“The Best Man in the World”: Attitudes Toward Personality Traits

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of attitudes toward traits, a bipolar evaluative construct.  It is argued that attitude toward traits is a supplementary characteristic for conventional personality traits.  In this regard, a second dimension of personality traits emerges where each trait can be characterized on another level, a level of attitudes.  The study also demonstrates the psychometric utility of a Russian version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI; John, Donahue & Kentle, 1991; John, Naumann & Soto, 2008).  The secondary factor structure of the Big Five corresponding to the hypothesis on stability/plasticity (DeYoung, Peterson, & Higgins, 2002) was obtained.  The BFI was also shown to be employed as a tool to measure attitudes toward traits, and the five-factor structure was replicated as applied to attitudes toward traits.  Different traits demonstrated different sizes of relationships with attitudes toward respective traits.