Cultural differences in personality have probably interested humans since the earliest intergroup contact. And with the development of language, words for personality attributes likely emerged to describe individual and cultural differences. However, cross-cultural psychologists recognize that we cannot determine whether cultural groups differ in personality without first addressing more basic questions. For one, we must determine whether personality attributes such as extraversion and conscientiousness are defined equivalently, or represented by comparable behaviors, in different cultures. If not, cross-cultural comparisons of these attributes or traits may not be meaningful. Even more fundamental is whether conceptions of “personality”—and the impact or role of personality attributes—are the same across cultures. For example, according to many psychologists, Americans and members of other individualistic cultures tend to think of personality as internal dispositions of individuals that are relatively consistent across situations and time and useful in predicting behavior. In contrast, some cultural psychologists question whether people in all cultures think of personality as an “internal package of attributes,” or expect such attributes to predict behavior as well as social roles, norms, or situational factors (Markus & Kitayama, 1998; Triandis, 1995). Importantly, cross-cultural studies can help to resolve questions about the nature, determinants, and consequences of personality in diverse cultures.
The three volumes of Personality across Cultures address a number of other central questions regarding the relationship between culture and personality. Table 1.1 lists a number of these questions with links to the primary chapter contributions that address them. The highest level of organizational structure for the topic is provided by the three volumes themselves, the contents of which are consistent with the following conception of personality:
| Question | Most Relevant Chapter Contributions |
|---|---|
What is the historical background of research on personality across cultures? What topics are currently being investigated? |
Church, Vol. 1, Chapter 1 |
To what extent is the organization or structure of personality attributes universal or unique across cultures? |
McCrae, Vol. 1, Chapter 2 Rossier, Ouedraogo, & Dahourou, Vol. 1, Chapter 3 F. M. Cheung, Fan, & S. F. Cheung, Vol. 1, Chapter 4 Fetvadjiev, Meiring, Nel, Hill, & van de Vijver, Vol. 1, Chapter 5 De Raad & Mlačić, Vol. 1, Chapter 6 Schwartz, Vol. 2, Chapter 5 Alessandri & Vecchione, Vol. 2, Chapter 8 |
Do personality inventories measure characteristics that are relevant for people in all cultures, or do we need to construct inventories that are unique to particular cultures? |
McCrae, Vol. 1, Chapter 2 Rossier, Ouedraogo, & Dahourou, Vol. 1, Chapter 3 F. M. Cheung, Fan, & S. F. Cheung, Vol. 1, Chapter 4 Fetvadjiev, Meiring, Nel, Hill, & van de Vijver, Vol. 1, Chapter 5 van de Vijver & He, Vol. 1, Chapter 9 |
Can average national and regional differences in levels of personality traits be detected using existing inventories, or do biases and inequivalences make such comparisons inaccurate or misleading? |
Allik & Realo, Vol. 1, Chapter 7 Rentfrow & Jokela, Vol. 1, Chapter 8 van de Vijver & He, Vol. 1, Chapter 9 |
Are there cultural differences in the consistency of traits in self-concepts and behavior? |
Church & Katigbak, Vol. 1, Chapter 10 Cross & Lam, Vol. 2, Chapter 1 Boucher & English, Vol. 3, Chapter 7 |
Do personality traits predict behaviors and consequential outcomes to a similar degree across cultures? |
Church & Katigbak, Vol. 1, Chapter 10 |
Do cultures differ in the situations encountered, how situations are construed, and the traits and behaviors they elicit? How can situations be assessed across cultures? |
Guillaume, Stauner, & Funder, Vol. 1, Chapter 11 |
Are there cultural differences in conceptions of self and identity and associated psychological processes? |
Cross & Lam, Vol. 2, Chapter 1 Morling & Lee, Vol. 2, Chapter 3 Smith & Easterbrook, Vol. 3, Chapter 6 Boucher & English, Vol. 3, Chapter 7 Kim, Kwon, M. Seo, & D. Seo, Vol. 3, Chapter 9 |
What is the relationship between culture and other important aspects of personality, including cognition, emotions, values, beliefs, motives, and life narratives? |
Kim, Nasiri, & Sasaki, Vol. 2, Chapter 2 Morling & Lee, Vol. 2, Chapter 3 Chirkov, Vol. 2, Chapter 4 Schwartz, Vol. 2, Chapter 5 Saroglou, Vol. 2, Chapter 6 McAdams & Guo, Vol. 2, Chapter 7 |
Can we identify universal types or configurations of traits across cultures? |
Alessandri & Vecchione, Vol. 2, Chapter 8 |
What impact do bilingualism and biculturalism have on personality, its assessment, and adjustment? |
Chen & Au, Vol. 2, Chapter 9 |
What personality attributes are most important in adjusting and performing competently in new cultures and multicultural contexts? |
van der Zee & van Oudenhoven, Vol. 2, Chapter 10 |
What do evolutionary and genetic perspectives contribute to our understanding of personality across cultures? |
Simpson, Griskevicius, Szepsenwol, & Young, Vol. 3, Chapter 1 Camperio Ciani, Vol. 3, Chapter 2 Kim, Nasiri, & Sasaki, Vol. 2, Chapter 2 |
Can cultural dimensions and aspects of personality be linked to underlying brain structures and neural processes, and do these structures and processes differ across cultures? |
Rule, Mar, & Bjornsdottir, Vol. 3, Chapter 3 |
What aspects of ecological or natural environments influence culture and personality? |
Murray & Schaller, Vol. 3, Chapter 4 Van de Vliert, Vol. 3, Chapter 5 Gelfand, Harrington, & Fernandez, Vol. 3, Chapter 8 |
What dimensions of culture influence personality, and how can they be measured? |
Smith & Easterbrook, Vol. 3, Chapter 6 Boucher & English, Vol. 3, Chapter 7 Gelfand, Harrington, & Fernandez, Vol. 3, Chapter 8 Kim, Kwon, M. Seo, and D. Seo, Vol. 3, Chapter 9 Saucier, Vol. 3, Chapter 10 |
What are the unique conceptual and methodological challenges in investigating personality across cultures, and what methods are used to address them? |
Allik & Realo, Vol. 1, Chapter 7 van de Vijver & He, Vol. 1, Chapter 9 |
A full accounting of a person’s life requires an examination of the unique patterning of dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and life narratives that characterize that life, all grounded ultimately in the evolutionary demands of the species and, at the same time, complexly influenced by culture. (McAdams & Pals, 2006, p. 210)
Volume 1, titled Trait Psychology across Cultures, focuses on the cross-cultural study of dispositional traits. Dispositional traits refer to broad dimensions of individual differences such as extraversion and conscientiousness that many psychologists view as biologically based basic tendencies or temperaments. Volume 2, titled Culture and Characteristic Adaptations, focuses on the study of characteristic adaptations and life narratives across cultures as well as aspects of personality and adjustment associated with bilingualism/biculturalism and intercultural experiences. Characteristic adaptations refer to the self-concepts, emotions, motives, values, beliefs, and so forth that account for additional individual differences and that may result from the interaction of basic tendencies and environmental influences, including culture (McCrae & Costa, 2008). Life narratives refer to the integrated personal stories that individuals construct to attain a sense of meaning, coherence, and identity in their lives. Finally, Volume 3, titled Evolutionary, Ecological, and Cultural Contexts of Personality, addresses the evolutionary and ecological pressures, dimensions of culture, and neurological substrates that are associated with cultural and individual differences. Readers of the three volumes should obtain a fairly thorough picture of the current status of the field as well as future directions for research. This is important because a more complete understanding of human personality will result from the study of people in all cultures, not just those in a particular country such as the United States.
The purpose of this introductory chapter is threefold. First, I provide a historical overview of the field, also noting, where relevant, how early developments presaged current efforts. Second, I offer brief overviews of each of the chapters in the three volumes, organized around salient topics that are presently being investigated. Third, I provide brief summaries or comments for each topic and, in a concluding section, note areas where knowledge appears to be more versus less definitive.
Jahoda and Krewer (1997) reviewed ideas about human diversity from classical Greek and Roman antiquity through the Enlightenment period (see also Jahoda, 1993). They described the dominant ideology regarding human diversity during classical antiquity as one of ethnocentrism and limited interest in other peoples. Nonetheless, they also noted the emergence and need for ethnographic descriptions during the expansion of the Greek and Roman empires. The idea of environmental determinism, including the influence of climate, as an explanation for human diversity was also proposed. For example, Poseidonus (135–51 BC) referred to the dominant psychological feature characterizing each cultural group’s institutions and habits—for example, the purported reflection, moderation, and control of southern peoples (including Greece and Rome) versus the purported emotionality, passion, and courage of northern peoples—an approach that foreshadowed the configurationist ideas associated with the culture-and-personality school during the first half of the 20th century. During the Renaissance, waves of exploration, conquest, and trade brought increasing interest in accounts of other peoples, but these accounts were largely descriptive, biased, and stereotypical.
The Enlightenment period brought a shift toward more scientific study of culture and peoples based on systematic observation and critical reflection. According to Jahoda and Krewer (1997), the emphasis on reason as the essential feature of all humans led to assumptions regarding the unity and equality of mankind—a belief later referred to as the “psychic unity of mankind” and adopted by many current cross-cultural psychologists (see Jahoda, 1993, regarding the origins of this concept). Others, however, endorsed a more relativistic stance that viewed the human mind as shaped by, and deeply embedded within, sociocultural contexts—a perspective currently emphasized by cultural psychologists1 (e.g., Heine, 2001; Markus & Kitayama, 1991, 1998). Language was seen as playing a prominent role in understanding the “mentality” of different peoples. For example, Wilhelm von Humboldt—sometimes viewed as the founder of “Völkerpsychologie” (Folk Psychology)—argued that people who share a language develop a similar subjectivity or worldview—a proposal anticipating the later Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (Whorf, 1956).
