Lexical hypothesis

In personality psychology, the lexical hypothesis[1] (also known as the fundamental lexical hypothesis,[2] lexical approach,[3] or sedimentation hypothesis[4]) generally includes two postulates:

1. Those personality characteristics that are important to a group of people will eventually become a part of that group's language.[5]

and that therefore:

2. More important personality characteristics are more likely to be encoded into language as a single word.[6][7][8]

With origins during the late 19th century, use of the lexical hypothesis began to flourish in English and German psychology during the early 20th century.[4] The lexical hypothesis is a major basis of the study of the Big Five personality traits,[9] the HEXACO model of personality structure[10] and the 16PF Questionnaire and has been used to study the structure of personality traits in a number of cultural and linguistic settings.[11]

  1. ^ Crowne, D. P. (2007). Personality Theory. Don Mills, ON, Canada: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-542218-4.
  2. ^ Goldberg, L. R. (December 1990). "An alternative "description of personality": The Big-Five factor structure". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 59 (6): 1216–1229. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.59.6.1216. PMID 2283588. S2CID 9034636.
  3. ^ Carducci, B. J. (2009). The Psychology of Personality: Second Edition. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-3635-8.
  4. ^ a b Caprara, G. V.; Cervone, D. (2000). Personality: Determinants, Dynamics, and Potentials. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-58310-7.
  5. ^ Cattell, R.B. (1943). "The description of personality: basic traits resolved into clusters". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 38 (4): 476–506. doi:10.1037/h0054116.
  6. ^ John, O. P.; Angleitner, A.; Ostendorf, F. (1988). "The lexical approach to personality: A historical review of trait taxonomic research". European Journal of Personality. 2 (3): 171–203. doi:10.1002/per.2410020302. S2CID 15299845. Archived from the original on 26 October 2014.
  7. ^ Miller, George A (1996). The science of words. New York: Scientific American Library. ISBN 978-0-7167-5027-7.
  8. ^ Ashton, M. C.; Lee, K. (2004). "A defence of the lexical approach to the study of personality structure" (PDF). European Journal of Personality. 19: 5–24. doi:10.1002/per.541. S2CID 145576560. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 March 2012.
  9. ^ Goldberg, Lewis (1993). "The structure of phenotypic personality traits". American Psychologist. 48 (1): 26–34. doi:10.1037/0003-066x.48.1.26. PMID 8427480. S2CID 20595956.
  10. ^ Ashton, Michael C.; Lee, Kibeom; Perugini, Marco; Szarota, Piotr; de Vries, Reinout E.; Di Blas, Lisa; Boies, Kathleen; De Raad, Boele (2004). "A Six-Factor Structure of Personality-Descriptive Adjectives: Solutions From Psycholexical Studies in Seven Languages". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 86 (2): 356–366. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.86.2.356. ISSN 0022-3514. PMID 14769090.
  11. ^ John, O. P.; Robins, R. W.; Pervin, L. A. (2008). Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, Third Edition. New York: The Guilford Press. pp. 114–158. ISBN 978-1-59385-836-0.