Type nouns and the five factor model of personality description

Abstract

Research in the tradition of the lexical approach has been largely confined to adjective rating scales. Another word class that appears particularly suited for personality description is the class of type nouns (e.g. extravert, misanthrope, leader, coward, intellectual). This paper presents the first investigation in the factorial structure of a relatively large set of German type nouns. Stimulus persons were 12 prominent males (e.g. Boris Becker, Helmut Kohl) and 12 prominent females (e.g. Claudia Schiffer, Steffi Graf). Raters were 240 men and 240 women. Each rater judged one stimulus person on 192 unipolar type noun scales and 32 bipolar adjective scales. Factor analyses of the type nouns yielded seven factors for males and six for females. These factors represented a clear‐cut and meaningful personality structure. Comparisons with the adjective factors (seven male and six female) demonstrated that the noun factors show some resemblance to the Big Five and Physical Attractiveness. Multiple regression analyses showed that the noun factors cannot be completely reduced to the Big Five. Some systematic differences between male and female stimuli are also discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.