JENNIFER LYNN BARNES
Veronica Roth has stated that she got the idea for Divergent while studying exposure therapy in Psych 101, but the psychology underlying the world of Divergent and threaded throughout the series goes far beyond studies on what it means to confront and overcome our fears. Psychology can explain the significance of the five factions, what it really means to be Divergent, and why, as readers, we’re faced with the same challenges that Tris confronts: to look beyond the simulation, to carve out an identity, to find the place where we belong.
In our case, the simulation is the book itself. When I’m not writing young adult novels, I study the science of fiction and the question of why we get so invested in fictional stories. Why, psychologists ask, do we invest so much time and spend so much money on things that we know are not real? And why is it that knowing that Tris and Four aren’t real doesn’t render her death painless for us as readers? Why would we ever cry real tears for people we know are make-believe?
One answer that scientists have come up with to this question is that fictional stories are simulations—and, yes, they do use that exact word. Even though we know these fictional stories are not real, we feel like they are. As Tris comments inside her fear landscape, “Simulations aren’t real; they pose no real threat to me, so logically, I shouldn’t be afraid of them.” And yet, despite knowing that the simulation isn’t real, Tris’ reactions to it are, as she puts it, “visceral” (Divergent). So, too, are our reactions as readers.
My goal for this essay is to dig beneath the surface of the simulation, with an eye to what the psychological sciences can tell us about the books. Like Tris, we can’t just turn off our emotions in response to something that seems so real, but we can use our awareness of the simulation to ask why the world Veronica Roth has built is so compelling. The answer, I am going to argue, is that the faction system challenges us as readers to ask the same questions that plague Tris throughout the series:
Who are we? What are we? And where do we belong?
THE FACTIONS, PERSONALITY, AND THE BIG FIVE
The faction system is introduced to us as a way in which groups of people dedicate themselves to different virtues. Each faction, we are told in Divergent, was founded on the belief that a specific vice was to blame for the world’s evils. Those who blamed dishonesty formed Candor; those who blamed cowardice became the Dauntless; those who eschewed selfishness became Abnegation; those who despised ignorance became Erudite; and those who swore off aggression became Amity. In this sense, the Choosing Ceremony asks teenagers to decide which virtue they want to live their lives by. It is up to them, Tris and her age-mates are told by a somber Marcus, “to decide what kind of people they will be” (Divergent).
On the surface, then, the ceremony asks young people to decide what they believe. What they value. Choosing to switch factions reflects a rejection of everything a person has been raised to believe, parallel in some ways to a child who has been raised in one religious tradition choosing to convert to another. And yet, for all that the factions are purportedly based on virtues, I do not think the powerful and compelling concept the faction system taps into really is belief.
Tris seems to come to a similar conclusion herself. In Divergent, when Four asks Tris if she thinks she made the right choice in coming to Dauntless, she says that she doesn’t think there was a choice. For Tris, the ceremony isn’t about deciding who she will be. It is about acknowledging who she already is. “I didn’t jump off the roof because I wanted to be like the Dauntless,” Tris realizes midway through Divergent. “I jumped off because I already was like them, and I wanted to show myself to them.”
At their core, these five factions are not merely about what a person believes or what they value. To my psychologist’s eye, what the faction system is really tapping into is the enduring internal traits that make us who we are: our personalities. This is occasionally acknowledged in the text: the vices that the factions are fighting against are initially referred to as faults in “human personality.” In Insurgent, Jeanine describes Divergents as having “flexible personalities,” while Fernando refers to transferring from Abnegation to Dauntless as “a leap in personality.” Even those who have been raised within the faction system seem to recognize that choosing a faction has as much to do with your aptitude for specific traits as your belief about which virtue is the most virtuous of them all.
What the residents of Tris’ community don’t seem to realize, however, is just how closely their faction system maps onto personality psychology more broadly. Just as there are five factions, psychologists refer to the “Big Five” personality traits: five traits that can describe the vast variation we see in human personality—each corresponding to one of the five factions in the Divergent series. Some of the parallels are obvious—you don’t need to be a psychologist to realize that Amity has a lot of parallels with the trait referred to as Agreeableness—while others require parsing your way through the text with an eye for detail.
Dauntless: Openness to Experience
The first of the Big Five is a trait referred to as Openness to Experience. People who are low in openness are frequently described as being cautious, clinging to routines, and disliking the idea of going outside of their comfort zones. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have people high in openness, who tend to be curious. They like hearing new ideas and doing things that they’ve never done before. They are not cautious, but instead—as the term suggests—are open to whatever new experiences the world has to offer. Openness to experience tends to co-occur with a variety of other things, among them creativity, risk taking, and sensation seeking.