The first formal program of Völkerpsychologie was proposed in Germany in 1860 by Lazarus and Steinthal in their introduction to the first issue of Zeitschrift fur Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (Journal for Folk Psychology and Linguistics) (Jahoda & Krewer, 1997). The proposal called for a historical study of mankind as a whole to reveal general laws of the mind combined with studies of diverse peoples to reveal the factors underlying specific manifestations of these laws. Here, we observe a resemblance to the distinction between etic (universal) and emic (indigenous, culture-specific) approaches later outlined for cross-cultural psychology (Berry, 1969). Subsequently, between 1900 and 1920 the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, also in Germany, published a 10-volume Völkerpsychologie series. Jahoda and Krewer (1997) observed that this work—comprised largely of ethnographic material with few theoretical or methodological insights—was generally ignored, in large part because mainstream psychology was seeking to establish itself as a natural science rather than cultural science.
A field referred to as culture-and-personality studies emerged in anthropology—with the participation of psychologists and psychiatrists—in the first half of the 20th century and flourished in the 1930s and 1940s (LeVine, 2001). Many contributors to the field posited a close correspondence or isomorphism between cultural “configurations” as integrated wholes and individual personality. This view of culture as “personality writ large” was particularly evident in Ruth Benedict’s (1934) Patterns of Culture, in which she portrayed Pueblo Indian culture and personality as Apollonian (characterized by moderation and restraint) in contrast to the Dionysian culture and personality of Plains Indians (characterized by excess, indulgence, and initiative). Others introduced the concepts of basic personality structure (Kardiner, 1939), basic personality type (Kardiner, Linton, Du Bois, & West, 1945), and modal personality (Du Bois, 1944) to capture similar ideas about the personality features or configurations that were shared by the bulk of the society’s members or were at least the most frequent, as a result of the early experiences that they have in common. For example, the essence of Kardiner’s theory was that primary institutions such as socialization and kinship determine the basic personality structure of a society, which, in turn, impacts secondary institutions such as religion, art, and folklore. Other culture-and-personality researchers, however, placed greater emphasis on individual variability in personality and argued that the impact of culture could differ for each individual in the society (Sapir, 1956; Wallace, 1961). In addition, while Freud’s psychoanalytic theory influenced much of this research, elements of the theory were applied in an unsystematic and idiosyncratic manner (Inkeles & Levinson, 1954), and some anthropologists sought to demonstrate that important aspects of the theory (e.g., the Oedipal complex) were culture-bound (LeVine, 2001; Spiro, 1982).
During and after World War II, efforts to apply the ideas and methods of culture-and-personality studies to describe the national character of people in large, complex nation states such as Germany, Japan, and Russia (e.g., Benedict, 1946; Gorer & Rickman, 1949) led to a crisis in the field and its virtual abandonment (Bock, 2000; LeVine, 2001). Although culture-and-personality studies continue today in the field of psychological anthropology, with a journal Ethos, the field is small and only weakly connected to academic psychology (LeVine, 2001).2 Bock (2000) criticized the national character studies for (a) their questionable assumption that child-rearing practices can be linked to predictable adult personality characteristics; (b) their characterizations of the personalities of whole populations (e.g., fanatical Japanese, authoritarian Germans) while ignoring the considerable variability within any cultural group; (c) their overreliance on responses to projective tests that may not have equivalent meanings in different cultural groups; and (d) their potential for subjective and biased descriptions of cultural groups. An example of the last point was provided by Barnouw (1979), who observed that descriptions of Japanese national character during the war emphasized negative features such as compulsiveness and fanaticism, whereas postwar analyses were much more favorable, for example, emphasizing Japanese collaterality and need for achievement. Bock (2000) warned that some of these criticisms might also apply to current research on personality and culture—for example, the use of mean scores on personality inventories to characterize and compare entire nations.
Also emerging toward the end of World War II—and largely grounded in psychoanalytic theory—were landmark studies on the authoritarian personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Christie & Jahoda, 1953). The general hypothesis was that an individual’s political, economic, and social convictions—including those of a fascistic or authoritarian nature—often form a broad and coherent pattern reflecting deep personality structure, derived in part from one’s early family experiences. A number of cross-cultural studies from about 1950 to 1980 compared mean scores and correlates (especially prejudice) using the California F scale, a measure of fascistic or authoritarian attitudes (e.g., Meade & Whittaker, 1967; Mynhardt, 1980; Orpen, 1971). However, some evidence indicated that scores on the F scale did not predict prejudice in societies in which cultural norms sanctioned such prejudice (e.g., in apartheid-era South Africa; Orpen, 1971; Pettigrew, 1960), suggesting that personality may not be the dominant determinant of prejudice in such contexts. In addition, questions arose regarding the equivalence of meaning of the F scale items across cultures and the possibility that the exclusively positively keyed items were impacted by acquiescence response bias (Peabody, 1961). In this regard, the studies foreshadowed issues of measurement equivalence and response styles that continue to challenge the study of personality across cultures today.
A few authors have noted the limited emphasis on culture by personality researchers after the demise of the culture-and-personality studies in anthropology, in particular, during the period from about 1960 to 1985 (Church, 2010; McCrae, 2000). Nonetheless, there were notable exceptions in the research programs of some personality and social psychologists, some of which foreshadowed more recent developments. These early efforts also revealed a shift from the ethnographic and interpretative methods used by anthropologists to study culture and personality—with their inherent challenges for replication—to the quantitative data and statistical methods typically employed by psychologists. In this section, I overview some of the most prominent research programs during this period.
In the 1960s and 1970s, psychologists and sociologists interested in cultural change provided evidence in multiple cultures for a coherent syndrome of values, beliefs, and behavioral tendencies characterizing the modern or innovating personality—which was described as open to experience, independent from authority figures, active with a strong sense of personal efficacy, and ambitious and future-oriented (Dawson, 1973; Doob, 1960; Inkeles & Smith, 1974). Both classic and more recent (e.g., Yang, 1996) portrayals of individual modernity resemble aspects of Big Five openness to experience and extraversion as well as Schwartz’s openness to change versus conservation value dimension (see Schwartz, Volume 2, Chapter 5).
McClelland (1961) used creative means (e.g., coding of children’s stories) to assess need for achievement imagery in various cultures as a predictor of economic development. In one study, conducted in 23 countries, a high correlation was found between achievement imagery in children’s stories in 1925 and the amount of growth in economic development between 1925 and 1950, as assessed by increases in electricity usage. Jahoda (1980) described McClelland’s cross-cultural work on achievement motivation as exceptional in its theoretical grounding, in contrast to many cross-cultural studies during this period, which “remained innocent of theory” (p. 71). Early on, however, some researchers suggested that McClelland’s emphasis on individualistic striving and personal mastery might be culture-bound, noting that in some societies socially oriented motives of affiliation, approval, meeting obligations, and family achievement may be more important (De Vos, 1968), a theme echoed in more recent cross-cultural research on motivation and agency (Markus, 2016; Tao & Hong, 2014; Yu & Yang, 1994).
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s numerous cross-cultural studies tested aspects of Witkin and colleagues’ theory of psychological differentiation (Witkin, Dyk, Faterson, Goodnough, & Karp, 1962), which postulated both development trends and individual differences in the ability to differentiate objects from their surrounding fields in perception (i.e., field independent vs. dependent or analytic vs. global cognitive styles) plus correlated individual differences in the tendency to develop a sense of identity separate from external sources of information. The approach served to bridge aspects of cognitive and personality functioning and inspired the concept of cognitive style (Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1990). Witkin and Berry (1975) reviewed much of the early and generally supportive evidence linking differentiation to (a) ecological factors—differentiation is greater in migratory hunters and gatherers than in sedentary agriculturalists and pastoralists because of the greater adaptive need of the former groups to articulate aspects of the physical environment; (b) societal institutions—differentiation is lower in tight cultures where adherence to authorities and social pressure to conform are greater; and (c) socialization practices—differentiation is greater when socialization emphasizes independence and achievement rather than responsibility and obedience. More recent summaries of this area of research have noted greater support for the theory in studies conducted across societies than in comparisons of subgroups within societies (Mishra, 1997; Segall et al., 1990). This extensive research program is noteworthy in foreshadowing many of the distinctions used by researchers today to differentiate cultures (tight vs. loose, holistic vs. analytic) and individuals (independent vs. interdependent self-construals). In addition, the ecocultural model developed by Berry as a theoretical framework for this research (see Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992) underlies much current research on culture and personality (Triandis & Suh, 2002). The model depicts the relationships between culture and psychology as complex and highly interactive, including ecological, sociopolitical, cultural, and biological factors.
Beginning in the 1960s, Triandis and colleagues (see Triandis, 1972) devised innovative methods (e.g., role differential, antecedent-consequent method) to assess cultural differences in subjective culture, defined as each cultural group’s characteristic ways of perceiving their social environments. Aspects of subjective culture include roles, associations, norms, beliefs, stereotypes, expectations, values, and evaluations, among other variables. In subsequent work, Triandis (1995) emphasized how the elements of subjective culture are organized into patterns or “cultural syndromes,” such as individualism, collectivism, complexity, and tightness that can be used to describe cultures. Triandis’s work on cultural syndromes, particularly individualism-collectivism, underlies much current work on the conceptualization and assessment of culture (see Volume 3, Chapters 6–10).
