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: These values influence personality. For example, Yang (2006) found that people in individualist cultures displayed more personally oriented personality traits, whereas people in collectivist cultures displayed more socially oriented personality traits. Frewer and Bleus (1991) conducted a study of the Eysenk Personality Inventory in a collectivist culture using Papua New Guinean university students. They found that the results of the personality inventory were only relevant when analyzed within the context of a collectivist society. Similarly, Dana (1986) suggested that personality assessment services for Native Americans are often provided without a proper recognition of culture-specific responses and a tribe-specific frame of reference. Assessors need to have more than a general knowledge of history, tribal differences, contemporary culture on reservations, and levels of acculturation in order to interpret psychological test responses with a minimal bias. Approaches to Studying Personality in a Cultural Context
There are three approaches that can be used to study personality in a cultural context, the cultural-comparative approach; the indigenous approach; and the combined approach, which incorporates elements of both views. Since ideas about personality have a Western basis, the cultural-comparative approach seeks to test Western ideas about personality in other cultures to determine whether they can be generalized and if they have cultural validity (Cheung van de Vijver, & Leong, 2011).