The Questionnaire Big Six in 26 Nations : Developing Cross-Culturally Applicable Big Six, Big Five and Big Two Inventories

The Big Five is a useful model of attributes now commonly used in cross-cultural research, but without the support of strong measurement invariance (MI) evidence. The Big Six has been proposed as a cross-culturally informed update, and the broader Big Two (Social Self-Regulation and Dynamism) draws on even more cross-cultural evidence. However, neither has been rigorously tested for cross-cultural MI. Here a Big Six inventory (36QB6) and measures of the Big Five and Big Two derived from it, were tested and refined for cross-cultural usability in samples from 26 nations, divided into three subsets. CFA of the models in the first subset of nations demonstrated fit as strong in translation as typical personality measures achieve in their nation of origin (although poor per standard benchmarks). Items that performed inconsistently across cultures were removed, and alternates considered in a second subset of nations. Fit and invariance were improved for refined 30-item QB6 (30QB6), 25-item Big Five (25QB5), and 14- item Big Two (14QB2) measures in the third subset of nations. For all models, decrease in CFI between MI levels was larger than .01, indicating lack of support for higher levels. Configural and factorial invariance were relatively stronger, compared to scalar and full

Intimations of a New Paradigm for Lexical Studies in Psychology

4 pagesSeveral consecutive productive decades of research on basic dimensions of personality have given a firmer footing to the discipline due, in part, to contributions of lexical studies of personality. These studies helped establish more consensus as to structure—a set of a few dimensions worth measuring—which has enabled knowledge to accumulate within something of a standard assessment paradigm. Admittedly, these dimensions are quite broad, and if one wishes to characterize their content quite accurately, he or she must often resort to compound labels (e.g., honesty/humility, intellect/imagination). The factors they refer to are, basically, collages of more fine-grained components; the composition of the collages varies somewhat from one measure to another, and one language to another. There are, however, cracks in the paradigm. The “few dimensions” most widely regarded as measurement worthy—the Big Five—embody a good degree of ethnocentric bias, deriving from origin in Western samples and studies in and of Germanic-language-family contexts. These dimensions often replicate only partially or weakly. And, although these have good evidence for comparative predictive validity (in competition with SES and IQ; Roberts et al., 2007), the magnitude of prediction is not overwhelming. Better prediction is likely to come from more comprehensive models (Paunonen and Ashton, 2001; Mõttus et al., 2017). In lexical studies, five factors account for only a narrow slice—about a quarter—of the variance that stimuli based on the personality vocabulary can afford (e.g., Saucier and Iurino, 2020). Personality data are not 75% noise! Structures with far more than five factors (accounting for closer to half the variance) have recently been found to be replicable to a good degree (Saucier and Iurino, 2020)

Absolutism, Relativism, and Universalism in Personality Traits Across Cultures: The Case of the Big Five

Personality is a broad concept used to organize the myriad ways that people differ psychologically from one another. There is evidence that such differences have been important to humans everywhere, in that personality-relevant terms appear in all known languages. Empirical attempts to identify the most useful individual differences and their structure have emphasized cross-cultural evidence, but rigid adherence to a Big Five model has sometimes meant ignoring heterogenous results. We start with a framework for more precisely defining the universality versus cultural-specificity of personality concepts and models in order to better assess cross-cultural evidence. As this 50th anniversary of the IACCP is also the 50th anniversary of the first large lexical study of personality and more or less of the Big Five model, we take the opportunity to explore both how personality has been studied across contexts using the lexical method, and in 100 articles on personality topics (most using questionnaires) that were identified in the pages of JCCP. Personality articles in JCCP, classified into three types based on their balance of emic and etic components, illustrate larger trends in personality psychology. With the benefit of hindsight, we reflect on what each type has to offer going forward, and we encourage cross-cultural personality psychologists to go beyond imposed etic studies that seek primarily to confirm Western models in other contexts. The kinds of insights that more integrative emic and etic approaches can bring to the study of psychology across cultures are highlighted, and a future research agenda is provided

Personality structure in east and west Africa: Lexical studies of personality in Maa and Supyire-Senufo.

The field of psychology relies heavily on evidence from North America and Northern Europe. Universally-applicable models require input from around the globe. Indigenous lexical studies of personality, which define the most salient person-descriptive concepts and their structure in a population, provide this. Such results are reported from two non-industrialized communities, representing two of the three main language families of Africa, in groups with differing cultural characteristics. Maasai participants, traditionally herders in rural Kenya and Tanzania, have a highly-structured, traditional culture. Supyire-Senufo participants are traditional horticulturalists in Mali. The 203 most common person-descriptive terms in Maasai were administered to 166 participants, who described 320 persons (166 highly-regarded, 154 less so). The optimal emic solution included 5 factors: virtue/moral-character, debilitation/vulnerability, boldness/surgency, hubris/pride, timidity. In the Maasai context, descriptions of well-regarded individuals were exceptionally uniform, suggesting the role of personality language in norm socialization in tight, traditional cultures. In Supyire, 115 participants used 208 person-descriptive terms to describe 227 targets (half highly-regarded). The optimal emic solution included 10 factors: social self-regulation, well-being, vitality/resilience, broadmindedness, diligence versus laziness, madness, stubbornness versus attractiveness, acceptance versus discontent, hurry/worry, peacefulness. The best convergence between the languages was at the three-factor level, where factors relate to moral character, low agreeableness coupled with high extraversion, and emotional stability. Beginning with the four-factor level, content related to local cultural characteristics became apparent. In both languages, two-factor solutions matched the Big Two, but three-, five-, and six-factor solutions failed to overlap with etic Pan-Cultural Three, Big Five, or Big Six models

