Title: Sattva: The General Factor of Personality from Indian tradition

Abstract

Aims / Objectives: The current study aimed to explore the relationship of Triguna

model of Indian psychology, and Anasakti with respect to meta traits of personality as well as

affect.

Method: A cross sectional survey method was adopted for the current study and it

was conducted after approval by the institute ethics committee. A total of 84 males between

the age of 18-50 years with a minimum of 10 years of formal education were selected from

colleges and various organizations. The study was approved by the Institute ethics

committee.Vedic personality Inventory, Big five aspect scale, Positive and negative affect

schedule, and Non- attachment scale were used in the study. A quantitative statistical analysis

was carried out using SPSS.

Results. An integration of the Indian model of personality with the western concept of

general factor of personality (GFP) was carried out here and Sattva was found to be

positively correlated with the general factor of personality. Anasakti was also moderately

correlated with the general factor of personality.

Key Words: Sattva, General factor of personality, Triguna, Anasakti

INTRODUCTION

In the context of increasing criticism of mainstream psychological concepts as being

predominantly western in their origins, there is a need to study indigenous ideas regarding

mental health, for the growth of the field in India.It is noteworthy that ancient Indian texts

around 3000 years BC described personality in terms of Triguna- Sattva, Rajas and Tamas.

This Indian concept of personality has been mentionedin the Chandogya Upanishads and was

fully described in Samkhya Karika, Bhagavad Gita and Yogasutras. The model of Triguna

largely pertains to the Samkhya philosophy, which describes two realities such as the spiritual

and material known as Purusha and Prakriti respectively. Purusha is the supreme

consciousness from which Prakriti, the matter is deriving from. Unlike western approaches,

the body and mind are considered as one entity in the Indian tradition, which are made of

thePrakriti. This Prakriti is further composed of three Guna generally known as Triguna,

namely Sattva, Rajas and Tamas.Thus, Gunas are different components of matter (Murthy

and Kumar, 2007).

The psychophysical disposition of a human being consists of a mixture of Guna

(Wolf, 1998), since Gunas are also the universal characteristics of all kinds of mental

tendencies, and are the forces which bring the mind to do certain action (Dasgupta, 1961;

Kumar and Balodhi, 2016). Thus, the characteristics of each Gunaasgiven in the table1

(Wolf, 1999) and their combination leads to the final make up of a person’s personality.

Sattva balance, peace, equanimity, cleanliness, truthfulness, dutifulness, detachment,

Guna discipline, contentment

Rajas Intense activity, dynamic, passion, agitation, anxiety, nervousness, materialistic

Guna mentality.
 Tamas Mental imbalance, anger, ignorance, arrogance, and helplessness
Guna

Table 1: Characteristics of Guna (Wolf, 1999)

In the field of mainstream psychology, personality traits have largely been studied

using the Five Factor Model (or the ‘Big-Five’) in the recent times (APA, 2013).The Big Five

model has been developed based on the assumption that all individual personality differences

are encoded in the language which people use to describe others. Thus, such a lexical

approach collates a list of adjectives and all the different words people use to describe

personality. Using this methodology, the five domains were finalized, as described in Five

Factor Model. i.e., Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, and

Conscientiousness(Costa, McCrae, and Dye 1991 ).Over last few years, newer models of

personality have been proposed, which includes integrative theories of personality and meta

traits of personality.

One of the newer integrative model of personality is the general factor of personality

(GFP). Similar to the general factor of intelligence g, this model by Musek (2007)

emphasizes a single general factor of personality (GFP) having a collection of socially

desirable traits. Hence, it is a combination of positive personality traits among the Big Five

traits; i.e., Agreeableness, Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Emotional

Stability (Reversed Neuroticism). This concept of Big One is an integration of the Big Two,

the two lower order traits, known as stability /alpha and plasticity /beta (Rushton, Bons and

Hur, 2008). This theory regarding stability and plasticity as two meta-traits underlying the

Big Five domains, has found empirical support in studies by Digman, (1997) and DeYoung,
Peterson, and Higgins (2002) and DeYoung (2006). The existence of two higher order factors

called Alpha (α) or stabilityand Beta (β) or plasticity was first proposed by Digman (1997)

based on factor analysis. Factor Alpha, subsumes the domains such as Agreeableness,

Conscientiousness, and Emotional stability, which covers the traits that are considered as

socially desirable. Factor Beta is supported from the perspective of Rogers and Maslow

(1979) wherein the idea of personal growth and self- actualization are of primary importance.

