Agreeableness (A); secure–
insecure for Emotional Stability (ES); creative–uncreative for Open-
ness (O); thorough–careless for Conscientiousness (C)). In the present
study, the observers used an abridged version, due to limited re-
sources. This abridged version (MRS-30) comprises 30 items only,
but has been shown to still provide good discriminant validity for
the factors, and good internal consistencies for the scales (Schallber-
ger & Venetz, 1999). One Openness item (artistic–unartistic) was
omitted because it seemed irrelevant for the assessment of interper-
sonal behavior. Because the Dominance dimension of the Interper-
sonal Circumplex model is not sufficiently represented within the
Minimum Redundancy Scales, we added another six items from
Ostendorf’s (1990) impressive set of adjective pairs to assess this do-
main as well (i.e., dominant–submissive, timid–assertive, determined–
slack, proud–unassuming, independent–dependent, self-sufficient-con-
forming). For each item, the observers indicated which of the two
adjectives described the interpersonal behavior of a target person
better, by means of a six-point bipolar rating scale.
3. Results
In the following, we will report on the agreement between observ-
ers, as well as on the stability of values (factor coefficients, factor
scores) across situations, and across observers. These different kinds
of associations are traditionally expressed by means of different indices
(i.e., Intraclass Correlations (ICC) vs. Cronbach’s a). However, because
a and ICC (2, k), which is the appropriate measure of inter-rater
agreement in the present study, yield identical results when applied
to the same data, we will only use a, for the sake of simplicity.
3.1. Inter-rater agreement
Separately for each of the 17 situations and each of the 35 items,
we computed the agreement (a) between the three observers. The
resulting 595 coefficients (17 situations  35 items) had a mean of
.61 and a standard deviation of .13 (range: .13 to .87). Eighty per-
cent of these coefficients were .50 or higher. When aggregating
across the 17 situations before computing inter-rater agreement,
the average a was .80 with a standard deviation of .07 (range:
.58–.90). Eighty percent of these coefficients were .76 or higher.
Thus, at least at a higher level of aggregation, the agreement be-
tween the observers was good.
3.2. Factor structure of aggregated observer-ratings
In order to determine the factor structure of the observer-rat-
ings, we conducted Principal Components Analyses (PCA) with
Varimax rotation. The number of factors to be retained was deter-
mined by parallel analysis (Horn, 1965). Fig. 1 displays the Scree
plot for a PCA with observer-ratings that were averaged across
observers and situations. The figure also contains the 95 percent
confidence limit for Eigenvalues that would be expected when
using a random data matrix with the same numbers of cases and
variables (= parallel analysis, 1000 trials). By comparing the empir-
ical Eigenvalues with the confidence limit, it is possible to identify
the factors whose Eigenvalues exceed chance level. The parallel
analysis unequivocally suggested retaining three factors. Thus, as
expected, the factor structure of the item set was simpler when
the items were used for judging people’s overt interpersonal
 D. Leising, W. Bleidorn / Personality and Individual Differences 51 (2011) 986–990
18
16
14
12
Eigenvalue
10
8 replicability. The resulting coefficients were a = .91 for Agency,
6
4 the participants’ relative standings on the three factors.
2
0 3.4. Stability of factors across situations
Component
Fig. 1. Eigenvalues for Principal Components Analysis of observer-ratings (averaged
across observers and situations). Thick line = empirical Eigenvalues. Thin line = 95%
confidence limit derived by parallel analysis (Horn, 1965).
behavior. The first five Eigenvalues were 16.91, 10.77, 2.53, 1.22
and 0.81. The loadings of the 35 items on the three factors (after
rotation) are displayed in Table 1. For each item, the highest load-
ing is printed in boldface.
