The use of traits and contextual information in free personality descriptions across ethnocultural groups in South Africa.

Valchev, Velichko H.; Vijver, Fons J. R. van de; Nel, Jan Alewyn; Rothmann, Sebastiaan; Meiring, Deon

doi:10.1037/a0032276

Cited by 76 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…With respect to assessment, general factors like the level of abstractness of personality characteristics can affect cross-cultural comparisons (cf. Valchev et al, 2012). When abstractness is a concern, as may often be the case in comparisons between more collectivistic and more individualistic cultures, questionnaire items with specific trait manifestations should be preferred as they have been found to favor structure replicability in more collectivistic groups while not hampering it in more individualistic groups (e.g., Schmitt, Allik, McCrae, & Benet-Martínez, 2007;Schwartz et al, 2001).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Similarities and Differences in Implicit Personality Concepts across Ethnocultural Groups in South Africa

Valchev

Nel

Vijver

et al. 2012

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

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Using a combined emic-etic approach, the present study investigates similarities and differences in the indigenous personality concepts of ethnocultural groups in South Africa. Semistructured interviews asking for self-and other-descriptions were conducted with 1,027 Blacks, 58 Indians, and 105 Whites, speakers of the country's 11 official languages. A model with 9 broad personality clusters subsuming the Big Five-Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Facilitating, Integrity, Intellect, Openness, Relationship Harmony, and Soft-Heartedness (Nel et al., 2012)-was examined. The 9 clusters were found in all groups, yet the groups differed in their use of the model's components: Blacks referred more to social-relational descriptions, specific trait manifestations, and social norms, whereas Whites referred more to personal-growth descriptions and abstract concepts, and Indians had an intermediate pattern. The results suggest that a broad spectrum of personality concepts should be included in the development of common personality models and measurement tools for diverse cultural groups. Keywords implicit personality concepts, emic-etic approach, indigenous personality modelCross-cultural research on personality is traditionally conducted either from an etic (universalistic) or an emic (culture-specific) perspective (Cheung, Van de Vijver, & Leong, 2011;Church, 2008). In more recent studies, there is a tendency to seek an integration of the two perspectives in an emic-etic framework that recognizes indigenous as well as universal components of personality (Cheung et al., 2011). The present study investigates a recently developed indigenous model of personality for South Africa in an emic-etic framework. This model has been at University of Pretoria on February 12, 2014 jcc.sagepub.com Downloaded from 366Journal of developed from an indigenous perspective to represent the implicit personality concepts of all major cultural groups in South Africa. The salience of the specific elements of this model for different groups has not been addressed so far, although group differences can be expected both as a function of broad factors like individualism-collectivism (Triandis, 1995), autonomy-embeddedness, and egalitarianism-hierarchy values (Schwartz, 2006) and of more specific factors like cultural differences in definitions of intelligence (Serpell, 1993). This study explores the similarities and differences in the salience and composition of implicit personality concepts across three ethnocultural groups in South Africa: Blacks, Indians, and Whites. We first provide a brief overview of the emic-etic approaches to personality. We then sketch the background of personality study in South Africa and describe in detail the indigenous model under investigation. Emic-Etic Approaches to PersonalityEtic studies of personality are primarily concerned with the cross-cultural replicability of universal personality models (Church, 2001(Church, , 2008 Emic studies, on the other hand, direct their attention to th...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Similarities and Differences in Implicit Personality Concepts across Ethnocultural Groups in South Africa

Valchev

Nel

Vijver

et al. 2012

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

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“…elaborated the most comprehensive list available with these types of sources, which include oral records, print media, literary texts, etc. used literary and academic texts; Cheung et al (1996) used literary texts, proverbs and the spoken language; and and Valchev et al (2013) recorded and transcribed the audio of interviews. , on the other hand, published a book entirely devoted to the automated evaluation of the personality through voice recording and speech analysis, including acoustic measures.…”

Section: The Lexical Approach and The Psychological Study Of Natural mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Personality Lexicon in Brazilian Portuguese: Studies with Natural Language

