Carving personality description at its joints: Confirmation of three replicable personality prototypes for both children and adults

Abstract

We tested the hypothesis that there are three major prototypic patterns of personality description (resilient, overcontrolled, and undercontrolled) in a series of studies including adults' self‐descriptions on the Big Five and parents' Big Five and Q‐Sort judgments of their children, using both replicated cluster analyses and replicated Q‐factor analyses. The consistency of the prototypes across ages, judges, and methods was quantitatively measured. The results confirmed the hypothesis in all studies. Personality, social relationship, and social interaction correlates of the prototypes indicated externalizing tendencies for undercontrollers and internalizing tendencies for overcontrollers for both children and adults. The studies provide strong evidence for a three‐prototype model of personality description at the highest level of analysis for both childhood and adulthood. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Child Personality and Parental Behavior as Moderators of Problem Behavior: Variable- and Person-Centered Approaches.

“…The types were assigned according to the standard procedure outlined by Asendorpf et al (2001). Children were assigned to groups experiencing differences in parenting on the basis of their scores on the parenting variables: children experiencing below-or above-average positive parenting and children exposed to below-or above-average negative control.…”

“…In the analyses with externalizing behavior as the dependent variable, the undercontrollers versus resilients dichotomy was entered as one of the independent variables, whereas in the analyses with internalizing behavior as the dependent variable, the overcontrollers versus resilients dichotomy was entered as one of the independent variables. This choice was based on previous research that showed a meaningful relationship between the undercontrolled personality type and externalizing behavior and a relationship between the overcontrolled personality type and internalizing behavior (Asendorpf et al, 2001;De Fruyt et al, 2002;Van Leeuwen et al, 2004). Table 6 shows the category means and the results of the analyses of variance.…”

Personality prototype as a risk factor for eating disorders

“…As mentioned in the introduction, this is the model that most researchers have considered the most repeatable across different sample groups and different instruments, in both ED and community groups. 12,[14][15][16]18,[40][41][42] As noted above, the k-means method produces the best results if the number of groups to be used is known.…”

“…17 This classification was also established using the Big Five model. 17 Asendorpf,12 for example, defines people with below-average scores in neuroticism and above-average scores in all other dimensions as belonging to the highfunctioning group. Those with high scores in neuroticism and low scores in agreeableness and conscientiousness are classified as undercontrolled, while those in the overcontrolled group score high in neuroticism and low in extraversion and openness to experience.…”

“…The studies conducted have employed different instruments and their samples have included both community groups and ED sufferers. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] The three personality subtypes mentioned above have to do with the amount of control exercised over impulses and emotions. Two of the groups reflect little ability to adapt to changes in the social environment.…”