A (latent) Big Five personality model in 1915? A reanalysis of Webb's data.

In 1915 Edward Webb, working under Charles Spearman at University College London, reported a study of personality trait ratings of 194 trainee teachers. The original report found a single personality factor, which Webb named Persistence of Motives or w. Subsequent partial reanalyses and reinterpretations of Webb's data are reviewed and are found to be misleading. The quality of Webb's data is high; 2 raters assessed every student, and the raters' studies ofthe students' characters were unusually prolonged and intense. A new reanalysis of Webb's data analyzes 6- and 5-factor personality structures latent in the data set, which are judged by experts to be congruent with current 5-factor and other models of human personality trait structure. Therefore, the first, albeit latent, discovery of some currently recognized broad personality dimensions came from the department that is the birth-place of differential psychology.