12 Culture and Personality
You may not have realized this, but most of our exploration of personality thus far has been focused on a very small subset of humans. Most of the data is focused on people living in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom because that’s where most psychological research has historically been conducted. Humans in these countries, however, are obviously only a very small percentage of the global population, and they are probably different in several regards from other humans who are currently living or have lived in the past. Specifically, these countries are geographically (and ideologically) Western, highly educated (in terms of formal schooling), heavily Industrialized, financially Rich (in terms of GDP), and Democratic. Psychologists commonly refer to this group of country characteristics with the tongue-in-cheek acronym “WEIRD”.
This overrepresentation of people from WEIRD societies is a problem because most psychologists probably aren’t just interested in the psychology of WEIRD people. We are interested in humans and human nature more broadly. To make more generalizable claims about human nature and to understand how human psychology and behavior works, we need study more diverse groups of people. That’s where cross-cultural research comes in.
Cross-cultural research plays a pivotal role in enriching our understanding of human behavior and psychology by exploring the breadth of cultural variation. It allows researchers to discern the universality of psychological phenomena and discern the extent to which cultural factors shape them. In applied settings, cross-cultural research can inform the development of interventions and treatments that are culturally sensitive and suitable for diverse populations. At a societal level, learning about cross-cultural research can promote a more nuanced-understanding and respect for diverse cultures. Additionally, it facilitates collaboration and exchange between researchers from different countries and cultural backgrounds, thereby enhancing the collective knowledge base of psychology on a global scale and fostering inclusivity and equity in psychological research.
In this chapter, we will examine some cross-cultural research exploring the interplay between culture and personality. We will examine what culture is, what it is made up of, and learn about a few fundamental dimensions of culture that will orient our focus. Then, we will explore how these fundamental cultural dimensions relate to cultural variation in personality trait levels and the structure of personality itself. Before we get going with our exploration of culture and personality, let’s review some basic pitfalls that we want to avoid and review basics of statistical distributions that can help us avoid them.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
When examining cultural differences, there are several pitfalls to avoid. Essentialism is a common pitfall to avoid when discussing cross-cultural research and cultural differences. This involves reducing a culture to a set of fixed, immutable traits or characteristics, ignoring the diversity and complexity within that culture. It overlooks the dynamic nature of cultures and individuals within them, leading to oversimplification and stereotyping. Ethnocentrism is another pitfall, where one evaluates other cultures solely based on the standards and values of their own culture, often leading to judgment or bias against those cultures. It’s crucial to recognize and appreciate cultural differences without imposing one’s own cultural norms as the universal standard.
We also want to avoid making a set of twin errors. The first is minimizing differences between cultures that are not our own which is problematic as it disregards the unique experiences, perspectives, and challenges faced by different cultural groups. Second, we want to avoid exaggerating differences between cultures, which can lead to misunderstandings and reinforce stereotypes, overlooking the commonalities and shared humanity that exist across cultures. Striking a balance between acknowledging cultural diversity and recognizing our commonalities is essential for meaningful cross-cultural understanding and research.
In my opinion, these pitfalls can be avoided by considering that cultural differences are usually referring only to the average of a distribution. Let’s review the concepts of averages and data distributions that we learned about way back in the chapter on Foundational Frameworks.
Understanding how an average relates to an underlying distribution is crucial for putting cultural differences into context. When we talk about an average, we are essentially summarizing a set of data points into a single value. It’s important to remember that this average is just one point within a broader distribution of data that captures the full variability or spread of individual scores within a group or culture.
Research across group differences consistently shows that there is more variation within groups than between groups. If we were to measure extraversion of people living in the USA and China, for example, we might find an average difference in extraversion between the countries; but within each country, there would still be a larger amount of variation among the people than the average difference between the countries. In other words, while there may be variability in averages between cultures, these differences are often small in magnitude when viewed in the context of the overall variability within each culture.
From the perspective of effect size measures like Cohen’s d, which quantify the magnitude of differences between groups, average differences between cultures tend to be relatively small (d < .2; for context, the difference in average height of men vs. women is around seven times bigger). This means that there is usually substantial overlap between groups or cultures in terms of the distribution of scores on a given trait or characteristic. Therefore, it’s essential not to overstate the significance of average differences between cultures and to recognize the diversity and variability within each culture.
