The development of the Humm-Wadsworth model of core emotions
Emotional Intelligence since its publication has created a new genre in the non-fiction market.  The phrase itself generates 3.8 million hits with Google.  Amazon lists 6446 titles incorporating the phrase.  In Australia alone there are now some 500 courses devoted to or incorporating the term “emotional intelligence”.  As yet no course or book yet produced or written has used a scientifically valid model of core emotions.  The Humm Handbook will fill this important gap.

The model of core emotions used in this book was first conceived by a American psychologist, Rosanoff in 1924.  Until the work of Rosanoff, doctors defined abnormal psychological conditions in black and white: people were either mad or not.  Rosanoff suggested that such a distinction between the normal and abnormal states was artificial and the difference was not one of kind but of degree.  Normality and abnormality should not be thought of as black and white but as different shades of grey.  

Rosanoff  further noted there were few mental illnesses and proposed a theory of personality based on the most common four:

 - schizophrenia

- epilepsy

- hysteria

- cyclodia (what we now would call manic-depression or the bi-polar personality disorder)

 and a fifth component called the Normal.  This component may best be understood as the desire for order and is associated with behaviour such as social adjustment or integration with society.  It is best expressed as the gradual change that occurs to the personality as the human being matures—and then may fade away if the adult enters a second childhood.

 In the 1930s two southern Californians, Humm, a statistician, and Wadsworth, a clinical psychologist, using multi-variate factor analysis extended the Rosanoff hypothesis by sub-dividing both cyclodia and schizophrenia into two new components.  Cyclodia was divided into manic-depression and schizophrenia divided into autistic-paranoid.  The Humm-Wadsworth model thus has seven major personality temperament components.

Other Approaches:

Neuro-Linguistic Programming: NLP
 One book that attempted at resolving Goleman's conundrum is 7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence by Merleverde, Bridoux, and Vandame (Crown House Publishing 2001.)  The book identifies the weakness that I do—Goldman did not provide a model of core emotions.  7 Steps then goes on to use a behavioural model known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming.  NLP was first postulated by two research scientists, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, and proposes that people receive data from the outside world mainly by the eye, the ear or by touch.  Furthermore they hypothesise that people tend to prefer one channel to the others and this preference can be recognised by a number of clues, especially in the language they use.  The three channels are described as the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic.  There is a world wide infrastructure about teaching of NLP, particularly by sales people such as Antony Robbins, but the model itself has been attacked for validity and reliability by reputable experimental psychologists.  Supposedly Bandler and Grinder are now suing each other.  7 Steps unfortunately like many of the writings of NLP descends into new age psycho-babble.  NLP itself suffers the usual faults of a pseudo-science: scientific-sounding jargon, reliance on anecdotal evidence, unsubstantiated claims of rapid cures, absence of a sound theoretical basis, and over-promotion for financial gains.

 DISC

In 1928 William Moulton Marston wrote a book called The Emotions of Normal People.  The DISC behavioural model was developed from his book.  Moulton’s book is not easy to read.  This is a typical passage:

“The total of psychonic (synaptic) excitation, existing at any given moment in the subject organism as a result of reflex tonic motor discharge, may be called for convenience, the ‘motor self’.  Definition of the term does not include any phenomena not objectively described or indicates.

Phasic motor impulses forming psychonic conjunction with tonic motor excitations may be conveniently termed ‘motor stimuli’, and are to regarded as being in exactly the same relation to the motor sefl as are afferent impulses to the organism’s sensory mechanisms.  Motor stimuli thus objectively defined, are not to be confused, under any circumstances, with environmental stimuli, which may be defined as objects or forces acting upon the organism’s sensory receptors.

Marston attempted in his book to develop a theory of emotions using synaptic impulses and the interaction between the motor self and motor stimuli.  In particular which of the two was stronger and did they work in conflict or alliance.

This lead Mouton to then develop a four type model:

Dominance:  Self > Stimuli working in conflict

Inducement:  Self > Stimuli working in alliance

Submissive:  Stimuli > Self working in alliance

Compliance:  Stimuli > Self working in conflict

DISC practitioners developed the Moulton model by saying people react either passively or actively to whether they perceive the environment to be favourable or antagonistic and this leads to four different styles of behaviour.  

