자녀에 대한 어머니들의 언어적 묘사에 의한 다섯가지 인성 범주

Big five personality categories by mothers' free language descriptions of their children

본 연구에서는 자녀의 인성에 대한 어머니들의 자유로운 언어적 기술을 기초로 하여 (1) 한국 아동들의 인성의 구조는 어떠한가? (2) 아동들의 인성은 연령과 성에따라 차이가 있는가? (3) 한국 아동들의 인성 특성은 다른 문화권 아동과 비교할 때 어떠한가를 알아 보고자 한다. 부수적으로 본 연구를 통하여 앞으로 한국 아동을 대상으로 영아기에서 청년기 혹은 성인기까지를 포함하는 인성 측정 도구를 제작 할 가능성이 있는지 탐색할 수도 있을 것이다.

Free language descriptions of 150 3-12 year-old Korean children's personalities by their mothers were analyzed for evidenence to support the five-factor model of personality (extroversion-E: agreeableness-a: conscientiousness-C: emotinal stability-N: openness to new experience-O). Using the Korean Lexical Manual for Coding Personality Descriptions of Children developed by the author, the percent occurance of each of the five factors in the mothers' descriptions were as follows: E-28.4%: a-24.5%: c-12.4%: N-10.6%: and O-8.2%. Analysis of variance of the possible age (3, 6, 9, 12) and gender differences existing in the Korean sample revealed that: (1) Boys were more frequently described as extravert at age of 3 and 6, and girls were more frequently described as extravert at age of 9 and 12 (2) frequency of conscientiouness descriptions increased regulary with age from 3 to 12. Further, comparisions of the Korean data with those obtained in previous research involving parents and their children in other cultures (China, Greece, Netherlands, Poland, United States) revealed: (1) Chinese children were more frequently criticized by their parents as being unconscientious than were other children: and, (2) Korean children were less frequently described by their parents as being open to new experience than were other children, It was concluded that the five factor model, orginally developed to characterize adult personality structure, also can be applied to personality descriptions of 3-12 year-old children, including 3-12 year-old Korean children.