Your past is not their present: Time, the other, and ethnocentrism in cross-cultural personality psychology

Abstract

Recent cross-cultural studies of personality traits have been ambitious in their scope, bringing together dozens of researchers to measure personality across many cultures. The key claim made in this paper is that a persistent form of ethnocentrism mars the presentation and interpretation of findings in cross-cultural studies of personality traits using evolutionary approaches. It is a form long-established as problematic and referred to in anthropology and related social science disciplines as allochronic discourse. A significant research report will be analysed to explore how allochronic discourse, conceptualizations of time, and representations of "otherness" are utilized. The reproduction of allochronic discourse is argued to indicate a need for cross-cultural personality psychologists to engage in multi-disciplinary debate, embrace innovative methodologies, and acknowledge the cultural specificity of its own conceptual frameworks.

Teaching the History of Psychology: A Content Analysis of Course Syllabi from Doctor of Psychology Programs

“…When these factors are considered, it is neither surprising nor coincidental that many scientific breakthroughs, including in psychology, occurred in 19th century Germany. Critical histories also focus on co-cultures that are usually left out of the familiar narratives (e.g., Adams & Hanna, 2012;Arnett, 2008;Brock, 2006;Furumoto & Scarborough, 1986;Holliday, 2009;Pickren, 2009;Sue, 2009). Another antidote is to inculcate diversity.…”

Open Peer Commentary and Author's Response

“…Accordingly, it is not surprising that critics have pointed out that ethnocentric approaches still affect the study of personality psychology (Adams & Hanna, 2012;Teo & Febbraro, 2003). Unfortunately, despite a huge amount of literature investigating personality traits, we know little about personality traits outside contemporary European and Asian cultures, and especially about personality traits of non-industrial cultures, and countless cultures that have existed in the history and prehistory of the human species.…”

Language Ability Accounts for Ethnic Difference in Mathematics Achievement

“…Although numerous cross-cultural studies have been conducted in juveniles, including those on delinquency (e.g., Link, 2008;Kemme, 2010;Schlesinger, 2010;Ungvary et al, 2017;Kobayashi and Farrington, 2019;Yun and Cui, 2019;Mancinelli et al, 2021), cognitive emotions (e.g., Pethtel and Chen, 2010;Alonso-Arbiol et al, 2011;Benítez et al, 2016;Potthoff et al, 2016;Susino and Schubert, 2016;Han et al, 2021;Zhou et al, 2021), traits (e.g., Adams and Hanna, 2012;Feilhauer et al, 2012;Wu and Bodigerel-Koehler, 2013;Bartel-Radic and Giannelloni, 2017;Wilson et al, 2017;Kuśnierz et al, 2020;Srirangarajan et al, 2020), and mental diseases (e.g., Lus and Mukaddes, 2009;Mpango et al, 2017;Wong et al, 2017;Nielsen et al, 2018;Sørlie et al, 2018;Ghafoor et al, 2019), there are relatively few cross-ethnic studies. China is a multi-ethnic country composed of 56 ethnic groups within which about 120 million are ethnic minorities.…”