Template:Did you know nominations/Big Five personality traits and culture

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 13:16, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Big Five personality traits and culture

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• ... that the Big Five personality traits have been found in the personality ratings of observers in over 50 different cultures?

Created/expanded by Carps11 (talk). Self nom at 22:19, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

• This article (Big Five personality traits and culture when it's not piped) should be merged with Big Five personality traits as it is about the same test. MathewTownsend (talk) 19:48, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the Big Five is the predominant model in personality psychology research. It's been widely studied across many different psychology subfields (e.g. Development, Cross-Cultural, Social, etc.) and has accumulated a lot of research in the last 20 years. I have (hopefully!) addressed other concerns on the article's talk page. Please let me know if there's any other response you need from me, I'm very new to editing Wikipedia. Thanks! Carps11 (talk) 16:59, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

• These "Big Five" articles seem repetitive and contain basically the same information. e.g. Hierarchical Structure of the Big Five, and the Five-factor_model, besides those listed above. Is all this repetition necessary, when the articles say basically the same thing, or are a subset of the main article on the Big Five? MathewTownsend (talk) 23:45, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

• They don't contain the same information at all - the Hierarchical Structure of the Big Five is about a different, unique way to examine the Big Five (traditionally you keep it as five traits, this is about breaking it up into two higher-order traits); the Dimensional_approach_to_personality_disorders#Five-factor_model is primarily about DISORDERS, how the Big Five has been theorized to relate to DISORDERS... etc. etc.! Plus, there's already separate pages for each of the traits of the Big Five (openness, etc). Granted, I think my page Big Five personality traits and culture is one of the better candidates for merging into the main page, but if you merged ALL THE PAGES that related to the Big Five, that would be one REALLY LONG article! I think it might be valuable to have the unique information that each page contributes separate so that it's easy to find. Carps11 (talk) 16:58, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• - There are five article on, or mainly on, the Big Five in the DYK queue right now. If this "is the predominant model in personality psychology research" - then why all of a sudden are there five (or more) new or 5X expanded articles right now in the DYK queue? MathewTownsend (talk) 00:58, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• Articles in the DYK queue now: Hierarchical Structure of the Big Five, Big Five personality traits and culture, Change in the Big Five in (Change in personality over a lifetime), Five-factor model (in Dimensional models of personality disorders) and Personality and life outcomes - basically about the Big Five — all these nominated for DYK right now. And maybe more. I haven't checked them all. So all these new articles on the "Big Five" (especially since you say it's been around a long time?) MathewTownsend (talk) 01:01, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• They were all nominated for DYK as part of a graduate class in personality psychology. As part of the course requirement, all our articles needed to be relevant to personality psychology research, which is why so many of them are related to the Big Five - it really is one of (if not the) biggest model in personality research these days... I hope that answers your question? I honestly can't tell you why there weren't a lot of Big Five articles on Wikipedia previous to this, because it baffles me a little bit too. Maybe no personality psychologists make a habit of editing Wikipedia? Carps11 (talk) 16:45, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• Carps11, are the editors of these article aware of the requirements of reliable sources for medical articles? It applies to this type of psychology article also. Please be sure that they are not using primary sources, such as reports of specific research data. It's necessary to find secondary sources, like review articles such as those that provide meta-analysis.

• Also be careful that information is not combined synthesizes from different articles to form original conclusions. Every finding must be supported by a reliable source, not data from primary research articles. Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 23:11, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• Hi Mathew, we were informed by our campus ambassador that journal articles are considered secondary sources. This is because they do interpret the data (which is the primary source) by drawing conclusions from it and integrating it into a larger body of research. Additionally, when I examine the primary sources page, it says: "In the social sciences, the definition of a primary source would be expanded to include numerical data that has been gathered to analyze relationships between people, events, and their environment." The secondary sources page says: "Secondary sources involve generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information," all of which are present in a psychological journal article. However, it does also indicate (as you said) that: "scientific and medical peer reviewed sources are not generally considered secondary unless they are a review or a meta-analysis." I would be surprised to hear that psychology (a social science) whould be considered a "medical" topic (unlike psychiatry, which absolutely makes sense in a medical context), but if this is the case then clearly we're in error here, as are most psychological articles present on Wikipedia. Carps11 (talk) 23:54, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• Hi Carpsll, psychology articles must follow WP:MEDRS, regardless of what your campus ambassador said. As you must know, the data from one research study is only that - the finding (and interpretation) of one research group. For information to be considered reliable, it must be supported by other sources reaching similar results. We all know that the outcome of one study can be wrong. Psychology uses the scientific method; results must be verified. MathewTownsend (talk) 00:16, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

• Okay, on that note we were obviously misinformed about how psychology isn't a social science on Wikipedia. I am really sorry that we all made that error! Unfortunately it seems to be a common error: it looks like the only psychological article on Wikipedia that's cited correctly is actually psychology. Nearly all other psychology articles (including large subfield pages), like Personality psychology, Social psychology, Evolutionary psychology, Developmental psychology, perception, memory, Abnormal psychology, emotion, mood, motivation, extraversion and introversion, learning, change blindness, Attachment theory, Positive psychology and Big Five personality traits (as a small sample) use almost entirely peer-reviewed journal articles. I'm not trying to make the "but everyone else is doing it!" argument here (since we are in the wrong if psychological research is supposed to be medical and not social science on Wiki), I'm just pointing out why it was so easy for us to make that error, since it truly seems to be the norm in psychological Wikipedia articles. Carps11 (talk) 19:28, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

• I think if you read WP:MEDRS, you will see that what is needed is reliable secondary sources for claims presented as "facts" in psychology. Researchers reporting their findings from a study in a journal article are primary sources - they are reporting what they saw and the interpretations they made to back the conclusions they drew from a specific study. Another study/experiment may present different interpretations Secondary sources would be journal review articles, using meta analyses for example, comparing the findings of many studies to draw composite conclusions based on many different studies/experiments. Occasionally a primary source, i.e. the report on one study or experiment can be used as a source, but only if its conclusions are supported by reliable secondary sources. The requirements of WP:MEDRS are used for psychology to discourage the use of the popular press and other sources that may be considered reliable for citations regarding a airplane crash or political events, etc., but not for information based on statistical analyses. MathewTownsend (talk) 21:56, 19 April 2012 (UTC)