2022/12/29 by Markus Quirin, Farhood Malekzad, Dinesh Paudel +3 · 14 citations
Psychology · #Alternative five model of personality #Big Five personality traits #Big Five personality traits and culture #Cognitive psychology #Dynamics (music) #Nomothetic #Nomothetic and idiographic #Personality #Personality Disorders and Psychopathology #Personality Traits and Psychology #Personality development #Psychological Testing and Assessment #Psychology #Social psychology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/jopy.12805
published in Journal of Personality 91(4), 928-946 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2022/12/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Personality researchers are increasingly interested in the dynamics of personality, that is, the proximal causal mechanisms underlying personality and behavior. Here, we review the Zurich Model of Social Motivation concerning its potential to explain central aspects of personality. It is a cybernetic model that provides a nomothetic structure of the causal relationships among needs for security, arousal, and power, and uses them to explain an individual's approach-avoidance or "proximity-distance" behavior. We review core features of the model and extend them by adding features based on recent behavioral and neuroscientific evidence. We close by discussing the model considering contemporary issues in personality science such as the dynamics of personality, five-factor personality traits and states, and personality growth.