Showing papers by "Robert R. McCrae published in 2002"

The Five-Factor Model of Personality Across Cultures

Abstract: Preface A.J. Marsella. Introduction R.R. McCrae, J. Allik. Section I: Trans- and Intercultural Studies. The Cross-Cultural Generalizability of the Five-Factor Model of Personality J.-P. Rolland. Exploring the Sources of Variations in the Structure of Personality Traits Across Cultures K. Konstabel, et al. The NEO Five-Factor Inventory in Czech, Polish, and Slovak Contexts M.H. Kova, et al. Relating the Five-Factor Model of Personality to a Circumplex Model of Affect: A Five Language Study M.S.M. Yik, et al. NEO-PI-R Data from 36 Cultures: Further Intercultural Comparisons R.R. McCrae. Section II: Case Studies in Personality and Culture. The Five-Factor Model in the Philippines: Investigating Trait Structure and Levels Across Cultures A.T. Church, M.S. Katigbak. The Applicability of the Five-Factor Model in a Sub-Saharan Culture: The NEO-PI-R in Shona R.L. Piedmont, et al. Five-Factor Model and the NEO-PI-R in Turkey S. Gulgoz. Vietnamese-American Personality and Acculturation: An Exploration of Relations Between Personality Traits and Cultural Goals A. Leininger. The Five-Factor Model of Personality Measurement and Correlates in the Indian Context P.H. Lodhi, et al. Personality and Culture: The Portuguese Case M.P. de Lima. Applications of the Russian NEO-PI-R T.A. Martin, et al. Section III: Methodological and Theoretical Perspectives. Cross-Cultural Equivalence of the Big Five: A Tentative Interpretation of the Evidence Y.H. Poortinga, et al. A Five-Factor Theory Perspective J. Allik, R.R. McCrae. Author Index. Subject Index.

Personality Trait Development From Age 12 to Age 18: Longitudinal, Cross-Sectional, and Cross-Cultural Analyses

Abstract: Three studies were conducted to assess mean level changes in personality traits during adolescence. Versions of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T. Costa, Jr., & R. R. McCrae, 1992a) were used to assess the 5 major personality factors. A 4-year longitudinal study of intellectually gifted students (N = 230) was supplemented by cross-sectional studies of nonselected American (N = 1,959) and Flemish (N = 789) adolescents. Personality factors were reasonably invariant across ages, although rank-order stability of individual differences was low. Neuroticism appeared to increase in girls, and Openness to Experience increased in both boys and girls; mean levels of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were stable. Results extend knowledge of the developmental curve of personality traits backward from adulthood and help bridge the gap with child temperament studies.

NEO-PI-R Data from 36 Cultures

Abstract: This chapter presents reanalyses of data originally reported in McCrae (2001) in an enlarged sample of cultures. Analyses of age and gender differences, the generalizability of culture profiles across gender and age groups, and culture-level factor structure and correlates are replicated after the addition of 30 new subsamples from 10 cultures. Cross-cultural variations in the standard deviations of NEO-PI-R scales are also examined. Standardized factor- and facet-level means are provided for use by other researchers.

Nature over nurture: Temperament, personality, and lifespan development

Abstract: Temperaments are often regarded as biologically based psychological tendencies with intrinsic paths of development. It is argued that this definition applies to the personality traits of the five-factor model. Evidence for the endogenous nature of traits is summarized from studies of behavior genetics, parent-child relations, personality structure, animal personality, and the longitudinal stability of individual differences. New evidence for intrinsic maturation is offered from analyses of NEO Five-Factor Inventory scores for men and women age 14 and over in German, British, Spanish, Czech, and Turkish samples (N = 5,085). These data support strong conceptual links to child temperament despite modest empirical associations. The intrinsic maturation of personality is complemented by the culturally conditioned development of characteristic adaptations that express personality; interventions in human development are best addressed to these.

A Five-Factor Theory Perspective

Abstract: Five-Factor Theory (FFT) is a conceptualization of the personality system that identifies traits as abstract Basic Tendencies rooted in biology. In this chapter, FFT is examined in relation to recent findings in cross-cultural psychology reported in this volume. FFT correctly predicts the universality of personality structure, maturation, and gender differentiation. FFT suggests that differences in the mean levels of traits across cultures may be due to differences in the distribution of trait-related alleles, and that cultural differences may be the effect, rather than the cause, of trait level differences. Reports of substantial cohort and acculturation effects pose challenges to FFT and provide special opportunities for future research.

