Shades of traits across languages: Comparisons of Dutch, Polish, Czech, and Serbian structures of behavioral items.

While trait adjectives may be regarded as convenient summary labels for varieties of behavioral expressions with common themes and outcomes, in turn, behaviors typical of a person may be considered as expressions of personality dispositions. In fact, in daily life, behavioral descriptions are way more frequent than the more abstract adjectival descriptors. For the present study, behavioral, verb-based data sets collected in four languages were used for comparison. The data sets each consisted of ratings from 400 participants on 543 Dutch personality verbs, 1,247 participants on 414 Polish personality verbs, 951 participants on 289 Czech personality verbs, and 512 participants on 319 Serbian personality verbs. Principal component analysis-based structures (of different dimensionalities) were compared pairwise across the languages, making use of congruence coefficients. Moreover, using simultaneous component analysis, the verb-based structure common to the four languages, based on a shared data set with ratings from 3,110 participants on 324 personality verbs, was analyzed. Three- and six-component structures based on the common set are discussed in some detail, both showing portions of the Big Five but with no reference to the Intellect-Imagination factor. It is concluded that verb-based behavioral items, in comparison to adjective- and noun-based items, give rise to a diluted and reduced trait-semantic space. To arrive at a full trait-semantic representation, all linguistic categories should be exploited in a joint operation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).