Cross-cultural studies of personality traits and their relevance to psychiatry.
OBJECTIVE
This article provides a brief review of recent cross-cultural research on personality traits at both individual and culture levels, highlighting the relevance of recent findings for psychiatry.


METHODS
In most cultures around the world, personality traits can be clearly summarized by the five broad dimensions of the Five-Factor Model (FFM), which makes it feasible to compare cultures on personality and psychopathology.


RESULTS
Maturational patterns and sex differences in personality traits generally show cultural invariance, which generates the hypothesis that age of onset, clinical evolution, and sex differences in the prevalence of psychiatric disorders might follow similar universal patterns. The average personality profiles from 51 cultures show meaningful geographical distributions and associations with culture-level variables, but are clearly unrelated to national character stereotypes.


CONCLUSIONS
Aggregate personality scores can potentially be related to epidemiological data on psychiatric disorders, and dimensional personality models have implications for psychiatric diagnosis and treatment around the world.
Terracciano
Antonio
A
terraccianoa@grc.nia.nih.gov
McCrae
Robert R
RR
D000367:Age Factors; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000523:psychology*; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000379:methods*