The replicability and utility of three personality types

Abstract: Personality types are construed as constellations of features that uniquely define discrete groups of individuals. Types are conceptually convenient because they summarize many traits in a single label, but until recently most researchers agreed that there was little evidence for the existence of discrete personality types. Several groups of researchers have now proposed replicable, empirical person clusters based on measures of the Five-Factor Model. We consider several methodological artifacts that might be responsible for these types, and conclude that these artifacts may contribute to the replicability of types, but cannot entirely account for it. The present research attempts to replicate these types in four large and diverse adult samples: the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (N = 1856); the East Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area study (N = 486); the University of North Carolina Alumni Heart Study (N = 2420); and an HIV risk reduction intervention study (N = 274). A clear replication (kappa = 0.60) of the proposed types was found in only one sample by one standard of comparison. The failure of the three personality types to replicate in three of the four samples leads to the conclusion that they are not robust empirical entities. Type membership predicted psychosocial functioning and ego resiliency and control, but only because it summarized trait standing; dimensional trait measures were consistently better predictors. Nevertheless, while the types do not refer to distinct, homogeneous classes of persons, they do have utility as convenient labels summarizing combinations of traits that relate to important outcomes. Published in 2002 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Cross-Cultural Research on the Five-Factor Model of Personality

Abstract: The Five-Factor Model (FFM) is a comprehensive taxonomy of personality traits, which are tendencies to show consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions. Although it was originally identified in the United States, the model appears to describe personality structure well in a wide variety of cultures, suggesting that personality trait structure is universal. Age changes--decreases in Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness and increases in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness from adolescence to adulthood--also appear to be universal, as are gender differences. Current studies comparing the mean levels of personality traits across cultures show systematic patterns, but their interpretation is uncertain. The FFM is currently in use by psychologists around the world in a variety of applications. This article is available in Online Readings in Psychology and Culture: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol4/iss4/1 Personality Traits and the Five-Factor Model Personality traits are defined as \"dimensions of individual differences in tendencies to show consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions\" (McCrae & Costa, 1990, p. 29). They are familiar to laypersons, who use a huge vocabulary of trait descriptive adjectives (such as nervous, enthusiastic, original, accommodating, and careful) to describe themselves and others. Allport and Odbert (1936) identified some 4,000 trait names in the English language, and similar (although generally smaller) lists of traits have been compiled for many other languages, including Turkish and Chinese (Somer & Goldberg, 1999; Yang & Lee, 1971). It is apparent that trait concepts are important in every human language, and it would clearly be of great interest to compare traits across cultures. Are the same traits found everywhere? Are they organized in similar fashion? Do they show the same course of development and the same correlates? Or are traits products of culture that vary as dramatically as vocabularies and food preferences do? These intriguing questions have been asked repeatedly by anthropologists and cross-cultural psychologists, but until recently, research was severely hampered by the lack of an agreed-upon taxonomy of traits. It is obviously impossible to conduct crosscultural studies of each of the 4,000 traits identified by Allport and Odbert, and without a taxonomy, the selection of a subset of traits is likely to be arbitrary. Personality psychologists like Raymond Cattell and Hans Eysenck had long ago noted that traits could be organized into much smaller clusters of similar traits. For example, the terms careful, cautious, deliberate, and thorough are near-synonyms, and people who are careful are also like to be described as cautious and thorough. In short, personality traits are structured, and a comprehensive yet parsimonious structure would greatly facilitate personality research. Disputes about which structure was best continued for decades, but toward the end of the last century it became clear to most personality psychologists that most traits could be described in terms of five factors or dimensions. The organization of many specific traits in terms of the five factors of Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness to Experience (O), Agreeableness (A), and Conscientiousness (C) is known as the FiveFactor Model (FFM; McCrae & John, 1992). Individuals who are high in N are likely to be anxious, easily depressed, and irritable, whereas those who are low in N are calm, eventempered, and emotionally stable. Extraverts are lively, cheerful, and sociable; introverts are sober and taciturn. Open men and women are curious, original, and artistic; closed people are conventional and down-to-earth. Agreeableness is characterized by trust, compassion, and modesty; Conscientiousness is seen in organization, punctuality, and purposefulness. Originally, the FFM was discovered through analyses of English-language trait names (Tupes & Christal, 1961/1992), and it is possible to measure individuals' standing on each of the five factors by asking them to rate themselves on a series of adjectives (Goldberg, 1992 ). But it is also possible to measure traits through the use of personality questionnaires, in which respondents indicate the extent to which they are accurately described by a series of statements about characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. 