Beginning in the 1970s, Spielberger and Diaz-Guerrero (1976, 1983, 1986; see also Spielberger, Diaz-Guerrero, & Strelau, 1990) reported work on the translation of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory into numerous languages. The instrument and associated theory distinguished anxiety as a transitory emotional state versus a relatively stable personality trait. Typical steps included direct translations (often with some adaptation but rare backtranslation), evaluation of the translations by experts, and the use of expert judgments and item-total correlations to select the best items for the culture of interest. Some construct validation was done in specific cultures, for example, by comparing scores under stressful (e.g., prior to an exam) and nonstressful conditions or by relating scores to academic or athletic anxiety and performance. The question of whether bilinguals score differently in their two languages was also raised in some studies—foreshadowing an ongoing question in personality assessment with bilinguals (see Chen and Au, Volume 2, Chapter 9). The primary focus of these studies was on adaptation and application of the instrument in new cultural contexts, whereas cross-cultural comparisons of anxiety and elaborations of the unique sociocultural factors that might impact anxiety received little emphasis. Thus, Draguns (1988) concluded that the studies provided limited knowledge regarding the interaction of culture and anxiety. In addition, although the researchers examined measurement equivalence using methods available at the time (i.e., reliability comparisons, bilingual test-retest method, some exploratory factor analyses), the studies lacked the more sophisticated statistical methods currently used to examine measurement equivalence across cultures.
Starting in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1990s, researchers have investigated cultural differences in neuroticism, extraversion, and psychoticism using Hans Eysenck’s measures. The usual procedure involved (a) translation of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire or Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire into a new language, (b) use of congruence coefficients to compare factor structures in the new cultures with the British factor structure, and (c) scoring of the scales in the cultures to be compared using only those items with acceptable and similar factor loadings in each culture (e.g., Barrett, Petrides, Eysenck, & Eysenck, 1998; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1983). In general, equivalence of factor structures has been good, although a nontrivial number of items typically fail to generalize well across cultures.
In 1971, Lynn published Personality and National Character, in which he pioneered the use of demographic characteristics to assess culture-level neuroticism (e.g., rates of suicide, alcoholism, and accidents). The approach was subsequently extended to quantify culture-level extraversion (Lynn & Hampson, 1975) using national rates of crime, murder, illegitimacy, and divorce (all considered indicators of high societal extraversion). Good convergence was found between neuroticism and extraversion scores based on Eysenck’s inventories and these demographic indices. Higher neuroticism scores were found in advanced Western nations compared to Arabic and Latin American nations. In addition, countries defeated during World War II showed greater postwar increases in neuroticism scores than other countries. Based on such findings, Lynn (1971, 1981) proposed a stress theory to account for national differences in neuroticism, with the most relevant stresses being military defeat and occupation, political instability, and economic disruptions associated with rapid economic development and industrialization. Higher extraversion scores in New World nations (i.e., Australia, Canada, South African Whites, the United States), as compared to “old European nations” (e.g., France, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom), were attributed to selective migration, with extraverts being more likely to emigrate due to their preference for novelty, excitement, and risk taking. In a more recent study across 37 countries, Lynn and Martin (1995) found extraversion negatively related to suicide rates and positively related to homicide rates; neuroticism positively related to an independent measure of anxiety; and psychoticism negatively related to work ethic.
One limitation of these studies was that only metric (i.e., factor loading) equivalence and not scalar (intercept) equivalence of the instruments was addressed in these comparisons (Bijnen, van der Net, & Poortinga, 1986). There is also some evidence that only the Extraversion and Neuroticism scales and not the Psychoticism and Lie (Social Desirability) scales show equivalent structures at the individual and country levels, suggesting that the meaning of the latter two constructs may differ at the two levels (van Hemert, van de Vijver, Poortinga, & Georgas, 2002). Finally, until recently (van Hemert et al., 2002), these studies could not benefit from the availability of measures of cultural dimensions that investigators currently use in attempts to explain cultural differences in mean trait levels.
On the positive side, Lynn (1971) pioneered the use of demographic indices, which are sometimes used in current studies to examine the political, economic, social, and behavioral correlates of country or regional differences in traits (e.g., see Rentfrow and Jokela, Volume 1, Chapter 8). Lynn’s selective migration hypothesis has also been adopted by current researchers as a plausible explanation for geographical differences in traits (see Rentfrow and Jokela, Volume 1, Chapter 8; Camperio Ciani, Volume 3, Chapter 2).
Paunonen and Ashton (1998) reviewed the appropriateness for cross-cultural use of several popular personality inventories. Although the authors emphasized more recent studies, their review makes clear that cross-cultural research on inventories such as the California Psychological Inventory, Comrey Personality Scales, and Sixteen Personality Factors (16PF) questionnaire continued during the period from 1960 to 1985. Cross-cultural studies of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI/MMPI-2), an objective measure of psychopathology, have also continued unabated for decades (Butcher, Lim, & Nezami, 1998; Butcher & Pancheri, 1976). Paunonen and Ashton concluded that the evidence for cross-cultural structural equivalence of various personality inventories is generally good, but the important question of whether scores on these inventories predict significant societal criteria in a similar manner across cultures has been much less studied, a question taken up by Church and Katigbak in Volume 1, Chapter 10.
In summary, the research efforts described in this section demonstrate that research on culture and personality continued throughout this period. Nonetheless, there is little question that cross-cultural research on personality began to accelerate significantly in the 1980s, as described in the next section.
A number of developments beginning in the mid-1980s and continuing today have contributed to a sustained increase in research on personality across cultures. Regarding culture, the pioneering work of Hofstede (1980) and subsequent work by Triandis (e.g., Triandis, 1995; Triandis, McCusker, & Hui, 1990) and others led to the elaboration and measurement of cultural dimensions such as individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity-femininity that could be used to link ecology, culture, and personality. An article by Markus and Kitayama (1991) played a significant role in bringing research on culture and self—and the distinction between independent and interdependent self-construals—into mainstream psychology. Subsequent work elaborated distinctions between cultures along dimensions such as dialecticism (Peng & Nisbett, 1999), tightness-looseness (Gelfand, Nishii, & Raver, 2006), social axioms (Bond et al., 2004), and various dimensions of values (Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Schwartz, 2007).
Regarding personality, by the mid-1980s, the concept of personality traits—which had become controversial in the late 1960s—was rejuvenated based on supportive research (Kenrick & Funder, 1988; McCrae, 2000). In addition, the Big Five or Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality, comprised of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability (vs. Neuroticism), and Openness to Experience (or Intellect) dimensions, was becoming a consensus model of personality structure (John & Srivastava, 1999). A few studies of the Big Five as possible universal dimensions of person perception had been conducted earlier (Bond, 1979; Guthrie & Bennett, 1971). However, it was the extensive cross-national studies with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (McCrae & Allik, 2002; McCrae & Costa, 1997) and the extension of psycho-lexical studies to a growing number of languages (De Raad, Perugini, Hřebíčková, & Szarota, 1998) that led to adoption of the Big Five model as the basis for most current studies of personality traits across cultures.
At the same time, by the late 1970s, indigenous personality concepts were being elaborated in countries such as Mexico, India, Taiwan, and the Philippines, in part as a reaction against the importation of Western instruments into non-Western settings (Church & Katigbak, 2002; Díaz-Guerrero, 1977; Enriquez, 1978; Kim, Yang, & Hwang, 2006; Sinha, 1997). More recently, some researchers have turned to combined emic-etic investigations to determine whether indigenous (emic) trait dimensions are culture-specific or can be encompassed by the hypothesized universal (etic) FFM (Katigbak, Church, & Akamine, 1996; Katigbak, Church, Guanzon-Lapeña, Carlota, & del Pilar, 2002; Ortiz et al., 2007; in Volume 1, see F. M. Cheung, Fan, & S. F. Cheung, Chapter 4; Fedvadjiev, Meiring, Nel, Hill, & van de Vijver, Chapter 5; and van de Vijver & He, Chapter 9).
Although earlier works had addressed the unique conceptual, linguistic, and measurement issues associated with cross-cultural research (e.g., Brislin, Lonner, & Thorndike, 1973; Triandis & Lambert, 1980), methodological refinements have continued to emerge (see van de Vijver & He, Volume 1, Chapter 9). For example, whereas early studies relied largely on exploratory factor analysis and the bilingual test-retest method, more sophisticated methods such as confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory are now available for testing various levels of measurement equivalence. New methods of statistical analysis have also facilitated tests of more sophisticated hypotheses. For example, structural equation modeling has become the preferred method to test mediation hypotheses, better enabling, for example, efforts to “unpackage” or explain cultural differences in personality variables. Multilevel modeling enables simultaneous tests of hypotheses at both cultural and individual levels. Both methods enable tests of the equivalence of structural or predictive models across cultures. At the same time, the Internet and the increasing globalization of scientific activity have enabled the collection of huge data sets across many countries, making it possible, for example, to uncover geographical patterning of personality profiles (McCrae et al., 2005; Schmitt et al., 2007) and to test for cultural moderation of psychological relationships across more representative samples of cultures (e.g., Gebauer et al., 2014).
Finally, the newest areas to impact the study of personality across cultures include evolutionary, ecological, and neuroscience perspectives. Although evolutionary psychologists initially emphasized human universals, many with direct implications for reproductive success (e.g., mating strategies, mate selection), evolutionary perspectives on individual differences—including dimensions of the FFM—are now being actively considered (Buss, 2009; Buss & Penke, 2015; Nettle, 2006; Nichols, Sheldon, & Sheldon, 2008). Also, while ecological variables have long interested cross-cultural psychologists (e.g., Georgas & Berry, 1995), recent research is providing persuasive empirical evidence for the impact of ecological variables such as historical pathogen prevalence, climate and economic resources, and emigration patterns on cultural and personality differences (in Volume 3, see Camperio Ciani, Chapter 2; Murray & Schaller, Chapter 4; and van de Vliert, Chapter 5). Recent studies in cultural and personality neuroscience attempt to link both dimensions of culture (e.g., individualism-collectivism) and aspects of personality to underlying brain structures and neural activity (see Rule, Mar, & Bjornsdottir, Volume 3, Chapter 3).