By acknowledging the overlap between cultural groups, we can avoid the trap of oversimplifying or stereotyping entire cultures based on average differences. Instead, we can appreciate the richness and complexity of human diversity, recognizing that individuals within any culture still exhibit a wide range of behaviors, attitudes, and traits. This perspective fosters a more nuanced understanding of cultural differences and promotes respectful and inclusive cross-cultural dialogue and research.
Now that we are equipped to avoid these pitfalls, we can begin to traverse the landscape of cultural variation in personality.
Elements of Culture
What is culture? Just as it is difficult to pin down just one definition of personality, it is also challenging to define culture succinctly. For our purposes, we will avoid providing a rigid definition of culture and instead focus on exploring some of the key elements that constitute it. We’ll consider five elements of culture: symbols, beliefs, values, norms, and practices.
Symbols refer to the representations of language or thoughts that have shared meaning within a group. Symbols can be just about anything that has an agreed upon meaning. Some examples include: the alphabet letters that make up the words that allow me to communicate these concepts to you right now; mathematical notation that represents algorithmic procedures and abstract numbers; and emojis.
Beliefs refer to what people in a culture hold to be true, reflecting their understanding of the world. Examples of beliefs include religious beliefs, such as the belief in an afterlife or the existence of a higher power; scientific beliefs, such as the belief in the theory of evolution or the laws of physics; and cultural beliefs, such as the belief in the importance of hospitality or the power of superstitions.
Values are deeply ingrained principles that guide individuals’ actions and judgments, reflecting what is considered important or desirable within a cultural context. Examples of values include cultural values such as respect for elders or the pursuit of individual happiness; moral values such as honesty, integrity, or compassion; and societal values such as democracy, freedom, or justice.
Norms dictate what behaviors and interactions are expected or typical within a society. They can serve as social guidelines that promote cohesion and cooperation. Examples of norms include social norms such as queuing in line or waiting for one’s turn; gender norms such as expectations regarding clothes, appearance, or behavior based on gender; and legal norms such as laws against theft, violence, or discrimination.
Practices encompass the tangible expressions of culture, including rituals, ceremonies, and customs that are enacted by individuals within a cultural group. Examples of practices include religious rituals such as prayer, meditation, or worship services; cultural ceremonies such as weddings, funerals, or coming-of-age celebrations; and everyday customs such as greetings, gestures, or dietary habits.
Together, these elements interact in different combinations to make up the culture of a group. These elements are not totally independent; they often influence each other. The practice of praying, for instance, likely depends on the belief that an entity can answer prayers.
While there may be an underlying logic to many combinations of cultural elements that arise in a group, there can also be a randomness or arbitrariness to it. Some cultural elements, such as norms or practices, may have originated by chance or historical accidents; but they are perpetuated simply because people continue to adhere to them. Culture is dynamic and evolving — shaped by a complex interplay of historical, social, and psychological factors. There is a whole field of cultural evolution that specifically studies the dynamic change of cultural elements over time.
Levels of Culture and Cultural Identities
It is also important to recognize that culture can be defined at many levels. A nation is a convenient unit for cross-cultural research, but people also belong to ethnic groups, political groups, social classes, cities, neighborhoods, religions, languages, occupations, hobbies, music scenes, academic disciplines, and many other groups. Each of these can include its own symbols, beliefs, values, norms, and practices.
This means that a person is not simply from one culture. Most people hold many cultural identities at once, and these identities can become more or less important across situations. For example, the cultural expectations that guide behavior in a family setting may not be the same expectations that guide behavior in a classroom, workplace, religious community, neighborhood, or online group. This is one reason we should expect cultural influences on personality to be plural, probabilistic, and heterogeneous rather than simple and deterministic.
Dimensions of Culture
Just like there are countless ways individual people might differ in their tendencies of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (i.e., personality traits), there are also countless ways that groups can differ in their unique combinations of symbols, practices, beliefs, norms, and values (i.e., culture). In previous chapters, we learned that psychologists made the study of personality traits more tractable by using factor analysis to identify broad dimensions of personality; it turns out that a similar approach was applied to identify broad dimensions of culture.
