Exploring the stability of HEXACO-60 structure and the association of gender, age, and social position with personality traits across 18 countries.

OBJECTIVES: The present paper tests the cross-national stability of the HEXACO-60 structure across 18 countries from four continents. Gender and age differences across countries will be examined. Finally, this is the first study to explicitly analyze the relationships between the HEXACO and social position. METHOD: Ten thousand two hundred and ninety eight subjects (5,410 women and 4,888 men) from 18 countries and 13 languages were analyzed. Confirmatory factor analysis techniques were used to test configural, metric and scalar invariance models. Congruence coefficients with the original structure of the HEXACO-60 were computed for every culture. Effect sizes of gender, age, and social position factors across countries were also computed. RESULTS: HEXACO-60 demonstrates configural and metric invariance, but not scalar invariance. Congruence coefficients show a great equivalence in almost all countries and factors. Only Emotionality presents a large gender difference across countries. No relevant effect of age is observed. A profile of high scores on Honesty-Humility, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience, and low scores on Emotionality increases the likelihood of achieving a higher social position, although the effect sizes are small. CONCLUSIONS: HEXACO-60 is a useful instrument to conduct personality trait research and practice around the world. Implications of gender, social position, and country differences are discussed.

Beyond humor styles: the nature of humor types and differences in basic personality traits from Zuckerman's Alternative Five-Factor Model.

BACKGROUND: Findings show that the complex nature of humor and its personality basis can be more comprehensively understood if humor styles are analyzed simultaneously within humor types, rather than separately. PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE: Utilizing two independent samples (N1 = 253, N2 = 353) of self-report responses to the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) and the Zuckerman-Kuhlman-Aluja Personality Questionnaire-Short Form, this paper outlines how the HSQ responses result in three humor use types following cluster analysis. Cluster differences in humor styles and personality traits were analyzed using ANOVA. RESULTS: In both samples, a humor type characteristic of individuals who scored lower in the positive and higher in the negative humor styles was revealed. People within this humor type also scored significantly higher in the personality measures of neuroticism and aggressiveness. A second humor type replicated in the two studies described individuals scoring higher for each of the four humor styles. People within this type also scored significantly higher on extraversion and sensation seeking, suggesting a need for cortical arousal. The third humor type members scored lower in each of the humor styles (apart from the affiliative humor style scores for one of the samples). This humor type requires further investigation. CONCLUSIONS: In general, humor types provide an additional understanding of humor use as people within the types differ for specific personality dimensions.

Anger and disgust shape judgments of social sanctions across cultures, especially in high individual autonomy societies.

When someone violates a social norm, others may think that some sanction would be appropriate. We examine how the experience of emotions like anger and disgust relate to the judged appropriateness of sanctions, in a pre-registered analysis of data from a large-scale study in 56 societies. Across the world, we find that individuals who experience anger and disgust over a norm violation are more likely to endorse confrontation, ostracism and, to a smaller extent, gossip. Moreover, we find that the experience of anger is consistently the strongest predictor of judgments of confrontation, compared to other emotions. Although the link between state-based emotions and judgments may seem universal, its strength varies across countries. Aligned with theoretical predictions, this link is stronger in societies, and among individuals, that place higher value on individual autonomy. Thus, autonomy values may increase the role that emotions play in guiding judgments of social sanctions.

Changes in social norms during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic across 43 countries.

The emergence of COVID-19 dramatically changed social behavior across societies and contexts. Here we study whether social norms also changed. Specifically, we study this question for cultural tightness (the degree to which societies generally have strong norms), specific social norms (e.g. stealing, hand washing), and norms about enforcement, using survey data from 30,431 respondents in 43 countries recorded before and in the early stages following the emergence of COVID-19. Using variation in disease intensity, we shed light on the mechanisms predicting changes in social norm measures. We find evidence that, after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, hand washing norms increased while tightness and punishing frequency slightly decreased but observe no evidence for a robust change in most other norms. Thus, at least in the short term, our findings suggest that cultures are largely stable to pandemic threats except in those norms, hand washing in this case, that are perceived to be directly relevant to dealing with the collective threat.

Perceptions of the appropriate response to norm violation in 57 societies.

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriateness of various responses to a violation of a cooperative norm and to atypical social behaviors. Our findings highlight both cultural universals and cultural variation. We find a universal negative relation between appropriateness ratings of norm violations and appropriateness ratings of responses in the form of confrontation, social ostracism and gossip. Moreover, we find the country variation in the appropriateness of sanctions to be consistent across different norm violations but not across different sanctions. Specifically, in those countries where use of physical confrontation and social ostracism is rated as less appropriate, gossip is rated as more appropriate.

Multicultural Validation of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman-Aluja Personality Questionnaire Shortened Form (ZKA-PQ/SF) Across 18 Countries.

The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman-Aluja Personality Questionnaire shortened form (ZKA-PQ/SF) in 18 cultures and 13 languages of different African, American, Asian, and European cultures and languages. The results showed that the five-factor structure with 20 facets replicated well across cultures with a total congruence coefficient of .97. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) resulted in adequate fit indices for the five factors based on the comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI; >.90), and RMSEA (.031-.081). A series of CFA to assess measurement invariance across cultures resulted in adequate CFIs and TLIs for configural and metric invariance. However, factors did not show scalar invariance. Alpha internal consistencies of five factors ranged between .77 (Sensation Seeking) and .86 (Neuroticism). The average alpha of the 20 facets was .64 with a range from .43 (SS4) to .75 (AG1). Nevertheless, alpha reliabilities were lower in some facets and cultures, especially for Senegal and Togo. The average percentage of the variance explained based on the adjusted R2 was 2.9%, 1.7%, and 5.1% for age, sex, and, cultures, respectively. Finally, multidimensional scaling suggested that geographically or culturally close cultures share mean profile similarities.