In summary, although the scientific study of personality across cultures began in a controversial manner with the culture-and-personality studies of the first half of the 20th century and experienced more limited activity (with notable exceptions) from about 1960 to the mid-1980s, the cross-cultural study of personality has been thriving ever since. One indication of the vitality of the field is the significant number of review articles that have addressed this area in recent years (Benet-Martínez & Oishi, 2008; Church, 2008, 2010, 2016; Heine & Buchtel, 2009; Kwan & Herrmann, 2015). Personality across Cultures represents the first encompassing treatment of the topic in a multivolume book set.
In this section, I introduce the chapters in the three volumes of Personality across Cultures by organizing them under current topics or issues in the field.
Evidence for the heritability of personality traits suggests that the organization or structure of personality will be similar across cultures, at least for some or most traits (Yamagata et al., 2006). Researchers investigate the universality versus cultural uniqueness of trait structure by (a) transporting and sometimes adapting trait measures, usually of Western origin, across cultures (an etic strategy); (b) identifying indigenous dimensions (an emic strategy); or (c) a combination of these two approaches (i.e., combined etic-emic strategy). Etic approaches facilitate direct tests of the generalizability of trait models as well as cross-cultural score comparisons but might miss trait dimensions that are unique to particular cultures. Emic approaches—which draw on indigenous sources such as cultural informants, native languages, or local psychological literatures—are more likely to identify culture-specific constructs but make cross-cultural comparisons more difficult.
In Volume 1, Chapters 2 and 3 illustrate the etic approach, while Chapters 4–6 exemplify emic (indigenous) or combined etic-emic approaches. Although a number of psychologists have elaborated on particular indigenous concepts in isolation, the indigenous research programs described in Chapters 4–6 are advantageous in two regards. First, they strive for comprehensive models of personality in the respective languages or cultures. Second, they examine the extent to which indigenous concepts resemble or overlap hypothesized universal dimensions such as the Big Five. This latter step is important in clarifying the extent to which the indigenous concepts are, in fact, unique to particular cultures.
McCrae (Volume 1, Chapter 2), in “The Five-Factor Model across Cultures,” summarizes evidence for the universality of the FFM and proposes that the model provides a reasonable representation of personality trait structure for almost all cultural groups. Evidence for universal gender and age differences—and the same pattern of differential reliability and heritability of different facets of the NEO-PI-R inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) across cultures—also suggest that the personality system captured by the FFM is part of evolved human nature. McCrae introduces an innovative way to assess the ethos of cultural groups along the facet dimensions of the NEO-PI-R. Although this assessment will not capture all aspects of culture, it might be particularly useful in relating personality to culture, since both personality and ethos are assessed along the same facet dimensions.
Rossier, Ouedraogo, and Dahourou (Volume 1, Chapter 3), in “Personality Structure and Assessment in French-Speaking African Cultures,” review research on personality traits and personality disorders and the practices and challenges of psychological assessment in French-speaking Africa. Although some indigenous models of personality and mental health have been developed in sub-Saharan Africa, most studies have involved Western inventories. The authors conclude that the dimensions of well-established models such as Eysenck’s PEN, the Big Five or FFM, and Zuckerman’s (2002) Alternative Five-Factor Model can be replicated in French-speaking Africa, but that the structures are less robust and some cultural specificities are observed. They also report that the relationship between normal personality traits and personality disorders is similar in Western societies and in French-speaking Africa.
F. M. Cheung, Fan, and S. F. Cheung (Volume 1, Chapter 4), in “Indigenous Measurement of Personality in Asia,” review efforts in Asian countries to adapt or “indigenize” Western measures and to develop truly indigenous tests, focusing especially on the indigenous scales of the Cross-Cultural (Chinese) Personality Inventory (CPAI). The CPAI/CPAI-2 research program is noteworthy in its identification of an Interpersonal Relatedness (IR) dimension that is relatively independent of the Big Five, the finding that openness to experience traits do not cohere on a distinct dimension in Chinese populations (Cheung et al., 2008), and the extensive program of validation research, reviewed in this chapter. Scales associated with the indigenous IR factor predict a variety of culturally relevant criteria and typically show incremental validity when measures of hypothesized universal traits are also included. The researchers present evidence that the IR factor might represent a relevant dimension of individual differences outside the Chinese context as well.
Fetvadjiev, Meiring, Nel, Hill, and van de Vijver (Volume 1, Chapter 5), in “Indigenous Personality Structure and Measurement in South Africa,” discuss the historical and political contexts of assessment in South Africa, including issues of bias and fairness, and then describe a research program investigating indigenous personality structure. Free personality descriptions obtained in 11 South African languages were content-analyzed to derive a qualitative structure with some resemblance to the Big Five but with richer representation of socio-relational concepts. An indigenous inventory based on the qualitative structure yielded six factors, four of which were given Big Five labels (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness) and two of which (Social-Relational Positive, Social-Relational Negative) appeared to the authors to be broader than Big Five Agreeableness. Joint factor analyses suggest that the two social-relational factors are independent of the Big Five and provide incremental validity in predicting a self-report measure of prosociality.
De Raad and Mlačić (Volume 1, Chapter 6), in “Psycholexical Studies of Personality Structure across Cultures,” provide a historical perspective on the psycholexical approach, summarize findings from the still growing number of psycholexical studies, and consider the potential of moving toward a consensual trait structure. The psycholexical approach provides a natural method to investigate indigenous personality structure but has typically focused on testing the universality of models with different numbers of dimensions, especially the Big Five. Although cross-language replication of factors for the most promising models (arguably those of two, three, five, and six factors) is frequently imperfect, the considerable resemblance of psycholexical trait dimensions across most cultures is impressive, given the range of cultures and languages investigated thus far. The authors acknowledge, however, that some language families and parts of the world are still underrepresented.
In summary, both etic and emic studies suggest that Big Five-like dimensions can be identified in most cultures. However, at least in psycholexical studies, two or three broad dimensions may replicate better across cultures than models with five or six dimensions. In addition, recent research suggests that the Big Five model may be difficult to replicate in some cultures or in less educated or preliterate groups (e.g., Gurven, von Reudon, Massenkoff, Kaplan, & Lero Vie, 2013). Indigenous socio-relational concepts may be distinguishable from the Big Five in some cultures, but further research is needed on the nature and cultural uniqueness of hypothesized culture-specific dimensions. For example, might they represent culture-specific manifestations (i.e., characteristic adaptations) of underlying basic tendencies such as the Big Five, or values, attitudes, and coping styles learned in particular cultural contexts, rather than dispositional traits?
In addition to their intrinsic interest—and possible benefits for interpersonal understanding in cross-cultural interactions—psychologists compare mean trait levels across cultures in hopes of identifying ecological and cultural influences on personality. The question of whether such comparisons are valid is presently a topic of considerable debate and is closely intertwined with measurement equivalence issues.
Allik and Realo (Volume 1, Chapter 7), in “How Valid Are Culture-Level Mean Personality Scores?” point to a major challenge in cross-national comparisons of personality scores: the size of the differences is generally small, inhibiting the ability to accurately detect national differences. The authors observe that mean trait scores reveal meaningful geographical patterning, but that convergence of scores across instruments and sources of data (e.g., self vs. other report) is not always exemplary. In addition, while some culture-level relations between traits and criterion variables are sensible, others seem counterintuitive. The authors consider how some counterintuitive results might be resolved and discuss how the potential effects of sampling, within-culture heterogeneity, response styles, self-enhancement biases, and differences in comparison groups might impact cross-national trait comparisons. In a table, the authors list country- or region-level mean scores from 33 large-scale studies of personality traits, information that can be useful for researchers interested in studying culture-level profiles or convergent culture-level correlations for different personality measures.
While most trait comparisons have involved national differences, Rentfrow and Jokela (Volume 1, Chapter 8), in “Regional Differences in Personality: Causes and Consequences,” review efforts to compare smaller geographical units within countries (i.e., regions, states, or districts), focusing on the United States and Great Britain. The authors discuss mechanisms that might explain regional differences in traits, including selective migration, social influence, and ecological factors; demonstrate that replicable regional differences in Big Five traits are associated with meaningful differences in political, economic, social, and health outcomes; and consider how regional psychological characteristics may impact individuals’ social and psychological processes. These studies of “geographical psychology” extend the idea of person-situation interactions to broader macro-level environments.
Van de Vijver and He (Volume 1, Chapter 9), in “Bias and Equivalence in Cross-Cultural Personality Research,” discuss types of bias (construct, method, and item) and levels of equivalence (construct, metric, and scalar) that need to be considered in making cross-cultural trait comparisons and describe sampling, test adaptation, and statistical methods for dealing with potential bias. Achieving full scalar equivalence, the preferred level of equivalence for cross-cultural mean comparisons, is a challenge. The authors lament the counterproductive distinction between etic (comparative, generally quantitative) and emic (indigenous, generally qualitative) approaches in the study of personality across cultures and make a strong case, despite the challenges, for combining the two approaches.
In summary, given current knowledge, it is probably best to consider the question of whether cross-cultural trait comparisons are valid or meaningful as unresolved. There is supportive evidence for such comparisons. However, there is also reason for caution, given the generally small size of the differences, significant within-culture variability, the limited convergence of Big Five means and correlates when assessed with different instruments, and the many factors that can bias comparisons. Although researchers differ in their views regarding the impact of response styles, reference group effects, and item bias on trait comparisons, it is clear that further research is needed.
