A 2022 study comparing personality trait tests across 22 countries found that people living in a cluster of countries with cultures that place strong emphasis on self-discipline – such as Albania, India, Germany, France, Hong Kong and China – scored higher on measures of dutifulness and organisation. Countries with more egalitarian, flexible, and individualistic cultures – such as Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Philippines – demonstrated higher levels of agreeableness and openness to experience instead.
Researchers have also recently identified that Western cultures are more likely to be monumentalist, viewing the self as a stable and unchanging thing, like a monument, says Vignoles. Flexible cultures, common in East Asian countries, on the other hand, view the self as more malleable.
Another cultural difference is the extent to which people notice context. One study asked participants to describe a series of underwater scenes, and found that Western study participants focused more on individual objects, whereas Japanese participants emphasised the wider context, such as the colour of the surrounding water or how the different objects related to one another.
“There is some evidence that in Western cultures, particularly North American culture, people are more likely to attribute that behaviour to the person’s characteristics rather than to the situation,” says Vignoles. In a dentist’s waiting room, Vignoles says, a Westerner is more likely to interpret a person who looks anxious as anxious overall, rather than just someone who is anxious about getting their teeth pulled in that context.
These results are always to be taken with a grain of salt, though, says Vignoles, as it is extremely difficult to disentangle behaviour, personality, culture and many other influences that come into play in this realm – and there is still so much more research to be done in the field.