Ross BROUGHTON
University of Winnipeg
PAUL D. TRAPNELL
AND
MICHAEL C. BOYES
iJniversi@ of Calgary
We are grateful to Beverley Fehr, Stephen Briggs and two anonymous reviewers for their
constructive comments on an earlier draft of this article. Address correspondence and reprint
requests to Ross Broughton, Department of Psychology, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada R3B 2E9.
302
OO92-6566/91 $3.00
Copyright Q 1991 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
PERSONALITY AND OCCUPATIONAL PROTOTYPES 303
is, people seem to have little difficulty in ascribing personality traits ex-
clusively on the basis of occupational information. In the present studies,
we were interested to see if the reverse was true: Do unique occupational
clusters exist for interpersonal personality types? If so, is there enough
interpersonal information encoded in such clusters to allow for reliable
discrimination among interpersonal personality types? If judges could
agree upon the presumed occupational preferences of each of the hy-
pothetical trait characters, then the usefulness of occupational clusters as
indicants of interpersonal traits could be assessed.
In Study 1, judges familiar with the eight trait categories of the inter-
personal circle were asked to rate the presumed relevance of occupations
to these categories. We predicted that eight occupational clusters, or
prototypes, could be reliably developed from these ratings. In Study 2,
a group of subjects completed the Revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales
(IAS-R; Wiggins, Trapnell, & Phillips, 1988) as well as the occupations
section of Holland’s (1985) Self-Directed Search (SDS). We predicted
that occupational scales developed from judges’ ratings in Study 1 could
be used to reliably classify these subjects into their appropriate trait cat-
egory.
Method
Procedure
With the advent of Buss & Craik’s prototypical act lists (Table 1 contains a 204tem list
for the trait of dominance), it was possible to construct stories about hypothetical characters
that each act out prototypical behaviors from a single trait category. Each of the characters
represented idealized trait types, or theoretical fictions that have proven useful for their
clarity and distinctiveness, rather than realism (Broughton, 1986). The vignette that was
used for the trait of dominance with men is contained in the Appendix.
The materials consisted of a booklet containing eight randomly ordered vignette stories
and eight occupational preference inventories (adapted from the SDS). Each of the stories
described a “day in the life” of a hypothetical character who acted out the behaviors deemed
prototypical of a given trait category (Buss & Craik, 1980). Eight characters were developed
306 BROUGHTON, TRAPNELL, AND BOYES
TABLE 1
TWENTY MOST PROTOTYPICAL DOMINANT ACTS
to represent each of the eight trait categories from around the Interpersonal Circumplex
(see Tables 1 and 2, and Broughton, 1986, for the complete set of vignettes). A set of eight
female characters were used for female subjects, and a set of male characters were used
for male subjects. The behavioral acts were the same for each gender. Six judges (three
males, three females) familiar with the Interpersonal Circle rated the presumed occupational
preferences of the eight trait characters (matched for the gender of the judge). Judges were
instructed to read each of the vignettes and then indicate the relevance of Holland’s SDS
occupational items for each character on a five-place Likert scale. Each judge completed
eight SD%; one for each of the eight trait characters.
and negatively keyed) were chosen according to the prototype scale con-
struction strategy developed by Broughton (1984). For most of the cat-
egories, items were selected by summing across judges’ ratings for each
occupation, then rank-ordering the sums from highest to lowest. Each
prototype scale was composed of the top 10 occupations from their re-
spective list, with the proviso that none of the chosen occupations ov-
erlapped, in the same keyed direction, with other categories. If overlap-
ping occurred, as one would expect with fuzzy categories, then the next
highest occupation would be used, etc., until 10 unique items were found.
Overlapping occurred only in the lower half of the circumplex, possibly
as a result of an underrepresentation of occupations for these trait cat-
egories. In cases where prototypical occupations were unavailable as a
result of either underrepresentation of items or high overlap with other
categories, items with lowest ratings for that category were reverse-keyed.
For example, as shown in Table 2, the negatively keyed item “bank
examiner” was used in the unassuming trait category.
Discussion
As predicted, judges were able to reliably rate the hypothetical trait
characters for their presumed occupational preferences. We view the
judges’ ratings as analogous to prototypicality ratings in the sense that
each occupational item is evaluated for its centrality of membership (rel-
evance) for a given trait category (exemplified by a hypothetical person).
To the extent that judges can reliably rate the prototypicality of occu-
pations for trait categories, and the results of this study indicate they can,
it follows that personality classification may be made on the basis of
occupational preference. Stated differently, the results of this study sug-
gested to us that occupations, when coded for their interpersonal content,
may qualify as stand-alone interpersona measures. At the very least,
perhaps they could enhance current assessment techniques as unobtrusive
or subtle interpersonal measures of personality.
An important next step in this line of inquiry was to test the accuracy
of our derived occupational prototypes in the classification of personality.
The utility of the occupational prototypes, hereafter referred to as the
Interpersonal Occupation Scales (IOS), was the focus of Study 2.
