Language-Related Expressions of Personality
Abstract
The present research aims to bridge the gap between prospective multi/ plurilingual education and overarching personality psychology by examining how language constructs and basic personality traits are interrelated in pre-service teachers who are fundamental to language education. The first part of the study identifies items within the International Personality Item Pool that are indicative of language constructs, revealing intricate language-related expressions of personality involving listening, learning, speaking, reading and writing. The second part investigates the links between these language constructs and the Big Five personality traits based on a sample of 124 female pre-service primary school teachers aged 19 to 27. The results show significant multivariate relationships, indicating that individuals high in conscientiousness, openness and extraversion, and low in neuroticism, tend to exhibit preferences for listening, learning, speaking and reading. The findings suggest that there are personality-embedded nuanced language-related expressions of trait structures reflecting psychological needs for language competence, relatedness and autonomy in (co-)creation. The research underscores the importance of considering both language constructs and internationally validated personality traits in teachers and their students. It suggests that some teachers and students may naturally align with language-trait structures conducive to quality language teaching and, prospectively, to multi/plurilingual proficiency. Additionally, educational interventions can potentially influence the development of these identified conducive structures over time, offering insights into the stable psychological foundations for language development and consequent pluricultural competence.
Downloads
References
Ackerman, P. L., Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2011). Trait complexes and academic achievement: Old and new ways of examining personality in educational contexts. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(1), 27–40. https://doi.org/10.1348/000709910X522564
Ackerman, P. L., & Lohman, D. F. (2006). Individual differences in cognitive functions. In P. A. Alexander, & P. H. Winne (Eds.), Handbook of educational psychology (pp. 139–161). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Ackerman, P. L., & Rolfhus, E. L. (1999). The locus of adult intelligence: Knowledge, abilities, and nonability traits. Psychology and Aging, 14(2), 314–330. https://doi.org/10.1037//0882-7974.14.2.314
Andersen, S. C., Gensowski, M., Ludeke, S. G., & John, O. P. (2020). A stable relationship between personality and academic performance from childhood through adolescence. An original study and replication in hundred‐thousand‐person samples. Journal of Personality, 88(5), 925–939. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12538
Baas, M. (2019). In the mood for creativity. In J. C. Kaufman, & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of creativity (pp. 257–272). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316979839.014
Benedek, M., Bruckdorfer, R., & Jauk, E. (2020). Motives for creativity: Exploring the what and why of everyday creativity. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 54(3), 610–625. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.396
Bleidorn, W., Schwaba, T., Zheng, A., Hopwood, C. J., Sosa, S. S., Roberts, B. W., & Briley, D. A. (2022). Personality stability and change: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 148(7-8), 588–619. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000365
Brumen, M., & Dagarin Fojkar, M. (2012). Teacher development in Slovenia for teaching foreign languages at the primary level. Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal, 2(3), 27–53. https://doi.org/10.26529/cepsj.346
Bujacz, A., Dunne, S., Fink, D., Gatej, A. R., Karlsson, E., Ruberti, V., & Wronska, M. K. (2016). Why do we enjoy creative tasks? Results from a multigroup randomized controlled study. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 19, 188–197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2015.11.002
Buss, D. M., & Craik, K. H. (1983). The act frequency approach to personality. Psychological Review, 90(2), 105–126. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.90.2.105
Caspi, A. (2000). The child is the father of the man: Personality continuities from childhood to adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(1), 158–172. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.1.158
Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2003). Personality predicts academic performance: Evidence from two longitudinal university samples. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(4), 319–338. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00578-0
Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2006). Intellectual competence and the intelligent personality: A third way in differential psychology. Review of General Psychology, 10(3), 251–267. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.10.3.251
Chen, X., He, J., Swanson, E., Cai, Z., & Fan, X. (2021). Big five personality traits and second language learning: A meta-analysis of 40 years’ research. Educational Psychology Review, 34(2), 851–887. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09641-6
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1985). The NEO Personality Inventory manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (2008). The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). In G. J. Boyle, G. Matthews, & D. H. Saklofske (Eds.), The sage handbook of personality theory and assessment, Vol. 2. Personality measurement and testing (pp. 179–198). Sage Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849200479.n9
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self- determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1104_01
Deci, E. L., Ryan, R. M., Gagné, M., Leone, D. R., Usunov, J., & Kornazheva, B. P. (2001). Need satisfaction, motivation, and well-being in the work organizations of a former eastern bloc country: A cross-cultural study of self-determination. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(8), 930–942. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201278002
DeYoung, C. G., Peterson, J. B., & Higgins, D. M. (2005). Sources of openness/intellect: Cognitive and neuropsychological correlates of the fifth factor of personality. Journal of Personality, 73(4), 825–858. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00330.x
Glăveanu, V. P. (2011). Creativity as cultural participation. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 41(1), 48–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.2010.00445.x
Goldberg, L. R. (1993). The structure of phenotypic personality traits. American Psychologist, 48(1), 26–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.48.1.26
Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In I. Mervielde, I. Deary, F. De Fruyt, & F. Ostendorf (Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe, Vol. 7 (pp. 7–28). Tilburg University Press.
