On the validity of narrow and broad personality traits: A response to Salgado, Moscoso, and Berges (2013)

• We comment on a recent article by Salgado et al.
• We show an example of a narrow facet-level trait that outpredicts a broad factor-level trait.
• We conclude that narrow personality traits should be assessed in addition to broader traits.

Salgado, Moscoso, and Berges (2013) have recently commented on the issue of the comparative validity of broad factor-level personality traits and narrow facet-level personality traits, providing arguments and data suggesting superior validity for the former. In response, we first clarify some of our previous points that were discussed by Salgado et al. and comment on some other aspects of their article. We then provide an empirical example in which a facet-level personality scale does better in predicting a delinquency criterion than does the factor-level personality scale that contains that facet. We also use CFA to demonstrate that it was the specific trait variance in our narrow predictor that added significantly to predictive validity, above and beyond the validity achieved by the common factor variance contained within the trait measure. These results support our previous conclusion that exclusive reliance on broad factor measures can be counterproductive for understanding and predicting behavior.