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They found that terms people considered to be important were used most frequently;  these terms also applied to more people, to reflected more stable person characteristics, and to pertained to a wider range of behaviors.
People like to describe others in ways that maximize generalizability across a broad range of behaviors, rather than using specific examples.

Results: Terms Used to Describe Personality

Leising, D., Scharloth, J., Lohse, O., & Wood, D. (2014). What types of terms do people use when describing an individual’s personality?. Psychological science, 25(9), 1787-1794.

What Types of Terms Do People Use When
Describing an Individual’s Personality?

Table 1: Descriptive Characteristics of Terms

Traits that are considered the most desirable and undesirable were considered to be more important to know for one's personality.

Figure 1: Terms Used to Describe Personality 

There was little relationship among a trait's observability and abstraction (how wide of a range of behaviors it pertains to), but it was slightly related to it's importance. Desirability and base rate (how many people they can apply it to for comparisons) seemed to have the highest correlations with the other aspects.

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