The structure of the French personality lexicon

The structure of the French personality lexicon was investigated. Self-rati ngs on the 388 most frequently used French personality-descriptive adjectiv es were obtained from 415 French-speaking people. The scree plot of eigenva lues indicated six large factors. In the varimax-rotated six-factor solutio n, the four largest factors, in order of size, corresponded fairly closely to the Big Five dimensions of Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Extravers ion, and Conscientiousness. The fifth factor was similar to the Honesty dim ension found in several other languages. The sixth factor was defined by Im agination-related terms, but not by Intellect-related terms. Solutions invo lving one to five factors were also investigated and correlations between t he factors that emerged from these different solutions are presented. The r esults are discussed in relation to other lexical studies of personality st ructure. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.