Demographic variables and personality: the effects of gender, age, education, and ethnic/racial status on self-descriptions of personality attributes

Abstract

Using a large ( N = 3629) sample of individuals selected to be representative of U.S. working adults in the year 2000, we provide the correlations between each of four demographic variables (gender, age, ethnic/racial status, and educational level) and each of the dimensions from two quite different five-variable representations of personality traits. Across the four demographic variables and the five personality dimensions, we find average correlations of 0.08 with the Big-Five factors and 0.10 with the AVA vectors. Although most of the demographic-personality associations are of trivial size, two are somewhat stronger: older persons tend to describe themselves as more conscientious than younger ones, and persons with higher levels of education describe themselves as more intellectual than those with less education.