Although most cross-cultural personality research has focused on personality structure and trait comparisons, equally important for the viability of the trait concept across cultures is the question of trait consistency and validity. Whereas trait theorists anticipate a degree of trait consistency and validity in all cultures (Church, 2000; McCrae et al., 2004), some cultural psychologists have proposed that traits may be less consistent and predictive of behavior in collectivistic, dialectical, or tight cultures (Heine, 2001; Markus & Kitayama, 1998; Suh, 2002; Triandis, 1995). Cultural differences in cross-situational consistency could reflect, in part, cultural differences in the situations encountered, how situations are construed, or the strength of social norms in various situations (Gelfand et al., 2006; Morling, Kitayama, & Miyamoto, 2002). These possibilities highlight the need to devise systematic ways to assess and compare situations across cultures.
Church and Katigbak (Volume 1, Chapter 10), in “Trait Consistency and Validity across Cultures: Examining Trait and Cultural Psychology Perspectives,” review trait and cultural psychology theory and empirical research on trait consistency and validity across cultures. Consistent with trait perspectives, the authors report evidence for moderate self-concept and behavioral consistency as well as cross-observer agreement in trait ratings, in all cultures studied thus far. Best support for cultural psychology perspectives come from comparisons of U.S. and East Asian samples, although the authors note methodological considerations that reduce confidence in these cultural differences. Personality measures—whether imported or indigenous—have successfully predicted relevant outcomes in each culture examined, whereas evidence for differential validity is mixed. The authors discuss recent alternatives to traditional cultural psychology hypotheses regarding differential validity across cultures.
Guillaume, Stauner, and Funder (Volume 1, Chapter 11), in “Toward a Psychology of Situations across Cultures,” review studies showing that cultures can differ in the types of situations encountered, how situations are construed or interpreted, and the traits or behaviors they afford or elicit. They observe that the limited number of studies, most of which compared only two cultures, may be attributed to the lack of an instrument for assessing situations across languages and countries. The Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ), which avoids several measurement invariance challenges encountered in cross-cultural research, is advocated for this purpose. The authors describe studies that illustrate the various ways that RSQ data can be analyzed across cultures, including comparisons of (a) how behaviors relate to situational contexts, (b) country-level situational profiles, (c) the situational experiences encountered, and (d) country-level correlates.
In summary, cross-cultural studies of trait consistency and validity provide good support for trait perspectives and mixed support for cultural psychology perspectives. More studies of trait consistency are needed outside the East Asian context. Although systematic studies of situations across cultures are rare, such research could elucidate cultural universals and specifics in situational experience and how situations relate to personality and behavior across cultures. As with the assessment of traits, combined etic (universal) and emic (culture-specific) approaches may prove most informative in the assessment of situations across cultures.
As reflected in Volume 1, psychologists who investigate personality across cultures often focus on dispositional traits. In contrast, since the publication of influential articles by Markus and Kitayama (1991) and Triandis (1989), a relatively independent stream of research, much of it conducted by social and cultural psychologists, has addressed the interplay or “mutual constitution” of culture and self and how cultural differences in conceptions of self influence cognition, emotion, motivation, and behavior—what some personality psychologists refer to as characteristic adaptations (e.g., McAdams & Pals, 2006; McCrae & Costa, 2008). In particular, the distinction between independent and interdependent construals of the self has provided the theoretical basis for numerous cross-cultural comparisons in these domains. The independent model of self—which is thought to be most prevalent in Western or individualistic countries—conceives of the person as “an autonomous entity defined by a somewhat distinctive set of attributes, qualities, or processes” that cause behavior (Markus & Kitayama, 1998, p. 69). In contrast, in the interdependent model of self—which has been considered most prevalent in collectivistic cultures such as those in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—the person is viewed as “an interdependent entity who is part of an encompassing social relationship” and “behavior is a consequence of being responsive to the others with whom one is interdependent.” Chapter 1 in Volume 2 provides a wide-ranging review of how cultural models of the self—in particular independent versus interdependent self-construals—can account for a variety of cultural differences in cognition, emotion, motivation, and interpersonal behavior. Chapters 2–4 address universals and cultural differences in emotion, motivation, and autonomy specifically.
Cross and Lam (Volume 2, Chapter 1), in “Cultural Models of Self: East-West Differences and Beyond,” review research—primarily comparing East Asian and European-heritage cultures—that relates the distinction between interdependent and independent self-construals to cultural differences in self-descriptions (e.g., their context-sensitivity and malleability), behavioral attributions (e.g., the extent of attention to situational information), emotions (e.g., socially engaging vs. disengaging emotions), motivation (e.g., primary vs. secondary control, self-enhancement motives), and interpersonal behavior (e.g., communication styles, conformity). The authors point to recent work on neuroimaging, relational self-construals, and social class differences that further our understanding of cultural models of self across groups.
Kim, Nasiri, and Sasaki (Volume 2, Chapter 2), in “Cultural and Genetic Influences on Emotion: The Role of Motivational Processes in Gene-Culture Interactions,” review key findings of cultural psychologists who compare the experience and expression of emotions across cultures. The authors point out, however, that these studies have typically not taken into account the biological underpinnings of emotions and how genetic differences may be manifested differently across cultures. Noting the implications of the serotonin system for negative emotions, the dopamine system for reward motivation and positive emotions, and oxytocin for socially relevant emotions, the authors report research in which the emotional and behavioral outcomes of genetic variants (alleles) associated with these systems differed depending on the cultural context. The authors propose a novel motivational setting hypothesis to explain these gene-culture interactions.
Morling and Lee (Volume 2, Chapter 3), in “Culture and Motivation,” argue that people in all cultures are motivated to absorb their respective cultural meaning systems. In turn, cultural content shapes what people are motivated to think, feel, and do. Basic needs for food, attachment, belonging, autonomy, and competence are cultural universals, but culture shapes their expression. Focusing largely on available comparisons of North American and East Asian samples (and, when available, social class differences), the authors review research demonstrating that motives for self-enhancement, self-consistency, personal control and agency, and self-regulation differ across cultures in ways that are generally consistent with cultural differences in independent versus interdependent self-construals. Increasingly, researchers are investigating whether cultural differences in motives are mediated by intersubjective culture—that is, consensual perceptions of what most people in the respective cultures value or believe—which is transmitted through tangible cultural products.
Chirkov (Volume 2, Chapter 4), in “Culture and Autonomy,” discusses how all cultures provide the means for achieving psychological autonomy despite the obstacles presented by societal norms and expectations. Drawing on philosophical, religious, anthropological, and psychological sources—and indigenous conceptions of self and agency—Chirkov describes cultural models of psychological autonomy in Indian, Chinese, and Western cultures. While the Western cultural model of individualism is perhaps most consistent in its support of autonomy, Chirkov describes how autonomy and the ability to experience feelings of choice and volition also have a legitimate place in the more interdependent Indian and Chinese traditions.
In summary, cultural psychology studies reveal not only some universals but also cultural shaping of self-processes, emotion, and motivation—often in ways that are consistent with the predominant manner of construing the self in the respective cultures. A significant limitation is the current overreliance on comparisons of North Americans and East Asians as representatives of individualistic (independent) and collectivistic (interdependent) cultures. In addition, recent extensions of research to within-culture comparisons, including social class differences, indicate that cultural models of self and agency are not uniformly adopted by all individuals or groups within societies. Recent research also suggests that both independent and interdependent self-construals are comprised of multiple facets or dimensions, which are relatively independent at the level of individuals and show different patterns of cultural differences (Vignoles et al., 2016).
New research on gene-culture interactions suggests that the cultural differences investigated by cultural psychologists may reflect not only differences in self-construals (or other cultural norms and values) but also genetic variation in interaction with these cultural differences. Finally, some research questions in these areas—for example, the extent to which self-enhancement motives, needs for autonomy, and the primacy of the individual (vs. collective) self are universal or culture-specific—remain somewhat controversial and unresolved, indicating that further research is needed (Chirkov, Ryan, Kim, & Kaplan, 2003; Church et al., 2014; del Prado et al., 2007; Gaertner, Sedikides, Vevea, & Iuzzini, 2002; Heine & Hamamura, 2007; Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003).
Whereas cultural level dimensions of values (e.g., Hofstede, 2001; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004; Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Kluckhohn & Strodbeck, 1961; Schwartz, 2007) are most often viewed as antecedents of personality, stable value differences among individuals can be considered an aspect of personality. Many early cross-cultural studies of individual values compared mean ranks for the instrumental (e.g., obedience, ambition) and terminal (e.g., happiness, wisdom) values in the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS: Rokeach, 1973) (e.g., Feather, 1986; Mayton & Sangster, 1992; Ng et al., 1982). These studies found generally sensible cross-cultural differences in specific values, interpretable in terms of cultural, historical, socioeconomic, political, or religious differences between groups. The RVS was criticized, however, for its ipsative (i.e., within-individual) scoring, the uncertain cross-cultural equivalence of some of its values, and the exclusion of important non-Western values (Hofstede & Bond, 1984; Zavalloni, 1980).
Using a more indigenous approach, Bond and colleagues developed the Chinese Value Survey (CVS) to assess fundamental Chinese values (Chinese Culture Connection, 1987). Hofstede (2001) noted that unlike the other dimensions in the CVS—Moral Discipline, Integration, and Human-heartedness—the Confucian Work Dynamism dimension is distinct from cultural dimensions identified in Western inventories, although the associated values are nonetheless recognizable to Westerners. Confucian Work Dynamism assesses values of persistence and thrift versus personal stability and respect for tradition and has been empirically linked to the explosive growth of East Asian economies in the latter part of the 20th century (Hofstede, 2001). Hofstede (2001) relabeled the dimension long- versus short-term orientation.
