Personality Flashcards
Personality
Aspects of an individual’s unique characteristics
- enduring behavioral and cognitive characteristics, traits or predispositions
Trait
A characteristic or quality distinguishing a person
Identity
Perceived roles in life, life experieces and narratives, values and motives
Psychological anthropology
This perspective forms the basis of the notion of a ‘national character’, which refers to the perception that each culture has a modal personality type and that most persons in that culture share aspects of it
- Personality is a relevant and meaningfull concept in the cultures that are being compared.
Cultural indigenous perspective
This perspective views personality as developed in a particular culture and found only in a specific culture; personality and culture are not separate entities, but are mutually constituted with each other
Cross-cultural perspective
This perspective views personality as something discrete and separate from culture, and as an etic or universal phenomenon that is equivalently relevant and meaningful across cultures (which allows for comparisons to be made)
Etic
Focused on measurement equivalence of improted instruments –> can be measured/compared across cultures
- strong focus on similarities may create blind spots
Emic
Indigenous, culture-specific approach –> difficult to measure with the same meaning across cultures
- focus on cultural uniqueness
Combined emic-etic
Starts in one culture from an emic approach and then takes the model from that culture and applies to other cultures in an etic approach to compare
Universality of the five factor model
Similarities in personality dimensions within and between cultures
- factor analyses of trait adjectives from English lexicon that were descriptive of the self and others
- widely used measure -> revised NEO personality inventory
Cross cultural differences in mean aggregate levels of five factor model
- why are there differences?
- Cultures shaped personalities through learning
- Selective migration of similar individuals
Why do we have perceptions on personality traits
- national identity?
- other sources for stereotypes: climate, national wealth, values and social desirability
- differences in other/self-perception
Five Factor Theory
This is the big five in personality traits: basic tendencies
- Neuroticisme
- Openness
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
–> Explains where traits come from
Characteristic adaptations on cultural bases
- Personal strivings
- Attitudes
- Skills
- Roles
- Relationships
Self concepts
- self-schemas
- Specific beliefs
- Specific behaviors
Evolutionary Approach
Universality of human interests
- traits serve adaptive functions
- hierarchical model from needs to action
Ashanti personality
- Emic
Child is given the name of the day, as it refers to the soul of the day
–> overrepresented in the justice system
- selective enhancement - internalized expectations?
Ubuntu personality
- Emic
African Personality
- ‘a person is only a person through others’
- layers
- three references axes: family, community, ancestors
Amae personality
- Emic
Japanese (building block of relationships)
- form of passive lover or dependency
- originating in the relationship with the mother
Familiar to self-distancing and self-assertive dimensions, and could thus be translated into other personality dimensions
Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI)
- combined emic and etic
- bottom-up, methodologically rigorous, indigenous approach, with a psycholexical starting point
- Emic/indigenous factor of interpersonal relatedness (Harmony and Renqing = theoretically and emprirically distinct
–> take it to other cultures (etic) andrenaming: Cross-cultural personality assessment inventory
South African Personality Inventory (SAPI)
Phase 1: Emic, culture-specific phase
Phase 2: instrument development phase
Phase 3: Combined emic-etic cross-cultural phase
Emic phase 1: personality descriptors
11 languages –> dictonary use problemetic
Solution:
- interviews with 1216 participants
- 49818 responses, 900 personality descriptors
- not exhausitve but ecologically valid
Phase 2: instrument development
Consideration:
- will the item translate well?
- Item too long in English? Idiomatic items?
Item Culling
–> traitedness
Traitedness in instrument development
More expected in individualistic contexts
- concrete behaviours
- qualified by situation
- qualified by relation
- expressed as relation or role
- expressed as joint description
Big Five
- conscietiousness
- emotional stability
- extraversie
- openess/intellect
- agreeableness
Phase 3 combined emic/etic for cross-cultural applicability
Comparison of South African groups and non South African groups –> emic-etic
Arab Personality Inventory (API)
Based on the five factor model and adds religious and moral values, gender roles and socioeconomic and political context
Can all trait dimensions be valid
- if trait dimensions have a biological basis
- if they are different pieces of the same cake
But: personality traits are not good predictors of behavior
–> Is personality just a label to roganize descriptions more efficiently
