The present study examined paranoid ideation, most of which is self-referring, in a non-clinical adolescent population. Four hundred and eighty-seven (487; 267 male, 225 female, and 5 unknown) high school students completed a questionnaire that included scales measuring self-reference, fear and avoidance of social relationship, depression (Children’s Depression Inventory; CDI), avoidance and absenteeism from school, and personality characteristics apparently associated with school avoidance and absenteeism. Eighty-one percent of the students endorsed at least one item of the self-reference scale as somewhat applicable or applicable to them. Self-reference tendency had a positive correlation with social phobic tendency and CDI score, and its correlations with school avoidance and related personality traits were positive but weak. The distinction and similarity between self-reference and social phobic tendency were discussed.

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The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between extreme response style (ERS) in rating scale responses and the big five factors of personality. ERS is a tendency to select extreme rating alternatives frequently, regardless of specific item contents. Japanese versions of Perceptual Reaction Test (PRT) and Word Reaction Test (WRT) were used as ERS scales. Correlational analysis of data from three samples, 534 undergraduates in total, showed that ERS correlated positively with playfulness of Tsuji et al.’s Five-Factor Personality Questionnaire (FFPQ, 1998), and openness of NEO-PI-R (Shimonaka et al., 1999). The playfulness and openness scores had such a high correlation that they seemed to measure an identical trait. Although ERS also correlated with some facets of playfulness and openness, low alpha coefficients of some facet subscales would require further investigation of the relationships between ERS and the facets of the big five factors.

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