What Are the Most Important Dimensions of Personality?Evidence from Studies of Descriptors in Diverse Languages

Person-Culture Personality Fit: Dispositional Traits and Cultural Context Explain Country-Level Personality Profile Conformity

In general, people are influenced by the standards set forth by groups of others; however, the levels of such conformity vary between people and across cultures. Here, we investigated factors related to country-level personality profile conformity (i.e., person-culture personality fit) across ∼5.9 million participants, residing in 57 different countries. We examined how each of the Big Five personality traits and cultural tightness are associated with variation in person-culture personality fit. We found that scoring higher in Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness and residing in a tight cultural context explains increased personality profile conformity, while scoring higher in Openness and Neuroticism and residing in a loose cultural context explains lower personality profile conformity. Furthermore, we found that Openness and Extraversion interact with cultural context to predict levels of personality profile conformity. These findings reveal that both dispositional and cultural factors correspond to the tendency to conform to country-level norms.

On the Comparability of Basic Personality Models: Meta-Analytic Correspondence, Scope, and Orthogonality of the Big Five and HEXACO Dimensions

Models of basic personality structure are among the most widely used frameworks in psychology and beyond, and they have considerably advanced the understanding of individual differences in a plethora of consequential outcomes. Over the past decades, two such models have become most widely used: the Five Factor Model (FFM) or Big Five, respectively, and the HEXACO Model of Personality. However, there is no large-scale empirical evidence on the general comparability of these models. Here, we provide the first comprehensive meta-analysis on (a) the correspondence of the FFM/Big Five and HEXACO dimensions, (b) the scope of trait content the models cover, and (c) the orthogonality (i.e., degree of independence) of dimensions within the models. Results based on 152 (published and unpublished) samples and 6,828 unique effects showed that the HEXACO dimensions incorporate notable conceptual differences compared to the FFM/Big Five dimensions, resulting in a broader coverage of the personality space and less redundancy between dimensions. Moreover, moderator analyses revealed substantial differences between operationalizations of the FFM/Big Five. Taken together, these findings have important theoretical and practical implications for the understanding of basic personality dimensions and their assessment.

The structure of social effects: Personality as impact on others

Social‐effect descriptors (like charming and annoying) register the individual's footprint on the social world. Highly prototypical social‐effects terms in English were identified and factor‐analysed in peer‐ratings, with comparisons to the same procedures in self‐ratings. Two internally replicated factors were highly interpretable. They reflect the extent to which a person is a source of pleasure to others, or alternatively is a source of pain to others. The factors are linked to hedonic principles and basic appraisal tendencies. Extension‐correlation analyses indicated that variation in social‐effects dimensions is represented diffusely in Big Five and six‐factor measures, but corresponds more directly to variation in a Big Two personality structure that has previously been found to arise rather ubiquitously across cultures. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

It's the deceiver and the receiver: Individual differences in phishing susceptibility and false positives with item profiling

Phishing email is one of the biggest risks to online information security due to its ability to exploit human trust and naivety. Prior research has examined whether some people are more susceptible to phishing than others and what characteristics may predict this susceptibility. Given that there are no standardised measures or methodologies to detect phishing susceptibility, results have conflicted. To address this issue, the current study created a 40-item phishing detection task to measure both cognitive and behavioural indicators of phishing susceptibility and false positives (misjudged genuine email). The task is based on current real-life email stimuli (i.e., phishing and genuine) relevant to the student and general population. Extending previous literature we also designed a methodology for assessing phishing susceptibility by allowing participants to indicate perception of maliciousness of each email type and the actions they would take (keep it, trash it or seek further information). This enabled us to: (1) examine the relationships that psychological variables share with phishing susceptibility and false positives-both captured as consistent tendencies; (2) determine the relationships between perceptions of maliciousness with behavioural outcomes and psychological variables; and (3) determine the relationships between these tendencies and email characteristics. In our study, 150 undergraduate psychology students participated in exchange for partial course credit (98 Females; Mean age = 19.70, SD = 2.27). Participants also completed a comprehensive battery of psychometric tests assessing intelligence, pre- and on-task confidence, Big 6 personality, and familiarity/competence in computing and phishing. Results revealed that people showed distinct and robust tendencies for phishing susceptibility and false positives. A series of regression analyses looking at the accuracy of both phishing and false positives detection revealed that human-centred variables accounted for a good degree of variance in phishing susceptibility (about 54%), with perceptions of maliciousness, intelligence, knowledge of phishing, and on-task confidence contributing significantly, directly and/or indirectly via perception of maliciousness. A regression model looking at discriminating false positives has also shown that human-centred variables accounted for a reasonable degree of variance (41%), with perceptions of maliciousness, intelligence and on-task confidence contributing significantly, directly and/or indirectly via perception of maliciousness. Furthermore, the characteristics of the most effective phishing and misjudged genuine email items were profiled. Based on our findings, we suggest that future research should investigate these significant variables in more detail. We also recommend that future research should capture consistent response tendencies to determine vulnerability to phishing and false positives (rather than a one off response to a single email), and use the collection of the most current phishing email obtained from relevant sources to the population. It is important to capture perceptions of maliciousness of email because it is a key predictor of the action taken on the email. It directly predicts accuracy detection of phishing and genuine email, as well as mediating the relationships between some other predictors whose role would have been overlooked if the perceptions were not captured. The study provides the framework of human-centred variables which predict phishing and false positive susceptibility as well as the characteristics of email which most deceive people.

