ABSTRACT
Gender differences in personality test scores have been the subject of considerable debate among personality, developmental, and cross-cultural psychologists. Two questions have been central in the literature on gender and personality (Feingold, 1994): Do men and women differ in their personality trait scores? and How do we explain gender differences in personality ratings? The answer to the first question provides a framework to interpret gender differences in the distribution of descriptors across the (sub)categories of the personality-descriptive lexicon used by our collaborative research group. Knowledge of the nature of gender differences might help to clarify the meaning of observed sex differences across cultures. The current study extends former research on sex differences in children and adults (for a review, see Feingold, 1994; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974) in two ways: The targets in this study were children between the ages of 3 and 12, freely described by one of their parents, and the focus was on the kind and number of free descriptors assigned to a personality-descriptive category, instead of on a score on a trait or a composite personality scale.
