Invitation to Psychology

Chapter 2 Theories of Personality 65

administering Western personality inventories

but also developing indigenous measures to cap-

ture cultural variations (Cheung, van de Vijver,

& Leong, 2011). In China, they found evidence

for a personality factor they call “interpersonal

relatedness.” This trait occurs universally, just as

the Big Five do, but Asians, and Asian Americans

who are less acculturated to American society,

score higher on it than do European Americans

or highly acculturated Asian Americans. In South

Africa, where a personality inventory has been

developed in the nine official Bantu languages,

Afrikaans, and English, the researchers found the

familiar Big Five, but also a few other central

factors, including “relationship harmony,” “soft-

heartedness,” and “facilitating” (providing guid-

ance to others).

Culture and Traits. When people fail to under-

stand the influence of cultural norms on behavior,

they often attribute another person’s mysterious

or annoying actions to individual personality

traits. Take cleanliness. How often do you bathe?

Once a day, once a week? Do you regard baths as

healthy and invigorating or as a disgusting wal-

low in dirty water? How often, and where, do you

wash your hands—or feet? A person who would

seem obsessively clean in one culture might seem

an appalling slob in another (Fernea & Fernea,

1994).

Or consider helpfulness. Many years ago,

in a classic cross-cultural study of children in

Kenya, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Okinawa,

the United States, and five other societies,

researchers measured how often children behaved

measures showed that the Chinese players were
almost always able to look at the target from
their partner’s perspective, whereas the American
players often completely failed at this task (Wu
& Keysar, 2007). Of course, members of both
cultures understand the difference between their
own view of things and that of another person’s,
but the collectivist-oriented Chinese pay closer
attention to other people’s nonverbal expressions,
the better to monitor and modify their own
responses.
Because people from collectivist cultures
are concerned with adjusting their own behavior
depending on the social context, they tend to
regard personality and the sense of self as being
more flexible than people from individualist
cultures do. In a study comparing Japanese and
Americans, the Americans reported that their
sense of self changes only 5 to 10 percent in dif-
ferent situations, whereas the Japanese said that
90 to 99 percent of their sense of self changes (de
Rivera, 1989). For the group- oriented Japanese,
it is important to enact tachiba, to perform social
roles correctly so that there will be harmony
with others. Americans, in contrast, tend to value
“being true to your self” and having a “core iden-
tity.” Americans often value “self”-enhancement
even at the expense of others, but the Japanese
way of being a “good self” is through constant
self-criticism in the context of maintaining face
with others (Hamamura & Heine, 2008).
To further separate universal from culture-
specific aspects of personality, a group of cross-
cultural psychologists conducted in-depth
re search with Chinese people and South Africans,

table 2.1 Some average Differences between Individualist

and Collectivist Cultures

Members of Individualist Cultures Members of Collectivist Cultures

Define the self as autonomous, independent of

groups.

Define the self as an interdependent part of groups.

Give priority to individual, personal goals. Give priority to the needs and goals of the group.

Value independence, leadership, achievement,

and self-fulfillment.

Value group harmony, duty, obligation, and security.

Give more weight to an individual’s attitudes and

preferences than to group norms as explanations

of behavior.

Give more weight to group norms than to individual

attitudes as explanations of behavior.

Attend to the benefits and costs of relationships;

if costs exceed advantages, a person is likely to

drop a relationship.

Attend to the needs of group members; if a

relationship is beneficial to the group but costly to

the individual, the individual is likely to stay in the

relationship.

Source: Triandis, 1996.