Goldberg, L. R. (2010). Personality, demographics, and self-reported behavioral acts: The development of avocational interest scales from estimates of the amount of time spent in interest- related activities. In C. R. Agnew, D. E. Carlston, W. G. Graziano, & J. R. Kelly (Eds.), Then a miracle occurs: Focusing on behavior in social psychological theory and research (pp. 205–226). Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. C. (2006). The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2005.08.007
Harzer, C., Bezuglova, N., & Weber, M. (2021). Incremental validity of character strengths as predictors of job performance beyond general mental ability and the big five. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.518369
International Personality Item Pool. (2023). International Personality Item Pool: A Scientific Collaboratory for the Development of Advanced Measures of Personality and Other Individual Differences. IPIP. https://ipip.ori.org/
Ivcevic, Z., & Hoffmann, J. (2019). Emotions and creativity: From process to person and product. In G. J. Feist, R. Reiter-Palmon, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of creativity and personality research (pp. 273–295). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316228036.011
Iversen, J. Y. (2022). Pre-service teachers’ narratives about their lived experience of language. Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, 43(2), 140–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2020.1735400
Jerneić, Ž. (n. d.). Croatian translation of the IPIP NEO PI facets. https://ipip.ori.org/CroatianIPIP-NEOFacets.htm
Jerneić, Ž, Galić, Z., & Parmač, M. (2007). Croatian translation and adaptation of the International Personality Item Pool questionnaire - IPIP-300 (author L. R. Goldberg, 2007). Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.
Kaufman, J. C., & Baer, J. (2002). I bask in dreams of suicide: Mental illness, poetry, and women. Review of General Psychology, 6(3), 271–286. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.6.3.271
Li, X. (2022). The significance of Q-methodology as an innovative method for the investigation of affective variables in second language acquisition. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 995660. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.995660
Lindauer, M. S. (2009). Literary creativity and physiognomy: Expressiveness in writers, readers, and literature. In S. B. Kaufman, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The psychology of creative writing (pp. 117–130). Cambridge University Press.
Mammadov, S. (2022). Big five personality traits and academic performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality, 90(2), 222–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12663
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (1997). Personality trait structure as a human universal. American Psychologist, 52(5), 509–516. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.52.5.509
McCrae, R. R., Costa, P. T., Jr, & Martin, T. A. (2005). The NEO-PI-3: A more readable revised NEO Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 84(3), 261–270. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa8403_05
McCrae, R. R., & Greenberg, D. M. (2014). Openness to experience. In D. K. Simonton (Ed.), The Wiley handbook of genius (pp. 222–243). Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118367377.ch12
Meyer, J., Jansen, T., Hübner, N., & Lüdtke, O. (2023). Disentangling the association between the big five personality traits and student achievement: Meta-analytic evidence on the role of domain specificity and achievement measures. Educational Psychology Review, 35(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09736-2
Miyamoto, A., Werner, K., & Schmidt, F. T. C. (2023). A reciprocal perspective on the differential associations between personality traits and multiple indicators of academic achievement. Journal of Personality, 92(4), 1067–1085. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12871
Mlačić, B., & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). An analysis of a cross-cultural personality inventory: The IPIP big-five factor markers in Croatia. Journal of Personality Assessment, 88(2), 168–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223890701267993
Morea, N., & Fisher, L. (2023). Multilingual teachers and teachers of multilinguals: developing pre- service teachers’ multilingual identities during teacher education. The Language Learning Journal, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2023.2251499
Oleynick, V. C., De Young, C. G., Hyde, E., Kaufman, S. B., Beaty, R. E., & Silvia, P. J. (2017). Openness/intellect: The core of the creative personality. In G. J. Feist, R. Reiter-Palmon, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of creativity and personality research (pp. 9–27). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316228036.002
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford University Press, American Psychological Association.
