The uniqueness of dominance: structural and criterion discriminability

Dominance, a trait capturing assertiveness, leadership, and social boldness, is sometimes subsumed as a facet of extraversion, but might be a blended trait, overlapping with extraversion and openness. We hypothesized that while dominance overlaps with these traits in some areas, dominance also is a uniquely discriminable construct. In a series of preregistered analyses, we looked for the ideal factor structure of dominance, extraversion, and openness, and predicted associations with external variables that would demonstrate the discriminability of each of these three personality constructs. We found that dominance is always best modeled with its own factor, though overlap is present and can be appropriately modeled. We also confirmed that dominance is associated with anger and aggression, while extraversion and openness are not. The further discriminability of dominance is discussed.