Jerry S. Wiggins

Jerry S. Wiggins (1931–2006) was an American personality and clinical psychologist known for developing scales to assess the traits in the circumplex model,^[1] writing and editing texts on personality theory^[2][3][4] and psychometrics^[5][6] and for developing measures of interpersonal behavior.^[7]

Jerry S. Wiggins
Born	1931
Died	2006
Occupation	Clinical psychologist
Known for	Writings on personality theory and psychometrics
Awards	Bruno Klopfer Award (2002)

Wiggins was one of the most prominent advocates of circular representations of personality and he formalized the circular model (also called circumplex model) with modern statistical techniques. Wiggins started with the lexical assumption - (the idea that all important individual differences are encoded within the natural language). But he went further in his effort at taxonomy by arguing that trait terms specify different kinds of ways in which individuals differ. Wiggins was most concerned primarily with interpersonal traits and carefully separated these from other categories of traits.^[1]

In 2004, the journal Multivariate Behavioral Research published a special edition entitled ‘Personality Topics in Honor of Jerry S. Wiggins’ which was guest edited by Lewis R Goldberg.^[8] As well as including references to Dr Wiggins' circumplex models it made particular reference to his contributions to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) His work was also mentioned following his death in the newsletter for the professional society he helped found, the Society for Interpersonal Theory and Research.^[9]

References

1. Larsen, R.J. Buss, D.M. (2010). Personality psychology: domains of knowledge about human nature. NY: McGraw-Hill
2. Wiggins, J.S. (1971). Psychology of personality. NY: Random House
3. Wiggins, J.S. (1996). The five-factor model of personality. NY: The Guildford Press.
4. Wiggins, J.S. (2003). Paradigms of personality assessment. NY: The Guilford Press.
5. Wiggins, J.S. (1966). Substantive dimensions of self-report in the MMPI item pool. Psychological Monographs, 80(22) #630.
6. Wiggins, J.S. (1973). Personality and Prediction: Principles of personality assessment. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
7. Wiggins, J.S. (1979). A psychological taxonomy of trait-descriptive terms: The interpersonal domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 395-412.
8. Goldberg, L. R (Ed), (2004) Personality Topics in Honor of Jerry S. Wiggins Multivariate Behavioral Research, Vol. 39, 2.
9. Tracey, Terence (October 2006). "President's Message" (PDF). SITAR Newsletter. SITAR (VCU). pp. 1, 7. Retrieved 2009-08-20.