Cross-cultural researchers have made greater progress in developing comprehensive taxonomies of value dimensions than belief dimensions. More typically, specific belief constructs or domains have been investigated across cultures, such as locus of control (e.g., Au et al., 2012; Cheng, Cheung, Chio, & Chan, 2013; Rossier, Dahourou, & McCrae, 2005; Smith, Trompenaars, & Dugan, 1995; see also Eisen, Ishii, Miyamoto, Ma, & Hitokoto, 2016), beliefs about the traitedness versus contextuality of behavior (Church et al., 2012; Norenzayan, Choi, & Nisbett, 2002; Owe et al., 2013), and moral beliefs or values (Graham, Meindl, Beall, Johnson, & Zhang, 2016; Graham et al., 2011; Miller, 1994; Snarey, 1985).
For example, studies tend to find that individuals from more collectivistic or traditional cultures report greater external control beliefs than do individuals from more individualistic cultures (e.g., Hamid, 1994; Rossier et al., 2005), although there are questions about the cross-cultural measurement equivalence of locus of control measures (e.g., Rossier et al., 2005; Smith et al., 1995). In a meta-analysis of 40 years of studies, Cheng et al. (2013) found that the relationship between external locus of control and anxiety was significantly weaker in collectivistic societies than in individualistic societies due to the reduced emphasis on agentic goals in collectivistic societies.
Studies that have investigated beliefs about the traitedness versus contextuality of behavior tend to find that people in all cultures believe that dispositional traits play a role in predicting behavior—consistent with trait theory. However, trait beliefs may be strongest in individualistic cultures, whereas beliefs in the contextual nature of behavior may be stronger in collectivistic cultures, consistent with cultural psychology predictions (Church et al., 2003, 2012; Norenzayan et al., 2002; Owe et al., 2013; see also Smith & Easterbrook, Volume 3, Chapter 6). Cross-cultural studies of moral values and beliefs have frequently referred to a distinction between moral codes that emphasize justice, harm, and individual rights—more prevalent in individualistic cultures—and moral codes based on duty, communal obligations, civility, or spiritual purity—more salient in collectivistic or Asian cultures (Buchtel et al., 2015; Graham et al., 2016; Graham et al., 2011; Miller, Bersoff, & Harwood, 1990).
In a rare and innovative effort to identify a more comprehensive set of belief dimensions, Leung and colleagues (Leung et al., 2002; Leung et al., 2012) developed a measure of axioms, defined as “generalized beliefs about oneself, the social and physical environment, or the spiritual world” (Leung et al., 2002, p. 289). Items were generated using a culturally decentered approach, and five individual-differences dimensions—cynicism, reward for application, social complexity, religiosity, and fate control (with fate determinism and fate control subfactors)—have replicated reasonably well across cultures and shown moderate and sensible relationships with the Big Five traits.
Since about 1990, Schwartz’s value model (see Volume 2, Chapter 5) has been most prominent in the study of individual values in cross-cultural research. The model is noteworthy for its strong theoretical and empirical base and the availability of measures with alternative formats to operationalize the model. In addition, given burgeoning interest in the psychology of religion (e.g., Pargament, Exline, & Jones, 2013), a chapter on the relationship between religiosity and personality across cultures merits inclusion in Volume 2.
Schwartz (Volume 2, Chapter 5), in “Individual Values across Cultures,” reviews evidence suggesting that people in all cultures recognize the same set of basic values and that these values can be organized in a circular motivational continuum that captures the oppositional relationships between competing values (i.e., openness to change vs. conservation values; self-transcendence vs. self-enhancement values). While meaningful individual and cultural differences in value priorities exist, there is also considerable cultural consensus in the rank order of importance of various values, likely due to shared human nature and the adaptive function of values in maintaining societies. Schwartz reviews evidence suggesting that values relate to personality traits and other variables in a generally similar manner across cultures while also noting plausible ecological, economic, and cultural explanations for cultural differences in some relationships.
Saroglou (Volume 2, Chapter 6), in “Culture, Personality, and Religiosity,” notes that researchers generally view religiosity as a characteristic adaptation resulting from the interaction of basic personality traits and values with contextual factors, among them the salience of religion in different cultures. The author reviews research showing that the modest positive relationships between religiosity and both Big Five agreeableness and conscientiousness may be cultural universals that replicate across individual and cultural levels of analysis. At the same time, the strength of these relationships—and the strength and direction of the relationship between religiosity and openness to experience—appears to be moderated by culture, plausibly reflecting differences in the functions of religiosity in traditionally religious and poor societies versus more secular and wealthy societies.
In summary, values and beliefs—as noted by Schwartz and Saroglou, respectively—can be viewed as characteristic adaptations that are influenced by both dispositional traits and environmental and cultural contexts. Empirical studies reveal sensible, but only moderate, links relating dispositional traits, values, and beliefs, indicating that they are relatively independent aspects of personality in all cultures. Importantly, both chapters reveal movement beyond the simple search for cultural differences in mean levels of values and beliefs, to more complex studies of the ecological, economic, and cultural factors that might moderate the strength of relationships with other variables (see also Fischer & Boer, 2015, 2016). Research on values, in particular, has been exemplary in efforts to delineate a comprehensive and universal set of values and their structural relationships, and researchers have been receptive to incorporating values originally identified in non-Western studies (e.g., Confucian Work Dynamism, face). One important strength of cross-cultural studies of values and beliefs has been their tendency to sample a broad range of cultures. Investigation of values and beliefs at the neurological level is a promising area for future research (Chiao & Blizinsky, 2010; Fischer & Boer, 2016).
McAdams and Pals (2006) proposed that individuals’ narrative identities or life stories constitute a third level of personality—beyond dispositional traits and characteristic adaptations—and that cultural differences might be greatest for narrative identities.
McAdams and Guo (Volume 2, Chapter 7), in “The Cultural Shaping of Life Stories,” describe how culture shapes these life stories and narrative identities in important ways. For example, the early influence of culture can be observed in cross-cultural studies of children’s autobiographical memories and in parent-child conversations and storytelling. The authors summarize research on the redemptive life stories that are typical of highly generative American adults and that reflect central cultural themes in American history, literature, and heritage. All cultures make accessible such master narratives of how members traditionally construe their cultural history and individual life stories, although individual members or marginalized subgroups may selectively choose particular features or participate in counter narratives. Master narratives are important in assimilating to new cultures but can also perpetuate cultural conflict between competing groups that differ in positioning and power.
In summary, cross-cultural studies of life narratives are rare but important for a fuller understanding of the sociocultural construction of personality and self. Thus, more research and theory are needed regarding the nature of cultural differences in life stories or narrative identities. Although plausible, it is probably not yet possible to conclude that cultural differences are greater for narrative identities than for dispositional traits or characteristic adaptations such as emotions and motives. Indeed, given their more qualitative nature, it may be more difficult to quantify the “size” of cultural differences in narrative identities.
Trait approaches, addressed in Volume 1, are nomothetic and variable-centered and seek to delineate quantitative or continuous dimensions that can be used to describe the personalities of all individuals. In contrast, typological approaches are idiographic or person-centered and seek to identify discrete, qualitatively different types or configurations of personality (e.g., profiles of Big Five traits). The typological approach has received much less attention in both personality and cross-cultural psychology but experienced a revival of interest around 2000 (Asendorpf, Caspi, & Hofstee, 2002).
Alessandri and Vecchione (Volume 2, Chapter 8), in “Resilient, Undercontrolled, and Overcontrolled Personality Types across Cultures,” argue the merits of a more person-centered typological approach. They conclude that Resilient, Undercontrolled, and Overcontrolled (RUO) types can generally be identified across cultures although with slight variations, perhaps reflecting differences in their expression due to local norms, values, and customs. The authors acknowledge that most studies have employed an etic approach, seeking cross-cultural replication of the RUO types, usually with measures of the Big Five traits, and note the need for more indigenous (emic) studies. In addition, although studies have been conducted in 14 countries, most have been done in the United States and Europe.
In summary, although a number of studies have derived personality types in different cultures, the range of cultures studied has been quite limited. Only two studies have involved non-Western cultures. The vast majority sampled single cultures rather than multiple cultures, thus complicating direct comparisons. This limitation—plus differences in the methods applied across studies—reduces confidence in conclusions about the degree to which identified types emerge in similar form across a range of cultures. Alessandri and Vecchione discuss how more precise analyses of cross-cultural comparability might be achieved. To the extent that typological approaches add to traditional trait approaches, more typological studies that sample multiple cultures are needed, particularly including non-Western samples.
With increasing immigration and globalization and the growing multiculturalism of societies, there is the need for greater understanding of how multicultural identities and experiences impact personality and adjustment and vice versa.
Chen and Au (Volume 2, Chapter 9), in “Personality and Adjustment in Bilingual and Bicultural Contexts,” review the concepts of bilingualism, biculturalism, and related constructs such as bicultural self-efficacy, acculturation types and strategies, and bicultural identity integration. The authors conclude that bilingualism has generally positive benefits for cognitive functioning and that biculturalism is strongly related to better adjustment. The same traits—especially extraversion and neuroticism—that predict adjustment in general populations are also important for adjustment in bicultural individuals. The authors review intriguing findings that the personalities of bilinguals shift depending on the language of assessment and review three conceptual frameworks (cultural accommodation, cultural frame switching, and cultural mind-sets) that may account for these shifts.
