Do We Have Valid Country -Level Measures of Personality?

Since the publication of the first compilation of "national IQs" by Lynn and Vanhanen (2001, 2002), intelligence has become increasingly important in comparative research at the country level. It has been used successfully as an explanatory variable in studies of cultural values (Meisenberg, 2004, 2008), religiosity (Lynn, Harvey and Nyborg, 2009; Meisenberg et al., 2012), fertility rates (Meisenberg, 2009), economic growth (Weede and Kampf, 2002; Meisenberg, 2014), suicide rates (Voracek, 2008), crime (Burhan et al., 2014), institutional quality (Kanyama, 2014), and political failure (Voracek, 2013). Scores in scholastic achievement tests such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Program for International Student Achievement (PISA) correlate so highly with IQ that they can be used as alternative measures of intelligence at the country level (Meisenberg and Lynn, 2011). However, intelligence captures only one dimension of psychological variation, among countries as well as among individuals. In order to study cultural variation at the psychological level, we need information about personality traits as well. The following research summarizes the results of the major comparative studies that have measured country-level variation in personality traits using inventories of the Big Five, and offers a critical assessment of their reliability and validity.1. The Big FiveEarly attempts at defining and measuring the dimensions on which personality varies among individuals produced classifications ranging from three factors in the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Psychoticism) to 16 in Cattell's 16PF inventory. Since the 1970s, however, a five-factor model has become the most widely used in differential psychology (McCrae and Costa, 1999). It was developed gradually, starting in the 1940s and 1950s with lexical studies in which correlations among trait-descriptive adjectives were measured, and from re-analyses of Cattell's 16PF that produced only five clearly reproducible dimensions. Thus it emerged as a result of empirical analysis, rather than pre-existing theory (Digman, 1990). The five personality factors are known as Neuroticism (or, reverse-scored, Emotional Stability), with (according to the NEO PI-R) the facet scores Anxiety, Angry Hostility, Depression, Self-Consciousness, Impulsiveness and Vulnerability; Extraversion (Warmth, Gregariousness, Assertiveness, Activity, Excitement-Seeking, Positive Emotions); Openness (Fantasy, Aesthetics, Feelings, Actions, Ideas, Values); Agreeableness (Trust, Straightforwardness, Altruism, Compliance, Modesty, Tender-Mindedness); and Conscientiousness (Competence, Order, Dutifulness, Achievement Striving, Self-Discipline, Deliberation). Factor analytic studies showed that many earlier personality inventories, including Cattell's 16PF (Hofer, Horn and Eber, 1997) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (McCrae and Costa, 1989), can be interpreted as measuring the Big Five.Importantly, the factor structures obtained with the commonly used inventories are sufficiently similar across countries and cultures that in broad outline, the five factors are valid cross-culturally (McCrae et al., 2005a; Rossier et al., 2007; Zecca et al., 2012). Although some differences between cultures are observed (Church et al., 2011), personality structure appears to be a "human universal" that can be recognized across cultures (McCrae & Costa, 1997). What is expected to vary across cultures are the average levels of the individual personality traits.2. Data SourcesThe following studies have compared scaled scores on personality inventories for a number of countries that is sufficient for systematic cross-national comparisons:1. McCrae, 2002: This compilation lists average scores on the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) scales and subscales for 36 cultures. Both college student samples and adult samples are represented. …