According to Digman (1997), personal growth or self-actualization meant an enlargement of

self by a venturesome encounter with life and its attendant risks, by being open to all

experiences, especially the new experiences and by the unfettered use of one’s intelligence.

Hence, this higher order factors includes Extraversion and Openness to experience.DeYoung

(2002)attempted to replicate these Big Two, and also suggested that these two higher order

factors may better be termed as Stability and Plasticity, respectively. The author also

hypothesised that stability is associated with the individual differences in serotonergic

system, and plasticity with the dopaminergic system in the brain.

An alternative but related theory has been suggested by Cieciuch and Strus (2017)

who verified the existence of Circumplex of Personality Metatraits (CPM) using the Big Five

personality traits. In this model, GFP is considered as one of the meta traits called Gamma

Plus/ Integration, with similar Big Five configuration as of GFP. It has characteristics like

being warm, prosocial towards the world, and having a state of wellbeing. The CPM model

also represents the Big Two as two other meta traits, Alpha- Plus (stability) and Beta-

Plus(plasticity) at the same level of hierarchy as GFP. These meta traits are orthogonal to

each other, along with an additional 4 th meta trait of self-restraint. These 4 meta traits with

their opposite poles (sensation seeking, disinhibition, disharmony and passiveness) make it a
circumplex, which can integrate a variety of theories of personality, motivation, emotion and

mental health (Cieciuchand Strus, 2017).

Table 2: Circumplex of Personality Metatraits and their association with Big- Five
personality traits (Cieciuch,and Strus, 2017)

Meta- trait Characteristics Big-Five configuration

Delta- Plus low emotionality, high behavioural control, -N, -E, -O, +A , +C

(Self- restraint) and a tendency to adjust oneself.

Alpha- Plus Stability in emotional, motivational -N, +A, +C

(Stability) and social functioning, and a

general social adaptation tendency

Gamma- Plus Wellbeing, warm and prosocial -N, +E, +O, +A, +C

(Integration) attitude towards the world

Beta- Plus Tendency to explore, openness to change +E, +O

(Plasticity) and engagement to new experiences.

Delta – minus Impulsiveness, high emotional lability, +N, +E, +O, -A, -C

(Sensation seeking) stimulation seeking

Alpha- Minus High- level of anti-social tendencies, +N, -A, -C,

(Disinhibition) low frustration tolerance

Gamma- Minus Distrust, coldness, distance in interpersonal +N, -E, -O,-A,-C

(Disharmony) relationships
 Beta- Minus Apathy, submissiveness, passivity -E, -O

(Passiveness)

Affect

Affect pertains to the experience of a feeling or an emotion. It is a broad term that is

used to cover mood, feeling, attitude, preference and evaluations (Oyebode, 2008). Positive

affect (PA) reflects the extent to which a person feels enthusiastic, active, and alert. High PA

is considered to be a state of high energy, full concentration, and pleasurable engagement.

While Negative Affect (NA) is a general dimension of subjective distress and unpleasurable

engagement that subsumes a variety of aversive mood states, including anger, contempt,

disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness (Watson, Clark and Tellegen, 1988).Circumplex model

of affect given by Russell (1980) is a dimensional approach that proposes two fundamental

neurophysiological systems as the basis of any affect. One system is related to valence, which

is a pleasure- displeasure continuum and the other is arousal or alertness. In this circumplex

model, each emotion is represented as a combination of valence and arousal in differing

degrees. For e.g. excitement represents an activated pleasant/ positive emotion, whereas

depression is a deactivated unpleasant/ negative emotion.

Anasakti
The literal meaning of Anasakti is non-attachment (Sanskrit root word ‘Sakti’, which

means attachment) and on a continuum, one may believe it lies between attachment and

active detachment. Anasakti involves absence of fixation on objects, ideas, images, and

mental independency and a genuine interest in other people, along with a responsive and

caring involvement in the present situation (Sahdra, Shaver and Brown, 2010).Hence, it is
distinct from the Western constructs such as avoidant and anxious attachment (Sahdra and

Shaver, 2013).