Minds and Meaning in Fictional Narratives: An Evolutionary Perspective

This article presents a theoretical framework for an evolutionary understanding of minds and meaning in fictional narratives. The article aims to demonstrate that meaning in fiction can be incorporated in an explanatory network that includes the whole scope of human behavior. In both reality and fiction, meaning consists of experiences in individual minds: sensations, emotions, perceptions, and thoughts. Writing and reading fiction involve 3 sets of minds, those of authors, readers, and characters. Meaning in the minds of authors and readers emerges in relation to the experiences of fictional characters. Characters engage in motivated actions. To understand minds and meaning in fiction, researchers need analytic categories for human motives. A comprehensive model of human motives can be constructed by integrating ideas from evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology. Motives combine in different ways to produce different cultures and different individual identities, which influence experience in individual minds. The mental experiences produced in authors and readers by fictional narratives have adaptive psychological functions. By encompassing the minds of authors, characters, and readers within a comprehensive model of human motives, this article situates the psychology of fiction within the larger research program of the evolutionary social sciences.

It's the deceiver, not the receiver: No individual differences when detecting deception in a foreign and a native language

Individual differences in lie detection remain poorly understood. Bond and DePaulo’s meta-analysis examined judges (receivers) who were ascertaining lies from truths and senders (deceiver) who told these lies and truths. Bond and DePaulo found that the accuracy of detecting deception depended more on the characteristics of senders rather than the judges’ ability to detect lies/truths. However, for many studies in this meta-analysis, judges could hear and understand senders. This made language comprehension a potential confound. This paper presents the results of two studies. Extending previous work, in Study 1, we removed language comprehension as a potential confound by having English-speakers (N = 126, mean age = 19.86) judge the veracity of German speakers (n = 12) in a lie detection task. The twelve lie-detection stimuli included emotional and non-emotional content, and were presented in three modalities–audio only, video only, and audio and video together. The intelligence (General, Auditory, Emotional) and personality (Dark Triads and Big 6) of participants was also assessed. In Study 2, a native German-speaking sample (N = 117, mean age = 29.10) were also tested on a similar lie detection task to provide a control condition. Despite significantly extending research design and the selection of constructs employed to capture individual differences, both studies replicated Bond and DePaulo’s findings. The results of Study1 indicated that removing language comprehension did not amplify individual differences in judge’s ability to ascertain lies from truths. Study 2 replicated these results confirming a lack of individual differences in judge’s ability to detect lies. The results of both studies suggest that Sender (deceiver) characteristics exerted a stronger influence on the outcomes of lie detection than the judge’s attributes.

The HEXACO Personality Inventory: Validation and Psychometric Properties in the Serbian Language

The aim of this research is to validate the HEXACO model of personality in the Serbian language through psychometric validation of the 100-item version of the HEXACO-PI-R. The research was conducted on 2 independent samples, the first comprising 1,217 participants from a community sample (55.5% females; average age = 31.77 years), and the second 345 undergraduate students (65% females; average age = 21 years). Besides the HEXACO-PI-R, 2 questionnaires were applied for the purposes of convergent validation: the Big Five Plus Two (BF+2), measuring 7 lexical personality dimensions (applied in Sample 1), and the Big Five Inventory (BFI; applied in Sample 2). Factor structure of the HEXACO-PI-R is in line with model assumptions. Convergent validity is good, whereby Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness are highly correlated to their BFI and BF+2 counterparts. Honesty-Humility is most closely related to Negative Valence (BF+2), Emotionality to BFI Neuroticism, and Agreeableness to BF+2 Aggressiveness and BFI Agreeableness. The results point to the satisfactory validity of the HEXACO model and its measure in the Serbian language.

The High Five: Associations of the Five Positive Factors with the Big Five and Well-being

The study of individual differences in positive characteristics has mainly focused on moral traits. The objectives of this research were to study individual differences in positive characteristics from the point of view of the layperson, including non-moral individual characteristics, and to generate a replicable model of positive factors. Three studies based on a lexical approach were conducted. The first study generated a corpus of words which resulted in a refined list of socially shared positive characteristics. The second study produced a five-factor model of positive characteristics: erudition, peace, cheerfulness, honesty, and tenacity. The third study confirmed the model with a different sample. The five-positive-factor model not only showed positive associations with emotional, psychological and social well-being, but it also accounted for the variance beyond that accounted for by the Big Five factors in predicting these well-being dimensions. In addition, the presence of convergent and divergent validity of the five positive factors is shown with relation to the Values-in-Action (VIA) classification of character strengths proposed by Peterson and Seligman (2004).

