تجزیه و تحلیل تاریخی از پیدایش لغوی توصیفگرهای شخصیتی صفت پنج عامل بزرگ

This study examined two questions regarding the emergence of adjectives that describe the Big Five Personality dimensions and when they emerged into the modern English lexicon: (1) Did the terms that describe these qualities appear simultaneously or sequentially? (2) Can the emergence of these terms be linked to specific historical eras? Results showed that the adjective descriptors for Openness appeared in the modern lexicon significantly later than those for Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness. The historical context surrounding the emergence of Openness was presented and the implications of these findings for understanding personality were discussed.

Generations of lexicographers have spent decades in a continuum of collaborative and detailed analyses to carefully document the categorizations of human interpersonal experiences. Miller (1991) made the observation: “When an idea is important, people are likely to have a word for it. Mountain people will have a word for mountain; people who live on the plains and have never seen a mountain will not have such a word. The more important something is, moreover, the more words that are likely to be” (p. 4). This idea reflects what has come to be known as the “lexical hypothesis”, and formed the underlying logic to Allport’s groundbreaking research that saw the English language as a potential source point for identifying salient individual-difference variables (Allport & Odbert, 1936). The result of this work has been the development of the Five-Factor Model of Personality (FFM; Digman, 1990). The FFM has become one of the more widely accepted taxonomies for describing personality structure (Digman, 1990, McCrae and John, 1992 and Wiggins, 1996). The value of this model has been found in its widespread usage in personality assessment (Ozer & Riese, 1994) and its importance has been extended through research documenting its cross-cultural relevance (McCrae & Allik, 2002). Behavioral genetics research has documented that between 40% and 60% of the variance of these constructs is genetically heritable (Jang, Livesly, & Vernon, 1996). As biological realities, these dimensions have important implications for understanding human behavior. However, this genetic linkage does not imply that culture and context have no impact on how these dimensions are expressed and the adaptive function(s) they serve. There is a complex interaction between nature and nurture, and no aspect of human behavior can be understood solely in terms of just one of these perspectives. Research with the FFM has generated findings that support the hypothesis that culture can have an impact on the salience and expression of personality qualities. Four sets of findings are presented that support this hypothesis. Although alternative explanations for the findings of each study are possible (e.g., McCrae, 2004 and Poortinga et al., 2002), taken as a whole these findings provide a compelling rationale supporting a cultural impact hypothesis. First, mean level scores on the domains of the FFM vary across the globe. McCrae (2002) presented data from 36 cultures and found much variability in scores on the FFM. For example Austrian, Swiss, and Dutch samples scored the highest on Openness to Experience, whereas the Danes, Malaysians, and Telugu Indians scored the lowest. When these differences were plotted spatially, Allik and McCrae (2004) noted that systematic patterns of personality profiles emerged that corresponded to the mapping of the countries on the globe. Thus, Indonesians, Filipinos, and Malaysians occupied one quadrant whereas Czech, Germans, and Austrians were found in another. Americans, Canadians, and Hispanic Americans were found in yet another quadrant. Levels of personality differ across cultures (and geographic regions) suggesting that different adaptive pressures may stress some aspects of personality more than others. In a related study by Hofstede and McCrae (2004), they noted how FFM personality scores in these cultures were significantly related to the cultural-based dimensions of Individualism, Power Distance, Masculinity, and Uncertainty Avoidance. Second, emic-based research examining the lexical structure of traits in various cultures has revealed that there may exist other context-specific personality dimensions not contained in the FFM (Bond et al., 1975, Isaka, 1990, Narayanan et al., 1995 and Yik and Bond, 1993). These dimensions capture trait aspects that may have developed in response to specific demands of the culture. Third, there is evidence suggesting that over time immigrant groups exhibit personality styles more consistent with their adoptive homes. McCrae, Yik, Trapnell, Bond, and Paulhus (1998) examined the personality profiles for recent Chinese immigrants to Canada with a cohort of Canadian born Chinese. Significant effects for acculturation were found: Canadian born Chinese scored higher in Extraversion, Openness, and Agreeableness than the recent immigrants. These three sets of findings support the hypothesis that there is a dynamic interplay between personality and culture: People select/create their environments so as to provide outlets for their own motivations, and environments in turn can provide specific pathways (e.g., rituals, social conventions, moral principles) that can focus these motivations for maximum effect. However, another question emerges from these findings: “As cultures develop and change over time (either in response to specific events, like wars or natural catastrophes, or to changing motivations in people), do they create psychological pressures to which people need to adapt?” Adaptation may be in the form of certain characteristics becoming more salient or the emergence of personality qualities that may have been dormant. This question emerged from the fourth set of findings in a study by Piedmont, Bain, McCrae, and Costa (2002) that translated the NEO PI-R into Shona, a native language of Zimbabwe. The great majority of research on the FFM has concerned itself with mostly industrialized or pre-industrial nations. Research with the Shona was one of only a very small number of studies examining the non-industrialized, agrarian cultures of sub-Saharan Africa. Although the five-factor structure could be obtained, Piedmont et al. (2002) found that it was difficult to find Shona words that represented Openness to Experience concepts. Problems in recovering Openness were found by others using different indigenous African samples (Heuchert et al., 2000 and Horn, 2000). This difficulty in recovering Openness cannot be due to its lack of presence. As research has shown, the construct has a substantial genetic basis and should be present in all humans. Perhaps, then, living in a traditional agrarian society, where personal options and opportunities for innovation are limited, individual differences in Openness may not be sufficiently important in daily life for the Shona to have developed a relevant vocabulary about the quality. The lack of words to define the construct would make it difficult for individuals to develop any type of self-image around Openness. Piedmont et al. considered whether the relative salience of Openness in the West is a recent response to the adaptive pressures brought about by industrialization and urbanization. The rise of a smokestack economy may have introduced sociological changes that highlighted individual differences in reactions to novelty, in distinguishing innovators from laggards, and in identifying creative potential. If indeed culture can impact the expression of traits, then major, durable, sociological shifts in a culture should be reflected in changes in the salience of specific traits. One way to track this possibility would be to examine when various trait terms made their appearance into the lexicon. If our hypothesis that Openness was a response to industrialization were correct, then we would expect that terms capturing Openness would have emerged more recently in time than terms capturing the other personality dimensions. This is a key premise of the lexical approach, that as attributes become more important and worthy of notice, words for those qualities appear and are maintained by frequent use (Saucier & Goldberg, 2001). If this perspective were correct, then it would provide an exciting platform for understanding how personality terms may develop in relation to specific cultural movements (see McClelland, 1961). Information about when a word appeared in the lexicon is readily available in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which provides historical dates for when (and where) a word was first used. This methodology can directly index when constructs became lexically formalized. Using year of entry dates from the OED, Benjafield and Muckenheim (1989) examined a sample of trait descriptors that described qualities inherent to the Interpersonal Circumplex (IC; Wiggins, 1979). (The IC is defined by the FFM personality domains of Extraversion and Agreeableness [McCrae & Costa, 1989]). They found that the broader, positive trait terms of each domain emerged earlier in language usage than the more specific, negative terms. They argued that such a lexical progression reflected a developing cognitive capacity of people to think more sophisticatedly about others. The purpose of this study was to expand on this methodology by examining a sample of word descriptors from the English language that reflect all the FFM personality dimensions and determine: (1) if the emergence of these trait terms into the lexicon occurred simultaneously or lagged over time; and, (2) when, historically, these word descriptors made their first appearance in the English lexicon. This study sought to determine if there are significant period effects for the emergence of the FFM dimensions and if Openness did indeed represent a rather recent lexical development in personality structure.