Big-6 Markers of the Malay Indigenous Personality Factor Structure: A Psycho-lexical Approach

Aim: The aim of the present study is to develop a personality scale based on the initial lexical Malay personality factor structure by replicating the pioneering study and enabling the development of the adjectival personality markers. An indigenous approach to the study of personality factor structure, i.e., psycho-lexical approach has a prominent spot in personality psychology. This approach proposes the idea that individual differences can be culled out from the language, hence, with different languages, one can expect that there will be difference in personality factor structure across languages.  In Malaysia, a pioneering effort by Fauzaman (2016) has researched Malay personality factor structure from the Malay language corpus. The study found a six personality factor structure from 260 adjectival personality descriptors, namely, Nefarious, Emotionality, Virtues, Accommodative, Extraversion and Indulgence. Methods and Key Findings: Using a combined emic-etic approach (n=802), results of the present study confirmed the initial six personality factor structure. Findings also illustrated that the six-factor is emically unique to the Malay and the Emotionality and Extraversion factors appeared slightly different from the mainstream Big-5 and Big-6 HEXACO. The adjectival personality descriptors of this factor structure were further examined on their factor loadings for the development of the Malay Big-6 Personality Markers. The markers demonstrated sound psychometric properties with α ≥ 0.9 across all factors. It can, thus, be further validated to other ethnic groups and various settings in Malaysia. 

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