سبک های تفکر و صفات شخصیتی بازبینی شده پنج عامل بزرگ

This article had two objectives. The first was to further explore the utility of measuring intellectual styles (a general term encompassing such style constructs as cognitive, learning, and thinking styles) in addition to measuring personality. The second was to verify Sternberg’s (1988) claim that the theory of mental self-government is applicable to non-academic settings as well as to academic settings. The Thinking Styles Inventory (Sternberg & Wagner, 1992) and the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) were administered to 199 parents of secondary school students in mainland China. Findings suggest that it is meaningful to investigate intellectual styles in addition to examining personality. In addition, results supported Sternberg’s assertion regarding the validity of the theory of mental self-government in both academic and non-academic settings.

Intellectual styles refer to people’s preferences in using their abilities (Sternberg, 1988 and Sternberg, 1997). Motivated by the repeated research finding that ability and personality do not tell the whole story about human performance, scholars have been using intellectual styles as an additional factor to explain variations in human performance for more than half a century. The argument about the utility of studying intellectual styles in addition to investigating personality has as long a history as does the field of intellectual styles. In trying to resolving this argument, scholars have engaged in examining the relationship between personality and intellectual styles at both the conceptual level (e.g., Adorno et al., 1950, Eysenck, 1978 and Messick, 1996) and the empirical level (e.g., Busato et al., 1999, Furnham et al., 1999, Jackson and Lawty-Jones, 1996 and Riding and Wigley, 1997). In the realm of empirical research, two different conclusions have been drawn regarding the necessity of assessing styles. Some scholars (e.g., Busato et al., 1999 and Riding and Wigley, 1997) have concluded that although there was some systematic overlap between intellectual styles and personality, it certainly makes sense to mention intellectual styles and personality separately in educational settings. Conversely, other scholars (e.g., Furnham et al., 1999 and Jackson and Lawty-Jones, 1996) argued that since cognitive/learning style is a sub-set of personality, there is no need to measure intellectual styles independently, unless intellectual style is of interest in its own right. In an attempt to join the debate, Zhang and her colleague (Zhang, 2002a, Zhang, 2002b and Zhang and Huang, 2001) investigated the relationships between thinking styles as defined in Sternberg, 1988 and Sternberg, 1997 theory of mental self-government and the big five personality traits (Costa and McCrae, 1985 and Costa and McCrae, 1992). These studies concluded consistently that although significant relationships were identified between thinking styles and personality traits, it is premature to claim that a personality measure such as the NEO Five-Factor Inventory can be used to measure thinking styles. One limitation with the studies of Zhang and her colleague is that they were conducted on the university student population. Accordingly, it is pertinent to enquire whether the same conclusion would be reached if the study were replicated in a sample from a non-academic setting. The primary aim of the current study is to explore the relationships between thinking styles and personality traits in a typically non-academic section of the population. 1.1. Sternberg’s theory of mental self-government Using the word “government” metaphorically, Sternberg contended that just as there are different ways of governing a society, there are different ways that people use their abilities. These preferred ways of using one’s abilities are construed as “thinking styles.” According to Sternberg, there are 13 thinking styles which fall along 5 dimensions: (1) functions (including the legislative, executive, and judicial styles), (2) forms (hierarchical, monarchic, oligarchic, and anarchic styles), (3) levels (global and local styles), (4) scopes (internal and external styles), and (5) leanings (liberal and conservative styles). These 13 styles have been reconceptualized into three types based on empirical data (e.g., Zhang & Sternberg, 2005), and the following introduces the three types of styles. Meanwhile, one characteristic for each of the 13 styles can be found in the bracket next to each corresponding style. Type I thinking styles are the ones that tend to be more creativity-generating and that denote higher levels of cognitive complexity, including the legislative (being creative), judicial (evaluative of other people or products), hierarchical (prioritizing one’s tasks), global (focusing on the wholistic picture), and liberal (taking a new approach to tasks) styles. Type II thinking styles are styles that suggest a norm-favoring tendency and that denote lower levels of cognitive complexity, including the executive (implementing tasks with given orders), local (focusing on details), monarchic (working on one task at a time), and conservative (using traditional approaches to tasks) styles. The anarchic (working on whatever tasks that come along), oligarchic (working on multiple tasks with no priority), internal (working on one’s own), and external (working with others) styles are Type III styles. They may manifest the characteristics of the styles from both Type I and