What is it about?
Many personality traits used in research are specific to certain cultures. This study used evidence from all over the world to define two basic traits common across contexts: Social Self-Regulation captures the degree to which a person regulates themselves to fit the expectations of their society, versus rebels against them. Dynamism/Agency captures tendency to approach rewards versus to avoid harm.
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Why is it important?
This study finally provides a core model for traits that is not dominated by evidence from the United States and Europe. It is a culture-fair model and inventory, created from evidence from groups all over the world. This is unique in psychology, and a model for how theory and inventories might be created in the future.
Perspectives
Many voices now criticize psychology for being too centered in Western contexts, which are home to only 11% of the world's population. Authors of this paper have been some of those voices! What is harder is to find practical solutions. For psychology to progress, we need ways to measure key variables in comparable ways. We spent many years and used multiple studies to find a way to create a culture fair model and inventory. We hope this will spark other ideas and solutions to improve psychology and reduce cultural bias.
Dr. Amber Gayle Thalmayer
University of Zürich
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The cross-cultural big two: A culturally decentered theoretical and measurement model for personality traits., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, November 2024, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000528.
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