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§ Personality: The Lexical Hypothesis
⸺ by Charles Iliya Krempeaux
🠶 personality (noun): a person's or animal's nature, especially as it permanently affects their behavior.
§§ Preamble
Every individual human seems to be their own //special snowflake//.
However, the way that humans behaviorally differ from one another seems to follow a pattern. I.e., there seems to be a structure to, and limitations on, the ways in which one human can behaviorally differ from another human.
One attempt to understand this pattern, and structure is called the **Lexical Hypothesis**.
§§ Examples
In many situations, examples help.
Let's give some examples of ways in which ones person might describe the personality of another person:….
🠶 Joe is usually pretty talkative.
🠶 Jane tends to find fault with others.
🠶 Bella usually does a thorough job.
🠶 Charlie is usually original, and often comes up with new ideas.
🠶 Tina is sometimes shy, and inhibited.
🠶 Fred tends to be lazy.
🠶 Robert is very hardworking.
Each of these examples seems to describe a //long term pattern// to each of these individuals' behavior.
§§ Structure In Descriptions: Example №1
Let's look at one of those examples again:
🠶 Bella usually does a thorough job.
What happens if you asked other people who know Bella to describe her.
Given that one person who knows Bella has said “// Bella usually does a thorough job.//”, in your experience, do you think it is more likely that someone else who knows Bella might say?:
🠶 Bella is a reliable worker.
Or?:
🠶 Bella can be somewhat careless.
In my personal experience, if one person who knows Bella says:
🠶 Bella usually does a thorough job.
Then it is more likely that another person who knows Bella would say the following her:
🠶 Bella is a reliable worker.
And you probably will //not// hear any other person who knows Bella say the following about her:
🠶 Bella can be somewhat careless.
(Of course, none of what we just said in this example is rigorous. But it is good to provide some examples, to try to give an intuition for what we are going to do, before we get rigorous.)
§§ Structure In Descriptions: Example №2
Let's look at another example of this:
🠶 Joe is usually pretty talkative.
In my experience if people who know Joe say that about him, then it is unlikely other people who know Joe will say the following about him:
🠶 Joe tends to be quiet.
However, in my experience, it is likely that other people who know Joe might say:
🠶 Joe is outgoing, and sociable.
(Again, none of what we just said in this example is rigorous. But it is good to provide some examples, to try to give an intuition for what we are going to do, before we get rigorous.)
§§ Structure In Descriptions
With these examples it seems as if there is some kind of structure in the way an individual will be described.
For example, you are more likely to hear these about the same person:
🠶 Jack tends to find fault with others.
🠶 Jack tend to start quarrels with others.
🠶 Jack can be cold and aloof.
🠶 Jack is sometimes rude to others.
And more likely to hear these about the same person:
🠶 Moe is helpful and unselfish with others.
🠶 Moe has a forgiving nature.
🠶 Moe is generally trusting.
🠶 Moe is considerate and kind to almost everyone.
But if one person is described as “//cold//”, “//quarrelsome//”, or “//rude//” by people who know them, then it is unlikely you will hear other people who know them as also describe them as “//forgiving//”, or “//unselfish//”.
That is some of the structure we think that is there.
That some descriptions //go together// with other descriptions. (For example: “//cold//”, “//quarrelsome//”, or “//rude//”.)
That some descriptions are sort of opposites of other descriptions. (For example: “//cold//”, “//quarrelsome//”, or “//rude//” versus “//forgiving//”, or “//unselfish//”.)
And that some descriptions are unrelated to certain other descriptions. (For example: “//cold//”, “//quarrelsome//”, or “//rude//” versus “//depressed//”, “//worrisome//”, or “//nervous//”.)
- We are going to try to dig into this structure in a rigorous way.
So let's get into what gets called the **Lexical Hypothesis**.
§§ Lexical Hypothesis
One (more concrete) attempt to understand the structure of human personality is what is called the **Lexical Hypothesis**.
The **Lexical Hypothesis** is also sometimes gets called the **Fundamental Lexical Hypothesis**, the **Lexical Approach**, and the **Sedimentation Hypothesis**.
The **Lexical Hypothesis** tries to understand //human personality// by looking at a single //human language//, and tries to analyze that //human language// for patterns in the way that humans are described in that language.
So, for example, if we picked the //English language// as the language to study, then we would try to analyze the //English language// for patterns in the way that humans are described.
Alternatively, for example, if we picked the //Persian language// as the language to study, then we would try to analyze the //Persian language// for patterns in the way that humans are described.
Really, it could be any human language.
For example, it could be a language such as:
• the Cantonese language, • the Coptic language, • the English language, • the Georgian language, • the Hausa language, • the Japanese language, • the Korean language, • the Nahuatl language, • the Nama language, • the Persian language, • the Polish language, • the Riau Indonesian language, • the Scots language, • the Sindhi language, • the Slovak language, • the Tongan language, • the Urdu language, • the Uyghur language, • etc.
(Obviously there are //a lot// more human languages than these. Both extant, and extinct. These are just a small subset of them.)
Note though that it seems conceivable to me that someone could combine multiple //human languages// together, and then perform the analysis on that combination. However, I am not aware of anyone who has done that.
So, the most common way of pursuing the **Lexical Hypothesis** is to pick one //human language//, a perform the analysis on it.
§§ Lexical Hypothesis Assumptions
(We haven't yet went into the details of what exactly this analysis is. So let's provide the background information to prepare ourselves to later of into the details of the analysis....)
Once a language is picked, we then make 2 assumption:….
- Assumption №1** is that, any important aspects of //human personality// will eventually get encoded into a human language.
- Assumption №2** is that, these important aspects of //human personality// will get encoded as a single word.
Nevertheless this approach — the **Lexical Hypothesis** — is an interesting way of trying to understand //human personality//. And work based on this does have some degree of utility.
§§ Examples Under Lexical Hypothesis
Let's look at our previous examples to see how the **Lexical Hypothesis** applies to them. Doing so will hopefully give us better understanding of what this **Lexical Hypothesis** and its //assumptions// really mean, in a concrete sense.
🠶 Joe is usually pretty talkative.
In this example, the word “talkative” encodes an aspect of //human personality//.
🠶 Jane tends to find fault with others.
In this example, the phrase “find fault” encodes an aspect of //human personality//.
- Note that an analysis under the //Lexical Hypothesis// would miss this phrase, since it is two words, instead of just one.**
In this example, the word “thorough” encodes an aspect of //human personality//.
🠶 Charlie is usually original, and often comes up with new ideas.
In this example, the word “original” encodes an aspect of //human personality//.
Also, in this example, the phrase “comes up with new ideas” encodes an aspect of //human personality//.
- Note that here too an analysis under the //Lexical Hypothesis// would miss this phrase, since it is five words, instead of just one.**
In this example, the word “shy” encodes an aspect of //human personality//.
Also, in this example, the word “inhibited” encodes an aspect of //human personality//.
🠶 Fred tends to be lazy.
In this example, the word “lazy” encodes an aspect of //human personality//.
🠶 Robert is very hardworking.
In this example, the word “hardworking” encodes an aspect of //human personality//.
Although, one could also argue that in this example, it is the phrase “very hardworking” that is doing the encoding.
Which, although the word “hardworking” would be detected by an analysis under the //Lexical Hypothesis//,
- the phrase “very hardworking” would be missed by an analysis under the //Lexical Hypothesis//.**