Van der Zee and van Oudenhoven (Volume 2, Chapter 10), in “Personality and Intercultural Competence,” address personality variables that can impact people’s ability to deal with the threats and challenges of intercultural situations. They propose five personality dimensions important in intercultural effectiveness, including two stress-reducing traits (emotional stability, flexibility)—which can protect against perceptions of cultural diversity as a threat—and three social-perceptual traits (cultural empathy, open-mindedness, and social initiative)—which may predispose individuals to view diversity as a positive challenge or learning experience. The authors review research on how personality can impact cohesion and performance in culturally diverse work groups and interpersonal dyads and achievement of a more integrated bicultural identity.
In summary, these two chapters point to the potential benefits and challenges of biculturalism and multicultural experiences as well as the important role that personality can play in facilitating a positive bicultural identity and intercultural effectiveness. As described in these chapters, validated instruments are available for assessing bicultural identity integration and the personality traits that facilitate intercultural effectiveness.
Evolutionary perspectives may provide an overarching theoretical framework for understanding universal human nature (e.g., species-typical characteristics) as well as individual and cultural differences (Buss & Penke, 2015). Traditionally, evolutionary psychologists have focused foremost on identifying specific psychological mechanisms (e.g., mating strategies, sociosexual orientations, standards of physical attractiveness, cheater detection) that appear most directly relevant to the adaptive problems of survival and reproduction in ancestral environments (e.g., Schmitt, 2005; Schmitt et al., 2004). For example, Schmitt et al. (2004) found that mate poaching is a cultural universal but that it varies across geographical regions depending on resources available and the ratio of women to men. Some efforts have also been made to address the relationship between evolved psychological mechanisms and culture. For example, evolutionary psychologists note that the basic processes of social learning that enable the transmission of culture are themselves evolved psychological mechanisms and that cultural differences in behavioral repertoires can result from the responsiveness of evolved mechanisms to environmental or cultural conditions (Gangestad, Haselton, & Buss, 2006).
More recently, evolutionary psychologists have begun to consider the genetic mechanisms that could account for individual and cultural variability in the dispositional traits (e.g., the Big Five) that personality psychologists focus on most (e.g., Buss, 2009; Buss & Penke, 2015; Nettle, 2006). Some studies have investigated the relationship between these traits and the variables (e.g., mating strategies) of traditional interest to evolutionary psychologists (e.g., Schmitt & Shackelford, 2008). Recent studies in cultural and personality neuroscience seek to relate cultural and individual differences to specific genes and patterns of neural activity, thus complementing traditional self-report and behavioral assessments of personality in cross-cultural studies (Chiao, Cheon, Pornpattanangkul, Mrazek, & Blizinsky, 2013). An underlying assumption is that culture and genes coevolve through cultural and genetic selection to impact neural architecture, cultural dimensions, and aspects of personality. The first three chapters in Volume 3 address personality across cultures from these evolutionary, genetic, and neuroscience perspectives.
Simpson, Griskevicius, Szepsenwol, and Young (Volume 3, Chapter 1), in “An Evolutionary Life History Perspective on Personality and Mating Strategies,” draw on life history theory, an integrative evolutionary perspective, to describe how different personality traits and mating strategies can emerge as adaptive “trade-offs” (e.g., between immediate and delayed reproduction, investment in mating versus parenting) during an individual’s development in response to specific environmental conditions, including the harshness and predictability of the environment. The authors present results from a longitudinal study testing their model. From an evolutionary perspective, clusters of personality traits that support alternative mating strategies should also have evolved. Indeed, the authors review findings indicating that a less restricted sociosexual orientation is associated with greater extraversion, less constraint or harm-avoidance, and poorer self-regulation.
Camperio Ciani (Volume 3, Chapter 2), in “Adaptive Personality Differences Revealed by Small Island Population Genetics: Testing the Personality Gene Flow Hypothesis,” advocates an evolutionary genetics perspective on human variability in personality traits. The author reports a series of studies in which the personality traits and selected genes of small, ancient, isolated island populations were compared with those of adjacent mainland populations sharing a culture and language. The studies largely support the Personality Gene Flow hypothesis, which proposes that due to sustained migration and selective gene outflow (allele drain) from the islands, islander personalities will converge, on average, toward lower extraversion and openness and higher emotional stability and conscientiousness—traits that are well adapted to the socio-ecological niche of small island life.
Rule, Mar, and Bjornsdottir (Volume 3, Chapter 3), in “Cultural Neuroscience Insights to Individual Differences and Personality,” discuss how the interdisciplinary fields of cultural and personality neuroscience emerged and how they help to reveal the role of genes and the brain in understanding cultural and personality differences. After a discussion of the challenges that limit these fields, the authors review research showing that many of the cultural differences reported by cultural psychologists—for example, in individualism-collectivism, language and attentional processing, emotional regulation, empathy, and self-perceptions—are associated with differences in the patterns of neural activity in these cultures. The authors also address how neuroscience and genetic research are contributing to new theory and models regarding the structure, biological determinants, and expression of basic traits such as the Big Five.
In summary, while a moderate genetic basis for personality has long been known and demonstrated across cultures (Jang, McCrae, Angleitner, Riemann, & Livesley, 1998; Yamagata et al., 2006), theory and research on the evolutionary bases for this genetic variability—and thus individual and cultural differences—are relatively recent and evolving. Further research is needed on the specific costs and benefits associated with different trait levels under various environmental or cultural conditions (Buss & Penke, 2015; Denissen & Penke, 2008; Nettle, 2006). While studies of molecular genetics have attempted to link common genetic variants to personality traits or cultural dimensions, it has proven difficult to identify genetic variants that are reliably associated with personality trait scores (de Moor et al., 2012; Genetics of Personality Consortium, 2015). Nonetheless, studies of neural activity across cultures and gene-culture interactions have the potential to increase our understanding of cultural differences in mean trait levels and how heritable traits are differentially manifested across cultures. In time, such research will hopefully lead to the development of more integrative frameworks that encompass the biological, ecological, and cultural contexts on personality.
Implicit in much cross-cultural research on personality is an ecocultural or environmental causation model, which posits a causal sequence from ecology (i.e., the natural environment) to culture to socialization patterns to personality to behavior (Triandis & Suh, 2002). In Volume 3, Chapters 4 and 5 address two prominent examples of research on ecological variables that impact culture and personality.
In addition, to effectively investigate the relationship between culture and personality, we need an adequate conceptualization of culture and the means to assess its most salient elements. Culture has been defined in many ways, but the following definition by Fiske (2002, p. 81) is reasonably representative:
A culture is a socially transmitted or socially constructed constellation consisting of such things as practices, competencies, ideas, schemas, symbols, values, norms, institutions, goals, constitutive rules, artifacts, and modifications of the physical environment.
Most attempts to assess culture have focused on values (Hofstede, 2001; Schwartz, 2007), beliefs (Bond et al., 2004; Leung et al., 2002), and ways of thinking (Peng & Nisbett, 1999), although some efforts have also been made to assess cultural products (e.g., Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008). Chapters 6–10 in Volume 3 address cultural dimensions that are prominent in current studies of personality across cultures, or—in the case of Saucier’s Chapter 10—a proposed cultural distinction that may serve as a framework for future studies.
Murray and Schaller (Volume 3, Chapter 4), in “Pathogens, Personality, and Culture,” argue that many traits and behaviors have differential costs and benefits across different ecologies or environments, which, in turn, lead to genetic or cultural selection for different traits and behaviors. In particular, they contend that traits that increase the likelihood of exposure to pathogens—for example, through greater interpersonal interaction or resistance to protective cultural norms—will be lower in environments with higher historical prevalence of pathogens. In support, they report country-level correlations relating historical pathogen prevalence negatively to extraversion, openness to experience, and unrestricted sexual attitudes and positively to authoritarianism, conformist dispositions, and moral values emphasizing group loyalty, respect for authority, and purity. The authors also link historical pathogen prevalence to culture, in particular, the individualism-collectivism distinction.
Van de Vliert (Volume 3, Chapter 5), in “Climato-Economic Pressures on Cultural Identity,” presents innovative theory and research on how climate and economic resources interact to influence aspects of cultural identity (i.e., culture and personality). Alternative ecological habitats are described as threatening (demanding climates combined with poor resources), unthreatening (undemanding climates with poor resources), unchallenging (undemanding climates with rich resources), and challenging (demanding climates with rich resources). The author reviews studies showing that threatening habitats are associated with greater collectivism, fearfulness, and tightness; challenging habitats with greater individualism, trustfulness, and creativity; and unthreatening and unchallenging habitats are generally intermediate on these aspects of culture and personality.
Smith and Easterbrook (Volume 3, Chapter 6), in “Individualism-Collectivism: Implications for Personality and Identity,” review the conceptualization, assessment, and correlates of individualism-collectivism—the dimension most commonly used to differentiate cultures. They note the importance of assessing multiple aspects of individualism-collectivism at the national level—and self-construals at the individual level—and address threats to measurement validity at both levels of analysis. They conclude that the relationships found between Big Five scores and Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions are suggestive rather than definitive, given limited replication. Research suggests that certain identity motives (e.g., distinctiveness, self-esteem, continuity) are universal, but that individuals’ ways of fulfilling these motives and the importance of social identities and groups differ in collectivistic versus individualistic contexts. Identity issues experienced by migrants and minorities are also addressed.
