Big Five Personalities Across 200 Years: A Large-Scale Study on the Description of Male- and Female-Dominated Occupations

Abstract The present study aims to investigate the issue of Big Five personalities from the perspective of gendered-segregated occupations. Descriptions of major male- and female-dominated occupations across 200 years were examined in a large-scale syntactically annotated corpus. Some results of interest were found. First, for both male- and female-dominated occupations, Agreeableness was found the most frequently occurring trait category, while Neuroticism was the least frequently occurring one. Second, in terms of the trends of the use of the Big Five traits, the past two centuries witnessed an overall drop in Agreeableness traits and a growth in Neuroticism traits for both male- and female dominated occupations. For Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness, their trends differed between the two gendered occupational groups. Possible reasons for our findings, such as those pertaining to historical background, sociocultural environments, and implicit public perceptions, are offered. Significance of our work is also discussed.