Thus, we may note that Triguna model comes close to the construct of dimensional

personality traits and can also be seen as a similar integrative model.Theoretically as well as

based on empirical literature, it may be considered that Sattva, as a meta trait is characterised

by balance, harmony and self-regulation. Thus there seems to be some similarity with the

Agreeableness and Conscientiousness domains of Big Five personality traits, along with

subjective wellbeing,in terms ofpositive affect and life satisfaction. On the other hand, Tamas

is characterised by inertia, misery and dullness, which might go along neuroticism as well as

deactivated negative affect. The concept of Rajas is more complex, as it is characterised by

heightened activity, desires and associated pleasures and frustrations. Given approach

motivation behind it, we expect it might have some overlap with Extraversion and Openness

to experience traits of personality, since high levels of Rajas might lead to high approach

motivation towards people and experiences, alongwith activated affect (both positive and

negative).

Hence, we attempted to explore, the association of general factor of personality or

Gamma plus (Musek, 2007) with Sattva guna, representing the cluster of socially desirable

traits according to Indian psychology. Triguna integrates not only personality but also

affect,in terms of valence and arousal. It also needs to be empirically tested whether there is

an overlap between the 2 dimensions of affect and Triguna, in terms of Sattva being similar

to deactivated positive emotions, while Rajas being a combination of activated positive and

negative emotions and Tamas relating to deactivated negative emotions. However, these

linkages have either never been explored or rarely studied, therefore this study is planned as

an initial step in a series of studies to build better understanding of Indian mental health

concepts and their linkages with mainstream mental health concepts.

METHOD
Aims or Objectives

The current study was aimed to explore the relationship of Triguna model of Indian

psychology, and Anasakti with respect to meta traits of personality as well as affect.

Participants

A cross sectional survey method was adopted for the current study and it was

conducted after approval by the institute ethics committee. Males between the age of 18-50

years with a minimum of 10 years of formal education were included in the study. A total of

84 participants were selected from colleges and various organizations. The study was

approved by the Institute ethics committee.

Measures

Socio-demographic data sheet: This datasheet was developed by the researcher to gather

basic socio demographic data such as age, education, occupation, marital status, religion,

living arrangement, and income.

Vedic Personality Inventory (Wolf, 1999): This inventory has 56 items to assess Vedic

concept of Gunas as related to personality. It gives a standardized score for each Guna. The

participants were asked to give their agreement to the given statements on a 7 point scale

from very strongly disagree (1) to very strongly agree (7). It included 15 Sattva items, 19

Rajas items and 22 Tamas items. It has an internal consistency ranging from 0.70 to 0.92 for

the Gunas. Its reliability coefficient is in the range of 0.74-0.79 (Wolf, 1999) and it has been

widely used in the Indian context.

Big five Aspect Scale (DeYoung, Quilty and Peterson, 2007): Big Five Aspect Scale was

used in this study to assess personality. It contains 100 statements which the participant has

to rate in a 5 point Likert scale from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree according to which

suits him/ her the best. It has 5 broad domains namely, Neuroticism, Extraversion,
Agreeableness, Openness/ Intellect and Conscientiousness. The test-retest reliability of the

scale ranged from 0.82 to 0.89 for the domains.

Non- Attachment Scale- NAS 7 (Elphinstone, Sahdra, and Ciarrochi., unpublished

manuscript, 2015): This is the short version of a 30-statementscale developed by Sahdra, Shaver

and Brown (2010). It contains 7 statements which try to understand the view of the participant

relating to the world, relationships and feelings. Participant has to rate the statements on a 6-point

scale from Disagree strongly to Agree strongly. It was found that the NAS 7 and NAS 30

measure the same construct as compared by correlation. It has been used in Indian context

and has an internal consistency of 0.81. (Gupta, Singh & Agrawal, 2018).

PANAS Revised (Rao and Mehrotra, 2006):The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule

(PANAS) revised version was used to assess the subjective well-being of the participants. It

contains 26 words describing various emotions and feelings and participants were asked to rate

each word according to its frequency in their life. It exists in both trait and state version. For the

current study trait version of the scale was used. The reliability of the Positive Affect scale

rangedfrom 0.86 to 0.90, the Negative Affect scale from 0.84 to 0.87. Agrawal and

colleagues (2010) have used, PANAS revised scale in an Indian setting. Both positive and

negative affect was calculated to denote valence, while activation-deactivation was calculated

to denote arousal levels.