Peres¹

2018

Preprint

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iv Procura da poesia (...) Chega mais perto e contempla as palavras.Cada uma tem mil faces secretas sob a face neutra e te pergunta, sem interesse pela resposta, pobre ou terrível, que lhe deres:Trouxeste a chave? (...) Carlos Drummond de Andrade in A Rosa do Povo (1945) From March 1979Tired of all who come with words, words but no language I went to the snow-covered island.The wild does not have words.The unwritten pages spread out on all sides! I come upon the tracks of roe deer in the snow.Language but no words. Tomas Tranströmer in The Wild Market Square (1983, trad. Robin Fulton) v DedicatoryThis dissertation is dedicated to Professor Jacob Laros and to Professor Luiz Pasquali, who advised me during my postgraduate studies with inspiring wisdom, not only embracing my projects, but also kindly respecting my ideas and decisions, and patiently guiding me through my doubts and after my stumbles. It is an honor to be an apprentice and a friend of such masters.vi Agradecimentos (Acknowledgements)Um doutoramento não é resultado apenas da dedicação individual do estudante. Nesse sentido, faço os seguintes agradecimentos. À Renata e ao Bartholomeu, pelo amor e companheirismo. Aos meus pais, que sempre se esforçaram para oferecer aos filhos e a outros familiares oportunidades para o desenvolvimento educacional e profissional. Aos meus irmãos, cunhados e ao restante da minha grande e querida família mineira. À Thaís, Dudu e Raphael, a quem espero inspirar em seguir a carreira acadêmica. Aos meus professores da Educação Básica, que me ensinaram a aprender e inspiraram minha predileção pela ciência, artes e filosofia. Gostaria de lembrar especialmente das professoras Laudiene, Eliana, Magda Table 3. The Six-Topic Model with the 10 most relevant terms of the topics, reliability and presumed correspondence with other psycholexical models ……………………………………………………………..……….… 127 Table 4. The Seven-Topic Model with the 10 most relevant terms of the topics, reliability and presumed correspondence with other psycholexical models ……………………………………………………….… 128 Table 5. The Fourteen-Topic Model with the 10 most relevant terms of the topics, reliability and presumed correspondence with other psycholexical models ………………………………………………………… 130 Table 6. The Fifteen-Topic Model with the 10 most relevant terms of the topics, reliability and presumed correspondence with other psycholexical models …………………………………………………………. 132 Table 7. User frequency or the number of users that used the term, overall term frequency in the corpus, inverse document frequency, mean, minimum, maximum, and range …………………………..… 147xii General AbstractThis dissertation consists of three studies concerning the lexical approach of research in the field of personality, with a focus on Brazilian culture and natural language. The first study is of a theoretical nature and explores some of the criticisms regarding the lexical approach to personality research with its origin in the psychological study of natural language and crosscultural psychology, as well as methodolo...

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“…It seems plausible that this difference between collectivistic and individualistic cultures manifests as DIF in the endorsement of specific items related to citizenship. This suggestion would be in keeping with conclusions drawn in other cross-cultural studies situated within the South African context, which have also found cultural differences in trait-like personality variables (Valchev et al, 2012;Valchev et al, 2013;Valchev et al, 2014). In the context of this body of research, this serves as sound cause for abductively motivated research into the manner in which such distinctions may be understood using a collectivisticindividualistic theoretical frame.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

Cross-cultural differences in the character strength of citizenship in South Africa

Plessis

Saccaggi

Bruin

2015

PINS

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The psychological conceptualisation of the character strength of citizenship as a trait ubiquitous across cultures is examined within the context of a diverse South African sample. The theoretically supposed elements common to the definition of citizenship as a dispositional trait (rather than a situational or cultural phenomenon) are examined by means of considering Peterson and Seligman's (2004) conceptualisation of citizenship as espoused in their work on character strength and virtues. Using the Rasch model of item response theory the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) Value in Action Inventory (VIA) Citizenship scale was examined for fit and differential item functioning (DIF). A diverse sample of 902 South African university students who completed the Citizenship scale was examined for DIF as a function of self-asserted ethnicities and home language groups, which serve as indicators of culture within the South African context. The findings of the study suggest that while certain conceptual aspects of trait-based citizenship as espoused by Peterson and Seligman (2004) are common across the heterogeneous cultures (as defined by ethnicity and language group) examined, there is sound evidence that there are also qualitative distinctions that are exclusively a function of cultural grouping, suggesting difficulties with the exclusive conceptualisation of citizenship as an individual trait. The implications of these findings speak to the importance of considering citizenship as a nuanced and complex notion that requires further consideration in terms of the philosophical, theoretical and empirical qualification of its conceptualisation. IntroductionThe concept of citizenship has been debated and discussed by scholars from numerous disciplines, including PINS, 2015PINS, , 48, 22 -44, http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2309PINS, -8708/2015 psychology (Dahlsgaard, Peterson & Seligman, 2005). At the broadest level, citizenship is linked to concepts such as membership and belonging. Although it was initially linked to belonging to a specific nation state, in recent times understandings of citizenship have moved beyond simplistic linkages with nation states to the idea that citizenship can be related to belonging to any grouping (Barnes, Auburn & Lea, 2004;Hamilton, 2009). Within psychology, citizenship has recently been conceptualised as one of the trait like character strengths identified by Peterson and Seligman (2004) and as such forms part of the growing positive psychology movement. This study examined this particular conceptualisation of citizenship within the South African context, making use of Peterson and Seligman's (2004: 13) seminal conceptualisation of citizenship as a trait-like construct that is "ubiquitously recognized and valued". It is acknowledged that despite the prominence of Peterson and Seligman's (2004) conceptualisation of citizenship other, contrasting, notions exist within psychology that view citizenship as being more situationally and culturally, rather than dispositionally, ...

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The use of traits and contextual information in free personality descriptions across ethnocultural groups in South Africa.

Cited by 76 publications

References 65 publications

Similarities and Differences in Implicit Personality Concepts across Ethnocultural Groups in South Africa

Similarities and Differences in Implicit Personality Concepts across Ethnocultural Groups in South Africa

The Personality Lexicon in Brazilian Portuguese: Studies with Natural Language

Cross-cultural differences in the character strength of citizenship in South Africa

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