Personality described by adjectives: The generalizability of the Big Five to the Italian lexical context

Abstract

Two studies have been performed in the frame of the Big Five model to describe personality. In the first study, the most useful adjectives for describing personality have been selected, trying to adopt a procedure as objective and empirically driven as possible. The resulting pool of adjectives (n = 492) has been administered to a sample of 274 subjects to verify the emergence of the Big Five in the Italian context. In the second study the pool of original adjectives has been reduced to 260 adjectives selecting the most representative terms (with regard to the factorial structure that has emerged). This pool of 260 adjectives has been administered to a sample of 862 subjects, together with the NEO‐PI and the BFQ to facilitate the interpretation of the resulting factorial structure. Results showed the emergence of an Italian Big Five factorial structure that resembles the ‘canonical’ Big Five, although some of the factors, viz. Agreeableness and Emotional Stability, emerged as ‘blended’ dimensions.