In the 1960s and 1970s Dr. Geert Hofstede, a psychologist studying cultural differences, used interviews and surveys to index variation in practices, beliefs, norms, and other elements of culture across multiple countries. Through his research and several follow-up studies, six fundamental cultural dimensions have been identified (Hofstede & Bond, 1984). The first dimension, Power Distance, reflects the acceptance of unequal power distribution within a society. Individualism vs. Collectivism, the second dimension, measures the prioritization of personal versus group interests. The third dimension, Masculinity vs. Femininity, explores the degree of emphasis on traditional masculine values like competitiveness and assertiveness versus feminine values such as cooperation and nurturance. Uncertainty Avoidance, the fourth dimension, examines the level of discomfort with ambiguity and risk within a culture. The fifth dimension, introduced later, is Long-Term Orientation vs. Short-Term Orientation, which assesses the focus on long-term planning and perseverance versus short-term gratification. Finally, Indulgence vs. Restraint, indexes the extent to which societies allow for gratification of human desires (e.g., sexual, material). See the table below for an overview of what the extremes of each dimension describe.
| Dimension | Description of High End | Description of Low End |
|---|---|---|
| Power Distance | Acceptance of hierarchical structures and centralized decision-making. Less powerful members of society defer to authority figures and expect clear delineation between social classes or ranks. | Preference for more egalitarian relationships. Individuals challenge authority and expect a participatory decision-making process. |
| Individualism vs. Collectivism | Emphasis on personal freedom, autonomy, and achievement. People prioritize their own goals and assert their individuality. | Emphasis on group harmony and cooperation. Individuals prioritize the needs and goals of the group over individual desires. |
| Masculinity vs. Femininity | Emphasis on traditionally masculine values such as competitiveness, assertiveness, and achievement. Success is often defined in terms of material wealth and status. | Emphasis on nurturing relationships, quality of life, and work-life balance. Success is often defined in terms of social welfare and personal fulfillment. |
| Uncertainty Avoidance | Preference for rules, structure, and conformity to minimize uncertainty. People avoid ambiguous situations and seek security through adherence to traditions and established norms. | Tolerance for ambiguity and a willingness to take risks. People are more open to change, innovation, and experimentation. |
| Long-Term Orientation vs. Short-Term Orientation | Emphasis on long-term planning, perseverance, and thriftiness. People prioritize long-term goals and are willing to sacrifice short-term gains for future success. | Emphasis on short-term gratification, tradition, and respect for social norms. People focus on enjoying the present moment and may prioritize short-term gains over long-term planning. |
| Indulgence vs. Restraint | Emphasis on enjoying life, freedom of expression, and indulging in personal desires. People prioritize leisure, pleasure, and self-expression. | Emphasis on self-discipline, modesty, and adherence to social norms. People restrain their desires and adhere to strict social codes of conduct. |
Importantly, much like the Big Five and other factor analytic models of personality do not capture every nuance of personality variation, Hofstede’s dimensions also probably do not capture many nuances of cultural differences. However, the dimensions provide a tractable framework for understanding and comparing cultural differences across societies. We will refer to these dimensions as we further explore the interplay between culture and personality.
Interplay Between Culture and Personality
How is culture related to personality? As you might guess, these constructs are overlapping, and mutually reinforcing. As we will see, it is likely that personality shapes culture (personality -> culture), and that culture shapes personality (culture -> personality). This is because the systems of interconnected beliefs, norms, values, and other elements of culture are ultimately maintained in the minds of individuals: individuals are culturally influenced influencers of culture. But also, culture can shape personality via at least two pathways: enculturation and acculturation.
Enculturation is the process through which individuals learn and acquire the cultural norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors of the society they are born into or grow up in. This process begins at a very young age and continues throughout one’s life, shaping identity and sense of belonging. Enculturation occurs primarily through socialization, which involves interactions with family members, peers, educators, media, and other social institutions. For example, a child raised in a culture that values collectivism may be taught to prioritize group harmony and cooperation over individual achievement, while a culture that emphasizes independence may encourage children to assert their autonomy and self-reliance.
