Literature suggests that reading fiction, more than reading nonfiction, correlates positively with the reader's social cognition, chiefly cognitive empathy. Earlier studies also indicate that ...individual differences, especially personality traits, are relevant predictors of reading tendencies that should be considered while studying the relationship between empathy and reading. Hence, in this study we examined whether personality traits, gender, and the students' fiction and nonfiction reading tendencies predict affective and cognitive empathy. University students (N = 429) participated in this study using the following questionnaires: The Emotional Empathy and Fantasy Scale (Raboteg-Šarić, 2002), the IPIP-50 Big-Five markers (Mlačić & Goldberg, 2007), and a newly constructed reading tendencies questionnaire. The results of multiple regression analyses indicate that Big Five Intellect and Big Five Emotional stability positively predicted nonfiction-reading tendency. Moreover, Intellect, Agreeableness, and gender (female) positively predicted fiction-reading tendency, while Extraversion was a negative predictor. Also, Intellect, Agreeableness, gender (female) and fiction-reading tendency positively predicted cognitive empathy. Agreeableness and gender (female) were positive, while Emotional stability and Extraversion were negative predictors of affective empathy.
Social effects represent the psychological (emotional, cognitive, and motivational) reactions evoked in other people by the expression of traits in behavior and emotion. From the transactional view ...on personality, studying the psycholexical structures of social effects can help to discover unique vs. common thought and behavior patterns, affects, and motivations, which are primarily related to personality dispositions. Thus, we developed the comprehensive taxonomy of social effects following the principles of the psycholexical approach. In the first study, two judges selected 9,625 person-descriptive terms-adjectives, type-nouns, attribute-nouns, and participles-from the Dictionary of the Standard Lithuanian Language. In the second study, six judges classified all the selected descriptors using German psycholexical methodology. Finally, a principal component analysis was performed, followed by varimax rotation for the 208 social-effect descriptors, separately for ipsatized self-ratings and observer-ratings from 203 to 204 Lithuanian students, respectively. We found out that the five-component solution was the best fit for self-ratings, whereas for observer-ratings it was a four-component structure. In this article, we present the results from the factor analyses and discuss our findings in the context of previous studies, as well as cross-language personality models.
•Lithuanian psycholexical study supports the Big Five in the self-rating data set.•Self-rating data supports HEXACO dimensions after re-rotating three factors.•The best fit for the peer-ratings is ...four-factor structure.•Lexical structures with fewer factors have a better replicability among languages.•The more complex factor solution is, the more self vs peer-rating structures differ.
We developed a taxonomy and structure of Lithuanian personality attributes following the principles of the psycholexical approach. Personality-relevant descriptors – 9625 adjectives, type-nouns, attribute-nouns, and participles – were selected from the Dictionary of the Standard Lithuanian Language by two judges, and subsequently classified by six judges. Finally, a principal component analysis was performed, followed by varimax rotation for the 627 morphemically unique personality-descriptive terms, separately for ipsatized self-ratings and peer-ratings from 519 and 554 Lithuanian students respectively. We found that the Big Five structure was the best fit for the self-ratings with no need to re-align emic factors, whereas HEXACO dimensions were confirmed after re-rotating the six-factor structure. The best fit for the peer-ratings was four-factor structure.
The present article focuses on two main problems: determining the factor structure of personality ratings of familiar Croatian brands and determining how different levels of data aggregation can ...affect the dimensionality and the nature of extracted factors. Following Aaker's seminal study Aaker, J. Dimensions of brand personality. Journal of Marketing Research 1997; 24: 347–356, which aims to identify the dimensions of brand personality, this study attempts to relate brand personality to personality dimensions derived from the natural language. In the first study, a sample of 55 students rate the familiarity of 111 brands represented in the categories of “a Croatian creation” and “Croatian quality”. Subsequently, ten brands are selected on the basis of mean familiarity and representation in various product categories (food, beverages, medicine and cleaning products). In the second study, an exhaustive Croatian taxonomy of personality descriptors Mlačić B, Ostendorf F. Taxonomy and Structure of Croatian Personality-descriptive Adjectives. European Journal of Personality 2005; 19: 117–152 serves as a basis for the construction of a 90-item inventory that covers the 45 facets from the AB5C model Goldberg LR. International Personality Item Pool. A Scientific Collaboratory for the Development of Advanced Measures of Personality and Other Individual Differences. 6 June 2005. 20 April 2005.
http://ipip.ori.org/ipip/. A large sample of students (267) rate the personality of the ten selected brands using the 90-item inventory. The results of exploratory factor analyses of brand personality are discussed in respect of previous research, the lexical approach, and the possible effects of different levels of data aggregation on the dimensionality of the obtained factor structure.
