Exploring Personality the Natural Way: An Inquiry into Open-Ended Self-Descriptions

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Abstract
A content coding system was developed for people's open-ended self-descriptions. Self-descriptive statements of N = 174 individuals were classified into content clusters based on similarity of meaning. Those clusters, in turn, were organized into content areas of personality functioning (cognitive, motivational and emotional, self-regulatory, social, and whole personality). An analysis of the clusters indicated that: a) the most commonly used clusters described simple and positive characteristics of an individual; b) many open-ended descriptions were similar to widely studied attributes (e.g., self-esteem); but also c) some self-descriptions reflected possibly neglected areas of study (e.g., self-authenticity). Significant correlations were found between self-report scales and self-descriptions with similar meaning.