Personality Model Candidates

Guilt/Shame

I think that this is derivative from Good. Certainly Good and Guilt/Shame are not orthogonal; a very Good person would certainly feel guilt or shame at an injury inflicted, and a not Good person would not feel guilt or shame in the same circumstances. Therefore, I think we can rely on Good to carry this load.

 

Jealousy

First question: do we see this as an intrinsic trait or a relationship? My first reaction was that jealousy should be a relationship, not a trait, as it does seem to be pointed towards somebody: the object of one's jealousy. But what is the operational significance of jealousy? How does it affect behavior? A jealous person will desire to acquire items of comparable emotional value to what is possessed by the object of jealousy. Another aspect of this is the desire to diminish the assets of the object of jealousy. Which is more important: the former desire or the latter?

 

Illuminating Russian joke: there were once two poor peasants named Ivan and Boris. They were desperately poor; life was a struggle for both of them. But after years of labor, Boris managed to acquire a cow. Ivan was hurt; he felt inferior to his old friend. One night, Ivan's guardian angel came to him and said, "Ivan, I know you are unhappy because Boris is wealthier than you. I can help you; I can grant your wish. Would you like to have a cow like Boris?" To which Ivan replied, "Kill Boris' cow."

 

I think that the truth of this joke is that the former, constructive approach is preferred, but the latter will do the job. Indeed, if Ivan had two wishes, his first would be have a cow, and his second would be to kill Boris' cow.

 

It seems to me that jealousy is related to social hierarchy, or self-esteem. As such, there is a connection with Submissive, but I concede that Submissive doesn't convey everything that jealousy connotes. What I want is to put my finger on that element of jealousy that is independent of Submissive. Are the disputed possessions in jealousy merely symbols of status, are is materialism intrinsic to this dispute?

 

Perhaps one resolution is to introduce a self-perceived status. Each character has a trait which is very close to self-esteem, but is tied more closely to perceived status in the social hierarchy. This opens up a large can of worms. We could have both the perceived status of the individual, the desired status of the individual, and the perceived status of other characters. This intrudes on Submissive, but perhaps it could become a replacement for Submissive, or an appendage to Submissive. I'll set this aside for your comments.

Desire for Approval

This gets us into exactly the same pot, doesn't it? Is desire for approval a variation on desire for status?

 

Deceptiveness

This strikes no chord with me.

 

Nurturance/ Creativity

There's definitely something here. I would put the emphasis on nurturance rather than creativity, as I see the latter being more of an intellectual style and the former being more of an emotional style. What confuses me, though, is the though, what kind of behaviors would this trait discriminate? Are such behaviors dramatically interesting?

 

Physical Discomfort

I am uncomfortable with this candidate because it raises a great many new issues. First, there are computational issues involved with keeping track of continuous activity rather than a pure event-driven approach, which is the heart of my system. For example, to keep track of hunger or fatigue, I'd have to continually update every character, asking whether they'd gotten something to eat or taken a nap. All this sounds entirely too mechanical. Some of it can be faked from indirect inferences. For example, if two characters are on a romp together, it would not be hard to consult the HistoryBook to determine the duration of the romp and infer the degree of fatigue or hunger that they have accumulated while dedicating themselves exclusively to this romp. The assumption here is that characters will take care of creature comforts in the time gaps between their actions.

 

The weakness of this approach comes when special circumstances conspire to deny creature comforts to a character. However, please note that such special circumstances are really events, substories, and as such can be addressed as special cases in their internal computations.

 

This raises an important point: the segregation of the narrow from the broad. The personality model should devote itself to broad factors, while texture and specificity should be addressed in the individual substories. You can have a starvation series of substories and carry temporary data through ThirdObject and FourthObject, thereby handling much of the load. You don't need to throw global variables at every problem; indeed, you don't want to!

 

Items from the Berkeley Five:

Expressive Style/ Extroversion

I think that this is handled by Initiative.

 

Interpersonal Style/ Agreeableness

This is covered by Empathy

 

Work Style / Conscientiousness

What does this have to do with storytelling?

 

Emotional Style

Covered by Volatility

 

Intellectual Style

Perhaps there's something here. I'm not impressed.