1. Driving       Forceful, Aggressive, Competitive, Decisive
2. Influencing        Warm, Friendly, Trusting, Demonstrative
3. Steadiness        Stable, Deliberate, Possessive, Steady
4. Compliant        Careful, Exacting, Tactful, Conventional

The DISC system is perhaps the most widely used personality test in the world.  A standard DISC questionnaire consists of twenty-four questions. Each of these questions presents four options, and asks the respondent is to select which of these applies most closely, and which least closely, to their approach.  The results are analysed and plotted on a graph known as a 'DISC Profile'.   DISC has also been attacked by experimental psychologists for weak scientific reliability and validity.  This is because DISC is an Ipsative rather than a Normative test.  Ipsative tests measure the relative strengths of traits within an individual by making an individual do a forced choice.  Normative tests compare the individual with the rest of the population.  Psychologists, who have authenticated DISC against the most widely validated test in personality testing, the 16PF, have concluded DISC is a two factor correlation.  The summary of one psychologist was telling:  "Why use a technology for prediction of human behaviour that is so inherently limited by its brevity and format?"  In other words DISC does provide an answer but it is too simplistic—it puts people into one of four boxes. 

 Myers-Briggs
Another widely used personality test is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Over 2 million people in the United States take the MBTI each year and it has been translated into more than 30 languages.  The mother/daughter team of Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers developed the MBTI over 20 years.  They based their lifelong work on Carl Jung's theories which were first stated in his book Psychological Types published in 1921.  Gifts Differing written by Isabel Briggs Myer and published in 1980 is an excellent introduction to the model. 

 The model basically asks four questions?

1. Are you an Extrovert (prefer to deal with the outer world) or an Introvert (prefer to focus on "the inner world").
2. How do you perceive incoming information? By simply Sensing the facts or do you try to use your INtuition to generate new non-obvious patterns?
3. Do you make decisions using a logical, analytical way of Thinking or do you decide by incorporating intensely Felt personal beliefs and values?
4. Which is more dominant in making decisions—how you Perceive the data or the Judging process you use?

 These four dichotomies in turn lead to 16 combinations called types, ENTP, ISTJ etc.

As can be seen the Myers-Briggs is a behavioural model about decision making.  How we make decisions is very important and reflective our personality.  However it is not a theory of core emotions and also suffers the difficulty of having to learn 16 different combinations.

OCEAN or the Big Five

Sir Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, and widely regarded as the father of psychometrics, first put forward what is now known as the Lexical Hypothesis. This is the idea that the most salient and socially relevant personality differences in people’s lives will eventually become encoded into their language. The hypothesis further suggests that by sampling language, it is possible to derive a comprehensive taxonomy of human personality traits.

 In 1936, Allport and Odbert expanded on the hypothesis. They worked through two of the most comprehensive dictionaries of the English language available at the time and extracted 18,000 personality-describing words. They then reduced this gigantic list to 4500 adjectives which they considered to describe observable and relatively permanent traits.

 In the late 1950s Raymond Cattell obtained the Allport-Odbert list and by a combinations of factor analysis and personality test development developed a model of sixteen major personality factors, which in turn led to the development of the 16PF Personality Questionnaire.   Over time more and more Ph.Ds  were done  attempting to find  new personality  factors.

However in 1961, two Air Force researchers, Tupes and Christal analyzed personality data from eight large samples. Using Cattell's trait measures, they found five recurring factors. This work was replicated by Norman (1963), who also found that five major factors were sufficient to account for a large set of personality data.  Subsequently the model became know as the Big Five or OCEAN model after the names of the five factors.  These factors are Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.  Each factor consists of a number of more specific traits.  For example, Extraversion includes such related qualities as sociability, excitement seeking, and positive emotions.

The major criticism of the Five Factor theory is that it is based on a set of empirical observations without an underlying explanation.   On the other hand the simplicity of the model has led to its  wide adoption in psychological circles.