Do We Have Valid Country-Level Measures of Personality?

Mean Profiles of the NEO Personality Inventory

“…When all personality ratings are aggregated, the country mean scores on personality traits are found. Unlike measures of happiness and religiousness, as stated above, personality averages are often treated with suspicion (Heine et al, 2008; Meisenberg, 2015; Perugini & Richetin, 2007). Indeed, some country rankings on personality traits look very puzzling (Allik & Realo, 2016) and they correlate with some external variables in a paradoxical manner (Heine et al, 2008; Mõttus et al, 2010).…”

“…Indeed, some country rankings on personality traits look very puzzling (Allik & Realo, 2016) and they correlate with some external variables in a paradoxical manner (Heine et al, 2008; Mõttus et al, 2010). Perhaps personality questionnaires have limited reliability and validity when used at the level of country averages (Meisenberg, 2015), this new analysis of NEO-PI-R/3 aggregate scores provides another explanation. Cross-country and cross-cultural differences in personality are very small compared with within-sample differences.…”

Diversity of historical ancestry and personality traits across 56 cultures

“…Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (log transformed) was used as an additional control because prior work has found it to be related to national variations in some of the big five personality traits (e.g., McCrae, 2001;Meisenberg, 2015). GDP per capita represents the total value of all services and goods generated for each person in a country, and it is considered a proxy for a country's overall standard of living and level of wealth.…”

Personality traits across countries: Support for similarities rather than differences

“…There are at least half a dozen large-scale cross-country studies to date. However, these often used modest country sample sizes, sometimes with equivocal results (see a comprehensive review [ 4 ]).Generally speaking, it is still a largely unsettled issue how reliable, valid and consequential country differences in personality traits are. In the wake of the suggested replication crisis within psychology [ 5 ], it is continually necessary to reaffirm psychological foundations such as cross-country personality measurement.…”

“…Relatedly, another study was unable to establish measurement invariance using a 36-item instrument across samples in 26 countries [ 18 ]. Nevertheless, the working assumption is that the FFM structure is sufficiently equivalent to enable comparisons of personality traits between countries [ 4 ].…”