Personality in Swahili culture: A psycho-lexical approach to trait structure in a language deprived of typical trait-descriptive adjectives

This study was an endeavor to map out a personality trait structure of the Swahili language that may be used to develop indigenous eastern African personality assessment instruments. We followed the psycho-lexical approach where we not only identified trait terms from the Swahili dictionary but also from free descriptions collected from indigenous Swahili speakers. In combination, these two routines led to a pool of 3,732 personality-relevant terms, which was reduced in several steps to a set of 948 terms, identified as the most relevant trait-descriptive terms, including a small set of 26 adjectives, a large set of 531 nouns, and a substantial set of 391 verbs. This working set of 948 terms was lastly reduced to a final set of 661 most useful terms, converted into brief communicable sentences based on 439 nouns (comprising 250 type nouns and 189 attribute nouns), 199 verbs, and 23 adjectives. The list of 661 items was used to collect self and peer ratings from 480 university and high school students. An analysis of ratings on the 661 items revealed a six-factor personality trait structure that included Virtue, Imprudence, Negative Valence, Self-importance, Deceptiveness, and Attentive Conversation. Separate analyses were done using the type nouns, the attribute nouns, and the verbs, to assess the differential contribution of these word classes to the makeup of these Swahili Six. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).