Acculturation, on the other hand, refers to the process of adopting and incorporating elements of a different culture into one’s own cultural identity. This often occurs when individuals or groups encounter a different culture due to migration, colonization, or globalization. Acculturation involves both cultural exchange and adaptation, as individuals may selectively adopt certain aspects of the new culture while retaining elements of their original cultural identity. For instance, immigrants to a new country may adopt certain customs, language, and practices of the host culture while still maintaining their native language, cuisine, and traditions. Over time, acculturation can lead to the development of a new blends of cultural practices and identities that reflect the diverse experiences and backgrounds of individuals or groups.
There are some important nuances to keep in mind when considering the power of these cultural processes to shape personality. Firstly, they are implicit, meaning that individuals often internalize cultural norms and values without conscious awareness. Secondly, they are plural, indicating that there are multiple cultural influences at play, including family, peers, media, and societal institutions. Thirdly, they are probabilistic, suggesting that individuals may not adopt all aspects of their culture equally or in the same way, and outcomes can vary based on various factors such as individual differences and environmental circumstances. Finally, these processes are heterogeneous, meaning that they manifest differently across diverse cultural contexts and can result in a wide range of outcomes in terms of personality, beliefs, and behaviors. With these caveats in mind, let’s examine some of the empirical research describing how cultural influences may shape personality.
Culture → Personality
One way culture can shape personality is by repeatedly exposing people to particular situations, expectations, rewards, and punishments. A culture that strongly values group harmony, for example, may provide frequent opportunities to practice deference, cooperation, and concern for others. A culture that strongly values self-expression may provide more opportunities to practice assertiveness, novelty seeking, and public self-promotion. These repeated situations do not create personality out of nothing, but they may help calibrate the average ways that people think, feel, and behave.
Cross-cultural research has found average differences in Big Five trait levels across nations and cultural groups (Schmitt et al., 2007). These findings are interesting, but they should be interpreted with the cautions from earlier in the chapter. Average differences in trait levels do not imply that every person in one culture differs from every person in another culture. They also do not tell us whether culture caused the difference, personality caused the cultural pattern, both influenced each other, or some third variable influenced both.
Culture and Personality Development
Culture may also shape how personality changes across the lifespan. Recall from the development chapter that people tend, on average, to become more agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable with age. Cross-cultural research suggests that these maturation trends are fairly widespread, but the timing and strength of these changes differ across cultures. One explanation is that cultures differ in when people enter adult social roles, such as stable work, committed partnerships, parenting, and other responsibilities. In one large study across 62 nations, cultures with earlier onset of adult-role responsibilities tended to show earlier personality maturation (Bleidorn et al., 2013).
Cultural expectations may also matter later in life. For example, Kitayama and colleagues (2020) argued that some Western cultural contexts emphasize remaining youthful, active, positive, and independent even in late adulthood. That cultural expectation may create a mismatch for older adults as physical and social conditions change. In contrast, some East Asian cultural contexts place more emphasis on age-graded roles and adapting to changing social positions across the lifespan.
These patterns suggest that culture may influence which personality patterns are reinforced, expected, or made difficult at different ages.
Cultural Experiences and Acculturation
Acculturation provides another window into culture shaping personality. When people move into a new cultural context, they may repeatedly encounter different norms, values, practices, and social expectations. Over time, these experiences can shift how people typically behave or how they understand themselves. Research on studying abroad, for example, suggests that international experiences can be associated with changes in some Big Five traits, although people who choose to study abroad may already differ from people who do not (Niehoff et al., 2017).
Research on immigrants provides a similar example. In one study of Japanese, Japanese American, and European American participants, greater involvement in U.S. culture was associated with personality profiles that fit U.S. cultural patterns more closely and Japanese cultural patterns less closely (Güngör et al., 2013). This is consistent with the idea that personality can acculturate. But it still requires caution: cultural exposure, self-selection, age, language, social roles, and measurement issues can all be tangled together.
Problems with Comparing Personality Across Cultures
Comparing personality across cultures is difficult because the measure itself may not work the same way across groups. A translated item may not carry the same meaning. A trait word may depend on a cultural context that is not shared by all participants. People in different cultures may compare themselves to different reference groups when answering questions (Heine et al., 2002). Response styles can also differ; for example, some groups may be more likely to agree with statements in general, avoid extreme responses, or answer in socially desirable ways.
