Short Communication Evidence for the general factor of personality (GFP) in the Big Five from 600 Iranians Stephen Erdle a,⇑ , Naser Aghababaei b a Huron University College at Western University, Canada b University of Tehran, Iran article info Article history: Received 27 January 2012 Received in revised form 19 March 2012 Accepted 22 March 2012 Available online 23 April 2012 Keywords: General factor of personality Big Five Cross-cultural Iran Prefrontal asymmetries abstract Evidence for the general factor of personality (GFP) was found in analyses of correlations among scores on the Big Five personality factors (Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emo- tional Stability) from 278 Iranian women and 322 Iranian men. The Big Five were measured by the Per- sian translation of the 50-item, self-report, International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, 1999). Loadings of the Big Five on the first unrotated factor from principal components analyses revealed the GFP for the entire sample and for both women and men, separately. Results demonstrated cross-cultural consistency of the GFP. A possible neurological substrate of the GFP, prefrontal asymmetries, is discussed. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The five-factor model (FFM) or Big Five is a widely researched model of personality trait structure (John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008). The theoretically independent Big Five personality factors are: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN). Empirical research, however, has found correlations among the Big Five, which yield a highest-order, general factor of personality (GFP) (e.g., Erdle, Irwing, Rushton, & Park, 2010; Erdle & Rushton, 2011; Hull & Beaujean, 2011; Loehlin, in press; Musek, 2007; Rushton & Irwing, 2008, 2009; van der Lin- den, Bakker, & Serlie, 2011; van der Linden, Scholte, Cillessen, te Nijenhuis, & Segers, 2010; van der Linden, te Nijenhuis, & Bakker, 2010). High scores on the GFP indicate a positive, socially desirable personality that is open, conscientious, extraverted, agreeable, and emotionally stable. Theoretically, it has been suggested that the GFP is caused by both the natural selection and the learning of so- cially desirable behaviors that produce effective performance across a variety of situations (Erdle & Rushton, 2010). Predisposi- tions to socially desirable behaviors likely are enhanced by both direct and vicarious social reinforcement. Those with high scores on the GFP are better liked and are more popular (van der Linden et al., 2010). Other validity studies have shown the GFP to be related to such external criteria as job performance (van der Linden et al., 2010), and informant ratings and behavioral clusters (Loeh- lin, in press). The GFP has been shown to converge across different personality inventories (e.g., Loehlin, in press; Woods & Hardy, 2012), showing its generalizability. In order to further establish the generalizability of the GFP, it is important to show that it has cross-cultural consistency. The pur- pose of the present study was to test for the GFP in Iran using a measure in the Persian language. It was predicted that the GFP would be found in the Big Five for both women and men. 2. Method 2.1. Participants Participants were 600 student volunteers from three major uni- versities in Tehran; University of Tehran, Allameh Tabatabai Uni- versity, and Sharif University of Technology. These 278 women and 322 men had ages ranging from 18 to 42, with a mean of 23.56 and a standard deviation of 3.21. 2.2. Measures The Big Five were measured using the 50-item, self-report, International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, 1999). The Persian translation of this measure has been shown to have internal con- sistency reliability and criterion and construct validity in Iranian samples (e.g., Tahmasb, Ghorbani, & Watson, 2008). In the present study, internal consistency reliabilities (Cronbach’s alpha coeffi- cient) ranged from .70 to .79 for the Big Five scales, and were .86, .84, and .85 for the general factor of personality (based on all 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.03.024 ⇑ Address: Huron University College at Western University, 1349 Western Road, London, ON, Canada N6G 1H3. Tel.: +1 519 438 7224x225; fax: +1 519 438 3938. E-mail address: serdle@uwo.ca (S. Erdle). Personality and Individual Differences 53 (2012) 359–361 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid