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In two experiments, 492 male and female subjects from three different age groups estimated the age of adult men and women on the basis of photographs and provided attractiveness ratings of the stimulus persons. With regard to the age estimates there was almost perfect agreement between the mean judgments of the different groups, and there was high consensus among the individual judges within each group. For each single picture, however, there was high variability in the age estimates; and although the estimates were generally quite accurate, in some cases they deviated substantially from the stimulus person's true age. In both experiments there was a negative relationship between age and attractiveness for female stimuli. For male stimuli a negative relationship was found in one experiment only, whereas in the other experiment these two variables were almost uncorrelated. Both experiments yielded two kinds of ingroup‐favoritism: The relationship between age and attractiveness was seen to be less negative (a) when the judges and the judged were of the same sex, and (b) when the subjects themselves belonged to the oldest age group.

Research in the tradition of the lexical approach has been largely confined to adjective rating scales. Another word class that appears particularly suited for personality description is the class of type nouns (e.g. extravert, misanthrope, leader, coward, intellectual). This paper presents the first investigation in the factorial structure of a relatively large set of German type nouns. Stimulus persons were 12 prominent males (e.g. Boris Becker, Helmut Kohl) and 12 prominent females (e.g. Claudia Schiffer, Steffi Graf). Raters were 240 men and 240 women. Each rater judged one stimulus person on 192 unipolar type noun scales and 32 bipolar adjective scales. Factor analyses of the type nouns yielded seven factors for males and six for females. These factors represented a clear-cut and meaningful personality structure. Comparisons with the adjective factors (seven male and six female) demonstrated that the noun factors show some resemblance to the Big Five and Physical Attractiveness. Multiple regression analyses showed that the noun factors cannot be completely reduced to the Big Five. Some systematic differences between male and female stimuli are also discussed. METHODSSubjects were 240 males and 240 females. Subjects' age ranged from 18 to 60 years (median, 26; interquartile, 23±36). Stimulus persons were 12 prominent males and 12 prominent females. More specifically, the male ratees were

Up until now it has been assumed that the German language comprises far more personality descriptive adjectives (e.g. cynical) than type nouns (e.g. cynic); cf. the article by Angleitner, Ostendorf and John (1990). The present paper shows that this conclusion is unwarranted. Firstly, it is demonstrated that the German taxonomers considered only a small fraction of the relevant type nouns. Then follows a discussion of why the German language contains a huge number of personality type nouns. Finally, some pitfalls of the lexical approach to personality description are considered.