Effects of Variable Selection on the Factor Structure of Person Descriptors toward Optimal Variable Sampling in Personality Psychology

Previous factor-analytic studies of lexical person descriptors have produced some recurrent patterns of results, but their integration has been hampered by divergences in variable sampling, such as disparate criteria for what is considered a personality descriptor. To isolate effects of variable selection on factor structures, 500 of the most familiar English person descriptors were identified. Fifteen judges provided reliable classifications of these adjectives as disposition, state, social evaluation, or physical-appearance terms. Analyses of adult self-ratings (N = 700) and acquaintance ratings (N = 201) led to a stable Big Five structure when disposition terms, or combined disposition and state terms, were analyzed. Including a wider range of terms led to two additional stable factors: Attractiveness and a factor resembling Big Seven Negative Valence. A stable 3-factor solution was relatively impervious to variable-selection effects.

[1]  O. John The "Big Five" factor taxonomy: Dimensions of personality in the natural language and in questionnaires. , 1990 .

[2]  E. Berscheid,et al.  What is beautiful is good. , 1972, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[3]  R. Cattell The Scree Test For The Number Of Factors. , 1966, Multivariate behavioral research.

[4]  Samuel J. Beck,et al.  The Q-Sort Method in Personality Assessment and Psychiatric Research. , 1962 .

[5]  P. Costa,et al.  Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[6]  L. H. Levy,et al.  Conceptions of personality : theories and research , 1970 .

[7]  W. T. Norman,et al.  2800 PERSONALITY TRAIT DESCRIPTORS--NORMATIVE OPERATING CHARACTERISTICS FOR A UNIVERSITY POPULATION. , 1967 .

[8]  R. Cattell The description of personality: basic traits resolved into clusters. , 1943 .

[9]  G. Saucier,et al.  Separating description and evaluation in the structure of personality attributes. , 1994, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[10]  L. R. Goldberg,et al.  The Big Five factor structure as an integrative framework: An empirical comparison with Eysenck's P-E-N model. , 1994 .

[11]  D. Peabody,et al.  Selecting representative trait adjectives. , 1987 .

[12]  Mark A. Boyer The American heritage dictionary , 1984 .

[13]  J. Block A contrarian view of the five-factor approach to personality description. , 1995, Psychological bulletin.

[14]  E. B. Andersen,et al.  Modern factor analysis , 1961 .

[15]  L. R. Goldberg The structure of phenotypic personality traits. , 1993, The American psychologist.

[16]  A. Feingold Good-looking people are not what we think. , 1992 .

[17]  N. Waller Evaluating the structure of personality , 1999 .

[18]  G. Āllport,et al.  Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study. , 1936 .

[19]  P. Costa,et al.  Positive and Negative Valence within the Five-Factor Model , 1995 .

[20]  N. Waller,et al.  Evaluating the Big Five , 1993 .

[21]  J. Block,et al.  The Role of Ego-Control and Ego-Resiliency in the Organization of Behavior , 1980 .

[22]  A. Eagly,et al.  What is beautiful is good, but…: A meta-analytic review of research on the physical attractiveness stereotype. , 1991 .

[23]  A. Tellegen,et al.  PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES An Alternative "Description of Personality": The Big-Five Factor Structure , 2022 .

[24]  J. M. Digman Higher-order factors of the Big Five. , 1997, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[25]  A. Tellegen,et al.  The Big Seven model: A cross-cultural replication and further exploration of the basic dimensions of natural language trait descriptors. , 1995 .

[26]  A. Tellegen Folk Concepts and Psychological Concepts of Personality and Personality Disorder , 1993 .

[27]  K. Lanning Dimensionality of observer ratings on the California Adult Q-Set , 1994 .

[28]  L. R. Goldberg THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARKERS FOR THE BIG-FIVE FACTOR STRUCTURE , 1992 .

[29]  R. Cattell,et al.  Handbook for the sixteen personality factor questionnaire (16 PF) , 1970 .

[30]  Hans J. Eysenck,et al.  Four ways five factors are not basic , 1992 .

[31]  Physique and delinquency , 1956 .

[32]  M. Cole Cross-cultural universals of affective meaning. , 1976 .

[33]  B. de Raad,et al.  Taxonomy and structure of Hungarian personality traits , 1994 .

[34]  J. S. Wiggins,et al.  Psychometric and Geometric Characteristics of the Revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS-R). , 1988, Multivariate behavioral research.

[35]  W. Velicer,et al.  Relation of sample size to the stability of component patterns. , 1988, Psychological bulletin.

[36]  B. de Raad,et al.  Towards a refined structure of personality traits , 1992 .

[37]  L. R. Goldberg,et al.  The language of personality: Lexical perspectives on the five-factor model. , 1996 .

[38]  G Saucier,et al.  So what do you propose we use instead? A reply to Block. , 1995, Psychological bulletin.

[39]  A. T. Church,et al.  Toward a taxonomy of trait adjectives in Filipino: comparing personality lexicons across cultures , 1996 .

[40]  L. R. Goldberg,et al.  Some determinants of factor structures from personality-trait descriptors. , 1989, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[41]  G. Saucier Mini-markers: a brief version of Goldberg's unipolar big-five markers. , 1994, Journal of personality assessment.

[42]  O. John,et al.  Towards a taxonomy of personality descriptors in German: A psycho‐lexical study , 1990 .

[43]  Anna Wierzbicka,et al.  What's in a Noun? (Or: How Do Nouns Differ in Meaning from Adjectives?) , 1986 .

[44]  J. S. Wiggins,et al.  A dyadic-interactional perspective on the five-factor model. , 1996 .

[45]  Frank Bernhard Brokken,et al.  The language of personality , 1978 .

[46]  J E Everett,et al.  Factor Comparability As A Means Of Determining The Number Of Factors And Their Rotation. , 1983, Multivariate behavioral research.

[47]  W F Velicer,et al.  An Evaluation of the Effects of Variable Sampling On Component, Image, and Factor Analysis. , 1987, Multivariate behavioral research.

[48]  Gerard Saucier,et al.  Benchmarks : integrating affective and interpersonal circles with the big-five personality factors , 1992 .

[49]  Marco Perugini,et al.  Personality described by adjectives: The generalizability of the Big Five to the Italian lexical context , 1994 .

[50]  J. Horn A rationale and test for the number of factors in factor analysis , 1965, Psychometrika.

[51]  P. Costa,et al.  Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO-Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) , 1992 .

[52]  J. M. Digman PERSONALITY STRUCTURE: EMERGENCE OF THE FIVE-FACTOR MODEL , 1990 .

[53]  W. Velicer,et al.  Comparison of five rules for determining the number of components to retain. , 1986 .

[54]  H. Eysenck The structure of human personality , 1953 .

[55]  D. J. Schneider,et al.  Implicit personality theory: A review. , 1973 .

[56]  B. Deraad,et al.  THE SEARCH FOR THE (BIG-5) IN A NON-INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE - THE HUNGARIAN TRAIT STRUCTURE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO THE EPQ AND THE PTS , 1994 .