The hierarchical structure of common Turkish person-descriptive adjectives

Findings from analyses of self-descriptions by 631 native speakers of Turkish, using 498 familiar Turkish person-descriptive adjectives, are compared to those of Saucier (1997), who analyzed 500 familiar English adjectives. In the total item pools in both studies, variants of the English/German ‘Big-Five’ factors were recovered, along with a broad Attractiveness factor and another factor composed of items of extremely low endorsement rates. Moreover, in both studies when the item pools were restricted to terms that are less pejorative and more clearly related to personality traits, again variants of the Big-Five factors were recovered. These latter findings replicate those from Somer and Goldberg (1999), who analyzed Turkish synonym clusters rather than single person-descriptive adjectives. We discuss some of the pitfalls of comparative studies of personality lexicons, and suggest some procedures for reconciling diverse findings. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.