Parental Descriptions of Child Personality

This book reports the first attempt in the child development literature to examine the structure of early personality based on parents' free-descriptions of their children. It is an important piece of research because of its cross-national focus on personality development. The authors present a data set that reveals considerable consistency in the parental descriptions of child personality in both western and nonwestern countries. This consistency supports the cultural universality of the "e;Big Five"e; personality factors. The authors' findings lay the foundation for an examination of how these major dimensions of childhood personality structure evolve into adult personality structure.