What Lies Beyond Personality Traits? The Role of Intolerance of Uncertainty, Anxiety Sensitivity, and Metacognition

Abstract

Although personality trait models have become consolidated as the hegemonic taxonomical models for describing personality and provide excellent capacity for predicting variables of psychological interest, there are still important gaps in our knowledge about why personality traits predict those variables. We hypothesised that intolerance of uncertainty, anxiety sensitivity and metacognition may partially give an answer to that why. We analysed: the relationship between those three variables and the five dimensions of the Big Five model (n = 914; 51.7% women) in Study 1, and the relationship between those variables and neuroticism facets (n = 656; 55.7% women) in Study 2. Intolerance of uncertainty was statistically related to the dimensions of neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness, while anxiety sensitivity also proved to be related to neuroticism. Both variables were related to the six facets of the neuroticism dimension. Metacognition showed no significant relationship with any of the personality dimensions.