Adjective Check List


The Adjective Check List is a psychological assessment containing 300 adjectives used to identify common psychological traits. The ACL was constructed by Harrison G. Gough and Alfred B. Heilbrun, Jr. with the goal to assess psychological traits of an individual. The ACL measures 37 scales within 5 categories: modus operandi, need, topical, transactional analysis, and origence-intellectence. To complete the ACL, respondents select the adjectives that they believe describe themselves. Any number of items may be selected from the list of adjectives. In this way, the results are customized to include only those adjectives salient to the individual being assessed. The ACL takes between 10-15 minutes to complete and may be administered to individuals, groups, or used by researchers to describe study participants. The ACL is protected by copyright law, published by Consulting Psychologists Press, and distributed by Mind Garden, Inc.
The ACL was first developed in the early days of the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research at the University of California, Berkeley. It has been used since 1952 by many psychologists worldwide and is one of the 100 most frequently used and cited tests in psychology.

ACL Research and Uses

"The ACL offers several advantages. It is self-administering, may be completed in 10 to 15 minutes, arouses little resistance or anxiety, and has proved useful in studies of highly effective persons in occupations other than politics such as architecture, mathematics, law, medicine, and management.
"Further, as a multidimensional instrument, which taps several domains of personality, the ACL affords an appraisal of positive as well as negative factors in human behavior, thus avoiding the frequently found preoccupation with psychopathological bases of political activity. Additionally, as an established standardized, and quantitative assessment procedure, the ACL reduces the problems of reliability and comparability entailed in studies relying on interviews or on ad hoc, limited use or abbreviated personality measures”.
"We propose that the Gough-Heilbrun Adjective Check List is another broad-range instrument with considerable promise as a general cross-cultural research tool. The argument is based on: the nature of the task, which seems appropriate in many cultural settings; the versatility of the method in addressing a variety of research questions; the fact that the instrument has been translated into many different languages; and the successful use of the method in recent cross-cultural studies".

ACL Success Factors at Work

The ACL scales were realigned in 2012 by Rob Devine in consultation with Gough to highlight how collections of characteristics, skills, and competencies impact success at work. This realignment, called Success Factors at Work, uses 30 of the original 37 ACL scales and assigns each to one of six Work Success Factors which have proven to be central and important to success at work. The six Work Success Factors are:
The ACL consists of 37 scales within 5 categories: modus operandi, need, topical, transactional analysis, and origence-intellectence.

Modus Operandi Scales

The Modus Operandi Scales assess ways in which the individual approached the task of describing themselves.
The Need Scales assess an individual's psychological needs or wants. These were identified as important in Henry A. Murray's Need-Press Theory of Personality.
The Topical Scales assess a diverse set of attributes, potentialities, and role characteristics.
The Transactional Analysis Scales - an Egogram - assess components of ego functioning. These were identified as important by Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis theory of personality.
The Origence-Intellectence Scales assess the balance between preferences for affective-emotional and rational-realistic models of functioning. These were identified as important by George S. Welsh's creativity and intelligence research.