ǂŪsigu: The Structure of Character Description in Khoekhoegowab

Personality psychology relies heavily on evidence from North America and Europe. Lexical studies, based on the rationale that the most important psychological distinctions between people will be encoded in the natural languages, can provide input from underrepresented contexts by defining locally-relevant personality concepts and their structure. We report the results of a psycholexical study in Khoekhoegowab, the most widely spoken of southern Africa’s (non-Bantu) click languages. It includes the largest sample of any lexical study conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa, is the first anywhere to include qualitative interviews to systematically assess the interpretability of terms, and is one of few to rely on a more representative community sample of adults rather than students. Refinement of the survey included frequency-of-use ratings by native speakers from throughout Namibia and input on relevance to personality by those with a psychology degree. The survey was administered by interview to 622 participants by a team of 15 schoolteachers of Khoekhoegowab. The 11 dimensions of the optimal local model were labelled: Intemperance, Prosocial Diligence, Intrusive Gossip, Good Nature, Bad Temper, Predatory Aggression, Haughty Self-Respect, Vanity/Egotism, and Fear versus Courage. A Big One model of evaluation was strongly replicated. Moderate replication was found for the Big Two, Pan-Cultural Three, and a hypothesized pan-African model based on prior lexical results in two languages. Replication criteria were not achieved for the Big Five, Big Six, or South African Personality Inventory models. What results suggest about the local cultural context and about culturally specific aspects of the imported models are discussed

Ethics-Relevant Values as Antecedents of Personality Change: Longitudinal Findings from the Life and Time Study

What leads personality to develop in adulthood? Values, guiding principles that apply across contexts, may capture motivation for growth and change. An essentialist trait perspective posits that personality changes only as a result of organic factors. But evidence suggests that psychosocial factors also influence personality change, especially during young adulthood. In the Life and Time study of sources of personality change in adulthood, we specifically explore ethically-relevant value priorities, those related to the relative prioritization of narrow self-interest over the concerns of a larger community. According to Rollo May (1967), “mature values”, including aspects of both self-transcendence and self-determination, should serve to diminish or prevent neurotic anxiety. This is consistent with research on materialism, which is associated with lower well-being. An index based on May’s proposal and several related constructs (materialism, unmitigated self-interest, collectivism and individualism) are tested longitudinally as possible antecedents of Big Five/Six personality trait change using bivariate LCMSR models in a national community sample (N = 864 at Time 1). Contrary to an essentialist trait perspective, these value priorities more often preceded change in personality traits than vice-versa. Somewhat consistent with May’s theory, higher “mature” values preceded higher openness (statistically significant at the p < .005 level). Higher vertical individualism significantly preceded lower compassion, intellect and openness. At the suggestive (p < .05) level, higher unmitigated self-interest preceded lower conscientiousness, higher vertical individualism preceded higher volatility, higher mature values preceded higher honesty/propriety and politeness, higher horizontal collectivism preceded higher orderliness, agreeableness, and assertiveness and lower intellect, and higher horizontal individualism preceded lower withdrawal. In two of three cases, suggestive personality-as-antecedent-of-values-change effects were reciprocal with the values-effects: higher conscientiousness scores reciprocally preceded lower unmitigated self-interest, and higher volatility higher vertical individualism. No significant or suggestive “stand-alone”, non-reciprocal personality on values effects were found

The Questionnaire Big Six in 26 Nations: Developing Cross–Culturally Applicable Big Six, Big Five and Big Two Inventories

The Big Five is a useful model of attributes now commonly used in cross–cultural research, but without the support of strong measurement invariance (MI) evidence. The Big Six has been proposed as a cross–culturally informed update, and the broader Big Two (Social Self–Regulation and Dynamism) draws on even more cross–cultural evidence. However, neither has been rigorously tested for cross–cultural MI. Here a Big Six inventory (36QB6) and measures of the Big Five and Big Two derived from it were tested and refined for cross–cultural usability in samples from 26 nations, divided into three subsets. Confirmatory factor analysis of the models in the first subset of nations demonstrated fit as strong in translation as typical personality measures achieve in their nation of origin (although poor per standard benchmarks). Items that performed inconsistently across cultures were removed, and alternates considered in a second subset of nations. Fit and invariance were improved for refined 30–item QB6, 25–item Big Five and 14–item Big Two measures in the third subset of nations. For all models, decrease in comparative fit index between MI levels was larger than .01, indicating lack of support for higher levels. Configural and factorial invariance were relatively stronger, compared to scalar and full