Title: 10.8 Cultural Understanding of Personality – Introductory Psychology
Headings: 10.8 Cultural Understanding of Personality
10.8 Cultural Understanding of Personality
Learning Objectives
Researchers found three distinct regional personality clusters in the United States. People tend to be friendly and conventional in the Upper Midwest and Deep South; relaxed, emotionally stable, and creative in the West; and stressed, irritable, and depressed in the Northeast (Rentfrow et al., 2013).
PERSONALITY IN INDIVIDUALIST AND COLLECTIVIST CULTURES
APPROACHES TO STUDYING PERSONALITY IN A CULTURAL CONTEXT
SUMMARY
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Personal Application Questions:
Glossary:
Answers to Exercises
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Content: Western ideas about personality may not be applicable to other cultures (Benet-Martinez & Oishi, 2008). 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 this study, there also seem to be regional personality differences within the United States (figure below). 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.