For all the standardized measures which are not in the public domain, requisite

permission was taken from the authors for using in the study. Informed consent was taken

from all the participants.

Procedure
 During the pilot phase of the study, since no published literature was found using

Big Five Aspect Scale in the Indian context, we established the test -retest reliability of the

Big Five Aspect Scale in Indian population. For this purpose, 30 students were recruited from

a nursing college. The sample consisted of 24 females and 6 males belonging to the age

group of 19-21 years. Informed consent was obtained from the sample prior to the data

collection. It was mentioned in the informed consent that the respondents would be

approached after a month for retest of the scale. The test-retest coefficient was found to be

satisfactory for Neuroticism (0.704), Extraversion (0.801), Agreeableness (0.822), Openness/

Intellect (0.734) and Conscientiousness (0.715). For the ten factors under these 5 domains,

the coefficient ranged between 0.499 and 0.789, suggesting an acceptable level of test-retest

reliability.

Statistical Analysis

A quantitative analysis was done using SPSS 20.0 version. Socio demographic

details of the samples were obtained through descriptive statistics such as mean, SD,

frequency and percentage. Correlations were obtained using both parametric and non-

parametric measures.

RESULTS
Table 3: The relationship between Triguna, Meta-traits, Affect (arousal&

valence), and Anasakti

Variables Meta-traits Affective arousal

Alpha
Integration Self- Plus/ Beta Plus / Activation De-
/ General restraint/ Stability Plasticity activation
factor of Delta
personality Plus
/ Gamma
Plus

Sattva .791** .528**# .796** .397** -.228 -.140

 Triguna Rajas -.486**# -.467**# -.500**# -.205# .253*# .163#

Tamas -.767** -.440**# -.721** -.447** .096 .060

Gamma Plus 1

Delta Plus .420**# 1

Alpha/
.887** .790**# 1
Stability
Meta- traits

Beta/
.686** -.271*# .273* 1
Plasticity

Activation -.056 -.414**# -.268* -.260* 1

Arousal

De-activation -.136 -.165# -.199 .018 .578** 1

Positive
.446** -.077# .239 .558** .395** .520**
Affect
Valence

Negative

-.602** .360**# -.583** -.375** .626** .399**

Affect

Anasakti .410** .192# .301* . 376** -.020 .152

*. Correlation significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed), **. Correlation

significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), #. Correlation by Spearman, Note: Correlation
by Pearson method

To explore whether Triguna is similar to integrative theory of personality, we calculated the 4

meta traits and explored its relationship with Triguna along with the General Factor of
Personality or Gamma plus (minus Neuroticism, plus Agreeableness, plus Extraversion, plus

Openness/ Intellect and plus Conscientiousness), Alpha plus or stability (plus Agreeableness,

minus Neuroticism, plus Conscientiousness), Beta plus or plasticity (plus Extraversion, plus

Openness/ Intellect) and self-restraint or delta plus (minus Neuroticism, plus Agreeableness,

minus Extraversion, minus Openness/ Intellect and plus Conscientiousness). The results are given

in Table 3.

Sattva: As depicted in the table, Sattva is highly positively correlated with Gamma Plus and

stability and moderately positively correlated with Delta Plus followed by plasticity which is

significant at 0.01 level.

Rajas: Rajas, on the other hand is negatively correlated with stability, followed by Gamma

Plus, Delta Plus and activation.

Tamas: Tamas is highly negatively correlated with Gamma Plus, followed by stability, at

0.01 level. With Delta Plus and plasticity, it has moderate negative correlation, significant at

0.01 level.

Anasakti: Gamma Plus-Moderate positive correlation is seen with nonattachment as

well.Plasticity showed a moderate positive correlation with Anasakti.

Additional analysis: Understanding the inter-correlations among meta-traits, Gamma Plus is

highly positively correlated with stability (.887**) followed by plasticity and Delta Plus.