Boucher and English (Volume 3, Chapter 7), in “The Yin-Yang of Personality: Implications of Naïve Dialecticism for Social Cognition, the Self-Concept, and Well-Being,” contrast the dialectical versus analytic/linear thinking that characterizes (relatively speaking) individuals in East Asian and Western cultures, respectively. Naïve dialecticism is described as a lay theory or folk psychology involving holistic thinking, acceptance of change, and tolerance of contradiction. Recently developed measures of dialectical thinking have shown convergent and discriminant validity and some success as mediators of cultural differences. Dialectical thinking has also been successfully primed using language or culture-laden symbols. The authors review research indicating that cultural differences in dialectical versus analytic thinking are associated with predictable differences in social cognition, self-concepts, and well-being.
Gelfand, Harrington, and Fernandez (Volume 3, Chapter 8), in “Cultural Tightness-Looseness: Ecological Affordances and Implications for Personality,” discuss how greater ecological and historical threats give rise to differences in the tightness (vs. looseness) of societies—defined as the strength of societal norms and the degree of sanctioning of deviant behavior. In turn, psychological adaptations to these differences lead to associated cultural variations in personality. The authors review research successfully linking cultural tightness to particular ecological and historical threats (e.g., population density, disease prevalence, natural disasters), stronger social-political institutions, greater perceived situational constraints on behavior, and a constellation of related personality characteristics (e.g., greater prevention focus, impulse control, need for structure, self-monitoring, conscientiousness, and lower openness). Numerous promising ideas for future research on tightness-looseness theory are offered.
Kim, Kwon, M. Seo, and D. Seo (Volume 3, Chapter 9), in “The Self in Face and Dignity Cultures,” discuss the distinction between dignity cultures, which they apply to North American (especially Anglo-American) culture, and face cultures, most descriptive of East Asian societies. They propose that dignity cultures emphasize the uniqueness of each individual, value affective autonomy and equality, and base self-worth on one’s own self-perceptions and sense of control. In contrast, face cultures are characterized to a greater extent by (a) hierarchical social structures, which assign roles and the amount of “face” or worth given to each individual; (b) an emphasis on harmony, which serves to maintain the face of self and others; and (c) humility, which serves to maintain harmony and face. The authors review research generally supporting the proposed differences between face and dignity cultures.
Saucier (Volume 3, Chapter 10), in “Personality, Character, and Cultural Differences: Distinguishing Enduring-Order versus Evolving-Order Cultures,” argues that moral attributes of character provide an important intersection point for linking culture and personality, given the centrality of moral norms for culture and character attributes for personality. However, moral rules and the attributes measured by most personality scales are not the best place to look for cultural differences. Rather, Saucier summarizes data showing that the largest cultural differences involve religious and “quasi-religious” (i.e., ethnonationalistic) content. Consistent with these differences, Saucier proposes a cultural distinction between enduring-order societies, which place greater value on an enduring normative order, maintenance of shared worldviews, and the sacred realm of culture, and evolving-order societies, which value an evolving normative order, material culture (e.g., instrumental achievements, technological innovation), and the secular realm of culture.
In summary, Chapters 4–10 in Volume 3 reveal that cross-cultural studies have been fairly successful in linking selected ecological and cultural dimensions to aspects of personality. Because multiple ecological and cultural dimensions likely combine or interact in their impact on personality, future theory and research that integrate these factors as well as genetic explanations would greatly benefit the field. In this regard, the model discussed by Gelfand et al. (Volume 3, Chapter 8) is exemplary in integrating macro-level ecological and cultural dimensions with micro-level situations and psychological processes. Further research is also needed on the mechanisms that underlie the relationships between ecological, cultural, and personality variables. As an example, Murray and Schaller (Volume 3, Chapter 4) note that cultural transmission, genetic evolution, epigenetic processes, and situational factors might all play a role in accounting for the relationship between historical pathogen prevalence and personality.
Similarly, many studies have compared the same set of cultures (in particular, the U.S. versus East Asian cultures) but using different cultural distinctions (individualism/collectivism, dialectical/analytic, face/dignity). This suggests the need to integrate these frameworks or place them in competition as explanatory dimensions in future studies. For example, Kim et al. (Volume 3, Chapter 9) suggest that the distinction between dignity and face cultures, as compared to the individualism-collectivism distinction, might provide a more cogent explanation of some cultural differences, such as the differences between East Asian and Western countries in prevention- and promotion-oriented tendencies. To compare the efficacy of alternative cultural dimensions, they need to be measured and tested as mediators of cultural differences. While measures of individualism-collectivism, dialecticism, and cultural tightness have been developed, the distinctions between face and dignity cultures and evolving-order and enduring-order societies await measurement operationalization. Although it is becoming more common to incorporate direct measures of cultural dimensions as mediator variables, the majority of studies still rely on nation as a proxy for culture.
It is also important to note that the same measurement issues (e.g., response styles, reference group effects, measurement noninvariance) that can impact personality scores across cultures are also relevant to measures of cultural dimensions, which are typically based on self-report Likert scales. Also, some aspects of culture may be too inaccessible to awareness to be assessed with self-report instruments. Indeed, some researchers have reported that cultural groups often fail to show the expected differences on cultural dimensions such as individualism-collectivism (e.g., Matsumoto, 1999; Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002). Other researchers, however, are inclined to attribute these apparent discrepancies to measurement issues (Schimmack, Oishi, & Diener, 2005; Vignoles et al., 2016). In any case, it is unclear how well measures based on aggregation of individuals’ scores can capture the cultural contexts within which individuals are located and socialized (an assumption that may commit the ecological fallacy). In this regard, efforts to assess aspects of culture via cultural products or artifacts warrant further attention (e.g., Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008). Finally, over time, increasing migration and globalization may make it more difficult to distinguish countries on various dimensions, as within-country heterogeneity increases and cultures become more similar. If so, it will become even more important to sample and assess distinct subcultures within societies. In short, despite some successes, how best to conceptualize and assess culture and its impact on personality will likely continue to challenge cross-cultural personality researchers.
Research on personality across cultures is thriving—facilitated since the mid-1980s by (a) the emergence of a near-consensus model of personality trait structure, (b) the identification and assessment of dimensions that can be used to characterize cultures and (c) continuing advances in statistical methods that are used to test measurement equivalence and more sophisticated hypotheses relating ecological, cultural, and personality variables at both individual and cultural levels of analysis. As outlined in this introductory chapter—and described in more detail in the remaining 30 chapters—areas of most significant progress and definitive knowledge at present include the following: (a) confirmation of universal (or highly generalizable) models of personality trait and value structure; (b) demonstration of the validity and utility of the trait concept across cultures; (c) development of methods to test the cross-cultural equivalence of personality constructs and measures; (d) conceptualization of cultural models of the self that predict differences in cognition, emotion, motivation, and behavior; (e) specification of relationships between personality, bicultural identity, and intercultural effectiveness; and (f) identification of ecological and cultural dimensions that relate to personality and self. Even in these areas, however, questions remain for further research, as outlined in the relevant chapters.
Knowledge appears to be less definitive at present in some of the other areas under investigation, suggesting that additional research on these topics will be particularly valuable. Accordingly, recommendations for future research include (a) the search, in a greater diversity of cultures, for personality constructs that may be unique or particularly salient for specific cultural groups (and how these constructs may or may not relate to universal dimensions); (b) further examination of the validity of mean trait profiles of cultures and regions and the impact that various sources of bias might have on these comparisons; (c) conceptualization and testing of alternative explanations for ecocultural differences in the strength of relationships between personality and criterion variables; (d) development of situational taxonomies and associated measures that generalize across most, if not all, cultural contexts; (e) elaboration of the nature of cultural differences in narrative identities or life stories and development of theoretical or cultural models that can account for such differences; (f) expansion of research on the genetic and neurological substrates underlying personality variables across cultures, including gene-culture interactions; (g) efforts to assess aspects of culture in more refined ways while also taking into account subcultures and the increasing heterogeneity of social groups; (h) theoretical and empirical work on how cultures might coevolve with the environments in which they emerge—as illustrated, for example, by the emergence of greater cultural tightness or collectivism in more threatening environments; and (i) integration and/or comparative testing of the relative efficacy of previously identified ecological and cultural dimensions—and perhaps new and more refined dimensions—in understanding personality variables across cultures.
In addition, a number of chapter authors have noted the need to extend research on cultural models of self and their implications beyond the usual East-West comparisons. Although these models have been highly generative in cross-cultural research, current theory (e.g., regarding self-construals, dialecticism, face vs. dignity cultures) appears to be most directly relevant to comparisons of Westerners (especially North Americans) and Easterners (especially East Asians). As research on culture and self is expanded to a greater range of cultures, new or refined theory is likely to be needed to account for cultural differences.
Finally, an important and welcome development evident in these volumes is the increasing convergence of disciplines or perspectives on personality across cultures, including, for example, evolutionary psychology with personality psychology, cultural psychology with neuroscience, and cross-cultural psychology with indigenous psychology. One can still observe, however, some separation in the literatures typically cited by researchers with different perspectives, and empirical studies that incorporate diverse perspectives are still fairly rare. This is understandable given (a) differences among researchers in background, training, and theoretical and methodological orientation; (b) the challenges of keeping up with multiple literatures and areas of research; and (c) the complexities involved in combining diverse sources of data (e.g., genomic, self-report, experimental, and behavioral). Thus, greater integration of perspectives may require collaborative efforts. Ideally, such research will eventually lead to more integrative frameworks that encompass the biological, ecological, and cultural contexts on personality and incorporate diverse sources of data. One goal of Personality across Cultures is to bring the multiple perspectives on personality across cultures to the attention of the diverse researchers in the field—as well as to a wider audience—and to hopefully promote the emergence of such integrative frameworks.
I thank Jüri Allik, Marcia S. Katigbak, Jérôme Rossier, Peter B. Smith, and Fons J. R. van de Vijver for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. Correspondence regarding this chapter can be e-mailed to the author at church@mail.wsu.edu.
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