From Phil Runkel on 19 March 98:
In _Contemporary Psychology_, 1995, 40(7), pp. 645-647, a fellow
named Gerard Saucier wrote a review of a book called _Personality
disorders and the five-factor model of personality_. In his
review, Saucier wrote:
Personality psychology ... has profited from rigorous
attention to enhancing reliable measurement. It has been
found that personality characteristics almost always vary in
a continuous distribution; there are few natural class
(categorical or typological) variables, meaning that
differences between people are usually differences in
degree, not in kind. Having addressed basic measurement
problems, personality psychology has been empowered to
develop parsimonious models of continuously distributed
personality characteristics, most prominently the
Five-Factor Model.
I will refrain from saying any more; I understand that what
appears on the internet can be treated in law as if it were
print, so I'll simply pass on this quotation from a review
without comment.