Role of Behaviorally Descriptive Adjectives in Description of Personality

Abstract

Behaviorally descriptive adjectives and personality trait terms have been analyzed periodically by many psychological researchers and practitioners during the last half of this century. This analysis of personality-descriptive adjectives and terms has led to the development of several widely used adjective checklists for personality assessment and the postulation and the construct validation of several personality models. Foremost among the adjective checklists have been the 1948 Activity Vector Analysis (AVA), the 1950 Adjective Check List (ACL), and the more recent Personality Adjective Check List (PACL) in 1987. The first descriptions and reports of their developmental and validation research appeared in the professional refereed literature, respectively by Clarke in 1956, Gough in 1960, and Strack in 1987. The ACL contains 300 adjectives, various forms of the AVA contain 81 to 87 adjectives, and the PACL contains 153 adjectives. The dimensionality of personality models and the number of scales interpreted in the protocols from these instruments have either remained stable as in the case of AVA (4 dimensions, 6 scales) or have been quite variable over time. For example, the ACL was originally 5-dimensional with 6 scales being interpreted. Currently, the ACL yields 37 interpretable scales, and the PACL perhaps a 5-factor structure.