The Importance of Psychological Traits: A Cross-Cultural Study (The Springer Series in Social Clinical Psychology)

From the reviews: "This is an important book for transcultural psychiatry. ... The authors of this book summarize research over a number of years designed to determine the cross-cultural consistency of trait dimensions. ... One of the unique aspects of this study concerned measures of the relative favorability and the psychological importance of traits." (Joel Paris, Transcultural Psychiatry, Vol. 41 (3), 2004) This valuable text presents an exhaustive examination of the relative importance and favorability assigned to different psychological characteristics in a variety of cultural settings. Importance ratings in a worldwide sample of twenty countries, and the relative favorability of these traits in a subset of ten, are calculated in terms of the Five-Factor Model of personality and other scoring systems. One noteworthy chapter summarizes findings from previous cross-cultural studies evaluating gender and age stereotypes and self concepts. A unique feature is the extensive set of appendices, of which two let readers test hypotheses of their own devising and provide the individual item values for the Five-Factor Model scoring system Ch. 1. Concepts And Issues In Cross-cultural Psychology -- Ch. 2. Psychological Importance, The Five Factor Model, And Transactional Analysis Theory -- Ch. 3. The Relative Favorability Of Psychological Traits: A 10-country Study -- Ch. 4. Psychological Importance: Method And Gender Analyses -- Ch. 5. Psychological Importance: Item Level Analyses -- Ch. 6. Psychological Importance: Theory Level Analyses -- Ch. 7. Psychological Importance: Relations To Cultural Comparison Variables -- Ch. 8. Summary And Integration Of Findings -- Ch. 9. Retrospect And Prospect: A Broader View. John E. Williams, Robert C. Satterwhite, And José L. Saiz. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 181-186) And Indexes. Concepts and Issues Incross-Cultural Psychology....Pages 1-23 Psychological Importance, the Five Factor Model, and Transactional Analysis Theory....Pages 25-40 The Relative Favorability of Psychological Traits a 10-Country Study....Pages 41-49 Psychological Importance Method and Gender Analyses....Pages 51-65 Psychological Importance Item Level Analyses....Pages 67-86 Psychological Importance Theory Level Analyses....Pages 87-107 Psychological Importance Relations to Cultural Comparison Variables....Pages 109-122 Summary and Integration of Findings....Pages 123-136 Retrospect and Prospect a Broader View....Pages 137-148 The psychological characteristics studied are the 300 items of the Adjective Check List (Gough & Heilbrun, 1980), translated as necessary. This highly versatile item pool has been used in previous cross-cultural studies of gender stereotypes (Williams & Best, 1990a), self concepts (Williams & Best, 1990b), and age stereotypes (Best & Williams, 1996; Williams, 1993). This use of a common method enables one to compare the relative degree of cross-cultural agreement in the various concepts studied (see Chapter 9) "This book reports the findings from extensive cross-cultural studies of the relative importance of different psychological traits in 20 countries and the relative favorability of these traits in a subset of 10 countries. While the work is devoted primarily to professionals and advanced students in the social sciences, the relatively nontechnical style employed should make the book comprehensible to anyone with a general grasp of the concepts and strategies of empirical behavioral science Unique to the book are the appendices that enable interested readers to test hypotheses of their own devising related to the psychological importance and/or favorability of selected sets of person descriptors in different cultural settings. Appendix D provides, for the first time, the individual item values for the Five Factor scoring system for the Adjective Check List described by FormyDuval, Williams, Patterson, and Fogle (1995).'--Page ix Reports the findings from extensive cross-cultural studies of the relative importance of different psychological traits in 20 countries, and the relative favorability of these traits in a subset of 10 countries. The psychological characteristics studied are the 300 items of the Adjective Check List