The Inaccuracy of National Character Stereotypes
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Journal of Research in Personality 47 (2013) 831–842 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Research in Personality journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrp The inaccuracy of national character stereotypes Robert R. McCrae a, Wayne Chan b, Lee Jussim c, Filip De Fruyt d, Corinna E. Löckenhoff e, Marleen De Bolle d, Paul T. Costa Jr. b, Martina Hrˇebícˇková f, Sylvie Graf f, Anu Realo g, Jüri Allik g,h, Katsuharu Nakazato i, Yoshiko Shimonaka j, Michelle Yik k, Emília Ficková l, Marina Brunner-Sciarra m, Norma Reátigui m, Nora Leibovich de Figueora n, Vanina Schmidt n, Chang-kyu Ahn o, Hyun-nie Ahn p, Maria E. Aguilar-Vafaie q, Jerzy Siuta r, Barbara Szmigielska r, Thomas R. Cain s, Jarret T. Crawford t, Khairul Anwar Mastor u, Jean-Pierre Rolland v, Florence Nansubuga w, Daniel R. Miramontez x, Veronica Benet-Martínez y, Jérôme Rossier z, Denis Bratko aa, Iris Marušic´ ab, Jamin Halberstadt ac, Mami Yamaguchi ac, Goran Knezˇevic´ ad, Danka Puric´ ad, Thomas A. Martin ae, Mirona Gheorghiu af, Peter B. Smith ag, Claudio Barbaranelli ah, Lei Wang ai, Jane Shakespeare-Finch aj, Margarida P. Lima ak, Waldemar Klinkosz al, Andrzej Sekowski al, Lidia Alcalay am, Franco Simonetti am, Tatyana V. Avdeyeva an, ⇑ V.S. Pramila ao, Antonio Terracciano ap,b, a 809 Evesham Avenue, Baltimore, MD, USA b National Institute on Aging, Baltimore, MD, USA c Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA d Department of Developmental, Personality, and Social Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium e Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA f Institute of Psychology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Brno, Czech Republic g Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia h Estonian Academy of Sciences, Tallinn, Estonia i Faculty of Social Welfare, Iwate Prefectural University, Iwate, Japan j Department of Human Studies, Bunkyo Gakuin University, Bunkyo, Japan k Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong l Institute of Experimental Psychology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovak Republic m Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru n Department of Psychology, University of Buenos Aires,Buenos Aires, Argentina o Department of Education, Pusan National University, Busan, Republic of Korea p Department of Psychology, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea q Department of Psychology, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran r Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland s School of Cognitive Science, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, USA t Department of Psychology, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ, USA u Personality Research Group, University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia v UFR STAPS, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, Nanterre, France w Institute of Psychology, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda x Office of Institutional Research and Planning, San Diego Community College District, San Diego, CA, USA y ICREA and Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain z Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland aa Department of Psychology, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia ab Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia ac Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand ad Department of Psychology, Belgrade University, Belgrade, Serbia ae Department of Psychology, Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA, USA af School of Psychology, Queens University, Belfast, United Kingdom ag School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, United Kingdom ah Department of Psychology, La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy ai Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China aj School of Psychology and Counseling, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia ak Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal al Department of Psychology, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Lublin, Poland am Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile an Graduate School of Professional Psychology, University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, MN, USA 0092-6566/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2013.08.006 832 R.R. McCrae et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 47 (2013) 831–842 ao Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India ap Department of Geriatrics, Florida State University College of Medicine, Tallahassee, FL, USA article info abstract Article history: Consensual stereotypes of some groups are relatively accurate, whereas others are not. Previous work Available online 22 August 2013 suggesting that national character stereotypes are inaccurate has been criticized on several grounds. In this article we (a) provide arguments for the validity of assessed national mean trait levels as criteria Keywords: for evaluating stereotype accuracy and (b) report new data on national character in 26 cultures from National character descriptions (N = 3323) of the typical male or female adolescent, adult, or old person in each. The average Stereotypes ratings were internally consistent and converged with independent stereotypes of the typical culture Five-Factor Model member, but were weakly related to objective assessments of personality. We argue that this conclusion Personality traits is consistent with the broader literature on the inaccuracy of national character stereotypes. Cross-cultural Ó 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction appearance, food preferences, and athletic abilities (e.g., Ibrahim et al., 2010). We adopt a narrower view, equating character with Since Lippmann (1922/1991) first introduced the term stereo- personality traits, and we use a comprehensive model of personal- type to refer to people’s beliefs about social groups, most social sci- ity traits, the Five-Factor Model (FFM). Our study thus speaks to the entists have emphasized their inaccuracy (Allport, 1954/1979; accuracy of national stereotypes of personality traits, but does not Brown, 2010). Basic cognitive processes have been identified that imply accuracy or inaccuracy in perceptions of other national lead people to exaggerate real differences between groups (Camp- characteristics. bell, 1967), ignore or misremember stereotype-inconsistent infor- Age and gender stereotypes concerning personality traits ap- mation (Stangor & McMillan, 1992), and develop false beliefs to pear to be largely accurate (Chan et al., 2012; Löckenhoff et al., justify injustice (Jost & Banaji, 1994). These processes are practi- 2013), but Terracciano et al. (2005) reported that national charac- cally important because of the role stereotypes can play in sustain- ter stereotypes are not. They examined beliefs about the typical ing and exacerbating social inequalities, and theoretically personality traits of members of different cultures and found that important because they demonstrate that people’s perceptions they were essentially unrelated to assessed mean levels of traits and judgments may deviate from objectivity and rationality. in 49 cultures. However, that conclusion has been challenged on ‘‘However’’, as Swim (1994, p. 21) put it, ‘‘reasons for inaccuracy a number of grounds (e.g., Perugini & Richetin, 2007). Because ste- are not evidence of inaccuracy’’. And, surprisingly, much of the evi- reotypes in general are often accurate, it is reasonable to ask if dence to date shows considerable accuracy in many consensual flaws in the Terracciano study accounted for the negative results. stereotypes, including those involving age (Chan et al., 2012), gen- Because the sample was large (N = 3,989) and a number of alterna- der (Swim, 1994), and race (McCauley & Stitt, 1978; see reviews by tive analytic strategies were employed, the most plausible argu- Ryan, 2002; Jussim, 2012). By accuracy we mean statistical agree- ments are that (a) the criteria—i.e., assessed national levels of ment between beliefs about a group and the aggregate characteris- personality traits—were invalid, or (b) the stereotype measure tics of the group in question. Importantly, stereotype accuracy does was inadequate. We consider these arguments and then offer not refer to beliefs about the sociological, historical, or biological new data on the (in)accuracy of national character stereotypes. bases of differences between groups; it implies only that individu- als are able to perceive group differences with some degree of pre- 1.1. Validity of the accuracy criteria cision. We are concerned here with the accuracy of consensual stereotypes (operationalized as the average beliefs across a sample The accuracy of stereotypes can only be determined by com- of respondents); because of the ‘‘wisdom of crowds’’ (Surowiecki, paring beliefs to some objective standard. Terracciano et al. 2004) these are likely to be substantially more accurate than per- (2005) argued that objective data on the mean levels of person- sonal stereotypes. ality traits in various nations provided such a standard, but that It is now clear that the degree of accuracy or inaccuracy of ste- view is currently a matter of controversy. In the 2005 study, reotypes cannot be assumed, but must be evaluated empirically, on personality was assessed using either self-reports or observer a case-by-case basis. In these evaluations, however, the burden of ratings of individuals in each culture on versions of the