This study investigated whether the child behaviors and personality traits parents talk about frequently are also highly valued. The purpose of the study was to adapt Triandis' methodology (Triandis, Bontempo, Leung, & Hui, 1990) of assessing the importance of values across cultures to the assessment of the importance of personality characteristics that parents hold for children. It was hypothesized that what parents talk about are the behaviors and traits that are salient to them but not necessarily highly valued. Previous studies had found that descriptions of personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience were used more frequently in some cultures and social class groups than others. Thirty clusters of descriptors of these personality traits were presented to 50 triads of parents. The clusters were high and low markers of these dimensions of personality. The high markers provided information on cultural values, and the low markers provided information on cultural disvalues. Each triad of parents was timed to determine how fast they reached consensus on the value of the cluster. Preliminary findings indicated differences for race, class, and gender. The study did not find support for Ogbu's (1981) argument for two separate cultures within the African American population. Overall, the findings lend support to the theory that saliency may not constitute value for the personality descriptors provided by parents. (Contains 15 references.) (EV)