 13. Personality in Adolescence  307
advances in association with other variables 
such as well-being, psychopathology, and 
performance at school or at work. This pri -
marily variable-  oriented research stream can 
be supplemented by more person-  oriented 
approaches that do not consider each trait in 
isolation from the others but focus on con -
figurations of multiple traits, that is, partic -
ular sets or groupings of traits that mean -
ingfully interact within the individual and 
jointly affect particular outcomes.
This is the function of personality types 
or, more accurately, personality prototypes  
(York & John, 1992) that group individuals 
into person factors depending on the similar -
ity (or dissimilarity) of their personality pro -
files; each person has a loading (or similarity 
coefficient) on each of the putative personal -
ity prototype factors. Using the 100 items of 
the California Q -sort, Robins, John, Caspi, Moffitt, and Stouthamer-  Loeber (1996) dis -
covered three major configurations of per -
sonality traits in a sample of adolescents 
in Pittsburgh, which were consistent with 
results in two other samples they consid -
ered for comparison. Most important, the 
same three personality prototypes were also 
found in several European samples, such 
as preschool German children (Asendorpf 
& van Aken, 1999) and 7- to 15-year-old 
Belgian youth (De Fruyt, Mervielde, & Van 
Leeuwen, 2002; Van Leeuwen, De Fruyt, & 
Mervielde, 2004), using different measures 
and methodological approaches.
Across studies, the resilient  personality 
prototype captures adolescents with gener -
ally healthy functioning and is defined by 
high scores on four of the FFM dimensions 
when keyed in the well-  adjusted direction, 
namely, average to high values on emotional TABLE 13.1.  Broad and Mid-Level Constructs of Childhood and Adolescent Personality
HiPIC ICID BFI-2
Neuroticism Neuroticism Neuroticism
Anxiety
Self-confidenceFearful/insecure
Negative emotionality
ShyAnxiety
Depression
Volatility
Extraversion Extraversion Extraversion
Energy
Expressiveness
Optimism
ShynessActivity level
Positive emotionality
Considerate/Sociable
OpennessEnergy
Sociability
Assertiveness
Imagination Openness Openness
Creativity
Intellect
CuriosityIntellect Creative imagination
Intellectual curiosity
Aesthetic sensitivity
Benevolence Agreeableness Agreeableness
Altruism
Dominance
Egocentrism
Compliance
IrritabilityStrong willed
AntagonismCompassion
Trust/forgiveness
Respect
Conscientiousness Conscientiousness Conscientiousness
Concentration
Persistence
Orderliness
AchievementDistractible
Organized
Achievement orientationProductivity
Organization
Reliability
Note . HiPIC: Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (Mervielde & De Fruyt, 1999); ICID: 
Inventory of Child Individual Differences (Halverson et al., 2003); BFI-2: Big Five Inventory-2 (Soto 
& John, 2017).