Growing cross-cultural evidence suggests that East Asians are less likely to show the correspondence bias, or a preference for explanations of behavior in terms of traits, dispositions, or other internal attributes of the target. The scope of this evidence spans several research paradigms and diverse methodologies. The cultural difference, however, appears not to be caused by an absence of dispositional thinking in East Asian cultures. Indeed, extensive ethnographic and psychological data indicate that "dispositionism" is a cross-culturally widespread mode of thinking, although East Asians believe dispositions to be more malleable and have a more holistic conception of the person as being situated in a broad social context. The East-West split in attribution thus originates primarily from a stronger "situationism" or belief in the importance of the context of behavior in East Asia. Consequently, East Asians are more likely than Westerners to avoid the correspondence bias as long as situational constraints are salient.

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Causal attribution across cultures: Variation and universality.

The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is a self-report measure designed to assess the high-order personality traits of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, the BFI was translated from English into 28 languages and administered to 17,837 individuals from 56 nations. The resulting cross-cultural data set was used to address three main questions: Does the factor structure of the English BFI fully replicate across cultures? How valid are the BFI trait profiles of individual nations? And how are personality traits distributed throughout the world? The five-dimensional structure was robust across major regions of the world. Trait levels were related in predictable ways to self-esteem, sociosexuality, and national personality profiles. People from the geographic regions of South America and East Asia were significantly different in openness from those inhabiting other world regions. The discussion focuses on limitations of t...

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The Geographic Distribution of Big Five Personality Traits Patterns and Profiles of Human Self-Description Across 56 Nations

Publisher Summary This chapter describes a global research program designed to evaluate the universality and meaning of a five-factor structure of general beliefs or social axioms. Student data from 40 cultures and adult data from 13 cultures are collected, with both types of data providing strong support for the generality of this five-factor structure. The validity and usefulness of this structure are established by correlating citizen profiles across five dimensions—including social cynicism, social complexity, reward for application, religiosity, and fate control for each cultural group with societal characteristics. Within-culture and cross-cultural studies are reviewed to support the meanings of these axioms. A five-dimensional structure of social axioms was identified in Hong Kong and Venezuela, and subsequently replicated in the United States, Germany, and Japan. The universality of this structure of social axioms was evaluated by a round-the-world study, the results of which are presented. The chapter describes a research program designed to identify psychological construct, general beliefs or social axioms. It presents a historical review of the study of shared beliefs in social psychology.

Social Axioms: A Model for Social Beliefs in Multicultural Perspective.

Personality traits, 2nd ed.

The extent to which methodological tools can help correct the overemphasis on fact finding and speed up the slow theoretical progress in cross-cultural psychology is analyzed. Two types of contributions to the current predicament are delineated. First, cross-cultural psychologists have created their own partis pris. Second, partis pris have been inherited from mainstream psychology. In the future, most cross-cultural studies will be carried out by researchers who have an interest in cultural variations on specific variables or instruments, whereas the group of researchers who spend their professional lives in cross-cultural psychology will remain small but influential. Methodological issues arising in studies by both groups are described. Important trends are (a) the change from exploration to explanation of cross-cultural differences, which has implications for the design of cross-cultural studies; and (b) the so-far-hesitant usage of recently developed statistical techniques, such as item response theor...

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Methodological Issues in Psychological Research on Culture

The universality and sufficiency of the five-factor model in the Chinese context were investigated. In Study 1, analysis of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI) taken by Chinese students showed four joint factors similar to the domains of the NEO-PI-R. Two unique factors were obtained. The Interpersonal Relatedness factor was defined only by CPAI scales. The Openness domain, however, was not represented in the CPAI scales. In Study 2, involving Chinese managers, the robustness of the Interpersonal Relatedness factor was demonstrated. In Study 3, the six-factor model was confirmed with Hawaiian students. Further analyses showed that the six-factor models were superior to the five-factor models and that the Interpersonal Relatedness scales could not be consistently explained by a combination of the Big Five factors. Implications for the universality of the five-factor model and the cross-cultural relevance of the CPAI Interpersonal Relatedn...

Wei-Zhen Song

Papers

Indigenous Chinese Personality Constructs Is the Five-Factor Model Complete?