On the cross-language replicability of personality factors

We comment on several aspects of De Raad et al. (2010), who concluded that only three factors of personality description could be recovered across languages. First, small differences in the congruence coefficients of factors were interpreted by De Raad et al. as indicating large differences in factor replicability. Also, in three languages, a factor that corresponded closely to Honesty–Humility was instead identified as Agreeableness. In addition, the analyses included a lexical study in which one factor represented motor skills rather than a dimension of personality. We suggest alternatives to the use of pairwise congruence coefficients in evaluating factor replicability, including marker scale correlations and conceptual similarity ratings. Results based on those methods indicate substantial cross-language replicability of six personality factors.