Arab-Levantine personality structure: A psycholexical study of modern standard Arabic in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the West Bank

OBJECTIVE

The debate of whether personality traits are universal or culture-specific has been informed by psycholexical (or lexical) studies conducted in tens of languages and cultures. We contribute to this debate through a series of studies in which we investigated personality descriptors in Modern Standard Arabic, the variety of Arabic that is presumably common to about 26 countries and native to more than 200 million people.

METHOD

We identified an appropriate source of personality descriptors, extracted them, and systematically reduced them to 167 personality traits that are common, are not redundant with each other, and are familiar and commonly understood in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the West Bank (Palestinian territories).

RESULTS

We then analyzed self- and peer ratings (N = 806) and identified a six-factor solution comprising Morality (I), Conscientiousness (II), Positive Emotionality (III), Dominance (IV), Agreeableness/Righteousness (V), and Emotional Stability (VI) without replicating an Openness factor.

CONCLUSIONS

The factors were narrower or broader variants of factors found in the Big Five and HEXACO models. Conceptual and methodological considerations may have impacted the factor structure.

Agency-communion and interest in prosocial behavior: social motives for assimilation and contrast explain sociocultural inconsistencies

Identifying the "prosocial personality" is a classic project in personality psychology. However, personality traits have been elusive predictors of prosocial behavior, with personality-prosociality relations varying widely across sociocultural contexts. We propose the social motives perspective to account for such sociocultural inconsistencies. According to this perspective, a focal quality of agency (e.g., competence, independence, openness) is the motive to swim against the social tide-agentic social contrast. Conversely, a focal quality of communion (e.g., warmth, interdependence, agreeableness) is the motive to swim with the social tide-communal social assimilation. We report two cross-sectional studies. Study 1 (N = 131,562) defined social context at the country level (11 European countries), whereas Study 2 (N = 56,395) defined it at the country level (11 European countries) and the city level (296 cities within these countries). Communion predicted interest in prosocial behavior comparatively strongly in sociocultural contexts where such interest was common and comparatively weakly where such interest was uncommon. Agency predicted interest in prosocial behavior comparatively strongly in sociocultural contexts where such interest was uncommon and comparatively weakly where such interest was common. The results supported the social motives perspective. Also, the findings help to reestablish the importance of personality for understanding prosociality.

Big Two Personality and Big Three Mate Preferences

People differ regarding their “Big Three” mate preferences of attractiveness, status, and interpersonal warmth. We explain these differences by linking them to the “Big Two” personality dimensions of agency/competence and communion/warmth. The similarity-attracts hypothesis predicts that people high in agency prefer attractiveness and status in mates, whereas those high in communion prefer warmth. However, these effects may be moderated by agentics’ tendency to contrast from ambient culture, and communals’ tendency to assimilate to ambient culture. Attending to such agentic-cultural-contrast and communal-cultural-assimilation crucially qualifies the similarity-attracts hypothesis. Data from 187,957 online-daters across 11 countries supported this model for each of the Big Three. For example, agentics—more so than communals—preferred attractiveness, but this similarity-attracts effect virtually vanished in attractiveness-valuing countries. This research may reconcile inconsistencies in the literature while utilizing nonhypothetical and consequential mate preference reports that, for the first time, were directly linked to mate choice.

The distance between Mars and Venus: measuring global sex differences in personality

BACKGROUND

Sex differences in personality are believed to be comparatively small. However, research in this area has suffered from significant methodological limitations. We advance a set of guidelines for overcoming those limitations: (a) measure personality with a higher resolution than that afforded by the Big Five; (b) estimate sex differences on latent factors; and (c) assess global sex differences with multivariate effect sizes. We then apply these guidelines to a large, representative adult sample, and obtain what is presently the best estimate of global sex differences in personality.

METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

Personality measures were obtained from a large US sample (N = 10,261) with the 16PF Questionnaire. Multigroup latent variable modeling was used to estimate sex differences on individual personality dimensions, which were then aggregated to yield a multivariate effect size (Mahalanobis D). We found a global effect size D = 2.71, corresponding to an overlap of only 10% between the male and female distributions. Even excluding the factor showing the largest univariate ES, the global effect size was D = 1.71 (24% overlap). These are extremely large differences by psychological standards.

SIGNIFICANCE

The idea that there are only minor differences between the personality profiles of males and females should be rejected as based on inadequate methodology.