Is the Big Five Universal?
It has been elucidated in voluminous number of studies using the Big Five Inventory that Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Openness and Neuroticism are personality traits that can be found across a wide range of population. Nevertheless, an article published in 2012 titled How Universal Is the Big Five? Testing the Five-Factor Model of Personality Variation Among Forager-Farmers in the Bolivian Amazon has come up with evidence that counter argues the universality of the big five.
First of all, the Big Five Inventory, abbreviated as BFI, is a 44 item inventory that is designed to measure the aforementioned personality traits present in individuals. Most of the researches studying the big five traits have mainly focused on literate and urban population and when the BFI was presented to a group of people, the Tsimane, who are forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia and has less contact with the modernized world it turned out that the BFI doesn't replicate similar results in this society.
The original BFI was translated to Tsimane and because of translation difficulties one item was removed. The item that was removed asked to scale on what degree the individual “has an active imagination.” The Tsimane BFI asked participants to give rate from 1 to 5 corresponding to strongly agree and strongly disagree respectively as in the English version. Elaborate steps were taken so that the participants become familiar with the test and because the researchers were present in this area for a decade they had already built a cooperative relationship with the study participants.
The results indicate that the internal reliability for all five traits except for neuroticism is moderate whereas for neuroticism it is low; the levels are lower compared to those found in developed countries. This is not due to difference in received educational level as different results weren’t observable among educated subsamples among the Tsimane. BFIs conducted in African and South Asian countries report similar level of internal reliability for extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness with those found in the Tsimane BFI.
Do these variations imply that genetics play a role? The researchers suggest that rather than trying to find an answer from the genetic construct we should endeavour to understand the various socioecological environments that have an effect on the way the genes are expressed among individuals.
The Big Five Inventory which has been numerously replicated to highlight the fact that personality traits are universal may be not applicable to those living in smaller societies where there have been less contact with the modernized countries. Further BFI tests can be conducted in smaller societies to find out whether similar results are replicated as well.
References
Gurven, Michael, Christopher Rueden, Maxim Massenkoff, Hillard Kaplan, and Marino Vie. “How Universal Is the Big Five? Testing the Five-Factor Model of Personality Variation Among Forager–Farmers in the Bolivian Amazon.” (2012): n. pag. 17 Dec. 2012. Web.
