"Professional Writers, Personality Types, & Genre Choice"

About the Author

Kim Darnell graduated summa cum laude from the University of Nevada, Reno in May 2011. Her studies in English and Psychology led her to take on this research project, under the gracious guidance of Dr. Lynda Walsh. Kim continues to reside in Reno with her husband and chihuahua mix, Roxy. She currently works as a Family Consultant at the Davidson Institute for Talent Development.

Contents

Introduction
Literature Review
Methodology
Results
Works Cited
Appendices

Literature Review

Since this is an interdisciplinary study (and the disciplines of psychology and composition have different approaches to the topics of personality and genre as they relate to writers), background on both personality studies and genre studies is outlined below.

Background on Personality Studies

Personality has been defined and measured in a number of ways, often involving the use of personality inventories, which are assessment tools used to measure a person’s identification with selected personality factors, such as extraverted/introverted. Typically, these inventories consist of around 100 statements and ask the individual to rate each statement on a Likert scale (i.e. strongly agree to strongly disagree; not at all like me to very like me). After all of the responses are scored, the output is normally a code that shows the personality factors with which the person identifies (i.e. for the Myers-Briggs, the output would be a four-letter code such as ISFJ, which stands for Introverted-Sensing-Feeling-Judging) and a detailed description of the personal characteristics associated with those factors. Some of the major personality models that utilize such inventories are the five-factor model (or Big Five), the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI), and Holland’s vocational typology. These inventories are often used in psychological research since they provide a means of quantifying personality; they are also used in vocational counseling/instruction as well as by individuals who simply wish to understand themselves better (McCrae and Costa). These three models have even shown to have inter-relations (i.e. those identifying with Intuition on the MBTI also identify with Openness to Experience on the Big Five); McCrae and Costa related the Big Five to the MBTI, and Chauvin, Miller, Godfrey, and Thomas related the MBTI to Holland’s typology.

The MBTI is the most widely used personality inventory (Reinhold) and is the inventory referenced in this study. Created by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katharine Briggs, the MBTI is derived from Carl Jung’s psychodynamic theory (Myers & Briggs Foundation). It measures personality type on four dimensions: the indices of extraversion-introversion, sensation-intuition, thinking-feeling, and judging-perceiving. However, MBTI type is defined as “more than simply the four basic preferences; it is a dynamic and complex interrelated system of personality” that measures people’s orientations to the world and their dominant mental functions (Myers & Briggs Foundation).

There is some controversy over the validity of the MBTI with claims of little structural support (Stricker and Ross) and evidence against test-retest reliability contingent on mood (Howes and Carskadon). However, other studies have showed favorable validity in a number of ways: positive psychological validity (the extent to which people’s self-perceptions match up with inventory results), convergence with other personality inventories (as mentioned above), and generally favorable criterion validity (Carlson). The MBTI continues to be used widely in vocational counseling and instruction, mostly as a prompt to discussion and reflection on a deeper level for the person seeking guidance. Since this is a small study that seeks to give a similar prompt for reflection to writers and not to claim widespread validity of results, the MBTI is an appropriate model to begin with.

As previously stated, there has been some scholarly interest in how personality relates to individual differences in language. This phenomenon has been studied by the analysis of written texts, as in the two studies outlined below. These studies have found that personality is in fact related to language use, a correlation that lays a foundation for investigating relationships between personality and genre, since language use differs among genres (Swales).

Pennebaker and King conducted a study in which they analyzed writing samples of several hundred university students and correlated the students’ word use to the Big Five personality dimensions. They used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program for text analysis and categorized word use under the factors of immediacy, making distinctions, the social past, and rationalization; then they correlated each of those LIWC factors with the Big 5 factors of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Their results concluded that word use and personality are correlated in low magnitudes. For example, they found that high extraversion is correlated with more positive emotion words and social process words but fewer negative emotion words. Similarly, conscientious and agreeable people used more positive emotion words and fewer negative emotion words. They concluded that linguistic style does provide valid insight into the study of personality.

Li and Chignell confirmed this conclusion in their study on personality and the reading and writing of blogs. They, too, found that emotion-word use correlated with writers’ personalities. They further focused their study by looking at two distinct genres of blog-writing— commentary and personal journal—and by assessing readers’ perceptions of writers’ personalities within these two genres. Readers rated the personalities of bloggers who wrote journal entries as more introverted, more agreeable and less conscientious than for those who wrote commentary entries. The authors speculated that these attributions could be a reflection of the topics and word uses linked to the genres themselves and not to the writers, but they noted that further research needs to be done on this issue.

Background on Genre Studies

Scholars have defined genres by similarities in strategies or forms, by similarities in audience, by similarities in modes of thinking, and by similarities in rhetorical situations (Miller). Formal or textual definitions of genre are no longer widely accepted in the field of composition; genre is now understood to be unfixed, situational, and socially rooted (Bazerman). Consequently, Bazerman suggests that this turn be taken in the teaching of genre as well, so that genres are not just formal reproductions but appropriate ways of approaching different social circumstances. He goes on to say that teachers should help students locate the kinds of writing that they themselves are interested in pursuing. (Personal interest and personality would seem to be strongly related in this instance.)

Genre studies differ from psychological studies in that they do not typically concern themselves with terms like “personality” but more so with words like “voice” and “identity.” For this study, these terms are assumed to point to the same idea as "personality" because they, too, are concerned with how individuals are uniquely distinguished from one another.

Freedman says that the issue of identity is foregrounded in genre studies and that “the learner must want to take on this identity” (189). She states that pushing students to take on different genres is to push them to take on different perspectives and subject-positions, and it is then up to the students to what extent they personally identify with each genre.

Brooke and Jacobs echo this notion, advocating that genre should be seen as a process that “shows us what writers are choosing (and why) as they develop their own reasons for writing” and not as a product that “shows us what writers aren’t choosing (and why) as they distance themselves from some of the social roles around them” (225). They argue that writers’ relationships to social roles follow the same reasoning as their relationships to genre: “In the same way we create a self by negotiating our stance toward the social roles we inhabit… so we create our self as writer by negotiating our stance toward the genres we use” (217). In line with this view of genre as “identity negotiation,” in their writing program at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Brooke and Jacobs allow their students to choose their own genres and purposes for writing. They speculate that life stage seems to affect students’ genre choices, since most first-year students gravitate toward personal experience genres while more experienced students typically explore professional and unfamiliar ones. In either case, the authors argue that genre is a way for student writers to explore who they are and who they are becoming by experimenting with a wide number of genres and seeing how each fits.

In a 1985 telephone interview, the acclaimed writer Rita Dove alluded to this same idea of a genre “fitting” a person when she said, “I really believe I’m more of a poet than a fiction writer, that it seems to fit me better” (Johnsen and Peabody 18). Dove also refrained from naming people who have influenced her work, stating that she was more concerned with “trying to find the voice that’s truest and the style that’s truest to [her] own voice” (24). From student writers to award-winning writers, these issues of voice and identity as they relate to genre seem to have a notable bearing on decisions about practice and vocation.

Research Gap

After reviewing the literature on both personality and genre as they relate to writers, it is known that there are correlations between word use and personality and that genre has been tied to writers’ identities. What is lacking is the explicit knowledge of which personality types are tied to which genres, and this study seeks to address this gap in research in order to offer writers more practical vocational, pedagogical, and personal enlightenment.