Uher, J. (2015b). Developing "personality" taxonomies: Metatheoretical and methodological rationales underlying selection approaches, methods of data generation and reduction principles. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 49, 531- 589 . http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12124-014-9280-4 REPRINT Original Article Developing "personality" taxonomies: Metatheoretical and methodological rationales underlying selection approaches, methods of data generation and reduction principles Jana Uher 1,2 * 1 The London School of Economics and Political Science; 2 Comparative Differential and Personality Psychology, Free University Berlin * Correspondence: The London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Psychology, St Clements Building, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom e-mail:
[email protected] Abstract Taxonomic “personality” models are widely used in research and applied fields. This article applies the Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals (TPS-Paradigm) to scrutinise the three methodological steps that are required for developing comprehensive “personality” taxonomies: 1) the approaches used to select the phenomena and events to be studied, 2) the methods used to generate data about the selected phenomena and events and 3) the reduction principles used to extract the “most important” individual-specific variations for constructing “personality” taxonomies. Analyses of some currently popular taxonomies reveal frequent mismatches between the researchers’ explicit and