Experience producing drive theory: Personality “writ large”

• A factor analysis of fifty-eight measures of individual differences is reported.
• Twelve substantive factors were found.
• Most factors were defined by multiple measures.
• No previous models of individual differences encompassed all the factors.
• Four super-factors that differ substantially from the big-five are reported.

Experience Producing Drive (EPD) theory is sketched out. The theory, initially proposed to explain the evolution of intelligence, is generalized to all human psychological individual differences (EPD-Revised). Simply put EPD-R theory asserts that human beings are active agents designed to survive in their average expected environment and have evolved numerous traits that facilitate that survival. These traits lead individuals to create physical and psychological environments compatible with their genotypes. EPD-R theory implies that current personality theories lack the necessary perspective to capture this dynamic structure due to a very narrow focus on affective-processing and psychopathology. The theory predicts that the inclusion of a wider variety of individual difference measures, e.g., psychological interests, values, social attitudes and work motivation, will reveal a more meaningful and larger set of basic traits than ordinary personality scales alone. I test this prediction by carrying out a factor analysis of individual difference measures drawn from the domains listed above. Twelve factors encompass constructs proposed by interest theorists, value theorists, attitude theorists and personality theorists. No single theory encompassed all the factors. A factor analysis of these twelve factors yields four super factors that differ substantively from the big five: Dangerous, Authoritarian, Powerful and Down-to-Earth.