Title: Cultural Understandings of Personality – Psychology
Headings: 
Cultural Understandings of Personality
Learning Objectives
PERSONALITY IN INDIVIDUALIST AND COLLECTIVIST CULTURES
APPROACHES TO STUDYING PERSONALITY IN A CULTURAL CONTEXT
Summary
Critical Thinking Questions
Personal Application Questions
Glossary
License

Content: With these ideas in mind, personality psychologists have become interested in the role of culture in understanding personality. They ask whether personality traits are the same across cultures or if there are variations. It appears that there are both universal and culture-specific aspects that account for variation in people’s personalities. Why might it be important to consider cultural influences on personality? 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 ( [link] ).