Gamma Plus does not have any significant correlation with arousal. However, regarding

valence, it has significant negative correlation with negative affect and moderate positive

correlation with positive affect.Delta Plus is also having high positive correlation with

stability at 0.01 level. With plasticity it has a weak negative correlation. With activation, it

has a moderately negative correlation and a moderate positive correlation with negative

affect. At 0.05 level, plasticity and stability has a weak positive correlation. Stability has a

weak negative correlation with activation and moderate negative correlation with negative

affect. Plasticity shows a weak negative correlation with activation and negative affect and
positive affect. Activation and deactivation are moderately positively correlated, which is

significant at 0.05 level. Activation has more positive correlation with negative affect and

weaker positive correlation with positive affect. Deactivation, on the other hand, has more

positive correlation with positive affect and lesser positive correlation with negative affect.

DISCUSSION
The results to the question whether Sattva is GFP were encouraging and we found
Sattva has very high relationship with General factor of personality/ integration (.79)
indicating possible redundancy. Thus, Sattva seems to be a very good measure of General
Factor of Personality, which is theoretically a collection of socially desirable traits. The field
of personality research has often discussed the idea of an ideal personality type, for e.g., ARC
typology of Resilient, over-controlled and under-controlled types (Robins et al, 1996) where
the resilient type is the ideal, flexible and well-adjusted personality. A recent study which
analysed the personality of 1.5 million respondents found a stable cluster with low scores on
neuroticism and high on other big five traits, which is similar to GFP and was called the ‘role
model’ type. The other common types were ‘reserved’ (low scores on neuroticism and
openness) and ‘self-centred’ (low scores on openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness)
types (Gerlach, Farb, Revelle, and Amaral, 2018 ). Thus, the indigenous models of Triguna
can be considered an alternative integrative model of personality and need more studies.

Further, we also analysed relationship of Sattva with other 3 meta traits, and found that it has

similar high positive correlation (.80) with Stability/ alpha (minus Neuroticism, added to plus

Agreeableness and plus Conscientiousness), indicating possibly Extraversion and Openness/

Intellect do not contribute much to Sattva. With other two meta traits, Sattva is highly

positivelycorrelated with self-restraints/ delta (.53) and only moderately with plasticity/ beta

(.40).

Additionally, Anasakti/ Non-attachment, which is characterised by mature and stable

motivational, emotional and relational aspects, conceptually also relates not only to Sattva,

but on similar lines with general factor of personality.

Conclusion: Overall, such results indicate presence of a General Factor of personality and

Sattva being that from an Indian theory. More research needs to be done to explore this single

factor, which may tie a variety of modern personality theories together.

This is the first Indian study which has treated Triguna model of personality as an integrative

model of meta traits, and has compared it with western integrative models of personality.

Since there are two such integrative models, a hierarchical model and a circumplex model,

the study results may add to research evidence for these models, especially the hierarchical

model with one General Factor of Personality at the top. We used a relatively new scale to

assess Big Five Personality domains in Indian context. Conducting an in-depth assessment

and association with integrative models of personality is a strength of this study. Our study

included activation-deactivation dimensions of affect, which is often overlooked, when

researchers focus more on the valence (positive vs. Negative) aspect of affect.

The Indian psychological concepts explored in the study (Triguna and Anasakti) areabstract,

and available tools may not be able to capture the exact construct. This might also explain the

results associated with Rajas, some of which did not emerge significant as expected from the

theory. The Cross-sectional design and purposive sampling used for data collection and

quantitative analysis has its limitations when it comes to gaining in-depth insight. Sample

was selected only from urban Bangalore due to language constraints, there was a requirement

to include only educated population and hence, the study may not be representing population

who differ with respect to education or live in a rural area. As this study is part of another

study including a different sample, the sample considered here is small.

The replication of study results can be done with varied sample. Studies can be done

with similar variables in females, or with elderly and in large sample to understand dynamics

of Triguna and personality in that group. Relationship of Triguna may also be explored with
psychological wellbeing, as well as character strength and virtues. Future study may also

explore factors development of Sattva, and how it can be increased which will help in

development of promotive mental health interventions, since Sattva seems to capture ideal or

desirable personality.

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Conflict of Interest:

Authors declare no conflict of interest

Acknowledgements:

Nil