We present the development and the underlying structure of a personality inventory for the main ethnocultural groups of South Africa, using an emic-etic approach. The South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) was developed based on an extensive qualitative study of the implicit personality conceptions in the country's 11 official languages (Nel et al., 2012). Items were generated and selected (to a final set of 146) with a continuous focus on cultural adequacy and translatability. Students and community adults (671 Blacks, 198 Coloreds, 104 Indians, and 391 Whites) completed the inventory. A 6-dimensional structure (comprising a positive and a negative Social-Relational factor, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness) was equivalent across groups and replicated in an independent sample of 139 Black and 270 White students. The SAPI correlated highly overall with impression-management aspects, but lower with lying aspects of social desirability. The SAPI socialrelational factors were distinguishable from the Big Five in a joint factor analysis; the multiple correlations with the Big Five were .64 (positive) and .51 (negative social-relational). Implications and suggestions for emic-etic instrument and model development are discussed.

The longitudinal links of personality traits, values, and well-being and self-esteem. A five-wave study of a nationally representative sample formal und inhaltlich überarbeitete Version

What motives do people prioritize in their social lives? Historically, social psychologists, especially those adopting an evolutionary perspective, have devoted a great deal of research attention to sexual attraction and romantic-partner choice (mate seeking). Research on long-term familial bonds (mate retention and kin care) has been less thoroughly connected to relevant comparative and evolutionary work on other species, and in the case of kin care, these bonds have been less well researched. Examining varied sources of data from 27 societies around the world, we found that people generally view familial motives as primary in importance and mate-seeking motives as relatively low in importance. Compared with other groups, college students, single people, and men place relatively higher emphasis on mate seeking, but even those samples rated kin-care motives as more important. Furthermore, motives linked to long-term familial bonds are positively associated with psychological well-being, but mate-seeking motives are associated with anxiety and depression. We address theoretical and empirical reasons why there has been extensive research on mate seeking and why people prioritize goals related to long-term familial bonds over mating goals. Reallocating relatively greater research effort toward long-term familial relationships would likely yield many interesting new findings relevant to everyday people’s highest social priorities.

This study aims to evaluate a number of procedures that have been proposed to enhance cross‐cultural comparability of personality and value data. A priori procedures (anchoring vignettes and direct measures of response styles (i.e. acquiescence, extremity, midpoint responding, and social desirability), a posteriori procedures focusing on data transformations prior to analysis (ipsatization and item parcelling), and two data modelling procedures (treating data as continuous vs as ordered categories) were compared using data collected from university students in 16 countries. We found that (i) anchoring vignettes showed lack of invariance, so they were not bias‐free; (ii) anchoring vignettes showed higher internal consistencies than raw scores where all other correction procedures, notably ipsatization, showed lower internal consistencies; (iii) in measurement invariance testing, no procedure yielded scalar invariance; anchoring vignettes and item parcelling slightly improved comparability, response style correction did not affect it, and ipsatization resulted in lower comparability; (iv) treating Likert‐scale data as categorical resulted in higher levels of comparability; (v) factor scores of scales extracted from different procedures showed similar correlational patterning; and (vi) response style correction was the only procedure that suggested improvement in external validity of country‐level conscientiousness. We conclude that, although no procedure resolves all comparability issues, anchoring vignettes, parcelling, and treating data as ordered categories seem promising to alleviate incomparability. We advise caution in uncritically applying any of these procedures. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology

This research extends our work on the conceptualization and measurement of cultural competencies with a revised bifactor measurement model of sociocultural adaptation (the Revised Sociocultural Adaptation Scale [SCAS-R]). Study 1 describes the initial development and validation of the SCAS-R with its Social Interaction, Community Engagement, and Ecological Adaptability domains of cultural competencies based on a mixed sample of short- and long-term migrants (N = 316). The construct validity of the revised scale was supported by significant correlations with social difficulties as assessed by the original Sociocultural Adaptation Scale; generic social skills; cultural intelligence; cultural engagement; international adjustment; and psychological adaptation: life satisfaction and depression. The bifactor model was confirmed in Study 2 with a sample of international students (N = 1,527). Results converged with previously established links between sociocultural adaptation and background variables (e.g., language proficiency), psychological adaptation, and situational factors such as cultural distance and perceived discrimination. Study 3 confirmed the predictive and incremental validity of the SCAS-R by investigating the influence of cultural competence on migration decision making in a varied sample of newly arrived migrants in New Zealand (N = 184). Cultural competence as assessed by the SCAS-R significantly explained additional variance in immigrants’ intention to settle permanently in New Zealand over and above migration motivations, social connectedness, life satisfaction, and language proficiency. Our findings address the limitations of the original SCAS measure, and offer initial validation of an improved measure for assessing the culturally competent behaviors required for appropriate, effective, and adaptive functioning in new cultural settings.

Cross-cultural transitions are challenging and often have detrimental consequences for psychological well-being. This is particularly true for international students at tertiary institutions who are not only transitioning between school and higher education, but also between vastly different educational systems. This study tests a predictive model of psychological adaptation with international students whereby host national connectedness mediates the effects of personal resources and contextual factors on adaptive outcomes. A sample (N = 1527) of international tertiary students in New Zealand completed a survey that measured self-reported English language proficiency, perceived cultural distance, perceived cultural inclusiveness in the classroom, host national connectedness (defined by frequency of contact, number of friends, social support, and general belongingness), and positive (life satisfaction) and negative (psychological symptoms) indicators of psychological adaptation. Path analysis indicated that host national connectedness fully mediated the effects of English language proficiency on psychological symptoms and partially mediated the effects of language proficiency, cultural distance and cultural inclusion in the classroom on life satisfaction and psychological symptoms. The findings highlight the importance of international students' relationships with host nationals, and the results are discussed in relation to strategies that could enhance student-host connectedness during crosscultural transitions.

Indigenous personality research often remains limited to its cultural context of origin. Previous cross-cultural examinations of indigenous models have typically focused on East–West comparisons and have paid scant attention to the predictive validity of indigenous models in new contexts. The present study addresses the replicability of the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) and its predictive validity for family orientation and well-being in New Zealand European ( n = 428) and Māori students ( n = 226). The structure of the SAPI in New Zealand was equivalent to the structure identified in South Africa and had metric invariance between the two New Zealand groups. The SAPI social-relational scales explained additional variance above neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness in family orientation, but not in well-being. Mediation path analyses suggested that personality played a similar role for family orientation and well-being in the two groups when assessed by the SAPI, although group differences were suggested when using the Big Five Inventory. Our findings indicate that indigenously derived models, developed with the aim to represent culturally salient concepts, can be relevant well beyond their culture of origin and offer an enriched understanding of personality’s role for important outcomes across cultures.

We present a new method for personality assessment at a distance to uncover personality structure in historical texts. We focus on how two 19th century authors understood and described human personality; we apply a new bottom‐up computational approach to extract personality dimensions used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to describe fictional characters in 21 novels. We matched personality descriptions using three person‐description dictionaries marker scales as reference points for interpretation. Factor structures did not show strong convergence with the contemporary Big Five model. Jane Austen described characters in terms of social and emotional richness with greater nuances but using a less extensive vocabulary. Charles Dickens, in contrast, used a rich and diverse personality vocabulary, but those descriptions centred around more restricted dimensions of power and dominance. Although we could identify conceptually similar factors across the two authors, analyses of the overlapping vocabulary between the two authors suggested only moderate convergence. We discuss the utility and potential of automated text analysis and the lexical hypothesis to (i) provide insights into implicit personality models in historical texts and (ii) bridge the divide between idiographic and nomothetic perspectives. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology