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The Factor Structure of Chinese Personality Terms
Author(s) -
Zhou Xinyue,
Saucier Gerard,
Gao Dingguo,
Liu Jing
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00551.x
Subject(s) - psychology , personality , factor (programming language) , clinical psychology , social psychology , computer science , programming language
From the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary, 3,159 personality descriptors were selected and then ranked by the frequency of use. Among those, the top 413 terms with the highest frequency were administered to two independent large samples in China for self‐ratings and peer ratings to explore the emic Chinese personality structure as well as to test the universality of other models. One‐ and two‐factor structures found in previous studies of other languages were well replicated. Previous structures with more than two factors were not well replicated, but six‐ and seven‐factor models were at least as well supported as the Big Five. Emic analysis indicated that a seven‐factor structure was the most informative structure relatively salient across subsamples of self‐ratings and peer ratings, across original and ipsatized data, and across differences in variable selections. These factors can be called Extraversion, Conscientiousness/Diligence, Unselfishness, Negative Valence, Emotional Volatility, Intellect/Positive Valence, and Dependency/Fragility.