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Application of the Five-Factor Model of Personality to Intergenerational Perception

¹ Department of Psychology, Université François-Rabelais, Tours, France.
² Department of Cognition and Decision, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, France.

Address correspondence to EtÕenne Mullet, Quefes 17 bis, F-31830 Plaisance du Touch, France, E-mail: mullet{at}univ-tlse2.fr

The perception held by respondents in a full range of age groups (young, middle-aged, and old) toward a full range of target age groups (young, middle-aged, and old) was studied in a multidimensional way. The five-factor model of personality was chosen as the model of intergenerational perception and the Gough Adjective Checklist was chosen as the measurement device. A total of 867 participants rated the degree to which they thought 300 different adjectives described people of various ages. Responses were factor analyzed, and the five expected factors were found. For Conscientiousness, the factor scores showed a linearly increasing pattern, with young children and children scoring lower, and the middle-aged, adults, elderly people, and the very old scoring higher. For Openness, the reverse trend was observed, but the real decrease started at the young adult age. For Neuroticism, factor scores were very low when the targets were children, very high when the targets were adolescents, and neither high nor low when the targets were middle-aged, elderly, or very old. For Introversion, the pattern of scores appeared U shaped, with adolescents and young and middle-aged adults on one side and the other targets on the opposite side. Finally, for Agreeableness, the middle-aged adults scored much lower than all the other targets. Overall, the age of the target effect explained on the average more than two thirds of the explained variance, whereas the age of the respondent variable explained less than one tenth of the explained variance. It appears that, in the population, a strong consensus is held concerning the attribution of personality characteristics to various age groups.