3 McCrae: Cross-Cultural Research on the Five-Factor Model of Personality Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011 A wide variety of measures of the FFM have now been developed (De Raad & Perugini, 2002), of which the most widely used is the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PIR; Costa & McCrae, 1992). The NEO-PI-R assesses 30 specific traits, six for each of the five factors, and has been shown to be a reliable and valid measure for the assessment of normal personality traits. The FFM Across Cultures Because the FFM was discovered by American researchers in American samples using instruments based on English-language trait terms, it is reasonable to ask if it is strictly an American structure, or whether it characterizes human beings everywhere. Since 1971, when Guthrie and Bennett (1971) examined the structure of personality perceptions among Philippinos, there has been considerable research on this question. Lexical studies, which examine personality factors in trait adjectives from different languages, have had somewhat mixed results. E, A, and C factors almost always appear, but N and O sometimes do not (Saucier & Goldberg, 2001). It is not clear from these studies whether those factors are missing from the culture, or merely from the set of adjectives studied. More definitive results come from studies of the NEO-PI-R. That instrument has been translated into more than 40 languages or dialects, and studies of its factor structure have been conducted in more than 30 cultures, from Zimbabwe to Peru (McCrae & Allik, 2002). Because the same instrument is used in each case, a failure to find one or more factors would most probably indicate that those factors were truly absent in that group. But in fact, in every case studied so far, a reasonable approximation to the intended structure has been found when adequate samples and appropriate statistical methods have been used. These results have been replicated when observer ratings of personality (instead of the usual self-reports) are factored (McCrae et al., 2005a). In this sense, the FFM is a universal structure, and thus should be useful in crosscultural research. There are two important qualifications to bear in mind, however. First, the fact that these five factors are universal does not necessarily mean that there are not also additional personality factors specific to individual cultures, as Cheung and Leung (1998) have argued. Second, even if all factors emerge when the NEO-PI-R is administered, they may not all be equally important in every culture. For example, individual differences in Openness to Experience may be of little consequence in traditional cultures where life's options are severely limited (Piedmont, Bain, McCrae, & Costa, 2002). The relevance of FFM traits across cultures is discussed at length by Church (2009). Age and Gender Differences in Personality Measures of the FFM can be used to address many questions about personality and culture. To date, some of the most important findings have concerned age and gender differences. 4 Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, Unit 4, Subunit 4, Chapter 1 http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol4/iss4/1 Studies of adult personality development in the United States have suggested that there are noticeable changes in the mean level of all five factors between adolescence and about age 30 (McCrae & Costa, 2003): N, E, and O decline, whereas A and C increase. After age 30, the same trends are seen, but at a much slower pace: In terms of personality traits, 30-year-olds resemble 70-year-olds more than 20-year-olds. These developmental patterns were seen in both cross-sectional age comparisons and longitudinal studies, in which the same participants are followed over years or decades. But their origins were not clear: Were the changes due to features of American culture, with its distinctive patterns of socialization and its role requirements at each age, or were they the result of some intrinsic pattern of maturation, akin to passage through the menopause or the graying of hair? Cross-cultural studies might shed light here. If very different patterns of age differences were found, we might suspect that age differences are the product of life experiences in different societies with different histories. However, if we find very similar patterns everywhere, it would seem more likely that age changes are intrinsic maturational processes. Data from Germany, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, South Korea, Estonia, Russia, Japan, Spain, Britain, Turkey, and the Czech Republic showed patterns of age differences very similar to those seen in the United States. It appears that age, especially from adolescence to mid-adulthood, tends to make individuals better adjusted, more altruistic, and better organized, but also less enthusiastic and less open to new experience (McCrae et al., 2000). These changes which are also seen in observer ratings of personality (McCrae et al., 2005a) appear to be common to people everywhere. If age differences follow a universal pattern, what about gender differences? Costa, Terracciano, and McCrae (2001) examined that question using data from 26 cultures where the NEO-PI-R had been administered to college-age and adult samples of men and women. In the United States, women typically score somewhat higher than men on both N and A, as well as some specific facets of E and O (e.g., Warmth, Openness to Aesthetics). Men usually score higher on other facets of E and O, namely, Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas. There are few gender differences in C. Figure 1 compares gender differe

The applicability of the five-factor model in a sub-saharan culture

Abstract: This chapter examines the Five-Factor Model of personality in Shona, a native tongue of Zimbabwe. One hundred and sixty-five women and 193 men participated in this study; all were bilingual in English and Shona. The Shona version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the English version of the Adjective Check List (ACL) were completed by 199 participants. The remaining 159 participants took English or Shona versions of the NEO-PI-R on two occasions, with a mean retest interval of seven days. Alpha reliabilities for the facet scales were quite low, but retest reliabilities and cross-language correlations were considerably higher. Targeted factor analyses showed that the factors and most of the specific facets had a structure similar to that found in Americans, and correlations with the ACL generally supported the construct validity of the new translation. The Openness (O) factor proved weakest in translation. The viability of trait approaches in collectivistic societies and the possible role of sociological context on personality development are discussed.