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Bell-Shaped Distribution of Personality Traits

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonyms

Normal curve

Definition

A symmetrical, unimodal distribution of individual differences along a personality trait dimension.

Introduction

The distribution of most normal personality traits tends to have a more or less symmetrical, bell-shaped form. Such a distribution has a single mode, its mean is very close to its median, the majority of individuals congregate in the vicinity of the mean and median, and relatively few individuals fall in the two tails. Bell-shaped distributions are sometimes incorrectly equated to the normal (Gaussian) distribution, but that distribution is only one form that bell-shaped distributions can take. For instance, non-Gaussian bell-shaped distributions include the logistic and Student’s t distributions, and they may differ from the normal curve in being narrower with heavier tails (leptokurtic) or flatter with fewer extreme outliers (platykurtic).

The processes that give rise to bell-shaped distributions are consistent with what is known about the...

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References

  • Meehl, P. E. (1992). Factors and taxa, traits and types, differences of degree and differences in kind. Journal of Personality, 60, 117–174.

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  • Micceri, M. (1989). The unicorn, the normal curve, and other improbable creatures. Psychological Bulletin, 105, 156–166.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Nick Haslam

Authors
  1. Nick Haslam
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Correspondence to Nick Haslam .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Lakehead University, Orillia, Canada

    Beth A. Visser

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

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Haslam, N. (2016). Bell-Shaped Distribution of Personality Traits. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1047-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1047-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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