THE PERCEPTION OF PERSONALITY THROUGH TRAIT SORTING: A COMPARISON OF TRAIT SAMPLING TECHNIQUES

This study was designed to extend the work of Rosenberg, Nelson, and Vivekananthan (1968) on the multidimensional structure of personality impressions by replicating their study with one methodologioal change. Namely, instead of allowing subjects to use each trait in only one description, subjects were allowed to use each trait in as many descriptions as they desired. A measure of trait co-occurrence for each pair of traits was used in Kruskal's muItidimentional sealing program. Canonical correlations were used to compare the present configurations with those obtained by Rosenberg et al. (1968). The two solutions were similar. Linear multiple regression was then used to locate axes in both the two- and three-dimensional solutions for each of five independently rated properties of the traits. The nonevduative dimensiom were less orthogonal than in the Rosenberg et al. (1968) study.