Personality and Developmental Characteristics of Primary School Students' Personality Types.

Yongjin Yu,Yanyan Zhang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.693329

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to investigate the personality characteristics and developmental characteristics of primary school students’ personality types in a cross-sectional sample of 10,366 Chinese children. The Personality Inventory for Primary School Student was used to evaluate primary school students’ personality. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to classify primary school students’ personality types. One-way ANOVA was used to explore the personality characteristics of personality types, and Chi-square tests were used to investigate grade and gender differences of primary school students’ personality types. Results showed that the primary school students could be divided into three personality types: the resilient, the overcontrolled, and the undercontrolled. Resilients had the highest scores, and undercontrollers had the lowest scores on all of five personality dimensions (intelligence, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability). The overcontrollers’ scores on personality were between the other two types, with lower emotional stability. As the grade level increased, the proportion of undercontrolled students in primary schools generally showed an upward trend and reached the maximum in grade 5. The proportion of resilient students in primary schools generally showed a downward trend. The proportion of resilient students was highest in grade 2 and lowest in grade 5. Girls were significantly more likely than boys to be resilient personality types, while boys were significantly more likely than girls to be undercontrolled personality types. The overcontrolled personality type did not show significant gender differences. Because of the undesirable internalizing problems related to overcontrollers and the externalizing problems related to undercontrollers, our results have implications for Chinese schools, families, and society in general.

Highlights

Personality has significant impacts on many aspects of people’s everyday lives, such as interpersonal relationships, health, academic performance, and subjective wellbeing (Neyer et al, 2014; Briki, 2018; Gray and Pinchot, 2018; Stajkovic et al, 2018)
The current study aimed to investigate the personality characteristics of Chinese primary school students’ personality types and their developmental characteristics by grade and gender
Akaïke Information Criterion (AIC), Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), and adjusted BIC of the three-class model and four-class model were smaller than other models, the entropy values were all above 0.8, and the value of p for LMR and Bootstrap Likelihood Ratio Test (BLRT) was both significant, which indicates that these two models fit well and the correct rate of personality type classification is higher than other models

Summary

Introduction

Personality has significant impacts on many aspects of people’s everyday lives, such as interpersonal relationships, health, academic performance, and subjective wellbeing (Neyer et al, 2014; Briki, 2018; Gray and Pinchot, 2018; Stajkovic et al, 2018). The primary school stage is an important developmental period for accumulating knowledge and learning to understand society It is an important stage for children’s personality development (Soto and Tackett, 2015). Based on Chinese culture and the characteristics of children’s personalities, Yang (2014) used teachers’ free description and vocabulary to collect and code personality trait adjectives for primary school students in China. They decided that the personality construction of Chinese primary school students was composed of five dimensions: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and intelligence. Cultural differences lead to differences in the connotations of personality traits involving intelligence

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion