The Five-Factor Model of Personality Across Cultures

ROBERT R. MCCRAE* & JuRI ALLIK** *Nationallnstitute on Aging, **University of Tartu, Estonia Personality psychology has become an international enterprise. To take an example at random, the eight personality articles in the December, 2001, issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology included contributions from the United States, Canada, Germany, Finland, and Israel. For the most part, international personality research is not cross-cultural, it is simply personality research conducted in different countries. The implicit assumption behind this practice is that personality process es are universal, and where they are studied is thus of no consequence. An insensitivity to cul­ tural context once imputed mostly to Americans now appears to characterize the field worldwide. Fortunately, recent years have also seen a rise of interest in studies of personality and culture (Church, 2001, Church & Lonner, 1998, Lee, McCauley, & Draguns, 1999, McCrae, 2000). What do these new...