The lexical Big Five and indigenous personality dimensions

AimThis study investigated the relationship between the lexical Big Five and indigenous personality dimensions emerging from responses to a pool of 166 trait descriptors indigenous to the Hong Kong Chinese context. MethodA total of 212 pairs of participants were asked to complete a questionnaire consisting of (1) the Big-Five factor markers (Goldberg, 1992) and (2) 166 unipolar Chinese personality trait descriptors derived from the taxonomy developed by Lai, Luk, and Wan (1992). Each participant was asked to provide self ratings and nominate a peer to provide other ratings using the Big Five and the indigenously derived measures. ResultsResults indicated that 3 indigenous personality factors, of which two exhibited a clear interpersonal and social content, emerged separately from a principal component analysis of self and other ratings. With respect to responses to the Big Five markers, the canonical 5-factor solution could not be completely replicated. Although substantial overlap was observed between these indigenous factors and the five-factor solutions derived from the Big Five markers, one-to-one correspondence between these two sets of factors was not observed. However, when the semantic content of items of the indigenous factors were compared to a more comprehensive model such as the AB5C, most of these items could be semantically subsumed within this taxonomy. In other words, these indigenous dimensions can best be characterized as blends of Big Five factor poles. ConclusionPresent findings suggest that Hong Kong Chinese place emphasis on their roles in the family, friendship and the relatedness to other people in general, which may explain the findings that two of the three emic factors have a salient interpersonal and social content. Using an indigenously derived instrument in this study, I am confident that present findings provide strong support as to the salient and important aspects of personality of the Hong Kong Chinese and that the lexical Big Five markers may not have been able to tap fully the essential characteristics of personality in the Hong Kong Chinese context. Apparently, the lexical Big Five may exhibit a high degree of universality when it is utilized as a semantic reference system, but this may not extend to factorially pure markers extracted from this comprehensive scheme. 目的這項研究針對五大人格要素及本土化人格特徵於中國人的關係.方法212對參與者被要求完成一份問卷, 包括(1)五大人格要素問卷(Goldberg, 1992), 和(2)由Lai, Luk 及Wan(1992)所開發的分類系統而産生的166項單向人格特徵描述. 每一對參與者的其中一位被要求提供一份自我評估問卷, 並且推薦一名同伴使用五大人格要素和本土化衍生量表對前者做出評估.結果通過分別針對參與者自我評估及同伴評估進行的常規因素分析, 研究結果顯示在三項本土化人格要素中, 有兩項呈現出清晰的人際關係及社會含義. 針對五大人格要素進行常規因素分析顯示, 常規五大因素並沒有完全體現. 雖然本土化要素及有五大人格要素之間存在很大程度上的重曡, 但兩組要素的一對一相關性卻沒有被發現. 然而, 當本土化要素中的語意內容與更加全面的模型進行比較時, 例如AB5C, 大部分的選項能夠在語意方面被納入這個分類系統中. 換言之, 這些本土化人格特徵具有混合了五大人格要素特質的特點.結論當前的發現表示, 總體而言, 中國人注重在家庭, 友誼及與他人關係間的角色, 同時這一點解釋了三項主體因素中的兩項具有顯著的人際關係及社會含義的研究結果. 由於此項研究運用了具有本土化特徵的工具, 當前的發現對中國人的顯著及突出人格特徵提供了有力的支援, 同時五大人格要素無法全面概括中國人的核心人格特質. 顯然, 當詞彙類五大人格要素被用作語意參考系統時, 它可以體現出較高的普遍性, 但是這不能適用於從語意參考系統中發展出的人格量表.