Piirto, J. (2009). The personalities of creative writers. In S. B. Kaufman, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The psychology of creative writing (pp. 3–22). Cambridge University Press.
Poropat, A. E. (2009). A meta-analysis of the five-factor model of personality and academic performance. Psychological Bulletin, 135(2), 322–338. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014996
Puryear, J. S., Kettler, T., & Rinn, A. N. (2017). Relationships of personality to differential conceptions of creativity: A systematic review. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 11(1), 59– 68. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000079
Puryear, J. S., Kettler, T., & Rinn, A. N. (2019). Relating personality and creativity: Considering what and how we measure. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 53(2), 232–245. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.174
Rački, Ž., Bakota, L., & Flegar, Ž. (2015). Word knowledge as predictive of linguistic creative behaviors. Review of Psychology, 22(1‒2), 11‒18. https://hrcak.srce.hr/162044
Rački, Ž., & Flegar, Ž. (2021). Likes to read? Assigning pre-service teachers’ reading-related behaviour to personality and creativity. In U. Mikac, & J. Mehulić (Eds.), 25th Ramiro and Zoran Bujas Days: International scientific psychology conference: book of abstracts (p. 143). Department of Psychology of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatian Psychological Association. https://urn.nsk.hr/urn:nbn:hr:131:657648
Roberts, B. W., & DelVecchio, W. F. (2000). The rank-order consistency of personality traits from childhood to old age: A quantitative review of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 126(1), 3–25. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.126.1.3
Roberts, B. W., Luo, J., Briley, D. A., Chow, P. I., Su, R., & Hill, P. L. (2017). A systematic review of personality trait change through intervention. Psychological Bulletin, 143(2), 117–141. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000088
Russ, S. W. (2003). Play and creativity: Developmental issues. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 47(3), 291–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313830308594
Russ, S. W. (2013). Pretend play in childhood: Foundation of adult creativity. American Psychological Association.
Schroedler, T., & Grommes, P. (2019). Learning about language: Preparing pre-service subject teachers for multilingual classroom realities. Language Learning in Higher Education, 9(1), 223–240. https://doi.org/10.1515/cercles-2019-0014
Shafir, T., Orkibi, H., Baker, F.A., Gussak, D., & Kaimal, G. (2020). The state of the art in creative arts therapies. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 68. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00068
Silvia, P. J., Eddington, K. M., Harper, K. L., Burgin, C. J., & Kwapil, T. R. (2021). Depressive anhedonia and creative self-concepts, behaviors, and achievements. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 55(2), 554-563. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.482
Silvia, P. J., & Kaufman, J. C. (2010). Creativity and mental illness. In J. C. Kaufman, & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of creativity (pp. 381–394). Cambridge University Press.
Silvia, P. J., Nusbaum, E. C., Berg, C., Martin, C., & O’Connor, A. (2009). Openness to experience, plasticity, and creativity: Exploring lower-order, high-order, and interactive effects. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(6), 1087–1090. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.04.015
Unruh, L. E., & McCord, D. M. (2010). Personality traits and beliefs about diversity in pre-service teachers. Individual Differences Research, 8(1), 1–7.
Vygotsky, L. S. (2004). Imagination and creativity in childhood. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 42(1), 7–97.
Zell, E., & Lesick, T. L. (2022). Big five personality traits and performance: A quantitative synthesis of 50+ meta-analyses. Journal of Personality, 90(4), 559–573. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12683
Zhang, J., & Ziegler, M. (2016). How do the big five influence scholastic performance? A big five- narrow traits model or a double mediation model. Learning and Individual Differences, 50, 93– 102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2016.07.011
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors are confirming that they are the authors of the submitted article, which will be published online in the Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal (for short: CEPS Journal) by University of Ljubljana Press (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education, Kardeljeva ploščad 16, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia). The Author’s/Authors’ name(s) will be evident in the article in the journal. All decisions regarding layout and distribution of the work are in the hands of the publisher.
- The Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit themselves to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
