What Types of Terms Do People Use When Describing an Individual’s Personality?

Psychological Science

Volumn 25, Issue 9, 2014, Pages 1787-1794

  Leising, Daniel ^a   Scharloth, Joachim ^a   Lohse, Oliver ^b   Wood, Dustin ^c  

^a DRESDEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY   (Germany)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH   (Switzerland)

^c WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

personality; psycholinguistics; social cognition; social perception

Indexed keywords

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; FEMALE; HUMAN; LANGUAGE; LINGUISTICS; MALE; PERCEPTION; PERSONALITY; SOCIAL DESIRABILITY; YOUNG ADULT;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; FEMALE; HUMANS; LANGUAGE; MALE; PERSONALITY; PSYCHOLINGUISTICS; SOCIAL DESIRABILITY; SOCIAL PERCEPTION; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 84908092913     PISSN: 09567976     EISSN: 14679280     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0956797614541285     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Allen B. P.,Potkay C. R.Variability of self-description on a day-to-day basis: Longitudinal use of the adjective generation technique.Journal of Personality. 1973;41:638-652
2. Allport G. W.,Odbert H. S.Trait names: A psycho-lexical study.Psychological Monographs. 1936;47 (1):
3. Anderson N. H.Likableness ratings of 555 personality trait-words.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1968;9:272-279
4. Augustine A. A.,Mehl M. R.,Larsen R. J.A positivity bias in written and spoken English and its moderation by personality and gender.Social Psychological & Personality Science. 2011;2:508-515
5. Baumeister R. F.,Bratslavsky E.,Finkenauer C.,Vohs K. D.Bad is stronger than good.Review of General Psychology. 2001;5:323-370
6. Biesanz J. C.,Human L. J.The cost of forming more accurate impressions: Accuracy-motivated perceivers see the personality of others more distinctively but less normatively than perceivers without an explicit goal.Psychological Science. 2010;21:589-594
7. Boucher J.,Osgood C. E.The pollyanna hypothesis.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 1969;8:1-8
8. Bowles S.,Gintis H.A cooperative species: Human reciprocity and its evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2011:
9. Church A. T.,Katigbak M. S.Internal, external, and self-report structure of personality in a non-western culture: An investigation of cross-language and cross-cultural generalizability.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1989;57:857-872
10. Donahue E. M.Do children use the Big Five, too? Content and structural form in personality description.Journal of Personality. 1994;62:45-66
11. Dumas J. E.,Johnson M.,Lynch A. M.Likableness, familiarity, and frequency of 844 person-descriptive words.Personality and Individual Differences. 2002;32:523-531
12. Edwards A. L.The relationship between the judged desirability of a trait and the probability that the trait will be endorsed.Journal of Applied Psychology. 1953;37:90-93
13. Fleeson W.Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: Traits as density distributions of states.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2001;80:1011-1027
14. Funder D. C.,Dobroth K. M.Differences between traits: Properties associated with interjudge agreement.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1987;52:409-418
15. Goldberg L. R.Advances in personality assessment. Spielberger C. D.Butcher J. N., ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; 1982:203-234.
16. Goldberg L. R.The structure of phenotypic personality traits.American Psychologist. 1993;48:26-34
17. Hampson S. E.,Goldberg L. R.,John O. P.Category breadth and social-desirability values for 573 personality terms.European Journal of Personality. 1987;1:241-258
18. Hampson S. E.,John O. P.,Goldberg L. R.Category breadth and hierarchical structure in personality: Studies of asymmetries in judgments of trait implications.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1986;51:37-54
19. John O. P.Handbook of personality: Theory and research. Pervin L. A., ed. New York, NY: Guilford Press; 1990:66-100.
20. John O. P.,Angleitner A.,Ostendorf F.The lexical approach to personality: A historical review of trait taxonomic research.European Journal of Personality. 1988;2:171-203
21. John O. P.,Hampson S. E.,Goldberg L. R.The basic level in personality-trait hierarchies: Studies of trait use and accessibility in three different contexts.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1991;60:348-360
22. John O. P.,Robins R. W.Determinants of interjudge agreement on personality traits: The Big Five domains, observability, evaluativeness, and the unique perspective of the self.Journal of Personality. 1993;61:521-551
23. Klages L.The science of character. London, England: Allen & Unwin; 1932:
24. Kohnstamm G. A.,Halverson C. F.,Mervielde I.,Havill V. L.Parental descriptions of child personality: Developmental antecedents of the Big Five?. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; 1998:
25. Leising D.,Ostrovski O.,Borkenau P.Vocabulary for describing disliked persons is more differentiated than vocabulary for describing liked persons.Journal of Research in Personality. 2012;46:393-396
26. NormanT. (1967). 2800 personality trait descriptors: Normative operating characteristics for a university population (Report UM-08310-1-T). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Department of Psychology. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED014738.pdf
27. Paunonen S. V.Consensus in personality judgments: Moderating effects of target-rater acquaintanceship and behavior observability.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1989;56:823-833
28. Peabody D.Selecting representative trait adjectives.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1987;52:59-71
29. Roivainen E.Frequency of the use of English personality adjectives: Implications for personality theory.Journal of Research in Personality. 2013;47:417-420
30. Saucier G.,Goldberg L. R.Lexical studies of indigenous personality factors: Premises, products, and prospects.Journal of Personality. 2001;69:847-879
31. Tupes E. C.,Christal R. C.Recurrent personality factors based on trait ratings. Lackland Air Force Base, TX: U.S. Air Force; 1961:
32. Unkelbach C.,Fiedler K.,Bayer M.,Stegmüller M.,Danner D.Why positive information is processed faster: The density hypothesis.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2008;95:36-49
33. WoodD. (2014). Testing the psycholexical hypothesis: Are more important traits more densely reflected in the English lexicon? Manuscript submitted for publication.
34. Wood D.,Gosling S. D.,Potter J.Normality evaluations and their relation to personality traits and well-being.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2007;93:861-879
35. Wood D.,Wortman J.Trait means and desirabilities as artifactual and real sources of differential stability of personality traits.Journal of Personality. 2012;80:665-701