Traits across the personality hierarchy differentially relate to positive and negative affect: Evidence for the predictive validity of empirically derived meta-traits.

There is increasing interest in the construct validity of higher-order domains of the Big Five personality traits. A total of 831 persons from the Swiss population completed the International Personality Item Pool and an adaptation of the Positive and Negative Affect Scales. Using Goldberg's bass-ackwards method, we found evidence for the general factor of personality (GFP) and the two meta-traits of positive emotionality (blend of low neuroticism and high extraversion) and constraint (blend of high agreeableness and conscientiousness). In association with positive affect, the explanatory power of the GFP (r = 0.43) and positive emotionality (r = 0.37) was largely superior to extraversion (r = 0.24), conscientiousness (r = 0.18), agreeableness (r = 0.09) and openness (r = 0.04), although not neuroticism (r = -0.34). In association with negative affect, neuroticism (r = 0.41), the GFP (r = -0.36) and positive emotionality (r = -0.35) were the most powerful single predictors. We conclude that the higher-order structure of personality is best explained by the meta-traits of positive emotionality and constraint, which correspond closely to the well-established superfactors of internalizing and externalizing. We further demonstrate that these have substantial criterion validity when broad positive and negative affect is the outcome of interest. These findings help to relate Big Five meta-traits to pathological personality. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.