My college roommate, when she takes personality tests, scores off the charts on the openness variable—and I cannot help but notice that this is the same college roommate who has decided that we will be spending her bachelorette party skydiving. The college roommate who once talked me into zip-lining. The college roommate who read Divergent and told me, with all confidence, that she would be Dauntless.
The parallels between Dauntless and this dimension of personality go beyond the fact that the Dauntless are a skydiving, zip-lining, jumping-off-buildings kind of group. Openness isn’t just about being open to physical risks. Just as there are three levels to the Dauntless initiation—the physical, the emotional, and the mental—openness to experience also operates on all three levels. Tris is high in openness not only because she’s willing to jump off a moving train, but also because she’s the type of person who is curious about what’s outside the fence—and willing to go off into the unknown to get her answer. Toward the beginning of Divergent, Tori actually comments on Tris’ curiosity, saying that she’s “never met a curious Abnegation before.” (Tris and the others may assume that curiosity is the reason she shows an aptitude for Erudite, but I would argue that this trait, as much as a desire to be fearless, is what makes Tris choose Dauntless—and that Tris’ Erudite side taps into a different quality altogether, one that we’ll return to later.)
Interestingly, people who are high in openness to experience also tend to be more easily hypnotized than other individuals—which seems fitting, given that the Dauntless end up more or less neurologically hypnotized into doing Jeanine’s bidding at the end of the first book. Equally striking is the fact that the openness variable tends to decline with age—and the Dauntless in the Divergent series force older faction members out.
Abnegation: Extraversion (and the Lack Thereof)
In many ways, Abnegation is the faction that it is hardest to classify in terms of the Big Five—until you realize that this faction does not just require putting other people first; they endorse a full-scale denial of the self. As part of Abnegation, Tris is only allowed to look in a mirror once every three months. She and her family do not celebrate their birthdays. The Abnegation are told they must try to forget themselves and fade into the background. When the Abnegation flirt, they flirt “in the tentative way known only to the Abnegation” (Divergent), exchanging shy looks and slight smiles. Tris says that it is difficult for the Abnegation to make friends because “it’s impossible to have real friendship when no one feels like they can accept help or even talk about themselves” (Divergent).
From this perspective, I would argue that the Big Five personality trait that Abnegation maps onto is actually Extraversion—or more specifically, introversion, the word we use to describe people who are extremely low on the extraversion personality scale. The extraverted individual is talkative, assertive, and the life of the party—not someone that anyone else would ever refer to as a Stiff. Extraverts like being the center of attention. Introverts, in contrast, tend to be described as solitary and reserved. Introverted individuals keep in the background, they don’t like to draw attention to themselves, and they can be hard to get to know.
When Tris expresses a desire in Divergent to be “loud and daring and free,” she is expressing a desire to shake off her introverted roots and become more extraverted. She transfers to Dauntless not only because she is curious and longs to experience a wider range of what life has to offer, but also because she is tired of feeling like she has to keep everything inside. She is tired of fading into the background, tired of wearing gray clothes and behaving in an unassuming way, tired of trying to forget herself, and tired of being forgotten.
In some ways, this aspect of Tris’ story parallels the classic teen movie trope of an introverted teenager making the conscious decision to break out of her shell. Shortly after Tris joins Dauntless, Christina even gives her a makeover, replacing her gray clothes with a little black dress, lining her eyes with eyeliner, and declaring, “I’m going for noticeable” (Divergent). And yet, even after Tris transfers to Dauntless, aspects of her Abnegation roots remain. She is never a look at me, look at me kind of brave. She leads quietly and by example. For many people—even Four—she remains difficult to know.
Erudite: Conscientiousness
The third faction that Tris shows an aptitude for is Erudite, the faction that prizes knowledge and intelligence above all else. And yet, the Erudite are not defined merely by being smart. After all, there are plenty of intelligent people in the other factions, too. Rather, the Erudite seem to be a very specific kind of smart—extremely organized, unemotional, almost pathological in their devotion to logic and reason.
In terms of the Big Five, this cluster of traits maps onto Conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is associated with self-discipline: perfectionists, workaholics, and those driven to achieve all rate high on this trait. Conscientious individuals plan ahead. They pay attention to details. They are highly organized, highly efficient, and they finish what they start.
Sound like anyone we know?
The Erudite are known as meticulous record keepers. Jeanine is slavishly devoted to her master plan. She’s a “walking, talking computer” (Divergent). Caleb finds Jeanine persuasive at least in part because he, too, has a thirst not just for knowledge, but for singularity of purpose. Even Cara, in the final book in the trilogy, founds the Allegiant to work toward a two-pronged goal: to overthrow Evelyn and to send a scouting party outside of the city. The way she presents this to the others feels almost like she’s checking items off a to-do list, even if those items involve “escape to unknown” and “rebel.” When she ultimately discovers that the plan has no meaning—that the faction system is part of an experiment and the Edith Prior tape was contrived—she is lost. Cara doesn’t know who she is without the plan, without purpose: “I’m an Erudite, you know,” she tells Tris. “It’s the only thing I am” (Allegiant).
