Do children use the big five, too? Content and structural form in personality description.

Free personality descriptions generated by 11-year-olds in the Role Construct Repertory Test (Kelly, 1955) were content-analyzed. The children's personality constructs were coded according to structural form (e.g., habits, preferences, traits) and "Big Five" personality content domain (e.g., Agreeableness, Conscientiousness). Findings showed that the children generated constructs from all of the Big Five personality domains. Agreeableness constructs were used most frequently, replicating the prevalence of that domain in studies of adult trait attribution (Peabody & Goldberg, 1989). However, in contrast to adults, less than half of the children's Big Five constructs were expressed as personality traits. The children's use of structural forms varied systematically with the personality domain they were describing. Target likability and age were also found to be related to the personality domains and structural forms of the children's constructs.

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