Universal Features of Personality Traits From the Observer's Perspective

Data From 50 Cultures

McCrae, Robert R.
Terracciano, Antonio

¹Gerontology Research Center, National Institute on Aging.

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert R. McCrae, Gerontology Research Center, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Box #03, 5600 Nathan Shock Drive, Baltimore, MD 21224-6825. E-mail: [email protected].

The 78 members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project are listed in order of data submission in the Appendix.

Robert R. McCrae receives royalties from the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). Portions of these data were presented at the Second World Congress on Women's Mental Health, Washington, DC, March 2004. Czech participation was supported by Grant 406/01/1507 from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic and is related to Research Plan AV 0Z7025918 of the Institute of Psychology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Sami Gülgöz's participation was supported by the Turkish Academy of Sciences. Burkinabè and French Swiss participation was supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation to J. Rossier. The data collection in Hong Kong was supported by RGC Direct Allocation Grants DAG02/03.HSS14 and DAG03/04.HSS14 awarded to M. Yik. Data collection in Malaysia was supported by UKM Fundamental Research Grant 11JD/015/2003.

We thank Dave Schmitt for contact information on potential collaborators, Bob Smith for authorizing use of the NEO-PI-R, and the translators whose earlier work on Form S of the NEO-PI-R made this project feasible. For assistance on this project we thank Herbert Biggs, Luciana de Almeida, Hudson W. Carvalho, Marco Montarroyos Calegaro, Andréia da Silva Bez, Zheng Li, Ana Butković, Ole Dreyer, Susy Ball, Anna Gramberg, Honathan Harrow, V. S. Bose, Suguna Kannan, K. Sarita, K. Madhavi, Lidwina Dominica R, Vina Bunyamin, Hiromi Imuta, Kenji Sugiyama, Midori Takayama, Rozita Kamis, Rosmaini Ismail, Anna Nedtwig, Zachary Smith, Aaron Wolen, Maya Tamir, Christie Napa Scollon, Valery E. Oryol, Ivan G. Senin, J. C. Munene, Silvo Kozelj, Manca Jakic, Simona Zbačnik, Nadia Messoulam, Facundo Abal, Fernanda Molina, Daiana Bion, Sebastián Mosquera, Ludmila Firpo, Lorena Etcheverry, Fernando Vera, Catherine Currell, Richard Chan, Christopher Paik, Herbert H. Freudenthaler, Andreas Fink, and Cornelia Hohenbichler.

German, Russian, and Czech data were taken from earlier studies (^;), and portions of the Brazilian, Lebanese, and Thai data are also reported in chapters in ^;; and , respectively.

Received Date: April 9, 2004; Revised Date: September 29, 2004; Accepted Date: October 7, 2004

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88(3):p 547-561, March 2005.

To test hypotheses about the universality of personality traits, college students in 50 cultures identified an adult or college-aged man or woman whom they knew well and rated the 11,985 targets using the 3rd-person version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Factor analyses within cultures showed that the normative American self-report structure was clearly replicated in most cultures and was recognizable in all. Sex differences replicated earlier self-report results, with the most pronounced differences in Western cultures. Cross-sectional age differences for 3 factors followed the pattern identified in self-reports, with moderate rates of change during college age and slower changes after age 40. With a few exceptions, these data support the hypothesis that features of personality traits are common to all human groups.