These problems matter because they can make a real cultural difference look larger or smaller than it is, or they can make a measurement artifact look like a cultural difference. This does not mean we should give up on cross-cultural personality research. It means we should treat reliability and validity as central scientific problems rather than boring technical details.
Personality → Culture
Culture can shape personality, but the arrow also points in the other direction. Cultures are produced and maintained by groups of individuals. If many people in a group tend to be open to novelty, extraverted, threat-sensitive, cooperative, suspicious, risk tolerant, or highly status motivated, those aggregate tendencies may influence the symbols, beliefs, values, norms, and practices that become common in that group.
For example, region-level personality has been linked to cultural and political outcomes. Obschonka and colleagues (2018) found that regional levels of neurotic traits were associated with support for Brexit in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump in the United States. This kind of finding does not mean that a single trait simply explains voting behavior. It does show that aggregate personality can be connected to large-scale cultural outcomes, especially when social conditions make certain concerns, motives, or emotions politically relevant.
The difficulty is that these patterns are usually circular. Personality may help shape culture, culture may help shape personality, and both may be influenced by other features of the environment. A cautious population might develop cautious norms, and cautious norms might then reinforce cautious behavior. Over time, it becomes hard to separate the chicken from the egg.
Ecological Factors
One way to make progress on the chicken-and-egg problem is to examine ecological factors. Ecological factors are aspects of the physical environment that can influence development and behavior but are less likely to be directly produced by personality or culture. Examples include latitude, temperature, topography, pathogen prevalence, soil quality, resource availability, and subsistence style. These variables are not magic causal explanations, but they can help us think more clearly about why cultures and personality patterns might differ across places.
Consider subsistence style. Some forms of farming require more coordination than others. Wetland rice farming, for example, often requires coordinated irrigation, shared labor, and monitoring of water use. Talhelm and English (2020) found that historically rice-farming regions tended to have tighter social norms than wheat-farming regions, both within China and across nations. This is not saying that rice causes one personality type. It is a hypothesis about how repeated ecological demands can shape cultural norms, which may then shape behavior and personality expression.
Pathogen prevalence provides another example. In environments where infectious disease risk was historically high, norms that limited contact with unfamiliar outsiders or emphasized group boundaries may have reduced exposure to disease. Consistent with this logic, pathogen prevalence has been linked to cultural variation in individualism-collectivism and to average levels of traits such as extraversion and openness (Fincher et al., 2008; Schaller & Murray, 2008). Again, this is not a simple deterministic story. Pathogens, economy, institutions, climate, migration, and measurement issues can all be intertwined.
Topography is another possible ecological influence. Mountainous or frontier environments may be more difficult to settle and may reward or attract people who are more independent, self-reliant, or open to risk and novelty. In a large study of the United States, Götz and colleagues (2020) found that mountainousness was associated with regional differences in Big Five traits. These effects were not enormous, and they do not mean that every person in a mountain region has the same personality. But they illustrate how physical environments can become part of the broader explanation for cultural and personality variation.
Cultural Variation in Personality Structure
So far, we have mostly focused on trait levels: whether one group is higher or lower, on average, on some personality trait. But we also need to think about personality structure. Personality structure refers to the pattern of covariation among traits in a population. The Big Five is not merely a list of five interesting traits. It is a claim that many narrower traits tend to cluster into five broad dimensions.
Many trait theorists have argued that the Big Five or other “Big Few” models reflect basic biological tendencies shared by humans. If that view is correct in a strong form, then the same broad structure should appear across cultures. We might expect different cultures to vary in average trait levels, but the underlying trait structure should remain basically the same.
The evidence is more complicated. The Big Five structure tends to replicate fairly well in many Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic populations. But the structure is often less clear outside these contexts, especially in some small-scale or non-industrialized societies (Gurven et al., 2013; McCrae & Terracciano, 2005; Schmitt et al., 2007). This raises an important question: Is personality structure universal, or does it partly depend on socioecological context?
