Traits and tangles: An analysis of the Big Five paradigm by tangle-based clustering

Using the recently developed mathematical theory of tangles, we re-assess the mathematical foundations for applications of the five factor model in personality tests by a new, mathematically rigorous, quantitative method. Our findings broadly confirm the validity of current tests, but also show that more detailed information can be extracted from existing data.

We found that the big five traits appear at different levels of scrutiny. Some already emerge at a coarse resolution of our tools at which others cannot yet be discerned, while at a resolution where these can be discerned, and distinguished, some of the former traits are no longer visible but have split into more refined traits or disintegrated altogether.

We also identified traits other than the five targeted in those tests. These include more general traits combining two or more of the big five, as well as more specific traits refining some of them.

All our analysis is structural and quantitative, and thus rigorous in explicitly defined mathematical terms. Since tangles, once computed, can be described concisely in terms of very few explicit statements referring only to the test questions used, our findings are also directly open to interpretation by experts in psychology.

Tangle analysis can be applied similarly to other topics in psychology. Our paper is intended to serve as a first indication of what may be possible.