Personality: The Universal and the Culturally Specific
Abstract
There appears to be a universal desire to understand individual differences. This common desire exhibits both universal and culturally specific features. Motivations to view oneself positively differ substantially across cultural contexts, as do a number of other variables that covary with this motivation (i.e., approach-avoidance motivations, internal-external frames of reference, independent-interdependent views of self, incremental-entity theories of abilities, dialectical self-views, and relational mobility). The structure of personality traits, particularly the five-factor model of personality, emerges quite consistently across cultures, with some key variations noted when the structure is drawn from indigenous traits in other languages. The extent to which each of the Big 5 traits is endorsed in each culture varies considerably, although we note some methodological challenges with comparing personality traits across cultures. Finally, although people everywhere can conceive of each other in terms of personality traits, people in collectivistic cultures appear to rely on traits to a lesser degree when understanding themselves and others, compared with those from individualistic cultures.
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The relationship between openness to experience and creativity is universal.
“Similarly, the relationship between the personal characteristic of openness to experience and creativity was found to be universal (Heine & Buchtel, 2009).”
From Creativity: The Influence of Cultural, Social, and Work Contexts (2010) · cites this paper as Heine & Buchtel, 2009
Some non-Western cultures express additional personality dimensions that do not exist in top-down, nomothetic personality taxonomies such as the Big Five.
“Similarly, while the Big Five model of personality has well-established cross-cultural generalizability49, some non-Western cultures express additional personality dimensions that do not exist in top-down, nomothetic personality taxonomies such as the Big Five50.”
From A psychometric framework for evaluating and shaping personality traits in large language models (2025) · cites this paper as [50]
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- Authors
- Heine, S. J., & Buchtel, E. E.
- Affiliations
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- Venue
- Annual Review of Psychology
- Publisher
- Annual Reviews
- Published
- 2009-01-01
- Volume
- 60
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 369-394
- ISSN
- 0066-4308 (ISSN-L)
- 1545-2085
- OpenAlex
- W2096314969
- Cited by
- 417
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 29 · 2020: 119 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 27 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 22 · 2012: 20
- FWCI
- 1.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Annual Review of Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Cultural Differences and Values
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Keywords
- personality, cross-cultural personality, individual differences, self-concept, approach-avoidance motivation, internal and external attributions, relational mobility, Big Five personality traits, collectivism, individualism
- MeSH terms
- Character, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Humans, Individuality, Internal-External Control, Motivation, Personality, Personality Inventory, Psychometrics, Self Concept, Social Behavior, Social Conformity, Social Identification, Social Values, Reproducibility of Results
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