A New Taxonomy of Dutch Personality Traits Based on a Comprehensive and Unrestricted List of Descriptors

• Published in: Journal of personality and social psychology Vol. 94; no. 2; pp. 347 - 364
• Main Authors: De Raad, Boele, Barelds, Dick P. H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-02-2008
• Subjects: Adjectives; Behavior; Biological and medical sciences; Classification; Communication; Descriptors; Emotions; Ethnic Groups; Female; Five Factor Personality Model; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Hedonism; Human; Humans; Language; Male; Netherlands; Personality; Personality Traits; Personality. Affectivity; Psychological aspects; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social Perception; Social psychology; Sociolinguistics; Taxonomies; Taxonomy; Traits; Virtue; Vocabularies & taxonomies; Vocabulary; Netherlands; comprehensive list of descriptors; trait taxonomy; personality structure; Human; Description; Language; Big Five personality model; Correlation analysis; Taxonomy; Lexicon; Personality; Dutch
• ISSN: 0022-3514; 1939-1315
• DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.2.347

A list of 2,365 personality descriptive items was selected from a computerized database of the Dutch language. The list included terms from various word classes, such as trait adjectives, trait nouns, and trait verbs, and from expressions in which the meaning was drawn from a combination of words. The items were administered to 1,466 participants, who provided self- or other-ratings. Principal components analyses were performed on both original and ipsatized data. The data set was split to investigate the invariance of the factors. The analyses yielded a final 8-factorial structure that included the Big 5. Three new trait factors were discovered, namely Virtue, Competence, and Hedonism.