Junior Middle School Students' Personality Types and Their Development Characteristics

Shi-Chao ZHANG

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2014, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (6) : 1377-1384.

PDF(7230 KB)
PDF(7230 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2014, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (6) : 1377-1384.

Junior Middle School Students' Personality Types and Their Development Characteristics

  • 1,Shi-Chao ZHANG2,3
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Abstract

Purposes:The transition to the adolescent is an important stage of children's personality development. When children enter junior middle school and face new developmental tasks, they need to adapt to both physiological and psychological changes, which make this stage an important research topic. Studies on junior middle school students' personality differences can be conducted with two different groups of methods: variable-centered vs. person-centered. The variable-centered methods focus on subjects' factor scores differences. Person-centered methods refer to within subjects' personality types. There are many personalities within subjects, but there are limited typical personality types at the overall level. Person-centered methods provide the profile plot, and include additional information beyond variable-centered methods. They supplement each other. This study is to examine whether the three personality types of adolescents can be replicated in Chinese context. Procedures:Personality development scale for Chinese junior middle school students has proved its reliability and validity by pilot measures, EFA from a sample of 583 subjects, and CFA from a sample of 592 subjects. The Internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability construction validity and criteria-related validity with NEO-FFI of the scale are ideal as well. Using the Chinese culture as the context, 13-to-15-year-old Chinese children's personality structure is divided into five factors: agreement, intellectual characteristics, conscientiousness, extraversion, and emotional stability, with each including some secondary traits. The structure of the scale is coincided to the Five-Factor Model. Higher factor scores correspond to higher personality development level. In the present study, personality development scale for Chinese junior middle school students is used to measure a sample of 3602 subjects from 14 junior middle schools in the city. And five factors' Cronbach's Alpha coefficients range from .773 to .874. Methods:Latent class analysis and its fit indices such as AIC, BIC,adjusted BIC, entropy, LMR and BLRT output by Mplus are used to identify junior middle school students' personality types. ANOVA and multiple comparisons are used to describe the characteristics of each personality type. Cross-tabulation Chi-square test and multinomial Logistic regression are both used to test and model the development characteristics of personality types using SPSS. Results:According to Robins' theory of self-control and adaptation and the posterior probability of subjects allocation by LCA, junior middle school students' personality can be optimally divided into three types: undercontrolled, overcontrolled and resilient. The resilient personality type is the majority(85.90%),and has the highest scores on all five factors. The overcontrolled personality type has the second highest factor scores on agreement, intellectual characteristics and conscientiousness, moderate extraversion and low emotional stability. The undercontrolled personality type has the lowest scores on most fators. The resilient personality type proportion has a significant trend of decreasing with upgrading while the other two types increase. The resilient personality type proportion of girls is higher than that of boys significantly. The interactive effect between grade and gender on personality types development is not significant. Conclusions:According to the self-control and adaptation theory and based on Five-Factor Model of personality, the rationality of three junior middle school students' personality types are identified under the context of Chinese culture; The resilient personality type is the majority(85.90%) and adaptive, while the undercontrolled(6.7%) and overcontrolled(7.4%) personality types both have high risk of adaptation. There are significant grade and gender effects on personality types.

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Junior Middle School Students / LCA / Personality Types / Development Characteristics

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Shi-Chao ZHANG. Junior Middle School Students' Personality Types and Their Development Characteristics[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2014, 37(6): 1377-1384
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