Migrating Personality Theories Part 1: Creating Agentic Trait Psychology?

Abstract

Pluralities of personality schemas reside across different Maruyama universes suggesting incommensurability and isolation. Schemas may migrate across Maruyama universes given appropriate means. As illustration, the MBTI schema for personality temperament is migrated into a sociocognitive schema through the intermediary of knowledge cybernetics. MBTI is a type approach that operates with polar opposites; however, conceptually there is no reason for it not to be associated with a trait space. Supposing that MBTI has traits at some horizon of meaning, then since traits are responsible for the creation of enduring states, sociocognitive explanations should be able to explain the stable states consistent with a variation of the McCrae and Costa proposition. As a result this paper formulates for the first time a link between the MBTI type schema, a trait space, and a capacity for sociocultural descriptions. In part 2 of this paper it will be shown how the sociocognitive theory of temperament can have other complementary partner theories that are today simply considered as different and competitive. This has the potential of pointing towards a general theory of personality. This paper received the Highly Commended Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2010.

Keywords: Personality Schemas, MBTI, FFM, Maruyama Universes, Schema Migration, Knowledge Cybernetics