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 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.

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