A caveat…

• Most personality psych studies were conducted in Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) nations.
• Participants were mostly undergraduates (first year), white (caucassians), and resided in North America.
• Findings from non-WEIRD countries are largely neglected.

• Our upbringing is so different so that it affects our personality.
• and are usually reared according to traditional gender stereotypes so that it affects personality in many ways.

• A comparison study of Japanese who emigrated to the , compared to those who stayed in . Those who moved became much more “American” in their personalities.
• Asian Americans reported a higher level of negative emotions in social situations than the European-Americans did.

• Brain wave activity of and to differ in reaction to the same visual stimuli; the differences paralleled each culture’s measured level of submissiveness or dominance.
• Differing beliefs in destiny vs free will, but because more Asian countries have become westernised, this belief is slightly reduced.

• Individual competitiveness and assertiveness are often seen as undesirable and contrary to Asian cultural standards.
• In an individualistic society, the focus is on personal freedom, choice, and action.
• In a collectivist society, the focus is on group norms and values, group role expectations, and other cultural constraints on behavior.

• However, most cross-cultural studies turned out to be problematic as they laid out narratives that WEIRD people are culturally superior. For example…
• A study showed that people in individualistic cultures show greater extraversion, self-esteem, happiness (or subjective well-being), optimism about their future, and a belief in their ability to control and direct it.

• In the individualistic cultures, parents tend to be noncoercive, democratic, and permissive in their child-rearing techniques.
• In collectivist cultures, parental practices tend to be more authoritarian, restrictive, and controlling Asian's tiger parenting
• So it's possible that children who were brought up in a collectivistic culture might have higher tendency to share similarities to their parents, including their personality.

The researchers noted that Arab adolescents “follow their parents’ directions in all areas of life, such as social behavior, interpersonal relationships, marriage, occupational preference, and political attitudes… they do not feel that they suffer from their [parents’] authoritarian style and are even satisfied with this way of life”

• Do you think your and your parents' personality are alike?
• How many traits do you share with your parents?
• How do you feel when someone highlight your resemblance to (one of) your parents?
• Do you think these similarities are more likely due to genes (heritability) or simply a product of learning?

• The assessment of personality is a major area of application of psychology to a number of real-world concerns.
• Clinical psychologists try to understand the symptoms of abnormality of by assessing personalities.
• School psychologists evaluate the personalities of the students to uncover the causes of adjustment or learning problems.

• Counseling psychologists measure personality to find the best job for a particular applicant.
• Research psychologists assess the personalities as an attempt to account for their behavior in an experiment or to correlate their personality traits with other measurements.

Keep in your mind that a good measurement should be both valid and reliable.

• Reliability The consistency of response to a psychological assessment device.
• Validity The extent to which an assessment device measures what it is intended to measure.

• Their techniques vary in objectivity, reliability, and validity, and they range from dream interpretation and childhood recollections to computer-administered objective tests.

• The major approaches to personality assessment are:
  • Self-report or objective inventories
  • Projective techniques
  • Clinical interviews
  • Behavioral assessment procedures
  • Thought and experience sampling procedures

• Have you ever taken a personality test?
• Can you describe what it looked like?
• Do you think it was helpful to understand your personality?

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
• The Big Five Inventory (BFI)
• NEO-PI
• HEXACO Personality Inventory
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

• When the MMPI was first introduced in Israel, many people there found it difficult to respond because they were unfamiliar with the true-false answer format.
• Translators of personality tests for use in other cultures also face the problem of slang and colloquial expressions.
• The Thematic Apperceptio Test (TAT) cannot be used in Islamic cultures prohibition against representing humans in pictorial form.

• Classical experimental method
• Virtual research online experiment/survey, simulation
• Correlational/survey method

• Psychologists have long recognized that some personality theories have a subjective component, which may reflect events in the theorist’s life as a sort of disguised autobiography.
• In order to understand a personality theory fully then, we should learn something about the life of the person who proposed it.

• BUT, perhaps it is not the person’s life experiences that influence the development of the theory. Maybe it’s the other way around.
• Perhaps the theory influences what the theorists remember and choose to tell us about their lives.

• Are we in charge of your own lives?
  • Free will vs fatalism
• What do define you?
  • Your inherited genes or your nurturing environment?
• Are you dependent or independent of your childhood experiences?
• Is human nature unique or universal?

• Which one does describe your aim best:
  • Satisfaction (pleasure seeking) or growth?
• …and how about your outlook?
  • Is it optimism or pessimism?