“Professional Writers, Personality Types, & Genre Choice”

by Kim Darnell | Xchanges 8.1

Literature Review

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. Some of the major personality models that utilize such inventories are the five-factor model (or Big Five), the Myers-Briggs 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).

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, convergence with other personality inventories, and generally favorable criterion validity (Carlson). Since this is a small study that seeks to give a prompt for reflection to writers and not to claim widespread validity of results, the MBTI is an appropriate model to begin with.

There has been some scholarly interest in how personality relates to individual differences in language. 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. Their results concluded that word use and personality are correlated in low magnitudes — for example, high extraversion is correlated with more positive emotion words and social process words but 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 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.

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). Bazerman suggests 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.” 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.

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 (225). They argue that “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 their writing program at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, they allow their students to choose their own genres and purposes for writing, and speculate that life stage seems to affect students’ genre choices.

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). 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.