We tested the hypothesis that only 3 factors of personality description are replicable across many different languages if they are independently derived by a psycholexical approach. Our test was ...based on 14 trait taxonomies from 12 different languages. Factors were compared at each level of factor extraction with solutions with 1 to 6 factors. The 294 factors in the comparisons were identified using sets of markers of the 6-factor model by correlating the marker scales with the factors. The factor structures were pairwise compared in each case on the basis of the common variables that define the 2 sets of factors. Congruence coefficients were calculated between the varimax rotated structures after Procrustes rotation, where each structure in turn served as a target to which all other structures were rotated. On the basis of average congruence coefficients of all 91 comparisons, we conclude that factor solutions with 3 factors on average are replicable across languages; solutions with more factors are not.
Osjećaj koherentnosti pokazao se značajnim faktorom koji doprinosi pozitivnim zdravstvenim ishodima. U prethodnim istraživanjima dimenzije ličnosti pokazale su se značajnim prediktorom osjećaja ...koherentnosti, a stilovi suočavanja bili su značajno povezani s osjećajem koherentnosti. Veza konstrukta netolerancije na neizvjesnost i osjećaja koherentnosti nije do sada istraživana, stoga je cilj ovog istraživanja bio ispitati prediktivni doprinos dimenzija ličnosti velepetorog modela, stilova suočavanja i netolerancije na neizvjesnost, osjećaju koherentnosti kod mladih odraslih osoba. Rezultati hijerarhijske regresijske analize pokazali su da dimenzije ličnosti iz velepetorog modela snažno doprinose objašnjenju varijance osjećaja koherentnosti, no povrh toga stilovi suočavanja i netolerancija na neizvjesnost uspjeli su dodatno objasniti varijancu kriterija. Ovo istraživanje pokazalo je da viša razina emocionalne stabilnosti, ekstraverzije, ugodnosti, savjesnosti; učestalije korištenje suočavanja usmjerenog na problem; manje često korištenje suočavanja izbjegavanjem te niža razina netolerancije na neizvjesnost značajno predviđaju snažniji osjećaj koherentnosti. Ključne riječi: osjećaj koherentnosti, dimenzije ličnosti, stilovi suočavanja, netolerancija na neizvjesnost
We reply to
Ashton and Lee’s (2010) comments on our paper on the cross-cultural replicability of trait factors (
De Raad et al., 2010). More specifically, we comment on the interpretation of ...congruence coefficients, the distinction between Agreeableness and Honesty–Humility in three languages, and the inclusion of a lexical study that has a different six-factor structure. In our view, none of the arguments given in Ashton and Lee’s paper compels a change in our conclusion, based on the extensive findings of our paper, that only three factors are fully replicable across languages.
Following the notion that the psycho-lexical approach in personality psychology is suboptimal if it does not encompass all the word categories potentially personality-relevant (De Raad, 2000), this ...paper describes the development of the Croatian taxonomy of social and reputational descriptors of personality. In the first step of the first study, a master list of social and reputational terms in the Croatian lexicon was constructed. In the second step, the personality-descriptive adjectives that were not captured by the earlier Croatian taxonomy (Mlačić & Ostendorf, 2005) were categorized by seven judges into 13 different types of descriptors, based on the classification system developed by Angleitner, Ostendorf, and John (1990). In the second study, the 532 adjectives that the majority of judges classified as prototypical for the three subcategories of interest of Social and Reputational aspects (social roles and relationships, social effects, and attitudes and worldviews) were used for self-ratings by a large sample of (N=524) University of Zagreb students and for peer-ratings by (N=502) those students’ best acquaintances. Results from factor analyses are presented, as well as the relations of the underlying dimensions of Social and Reputational aspects of personality with two different measures of social attitudes and with the Big-Five factors of personality.