Tris has an aptitude for Erudite not because she’s studious or a lover of books, but because she is a strategist. Whether it’s for capture the flag or a preemptive strike against those playing with the lives of those she loves, she is a planner who will go to great lengths to see things through to the end. Ultimately, the difference between Tris and Jeanine is not in their ability to form plans or to execute them—it’s the fact that Jeanine is willing to do so at great costs to others, and Tris does so no matter the cost to herself.
Candor: Low on Neuroticism
Candor prizes honesty. It is difficult at first to see how this could correspond to any of the five traits we use to classify human personalities—until we unpack a bit more about what this means on a day-to-day basis. The Candor wear black and white; they don’t get bogged down in shades of gray. Their manifesto proudly declares, “We have no suspicions and no one suspects us” (Divergent bonus materials). Candor initiation involves the forced confession of an initiate’s darkest secrets. Afterward, no one has anything to hide, and as a result, they do not have to worry about the consequences of telling the truth.
The personality trait associated with worrying about how other people view you is Neuroticism. People who are high in neuroticism are prone to embarrassment. They tend to be insecure and highly anxious. Other people might describe them as sensitive. In other words, they are the exact personality type that could not survive in Candor. In contrast, individuals who are low in neuroticism are not easily embarrassed. They are confident, tend not to worry, and are not easily bothered. Both aspects of Candor—always telling the truth yourself and weathering the emotional costs of constantly being told what other people think of you—require a personality type that is relatively immune to anxiety. For individuals high in neuroticism, things are not always black and white—and the difference between gray and dark gray might be worth agonizing over in and of itself.
During her simulation, Tris proves that she does not have an aptitude for Candor by lying when asked if she knows a man. In that moment, her heart pounds. She is overcome with anxiety and convinced—convinced—that if she tells the truth, something awful will happen. That fear—of an unknown, ambiguous something—is a prime example of neuroticism, and ultimately, it’s the reason that Tris adamantly does not belong in Candor.
Amity: Agreeableness
Finally, we have Amity, the faction that most clearly maps onto one of the Big Five—so much so that it might as well be called agreeableness. Individuals who are high on agreeableness are friendly, warm, and cooperative. They may be overly trusting. They tend to lose arguments—and may refuse to argue altogether. Highly agreeable individuals avoid conflict, find it difficult to hold grudges, and may express little to no desire for vengeance when they are wronged.
When I take personality tests, this tends to be the variable on which I score the highest. With the possible exception of a life-or-death struggle, I cannot imagine hitting another person—and yelling is almost as out of the question. I do stand up for what I believe in, but I also pick my battles, and they tend to be very polite battles. Once, when I was crossing the street and got nicked by a car, I apologized to the person who hit me.
In Insurgent, when Marcus refuses to share the secret of Edith Prior’s video with Johanna, she makes a similar apology. Rather than confronting him for being secretive, she apologizes for whatever it is that she’s done to make him think she’s not trustworthy. When the Amity vote, it is expected that it will be unanimous; and when they vote to allow Tris and company to stay at the Amity compound in the beginning of Insurgent, the condition on that invitation is that the guests aren’t allowed to even reference the conflict.
As indicated by her original test results, Tris is fairly low on agreeableness. She describes herself as “not nice,” and while she is extremely loyal and loves fiercely, she also gets a rush out of physical confrontations and violence. And yet, if Tris were higher on agreeableness, she likely wouldn’t be able to rebel the way she does. In order to fight for what one believes in, a person has to be able to fight.
WHAT IS DIVERGENCE?
I believe that part of the appeal of the Divergent series comes from the fact that in presenting readers with these five factions, Roth has essentially offered up a personality test that asks readers to answer the same question that Tris must: Who are you? Where do you belong?
Are you high on agreeableness? Maybe you belong in Amity. Score off the charts in openness to experience, and you might be a better fit for Dauntless. The caveat to this exercise, however, is that unlike the factions in Divergent, the Big Five personality traits don’t compete with each other. They were identified as traits of interest because each one seems to exist independent of the others. A person can be open and agreeable and neurotic and conscientious and extraverted—or any combination thereof. You might score high on all five traits—or two of the five, or three, or none. Being highly agreeable doesn’t mean you can’t also be open to new experiences, any more than being introverted means that you can’t be conscientious.
For this reason, it is likely that many—if not most—of the people who read this series are themselves Divergent. I’d probably be Amity or Erudite, but I’d bet my simulation wouldn’t rule out Abnegation.
