Three or five personality dimensions? An analysis of natural language terms in two cultures

Personality Structure Among Black and White South Africans

“…The first component was labeled A and explained 14.1 % of the variance; the second component, explaining 8.1% of the variance, was labeled E; the third component was labeled N (6.5% of the variance), the fourth was labeled C (5.0% of the variance), and the fifth was clearly 0 (4.0% of the variance). These results support earlier work among English-speaking samples using these adjectives (Heaven et al, 1994;John, 1990).…”

“…Heaven and colleagues (Heaven et al, 1994) were unable to uncover five predicted dimensions in a sample of Black South African university students. Using a list of English trait adjectives proposed by John ( 1990), the authors found that items normally associated with agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C), and openness to experience (0) loaded significantly on one dimension; contrary to expectations, introversion (E-) and extraversion (E+) items were observed to load on separate dimensions.…”

“…Several non-American studies have used imported measures of personality and natural language terms, and some have identified factors easily recognizable as belonging to the Big Five. Heaven, Connors, and Stones (1994) uncovered five factors among Australian undergraduates, using adjective terms borrowed from John (1990): Neuroticisdemotional stability (N), Extraversiodintroversion (E), Openness to experience (0), Agreeableness (A), and Conscientiousness (C). Likewise, Borkenau and Ostendorf (1990) also found evidence of five factors in a German sample: Using a German translation of the NEO inventory as well as adjective markers developed by Norman (1963), they found that five factors were replicated across sexes as well as across instruments.…”

Using the occupational personality questionnaire (OPQ) for measuring broad traits

“…In South Africa four studies have investigated the applicability of the model for South African population groups, but these studies produced conflicting results. Heaven, Connors and Stones (1994) did not find support for a five-factor structure when they applied a measure consisting of a list of trait adjectives proposed by John (1990) to 200 Black South African students, nor did Heaven and Pretorius (1998) succeed in doing so when translations of the adjectives were administered to 247 Black Sotho-speaking students. However, the same procedure for a sample of 155 Afrikaansspeaking students yielded a five-factor structure in support of the Big Five model.…”

The influence of proficiency, extraversion, and inter-personal interaction on ESL writing

“…Finally, Piedmont explains that research has shown that the fivefactor model can be "useful for understanding culture-specific phenomena (Heaven et al, 1994;Paunonen et al, 1992). Understanding the relationship between the fivefactor model and how it generalizes to non-native English speaking populations is critical to this study because a model that cannot be generalized would not provide any conclusive data on how personality relates to second language acquisition.…”