individual differences - personality + culture

what countries dont fit into the big-5 theory of personality

• philippines

  • social curiosity, risk taking & religiosity

    • matsumoto & juang 2008

• china

  • chinese personality assessment inventory

  • ren qing (relationship orientation), flexibility, harmony, face

    • cheung et al 2001

• tsimane of bolivia

• hong kong

• japan

  • hong kong + japan - big 4

    • henrich 2020

what is the niche diversity hypothesis - feng 2021

• there is a genetic variation which produces stable behavioural characteristics or traits

• there is cross-cultural variation in traits

• personality dimensions increase as niches, or the ways resources can be extracted from the environment, increase. assuming that a closer fit between niche and personality yields greater payoffs, greater variation in environment incentives greater variation in personality that is adapted to these environments

personality as a product of opportunity afforded

• WEIRD populations might show a similar personality structure if trait covariance is an artefact of living in large urban, literate populations which afford people varied occupational position

  • henrich et al 2010, gurven 2012

• personality traits culturally constructed

  • henrich 2020

• the fewer the options available to people the fewer the personality traits

socioecological complexity hypothesis

• the more urbanised a country, or the greater its occupational diversity, the lower the inter correlations were among the big-5 dimensions

  • Lukaszewski et al 2017

• the degree of personality covariation observed within a society will be inversely related to the societys socioecological complexity, that is, its diversity of social and occupational niches

• big five dimensions are more strongly intercorrelated in less complex societies where the complexity is indexed by nation-level measures of economic development, urbanisation and sectoral diversity

personality traits and the expression of personality traits

• the appeant universality of the big 5 may reflect adaptations that enable people whatever the culture to identify people who will facilitate strategic goals

• ecological approaches have linked natural and social habitats to personality and cultural dimensions

• cultural tightness is linked to reduced variance in big fives scores

• with cultural tightness, people are less free to express their traits

  • church 2016

the fundamental attribution error

• tendency to attribute anothers actions to their character or personality while attributing their own behaviour to external situational factors outside of their control

what did norenzayan et al 2002 find

• what varies across cultures is the situational inference part of the attribution and process, whereas dispositional inference is less susceptible to cultural variation

• people from the USA see personality as being fixed and unchangeable, one is expected to be oneself, the same person in all situation

• people from korean see personality as being more malleable, one is expected to behave in different ways in different situations

• korean people see personality as much more changeable or variabe

• as a result people from korea and china rely less on personality when explaining peoples behaviour and more on situational factors

  • makes east asian people less susceptible to the fundamental attribution error

cross-cultural differences in average personality

• the highest scoring cultural groups for extraversion on average were brazilian french swiss and the maltese, while the lowest scoring were nigerians, moroccans and indonesians

• the highest scoring for openness to experience were german speaking swiss, danes and germans, whilst the lowest scoring on average were hong kong chinese, northern irish and kuwaitis

• there were also variation between countries in the three other main personality traits of neuroticism, conscientiousness and agreeableness

explanations - genetic

• bolder people migrate, isolated communities tend to be more introverted and less open to novelty

• islanders are less extroverted and open minded, but more conscientious and emotionally stable, than their italian mainland neighbours

  • camperio & capiluppi 2010

explanations - socio-ecological

• risk of infection leads to lower levels of extraversion

• cold and lower sunlight levels linked to neuroticism

• high population density linked with higher levels of conscientiousness

• self perpetuating as people are drawn to live in areas occupied by people like themselves

  • jarrett 2015

• countries with higher average trait openness tended to have more democratic institutions

  • barcelo 2016

what is evolutionary stable strategy

• a mixed strategy which would favour trait diversity, a group could not function if everyone had leadership traits

• personality could be a by product of selection for mixed traits

• personality differences could be the result of sexual selection

  • macdougall-shackleton 2024