Type II groups, depending on the stylistic demands of a specific task. For example, one could use the anarchic style in a sophisticated way (characteristic of Type I styles)—such as dealing with different tasks as they arise, but without losing one’s sight of the whole picture of the central issue. By contrast, one also could use the anarchic style in a more simple-minded way (characteristic of Type II styles)—such as dealing with tasks as they come along without knowing how each task contributes to his/her ultimate goal. According to Sternberg, the thinking style construct is a broad intellectual style construct. As such, his theory of mental self-government applies to both academic and non-academic settings. Since its publication in 1988, the theory has guided much research in academic settings in several cultures, including Hong Kong, mainland China, India, the Philippines, and the United States (e.g., Bernardo et al., 2002 and Grigorenko and Sternberg, 1997). Much empirical evidence has supported both internal and external validity of the theory when tested among populations in academic settings (e.g., Zhang and Sternberg, 2005 and Verma, 2001). However, in non-academic settings, only internal validity of the theory has been obtained (Hommerding, 2003 and Zhang, 2005). The second aim of the present study was to investigate the external validity of the theory by testing the thinking style construct against personality traits. External validity of the theory would further support Sternberg’s argument that the theory of mental self-government is applicable to both academic and non-academic settings. 1.2. The big five personality traits Neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are known as the big five personality traits in psychology. The five-factor personality traits model (FFM) resulted from several decades of factor analytic research focusing on trait personality (see Antonioni, 1998). The FFM has piqued the interest of many personality psychologists, and indeed the work of Costa and McCrae, 1985 and Costa and McCrae, 1992 is one of the most noteworthy. They describe the five personality traits as follows: Neuroticism (N) is the opposite of emotional stability. People high on the N scale tend to experience such negative feelings as emotional instability, embarrassment, guilt, pessimism, and low self-esteem. People scoring high on the extraversion (E) scale tend to be sociable and assertive, and they prefer to work with other people. Openness to experience (O) is characterized by such attributes as open-mindedness, active imagination, preference for variety, and independence of judgment. People high on the agreeableness (A) scale tend to be tolerant, trusting, accepting, and they value and respect other people’s beliefs and conventions. Finally, people high on the conscientiousness (C) scale tend to distinguish themselves for their trustworthiness and their sense of purposefulness and of responsibility. They tend to be strong-willed, task-focused, and achievement-oriented. The NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI, Costa and McCrae, 1985 and Costa and McCrae, 1992) measures the five personality traits. According to Taylor and MacDonald’s (1999) review, the NEO-PI has not only demonstrated good psychometric properties, but also been successful in accommodating constructs that are already measured by existing tests of personality traits, for example, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Briggs & Myers, 1987). Furthermore, the NEO-PI also has been proved to be related to the Eysenck Personality Inventory (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1964) which is one of the most widely used psychometric tools in research on personality. Moreover, the NEO-PI has been successfully used in investigating the relationships of personality to other important variables, including creativity and divergent thinking (e.g., McCrae, 1987) and achievement motivation (e.g., Busato et al., 1999). A brief version of the NEO Personality Inventory is the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) that also has been successful in reliably measuring the five personality dimensions (e.g., Courneya and Hellsten, 1998 and Saucier, 1998). 1.3. The present research The present research aimed at cross-validating the research findings obtained from university students regarding the relationships between thinking styles and the big five personality traits in a non-academic research sample. In previous research (Zhang, 2002a, Zhang, 2002b and Zhang and Huang, 2001), predictable patterns of relationships have been found between specific scales in the two inventories. For example, in all three studies, the openness personality trait is positively related to Type I styles, while neuroticism is positively associated with Type II styles. The conscientiousness trait tends to be positively related to the majority of styles, whereas the agreeableness trait tends to be negatively related to most styles. Finally, the extraversion trait tends to be positively related to Type I styles and the external style, but negatively related to the internal style. The present study intends to find out if similar results can be found in a non-academic sample. Such findings would not only provide an answer to the question about the need for studying intellectual styles in addition to examining personality traits, but also make available initial external validity of the theory of mental self-government in a non-academic sample.