Contact Information:

490 Boston Avenue
Department of Psychology
Tufts University
Medford, MA 02155
USA

Telephone: (603) 866-9878

Ivcevic, Z., Mayer, J. D., & Brackett, M. A. (2003).   Exploring personality the natural way: An inquiry into open-ended self-descriptions. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 22, 209-236.

A content coding system was developed for people's open-ended self-descriptions. Self-descriptive statements of N=174 individuals were classified into content clusters based on similarity of meaning. Those clusters, in turn, were organized into content areas of personality functioning (cognitive, motivational and emotional, self-regulatory, social, and whole personality). An analysis of the clusters indicated that: a) the most commonly used clusters described simple and positive characteristics of an individual; b) many open-ended descriptions were similar to widely studied attributes (e.g., self-esteem); but also c) some self-descriptions reflected possibly neglected areas of study (e.g., self-authenticity). Significant correlations were found between self-report scales and self-descriptions with similar meaning.