Evidence for the Big Five in analyses of familiar English personality adjectives

✍ Scribed by Gerard Saucier; Lewis R. Goldberg

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 921 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0890-2070
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0984(199603)10:1<61::aid-per246>3.0.co;2-d

✦ Synopsis

Studies of the natural language are a prime source of the Big-Five model, yet the factor analysis of a large, representative, and non-clustered set of English-language personality adjectives in a large sample has not yet been published. In order to test the hypothesis that fmding the Big Five dependrs on biasing the variable selection with an investigator's preferred non-familiar terms, we present the factor analysis of 435 familiar adjectives in a combined sample (N = 899) of 507 self-and 392 peer ratings.

The five-factor solution reproduced the Big Five with high clarity, demonstrating generally very high correlations with Goldberg's adjective markers of the Big Five. The Intellect factor had a more moderate correlation, due to its de-emphasis of the creativity components of Factor V , a phenomenon that may occur commonly with the lexical Intellect factor.