Personality traits and their psychological foundations

Five Factor Model

Personality traits

The Five Factor Model of personality traits:

Evaluating universal and non-universal constructs of personality

The Five Factor Model of personality traits suggests that all human beings can be judged according to the degree to which they manifest five specific traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. It is true that "lexical studies, which examine personality factors in trait adjectives from different languages, have had somewhat mixed results [regarding their universality]. E, A, and C. factors almost always appear, but N. And O. sometimes do not" yet the concepts themselves still seem to exist cross-culturally (McCrae, n.d.: 2). The degree to which societies value different qualities may vary, but the universal presence of these qualities is noteworthy. For example, "extraverts are lively, cheerful, and sociable; introverts are sober and taciturn… Conscientiousness is seen in organization, punctuality, and purposefulness" (McCrae n.d.: 2). The United States may value extroversion more so than Japan, while Japan tends to place a higher value on the more communitarian vale of conscientiousness. But both traits are manifest in both nations, despite substantial cultural differences.

Reasonably consistent trends regarding the genders in all societies have also been determined according to the Five Factor Model. "On almost every culture, women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas" (Alik 2010: 870). Another universal trend is related to age: as people mature, they tend to become less open to new experiences and rate higher in traits like conscientiousness instead. "Certainly it is the case that personality traits are expressed differently in different cultures, and it is unlikely that a single set of questionnaire items would be optimal in every culture" (McCrae 6). Self-perceptions of traits such as extroversion and conscientiousness may vary cross-culturally but according to the Five Factor Model, the different expression and self-perception of the concepts do not negate their universality. "In countries where women are expected to be subservient, they attribute their low Assertiveness to their role as a woman rather than their traits. By contrast, European women who are equally low in Assertiveness identify it as a part of their own personality" (McCrae, n.d.: 4).

Femininity, or the desire to seem 'feminine,' may thus be more of a culturally-produced trait. While societies such as the United States tend to value androgyny, in other societies such as Japan, the rules for conduct for men and women are far less pliable. In Japan, the notion that conforming to feminine stereotypes is desirable vs. gender-neutral self-expression is far more starkly manifest than in America, even though there may be differences between the genders in both societies. Similarly, the notion to which personality traits of men are derived from one's essential 'masculine' self and are thus desirable and essential will vary widely between cultures. In more egalitarian societies like the Untied States, doing something simply because 'it is what a man or woman does' is not necessarily seen as an automatic positive.