In Allegiant, we learn that most of the individuals in Tris’ community have a genetic modification that causes them to score at an unnatural extreme on one trait. The scientists in the book describe the original modification as an attempt at getting rid of negative traits, but for traits that exist along a spectrum, no matter which way you frame it, the end result is one and the same: eliminating aggression is increasing agreeableness. Either way, “genetically damaged” individuals end up with unusually extreme scores in one and only one trait—be they extremely high (fearless and open) or extremely low (selfless and not extraverted in the least), while the genetically “healed” individuals—the Divergents—score more like the rest of us. In this way, the series itself confirms the idea that in its natural state, human personality is not typically driven by one extreme trait that drowns out the rest.
This explains a great deal about why so many people in Tris’ world seem to have no problem dedicating themselves to a single faction; however, there is a large part of me that believes that the scientists in Allegiant got it wrong—that Divergence, as depicted throughout the series, is not simply a matter of being “genetically pure.” Throughout the first two books, Divergence is defined by two things: an affinity for more than one faction and the ability to stay aware in the simulations. The scientists consider the latter to be nothing more than a “genetic marker,” a convenient sign that someone has reached a certain milestone of genetic purity.
I don’t believe them.
These are the same scientists who believe that war did not exist before genetic modification. They’ve lost touch with history; I believe they have also lost touch with some pretty major tenets of science, including what it means to do science in the first place. The scientific method prioritizes asking questions in a way that could disprove your theory. If there is no outcome that would change your conclusion—say, that “genetic damage” is associated with violence and can be healed through the world’s oddest selective breeding experiment—then what you are doing is not science.
If you have been raised from childhood to view your theory as fact, even as you are being taught how to conduct your “experiment,” what you are doing is not science.
If you twist your data to fit your theory by ignoring any data points that could call your theory into question—like Marcus, a “genetically pure” man who is nonetheless violent—what you are doing is not science.
And if you are a geneticist who—for reasons that escape me—believes that the way to get rid of a mutation is to take tons of people who have that mutation and breed them together, I reserve the right to side-eye your scientific credentials.
All of which goes to say that there are plenty of reasons not to take Matthew and company at their word about what it means to be Divergent. I tend to think that the fact that Divergents are aware during simulations isn’t just some genetic marker; to me, it is the single biggest clue about what being Divergent might—at least symbolically—mean.
I believe that being Divergent means being aware—not just aware that the simulations aren’t real, but self-aware. We all vary in the degree to which we demonstrate each of the Big Five personality traits; to me, what makes Tris special is not so much the fact that she scores at the extremes on three of the five, but the fact that she is keenly aware of where she stands. She is constantly analyzing herself, breaking her personality down into parts, actively attempting to construct an identity, and aware of all of the ways in which the various identities she tries on do not fit. She is critical of people who lack this kind of self-awareness: she judges Caleb not only for being “despicable,” but also for having “no understanding of how despicable he is” (Allegiant).
When we get to see Four’s perspective on Tris, he notes that while what Cara has gone through has made her certain of herself, Tris’ suffering has just made her cling to her uncertainties more. Tris knows what she doesn’t know, and she is able to use that level of awareness to come to a striking conclusion about human nature: “That internal war doesn’t seem like a product of genetic damage—it seems completely, purely human” (Allegiant).
Ultimately, it is Tris’ insight into her own vices and virtues, her own wants and needs, that sets her apart. She recognizes how very much she is driven by the need to belong. She sees the parallels between the factions inside the fence and the divisions outside the fence. And ultimately, she realizes that words and labels may not fulfill the human need to belong as fully as relationships do. When she dies, it is not as a “GP” or a “Divergent,” not as “Abnegation” or “Dauntless,” but as a sister and a lover, a daughter and a friend.
I like to think that Tris’ death serves a purpose, not just in the atrocities it prevents, but also in the way that it might cause other people to introspect, to question who they are, their vices, their virtues. I like to think that for the second time in her life, Tris has seen a group of people dazed and sleepwalking, and she’s woken them up.
I like to imagine that in the wake of losing Tris, Caleb and Four—and so many others—are a little more Divergent now.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes has degrees in psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science. She’s the author of twelve books for young adults, including the Raised By Wolves series, Every Other Day, and The Naturals. When she’s not writing about teens confronting extraordinary circumstances, she studies the psychology of fiction and why we like it.
Let’s pretend, for a few thousand words, that Divergent’s world is not an invention, but a reality—one that evolved from (or, more accurately, given the Bureau’s involvement, was constructed from) our own. Could we locate the landmarks of Divergent’s future Chicago on a map of today’s, using what we know of both the real city and the clues provided by Tris in the text? In her essay, V. Arrow has done exactly that.