The replicability of the Big Five personality dimensions in three word‐classes of the Dutch language

Abstract

Of the main classes of personality‐descriptive words, verbs, adjectives, and nouns, the class of adjectives has figured as the constant and almost exclusive resource for taxonomic enterprises. In the Dutch language, Brokken (1978) was the first to structure the personality‐descriptive adjectives on a large‐scale basis. The aim of that particular study was not to test the existence of the Big Five in the Dutch language. Of the six Brokken factors, only two or three showed a clear correspondence to the Big Five. Recently, De Raad, Mulder, Kloosterman and Hofstee (1988) and De Raad and Hoskens (1990) taxonomized the personality‐descriptive verbs and the personality‐descriptive nouns. In the present study, the self‐ratings on adjectives (N = 200), nouns (N = 200), and verbs (N = 200) from the latter two studies are used to test the Big Five model in the three classes of personality terms. The model fits well with the adjective domain, although the result deviates from the English structure in order of factors and in emphasis of interpretation. To a certain extent, the model can be said to capture the noun domain as well. Four of the Big Five factors can be identified more or less easily, and the fifth may be discernible as well. The verb structure, however, is quite different in that it shows only two dimensions which seem to be more comprising in meaning than both the adjective factors and the noun factors.