Trait Psychology in the Philippines

Abstract

McCrae's proposal to designate a field of personality traits and culture, coupled with challenges to the trait concept by cultural psychologists, makes relevant a review of trait psychology in a collectivistic culture, the Philippines. Philippine evidence in support of the trait concept includes the following: (a) Filipinos have a rich lexicon of trait terms and use these terms to describe and understand others and their behavior, (b) traits may be an important part of Filipinos' self-concepts, (c) the structure of Filipino traits can be approximated by universal Big Five-like dimensions, (d) trait scores show criterion validity, and (e) some interjudge agreement in trait judgments can be demonstrated. There is some suggestion, however, that criterion validities and interjudge agreement values may be lower in the Philippines than in the United States, providing some support for the view that traits will be less predictive of behavior in collectivistic cultures.