Title: 11.8 Cultural Understandings of Personality - Psychology 2e | OpenStax
Headings: 11.8
Cultural Understandings of Personality

11.8 Cultural Understandings of Personality
Learning Objectives
Personality in Individualist and Collectivist Cultures
Approaches to Studying Personality in a Cultural Context

Content: In fact, there is evidence that the strength of personality traits varies across cultures. Let’s take a look at some of the Big Five factors (conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, and extroversion) across cultures. As you will learn when you study social psychology, Asian cultures are more collectivist, and people in these cultures tend to be less extroverted. People in Central and South American cultures tend to score higher on openness to experience, whereas Europeans score higher on neuroticism (Benet-Martinez & Karakitapoglu-Aygun, 2003). According to a study by Rentfrow and colleagues, there also seem to be regional personality differences within the United States ( Figure 11.15 ). Researchers analyzed responses from over 1.5 million individuals in the United States and found that there are three distinct regional personality clusters: Cluster 1, which is in the Upper Midwest and Deep South, is dominated by people who fall into the “friendly and conventional” personality; Cluster 2, which includes the West, is dominated by people who are more relaxed, emotionally stable, calm, and creative; and Cluster 3, which includes the Northeast, has more people who are stressed, irritable, and depressed. People who live in Clusters 2 and 3 are also generally more open (Rentfrow et al.,