The third factor was the easiest to interpret: It assembled five of
the six Emotional Stability items, plus one of the six additional
items (‘‘independent–dependent’’). In light of this pattern, we think
it is appropriate to use the label ‘‘Emotional Stability’’ for this fac-
tor. The six items with the highest loadings on the second factor
were all from the Agreeableness scale. However, the second factor
also assembled a few items from other scales: Participants with
high scores on this factor were also described as being ‘‘unassum-
ing’’ (and not ‘‘proud’’), ‘‘conforming’’ (and not self-sufficient), ’’join-
ers’’ (and not ‘‘loners’’), ‘‘self-controlled’’ (and not ‘‘impulsive’’),
‘‘neat’’ (and not ‘‘sloppy’’), and ‘‘conscientious’’ (and not ‘‘negligent’’).
According to our view, this pattern of loadings justifies naming the
second factor ‘‘Communion’’, as the items seem to describe a per-
son who is easy to ‘‘get along’’ with (Hogan, 1983). The first factor
was even broader than the other two. It comprised items referring
to activity (e.g., ‘‘talkative–silent’’, ‘‘hardworking–lazy’’), sociability
(e.g., ‘‘gregarious–aloof’’), ambition (e.g., ‘‘determined–slack’’),
precision (e.g., ‘‘thorough–careless’’), creativity (e.g., ‘‘original–
conventional’’), competence (e.g., ‘‘intelligent–unintelligent’’,
‘‘educated–uneducated’’), as well as dominance (e.g., ‘‘dominant–
submissive’’, ‘‘timid–assertive’’). The majority of these items belong
to the Extraversion, Openness and Conscientiousness scales of the
MRS. We think it is straightforward to interpret the first factor as
‘‘Agency’’, given that most of these characteristics reflect a person’s
willingness and/or ability to ‘‘get ahead’’ (Hogan, 1983). To conclude,
we clearly identified three factors that accounted for the bulk of
variance (86.3%) in observer-ratings of other people’s overt interper-
sonal behavior. The first two factors were Agency and Communion,
whereas the third factor reflected Emotional Stability.
3.3. Replicability of factors across observers
In order to determine how well the three factors of interper-
sonal behavior were replicable across observers, we independently
factored the ratings by the three observers (PCA with Varimax
rotation, three factors), averaging across role-plays. First, we com-
puted the internal consistencies of the vectors of factor coefficients
for corresponding factors. The resulting coefficients were a = .95
for Agency, a = .97 for Communion, and a = .95 for Emotional Sta-
bility. Thus, all three factors demonstrated excellent replicability
across observers. Second, we computed the internal consistencies
of the factor scores resulting from the different PCAs. It should
be noted that these latter consistencies reflect two influences at
989
once: (a) the similarities of the covariance structures of the ratings
by the individual observers (which was also tested in the first set of
analyses), and (b) the extent to which the observers assigned sim-
ilar ratings to the targets on the respective factors. Dissimilarities
of covariance structures and disagreements in judging the relative
positions of targets would both lead to lower consistencies, which
is why this approach represents an even more conservative test of
a = .90 for Communion, and a = .85 for Emotional Stability, imply-
ing that the observers arrived at very similar judgments regarding
We also conducted separate PCAs (Varimax, three factors) for
each of the seventeen role-plays, averaging across the three
observers. The internal consistencies of the factor coefficients
across role-plays were a = .99 for Agency, a = .99 for Communion,
and a = .92 for Emotional Stability. The internal consistencies of
the respective factor scores were a = .91 for Agency, a = .92 for
Communion and a = .78 for Emotional Stability. Thus, whereas
the factor structure itself was remarkably stable across role-plays,
the participants’ scores on the three factors were very stable for
Agency and Communion, but somewhat less stable for Emotional
Stability.