Another way to see this issue is through indigenous personality research. If researchers begin with personality concepts that are especially important in a particular language or cultural context, they may find dimensions that imported Big Five measures miss. For example, research on Chinese personality assessment has identified an Interpersonal Relatedness dimension, including concepts such as ren qing, or reciprocal relationship orientation, that are not fully captured by standard Big Five measures (Cheung et al., 2001). This does not mean people in one culture have psychological traits that people in another culture completely lack. It means the socially important ways of describing, organizing, and measuring personality may differ across cultures.
The Tsimane Case Study
One important case study comes from research with the Tsimane, an Indigenous group living in the Bolivian Amazon. The Tsimane are often described as forager-horticulturalists who live in relatively small communities, rely heavily on subsistence activities, and have had less exposure to formal schooling and industrialized institutions than participants in typical personality studies.
Gurven and colleagues (2013) translated a Big Five questionnaire into the Tsimane language and interviewed more than 600 adults. They also collected spouse reports from another sample. Across these analyses, the Big Five structure did not clearly emerge. Instead, the data were more consistent with two broad dimensions: prosociality and industriousness. These dimensions mixed together narrower traits that would usually be split across different Big Five dimensions in WEIRD samples.
There are two ways to react to this finding. One reaction is to assume the result is just a measurement problem: maybe the translation was imperfect, the questions were unfamiliar, or the response format did not fit the context. Those are serious possibilities, and cross-cultural researchers should take them seriously. But Gurven and colleagues tested several measurement explanations and still did not find strong support for the Big Five. So the more interesting possibility is that the structure of personality itself may differ across socioecological contexts.
The Niche Diversity Hypothesis
The niche diversity hypothesis was developed to explain why personality structure might differ across societies. A niche is a smaller position or role within a larger society that has its own opportunities, constraints, and payoff structures. Occupations, social groups, coalitions, families, and organizations can all be thought of as niches. Different niches may reward different combinations of traits.
In a society with many diverse niches, there may be many different ways to be successful. One niche might reward patience, diligence, and emotional stability. Another might reward sociability and risk tolerance. Another might reward technical skill and low concern with public attention. If people calibrate their behavior to the niches they occupy, then different combinations of traits can become useful in different parts of society. At the population level, this should reduce overlap among traits and produce more distinct personality dimensions (Lukaszewski et al., 2017; Smaldino et al., 2019).
In a society with fewer distinct niches, the same combinations of traits may be useful across more domains of life. If success in domestic, cooperative, productive, and public activities depends on overlapping trait combinations, then traits that appear separate in one society may covary more strongly in another. This could produce fewer broad dimensions, such as the prosociality and industriousness pattern observed among the Tsimane.
Smaldino and colleagues (2019) tested the logic of this idea with agent-based computer simulations. The simulations showed that if people occupy niches, niches reward particular trait profiles, and people adjust toward the traits rewarded by their niches, then populations with more niches develop lower correlations among traits and more personality dimensions. A simulation does not prove that the hypothesis is true in real humans, but it shows that the hypothesis is logically coherent.
Durkee and colleagues (2022) tested the niche diversity hypothesis using Big Five data from 685,089 people across 115 nations. Niche diversity was estimated using indicators such as human development, urbanization, and economic complexity. Countries with higher niche diversity tended to show lower covariance among personality traits and greater personality dimensionality. In simpler terms, countries with more diverse niches tended to have more distinct personality dimensions. The study did not find consistent evidence that niche diversity was related to wider trait distributions.
These findings suggest that niche diversity can partly explain cultural variation in personality structure. But it is not without problems. The evidence is correlational, the indicators of niche diversity are imperfect, the personality data came from people with internet access, and cross-cultural personality measurement remains difficult. Still, this framework helps move the field beyond simply asking whether the Big Five is universal. A better question is: What features of human minds, cultures, and socioecologies explain both the similarities and differences in personality structure across populations?
Closing Thoughts About Culture and Personality
Culture and personality are not separate forces acting independently on behavior. Culture is maintained in the minds and actions of individuals, and individuals develop within cultural and ecological contexts. This means that culture can shape personality, personality can shape culture, and ecological factors can influence both.
The goal of this chapter is not to throw out trait models like the Big Five or HEXACO. Those models are useful tools for summarizing personality variation. The goal is to recognize their limits. A complete science of personality has to explain not only why some patterns appear across many human groups, but also why those patterns change across cultures, ecological contexts, historical periods, and social niches.
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