STUDY 2: CLASSIFYING PERSONALITY TYPES WITH
OCCUPATIONAL PROTOTYPES
The link between occupational preference and personality, as mentioned
earlier, has been the subject of extensive theorizing in the vocational
choice literature (Holland, 1978; Roe 1956). Yet, empirical studies de-
voted to quantifying the theoretical links have not been abundant. To use
Holland’s words, this is the case partly because “data show that the VPZ
TABLE 2
INTERPERSONAL OCCUPATION SCALES
Note. Item number indicates prototypicality, with 1 the highest. Number in parentheses beside scale label is the intraclass correlation coefficient
for that scale. (-) denotes negatively keyed item.
PERSONALITY AND OCCUPATIONAL PROTOTYPES 309
Method
Subjects and Procedure
Students from four classes (N = 236) each completed the IAS-R and the occupations
section from the SDS.’ The IAS-R items were grouped into two sets of scales, quadrants
and octants, each based on the revised key (Wiggins, Phillips & Trapnell, 1988). Quadrant
labels (friendly-dominant, hostile-dominant, hostile-submissive, and friendly-submissive,
from Carson, 1%9) reflect the polar contribution of the two circumplex dimensions of
dominance-submission and friendliness-hostility. The octant labels (e.g., dominant, arro-
gant, quarrelsome, etc.) are contained within the outer circle of Fig. 1. The IOS octants
were scored by summing the Likert ratings for each of the occupational profiles contained
in Table 2. The two sets of quadrant scales were formed by collapsing octants into coun-
terclockwise adjacent categories, beginning with agreeable (00). Quadrants and octants were
’ To test for the possibility that a subject’s response style to endorse many versus few
scale items would affect classification, all analyses were carried out twice-once with oc-
cupation scales based on raw scores and once with ipsatized scores (standardized on the
basis of a subject’s own mean and standard deviation). Since the results were very similar
for both methods, we used the raw score format.
310 BROUGHTON, TRAPNELL, AND BOYES
FIG. 1. Angular locations for Interpersonal Occupation Scales, displayed on the outside
of the circle. OC, occupation; DOM, dominant; ARR, arrogant; QUA, quarrelsome; ALO,
aloof; SUB, submissive; UNA, unassuming; AGR, agreeable; GRE, gregarious. Interper-
sonal circumplex markers and angles are depicted within the circle.
compared via preliminary canonical and correlational analyses to establish degree of overlap
and bandwidth sensitivity of the IOS measures.
Occupations 3
Trait Friendly-Dominant Hostile-Dominant Hostile-Submissive Friendly-Submissive
I2
Friendly-Dominant .36** .08 - .34** .06 5
Hostile-Dominant .14* .33** .10* - .29**
Hostile-Submissive - .23** - .10* .25** - .02
Friendly-Submissive .06 - .46*** - .02 .27**
E
Note. IOS, Interpersonal Occupation Scales: IAS, Interpersonal Adjective Scales.
* p < .05; **p < .Ol; ***p i .ool. s
s
3
VJ
312 BROUGHTON, TRAPNELL, AND BOYES
TABLE 4
ZERO-ORDER CORRELATIONS OF IOS OCTANTS WITH IAS OCTANTS
Occupations
Note. IOS, Interpersonal Occupation Scales; IAS, Interpersonal Adjective Scales; Oc,
occupation scale; AGR, agreeable; GRE, gregarious; DOM, dominance; ARR, arrogance;
QUA, quarrelsome; ALO, aloof; SUB, submissive; UNA, unassuming.
*p < .05; **p < .Ol; ***p < 301.
100
10s
T
-0
25
O/
Friendly/Dominant Friendly/Submissive
Hostile/Dominant Hostile/Submissive
Quadrant
FIG. 2. Quadrant hit rates for IOS and SDS measures.
/
0 - ‘0
-3 -2 -1 Target -1 -2 -3 -4
Trait Category
FIG. 3. Average profile of classification hits and misses (percentages) for Interpersonal
Occupation Scales (10s) and Self-Directed Search (SDS) predictor variables. Trait categories
that are adjacent to the target on the circumplex are represented by - 1, categories twice
removed from the target by -2, etc.
316 BROUGHTON, TRAPNELL, AND BOYES
TABLE 5
SEPARATE-GROUP DWRIMINANT CLASSIFICATION SUMMARY TABLE
Representative Hits
Analysis Trait group occupation N KR-20 (%I 2
1 Dominant Business executive 29 .76 81 11.30*
Stock and bond
Calculating sales person 26 .74 70 10.80*
Quarrelsome Credit investigator 23 .64 74 11.37*
Introverted Poet 25 .72 56 9.50*
Submissive Bank teller 25 .72 72 11.12*
Unassuming Concert singer 23 .68 61 10.12*
Playground
7 Agreeable director 26 .80 78 11.51*
Master of
8 Gregarious 28 .85 68 10.56’
Note. KR-20, Kuder Richardson formula 20; Hits (%), the percentage of correct clas-
sifications based on group N.
*p < .OOOl.
and yelled, when necessary, to get his own way. Phil settled disputes
among other members of the group, and managed to control the outcome
of the meeting without the others being aware of it.
That Friday night at a party, Phil spoke with friends, monopolizing the
conversation, as usual. When someone talked about buying a new car,
Phil gave him advice, although none was requested. The party got a bit
dull in the early going, but Phil took the lead in livening things up.
Before long, Phil made a bold sexual advance and left with a woman
he had been talking to earlier. When they got to her place, Phil imme-
diately took the sexual initiative. Later, they watched a movie in bed.
Phil decided which channel to watch.
REFERENCES