4. Discussion
The present study is the first to investigate the basic meaning
dimensions of overt, momentary interpersonal behavior by means
of observational methods. One-hundred participants interacted
with confederates in 17 different interpersonal role-plays, and
their interpersonal behavior was judged independently by three
observers. A Principal Components Analysis of the observer-ratings
yielded three factors that had Eigenvalues above chance level. The
first factor mainly assembled items referring to activity, ambition,
competence, dominance, and creativity. Most of these reflect a per-
son’s motive and/or capacity to ‘‘get ahead’’ (cf. Hogan, 1983). Even
though four of the six Extraversion items had their highest load-
ings on the first factor, the content domain that was covered by
this factor was obviously broader. In light of the pattern of loadings
displayed in Table 1, we think that labeling the first factor
‘‘Agency’’ is appropriate. The second factor comprised all six Agree-
ableness items, as well as several other items reflecting a benign
attitude towards other people. As these characteristics make it eas-
ier for a person to ‘‘get along’’ with others, we think it is justified to
call the second factor ‘‘Communion’’. Thus, our study largely sup-
ports the notion that Agency and Communion are indeed the major
meaning dimensions of observable interpersonal behavior.
It may be noted that some items (e.g., 21 and 27) had substan-
tial loadings on more than one factor. Thus, when plotting the
loadings, some items would fall ‘‘in between’’ the end points of
the factors. A circumplex structure, however, would not be ob-
tained with this data, because the vast majority of items were
keyed in the same direction (cf. Gurtman & Balakrishnan, 1998).
The meaning of the third factor was also very clear, as it assem-
bled five of the six Emotional Stability items. Emotional Stability
(the opposite of Neuroticism or Negative Affectivity) is usually
considered a more ‘‘internal’’ (i.e., not very well visible) character-
istic, because it mainly concerns people’s tendency to experience
negative emotions (Watson & Clark, 1984). Accordingly, this con-
tent domain is not represented in most dimensional models of
interpersonal behavior. It neither features in Wiggins’s (1991) or
Bakan’s (1966) model, nor in the original Interpersonal Circumplex
Model (Kiesler, 1983; Leary, 1957; Wiggins, 1979). However, our
990 D. Leising, W. Bleidorn / Personality and Individual Differences 51 (2011) 986–990
study suggests that Emotional Stability may be more interpersonal
than is often assumed: The observers were obviously able to judge
some of the participants’ experiences relating to this domain (e.g.,
‘‘robust–vulnerable’’, ‘‘relaxed–tense’’) from outside, with good
agreement. In the context of our interpersonal role-plays, we think
that the Emotional Stability factor we found may reflect (low) so-
cial anxiety.
We obtained three factors with a measure whose five-factor
structure for self-assessments of personality is well-established
(cf. Ostendorf, 1990). The most obvious reason for this lies in the
lower amount of information to which our observers had access
(cf. Beer & Watson, 2008; Vazire, 2010). First, they had never met
the targets before, and only saw them interacting with another
person for about 20 min altogether. Given this limited amount of
behavioral information, one would not expect a highly differenti-
ated pattern of correlations between items. Second, the observers
were unable to communicate with the targets to obtain more de-
tailed information regarding (e.g.) their thoughts, values, and aspi-
rations. The fact that we did not find separate Conscientiousness
and Openness factors is likely to reflect the lack of this kind of
information. It may be concluded that these two are the least inter-
personal of the Big Five factors.
In explaining the simpler factor structure that we found, one
may also argue that motivational reasons may have played a role:
The observers watched each of 99 targets in each of 17 situations
(twice), and were asked to rate each target by means of 35 items,
constituting a total amount of (99  17  35 =) 58.905 ratings per
observer. Even though we had great trust in the conscientiousness
of our observers, it would be conceivable that their ratings became
somewhat stereotypical (i.e., less differentiated), because of the
sheer amount of ratings they were asked to deliver. However, if a
lack of motivation was the reason for the simpler factor structure
of the observer-ratings, it would be hard to explain why the factors
that did emerge were so well replicable across observers. More-
over, the first two factors that we found were exactly the ones that
Wiggins (1991) suggested, even though the observers were una-
ware of Wiggins’s theory. Therefore, we think it is safe to say that
the simpler factor structure of the observer-ratings does not
merely reflect an effect of motivational difficulties, but the actual
meaning dimensions of observable interpersonal behavior.
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