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Parental free descriptions of their infants/toddlers: do they resemble the Five-Factor Model of personality?
Maja Zupančič
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Written in English. | Published: September 1, 2001
Abstract: During the past decade, developmental psychologists have begun to search for the antecedents of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) adult personality dimensions in childhood. Based on a free-descriptive approach the Five-Factor domains were strongly replicated in descriptions by parents of 3 to 12-year-old children in different countries. This study was designed to examine whether the parental free-descriptions of their infants and toddlers could as well be categorised by the FFM taxonomy. It compared the frequency of category use for several groups of children to determine how they might vary by the child's age, gender, and by which parent provided the descriptions. 101 Slovenian children (mean age 14.4 months) were described by 100 mothers and 85 fathers. Their expressions were coded by an elaborate coding scheme including five main categories, with three subcategories each, and nine additional categories outside the FFM. Approximately four fifths of the parental responses were classified within the FFM, which proves the taxonomy useful for describing the infants and toddlers. No significant differences in the proportions of the descriptors were obtained by the rater and by the child's gender for any of the (sub)categories. Several age differences between the parental perceptions of infants and toddlers were found significant. They are suggested to reflect rapid behavioural changes during the first two years of the child's life. These changes are supposed to shift the parental focus of attention to additional and/or different aspects of the child's behaviour in his/her second year compared to the first year. Thus the parents use somewhat different aspects of the child's behaviour to make social comparisons between the toddlers than between the infants.
Keywords: infants, toddlers, parental descriptors, personality, Five-Factor Model
