Personality and Culture

This week’s topic was personality and culture. The articles jointly focus on finding valid methodologies to study personality or personality traits in different cultures. While first article explains various key points about applying a measure to different cultures in the context of translation, the second article follows the way the first article paves and provides us an example of a personality study in Philippines.

The first article focuses on the translation/application problem under eight different titles. These titles are mainly about the adequacy of the translation; equivalence, reliability and the validity of the measures used, ethical and methodological limits/frames related to culture etc. Article also points out two main gaps in theory: How Western measures are applied to different cultures with the presupposition of universality and how these Western measures can exclude the local or culture-related personality constructs.

The second article presents us a study about if the personality traits are universal or culture-related. Based on the culture of Philippines, study shows traits both that could be considered as universal and culture-related. While conducting the study, both culture-specific measures and measures that are imported are used. Both of these measures contribute to the results of the study. Culture-specific measures, mostly conform with universal measures, but also show some traits specific for that culture. The salience of the traits obedience and social curiosity can be given as an example. Results of the study show that the universal measures (Big Five) are applicable to the Philippine culture, while addressing how culture-specific measures are consistent with the universal ones and also contribute to them.

So, these are my opinions. In the second study, results also showed differences between individuals based on gender or socioeconomic status. Factors like these make the effects of culture on psychology more complex and mobile. Applications of universal measures are limited with these factors. Every culture contains various sub-cultural, gender or economical factors that cause people to differentiate and with every combination of these comes different personality traits. I believe basic limitations of universal measures start here. In this study, it seems like this limitation is exceeded, but elimination process of this limitation can also differentiate in accordance to culture. I don’t know if this makes sense or not.