A four-culture study of self-enhancement and adjustment using the social relations model: do alternative conceptualizations and indices make a difference?

In the self-enhancement literature, 2 major controversies remain--whether self-enhancement is a cultural universal and whether it is healthy or maladaptive. Use of the social relations model (SRM; Kenny, 1994) might facilitate resolution of these controversies. We applied the SRM with a round-robin design in both friend and family contexts in 4 diverse cultures: the United States (n = 399), Mexico (n = 413), Venezuela (n = 290), and China (n = 222).

A Basic Bivariate Structure of Personality Attributes Evident Across Nine Languages.

Here, two studies seek to characterize a parsimonious common-denominator personality structure with optimal cross-cultural replicability. Personality differences are observed in all human populations and cultures, but lexicons for personality attributes contain so many distinctions that parsimony is lacking. Models stipulating the most important attributes have been formulated by experts or by empirical studies drawing on experience in a very limited range of cultures.

The effect of response style on self-reported Conscientiousness across 20 countries.

Rankings of countries on mean levels of self-reported Conscientiousness continue to puzzle researchers. Based on the hypothesis that cross-cultural differences in the tendency to prefer extreme response categories of ordinal rating scales over moderate categories can influence the comparability of self-reports, this study investigated possible effects of response style on the mean levels of self-reported Conscientiousness in 22 samples from 20 countries. Extreme and neutral responding were estimated based on respondents' ratings of 30 hypothetical people described in short vignettes.

Are cross-cultural comparisons of personality profiles meaningful? Differential item and facet functioning in the Revised NEO Personality Inventory.

Measurement invariance is a prerequisite for confident cross-cultural comparisons of personality profiles. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was used to detect differential item functioning (DIF) in factor loadings and intercepts for the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T.

Cultural Similarities and Differences in Perceived Affordances of Situations for Big Five Behaviors.

The perceived affordance or conduciveness of various situations for Big Five behaviors was investigated in the United States (N = 188) and the Philippines (N = 215). The basic proposition that different situations afford different trait-relevant behaviors was supported, at least in the perceptions of cultural informants. Cultural similarities exceeded differences, and in both cultures individuals perceived Big Five behaviors as expressed in if-then patterns of variation across situations.

Only three factors of personality description are fully replicable across languages: a comparison of 14 trait taxonomies.

We tested the hypothesis that only 3 factors of personality description are replicable across many different languages if they are independently derived by a psycholexical approach. Our test was based on 14 trait taxonomies from 12 different languages. Factors were compared at each level of factor extraction with solutions with 1 to 6 factors.

Culture, Method, and the Content of Self-Concepts: Testing Trait, Individual-Self-Primacy, and Cultural Psychology Perspectives.

Three theoretical perspectives on cultural universals and differences in the content of self-concepts were tested in individualistic (United States, n = 178; Australia, n = 112) and collectivistic (Mexico, n = 157; Philippines, n = 138) cultures, using three methods of self-concept assessment. Support was found for both trait perspectives and the individual-self-primacy hypothesis. In contrast, support for cultural psychology hypotheses was limited because traits and other personal attributes were not more salient, or social attributes less salient, in individualistic cultures than collectivistic cultures.

Prediction and Cross-Situational Consistency of Daily Behavior across Cultures: Testing Trait and Cultural Psychology Perspectives.

Trait and cultural psychology perspectives on the cross-situational consistency of behavior, and the predictive validity of traits, were tested in a daily process study in the United States (N = 68), an individualistic culture, and the Philippines (N = 80), a collectivistic culture. Participants completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and a measure of self-monitoring, then reported their daily behaviors and associated situational contexts for approximately 30 days. Consistent with trait perspectives, the Big Five traits predicted daily behaviors in both cultures, and relative (interindividual) consistency was observed across many, although not all, situational contexts.

Culture, cross-role consistency, and adjustment: testing trait and cultural psychology perspectives.

Trait and cultural psychology perspectives on cross-role consistency and its relation to adjustment were examined in 2 individualistic cultures, the United States (N=231) and Australia (N=195), and 4 collectivistic cultures, Mexico (N=199), the Philippines (N=195), Malaysia (N=217), and Japan (N=180). Cross-role consistency in trait ratings was evident in all cultures, supporting trait perspectives. Cultural comparisons of mean consistency provided support for cultural psychology perspectives as applied to East Asian cultures (i.

Lexical Studies of Filipino Person Descriptors: Adding Personality-Relevant Social and Physical Attributes.

Lexical studies have focused on traits. In the Filipino language, we investigated whether additional dimensions can be identified when personality-relevant terms for social roles, statuses, and effects, plus physical attributes, are included. Filipino students (N = 496) rated themselves on 268 such terms, plus 253 markers of trait and evaluative dimensions.

Culture and the Behavioral Manifestations of Traits: An Application of the Act Frequency Approach.

The behavioral manifestations of Big Five traits were compared across cultures using the Act Frequency Approach. American (n = 176) and Filipino (n = 195) students completed a Big Five measure and act frequency ratings for behaviors performed during the past month. Acts for specific traits cohered to an equivalent degree across cultures.

Measuring individual and cultural differences in implicit trait theories.

A new measure of implicit theories or beliefs regarding the traitedness versus contextuality of behavior was developed and tested across cultures. In Studies 1 (N = 266) and 2 (N = 266), these implicit beliefs dimensions were reliably measured and replicated across U.S.

Are indigenous personality dimensions culture specific? Philippine inventories and the five-factor model.

The authors addressed the culture specificity of indigenous personality constructs, the generalizability of the 5-factor model (FFM), and the incremental validity of indigenous measures in a collectivistic culture. Filipino college students (N = 508) completed 3 indigenous inventories and the Filipino version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). On the basis of the factor and regression analyses, they concluded that (a) most Philippine dimensions are well encompassed by the FFM and thus may not be very culture specific: (b) a few indigenous constructs are less well accounted for by the FFM: these constructs are not unknown in Western cultures, but they may be particularly salient or composed somewhat differently in the Philippines; (c) the structure of the NEO-PI-R FFM replicates well in the Philippines: and (d) Philippine inventories add modest incremental validity beyond the FFM in predicting selected culture-relevant criteria.