This is a description of the methodology behind the latest iteration of my Targeted Personality Test. Feel free to take it either before or after reading the article. This post can also be read at my Substack. Thanks to Justis Millis for providing feedback and proofreading on this post.

In my prior post “Which personality traits are real? Stress-testing the lexical hypothesis”, I observed that a lot of the personality traits that are measured by conventional personality tests are not very “real”: they lump together nearly unrelated behaviors. Can we do better?

Thanks to a lot of anonymous respondents to my test[1], I think yes! I factor-analyzed the data from my Targeted Personality Test, and came up with a hierarchical personality model which hopefully should be better at cutting personality-space at its joints.

Quick recap: The problem

Empirical personality models are built on correlations. If a cluster of variables are all correlated with each other, then we assume that there is a latent personality factor accounting for these correlations, and we score the factor using an aggregate of the correlating variables.

However, the standard datasets with which these correlations are computed include lots of near-synonymous item pairs such [...]

---

Outline:

(01:04) Quick recap: The problem

(01:50) My solution: Narrow items

(03:09) Initial results: Concerning

(04:10) Agglomerative item clustering

(06:27) Matrix algebra correlation modelling

(08:55) How much of the SPI-27 is preserved?

(09:46) Evaluation

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
June 5th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aRcZSKYdt26KdqoFw/beyond-the-lexical-personality-traits-what-is-the-structure

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Scatter plot showing original SPI-style loadings versus near clustered loadings for concrete items.

Correlation matrix showing relationships between personality traits and behavioral characteristics.

Factor analysis table showing factor loadings across five factors for personality and behavioral items.

Table showing personality traits scored across seven dimensions with total values in rightmost column.

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“Beyond the lexical personality traits: What is the structure of personality?” by tailcalled

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Beyond the lexical personality traits: What is the structure of personality?” by tailcalled