The General Factor of Personality as Ego-Resiliency

Curtis S Dunkel; Dimitri van der Linden; Tetsuya Kawamoto; Atsushi Oshio

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.741462

The General Factor of Personality as Ego-Resiliency

Front Psychol. 2021 Nov 22:12:741462. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.741462. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Curtis S Dunkel¹, Dimitri van der Linden², Tetsuya Kawamoto³, Atsushi Oshio⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL, United States.
² Department of Psychology, Education, and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
³ Faculty of Letters, Kokushikan University, Tokyo, Japan.
⁴ Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.

Abstract

It was originally hypothesized by Block that what has come to be known as the General Factor of Personality (GFP) reflects ego-resiliency. We test Block's hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1 a meta-analysis (N = 15,609) examining the relationship between the GFP and ego-resiliency/resilience was conducted. In Study 2 (N = 157) archival data from Block and Block was used to examine the association between rater judged ego-resiliency across childhood, adolescence, and into early adulthood and the GFP based on self-report in early adulthood. Using structural equation modeling for the meta-analytic data, the correlation between the GFP and ego-resiliency/resilience was estimated at r = 0.93. Using a trait-state occasion model to test the hypothesis in Study 2, the correlation between the GFP and rated ego-resiliency was estimated at r = 0.85. The results of the two studies offer substantial support for Block's original hypothesis. Given the strength of the associations between the GFP and ego-resiliency/resilience one may conclude that the two constructs largely reflect the same underlying phenomenon.

Keywords: ego adaptability; longitudinal; personality structure; resileincy; structural equation (SEM).