Personality structure in east and west Africa: Lexical studies of personality in Maa and Supyire-Senufo.

The field of psychology relies heavily on evidence from North America and Northern Europe. Universally applicable models require input from around the globe. Indigenous lexical studies of personality, which define the most salient person-descriptive concepts and their structure in a population, provide this. Such results are reported from two nonindustrialized communities, representing 2 of the 3 main language families of Africa, in groups with differing cultural characteristics. Maasai participants, traditionally herders in rural Kenya and Tanzania, have a highly structured, traditional culture. Supyire-Senufo participants are traditional horticulturalists in Mali. The 203 most common person-descriptive terms in Maasai were administered to 166 participants, who described 320 persons (166 highly regarded, 154 less so). The optimal emic solution included 5 factors: virtue/moral-character, debilitation/vulnerability, boldness/surgency, hubris/pride, and timidity. In the Maasai context, descriptions of well-regarded individuals were exceptionally uniform, suggesting the role of personality language in norm socialization in tight, traditional cultures. In Supyire, 115 participants used 208 person-descriptive terms to describe 227 targets (half highly regarded). The optimal emic solution included 10 factors: social self-regulation, well-being, vitality/resilience, broadmindedness, diligence versus laziness, madness, stubbornness versus attractiveness, acceptance versus discontent, hurry/worry, and peacefulness. The best convergence between the languages was at the 3-factor level, where factors relate to moral character, low agreeableness coupled with high extraversion, and emotional stability. Beginning with the 4-factor level, content related to local cultural characteristics became apparent. In both languages, 2-factor solutions matched the Big Two, but 3-, 5-, and 6-factor solutions failed to overlap with etic Pan-Cultural Three, Big Five, or Big Six models. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A Basic Bivariate Structure of Personality Attributes Evident Across Nine Languages.

Here, two studies seek to characterize a parsimonious common-denominator personality structure with optimal cross-cultural replicability. Personality differences are observed in all human populations and cultures, but lexicons for personality attributes contain so many distinctions that parsimony is lacking. Models stipulating the most important attributes have been formulated by experts or by empirical studies drawing on experience in a very limited range of cultures. Factor analyses of personality lexicons of nine languages of diverse provenance (Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Turkish, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, Maasai, and Senoufo) were examined, and their common structure was compared to that of several prominent models in psychology. A parsimonious bivariate model showed evidence of substantial convergence and ubiquity across cultures. Analyses involving key markers of these dimensions in English indicate that they are broad dimensions involving the overlapping content of the interpersonal circumplex, models of communion and agency, and morality/warmth and competence. These "Big Two" dimensions-Social Self-Regulation and Dynamism-provide a common-denominator model involving the two most crucial axes of personality variation, ubiquitous across cultures. The Big Two might serve as an umbrella model serving to link diverse theoretical models and associated research literatures.