Personality portrait of psychologists in 170 years of English books

Psychologists' public image has long reflected broader cultural and disciplinary shifts, yet little is known about how their personality stereotypes have changed over time. In this study, we conducted a large-scale analysis of over 16 million English-language books published between 1850 and 2019 to examine how psychologists have been described in terms of the Big Five personality traits. Frequency analysis revealed that conscientiousness was the most frequently mentioned trait across the corpus, followed by openness, agreeableness, extraversion, and neuroticism. The most common personality descriptors associated with psychologists included practical, introspective, analytical, philosophical, and rational. Notably, beginning in the 1960s, openness overtook conscientiousness as the most salient trait. Polarity analysis further showed that, across the entire time period, psychologists were portrayed as higher in openness and conscientiousness, and lower in agreeableness, extraversion, and neuroticism, compared with the general population. Finally, personality similarity analyses revealed that, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, psychologists' portrayals closely resembled those of natural scientists (e.g., geologists, astronomers, biologists). By contrast, by the late 20th and early 21st centuries, psychologists shared personality characteristics with both natural scientists (e.g., chemists, geographers) and humanistic-social scholars (e.g., sociologists, anthropologists, linguists). These findings demonstrate the utility of language-based approaches in capturing long-term changes in occupational stereotypes and contribute to a deeper understanding of psychology's shifting disciplinary identity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).