On artifacts and meaning in person‐centred analyses: comment on McCrae, Terracciano, Costa and Ozer (2005)

McCrae et al.'s (2006) analyses of the California Adult Q‐Set (CAQ) are flawed in two respects. First, they misunderstand the meaning of Q‐factors by claiming that high Q‐correlations between the first Q‐factor and item endorsements or the social desirability of items are an artifact. Second, their attempt to overcome this ‘artifact’ by conducting a Q‐factor analysis of interindividually standardised items induces, ironically, a real artifact because this approach ignores meaningful interindividual differences in the intraindividual means and standard deviations of the standardised Q‐sort profiles. Instead of closing doors on person‐centred analyses of personality data, more of these doors should be passed through.