パーソナリティ特性語の望ましさの時代変化

抄録

This study examined the historical changes in the social desirability of 388 descriptive personality words between 1970 and 2020 in Japan. The participants, 353 university students (all men, mean age = 19.9) and 373 employees (all men, mean age = 45.3), rated the social desirability of descriptive personality words. We compared the results obtained in this survey with those of a previous study (Aoki, 1971) and tested for stochastic equality of the two samples. The results indicated that the social desirability for hard-working and diligent descriptive personality words significantly declined over fifty years. A similar tendency was observed in the university students’ sample. We discuss these results by referring to the chronological changes in employers’ preferences in Japanese companies.