Handbook on the State of the Art in Applied Psychology

CHAPTER 14Assessing Personality from a Cultural Perspective

Fanny M. Cheung and Yuen Wan Ho

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, The People's Republic of China

Abstract

When assessing personality across cultures, it is common to adopt a test developed in the West and assume that it is universally applicable. Using these imported etic measures, it is important to demonstrate the equivalence between the original and the translated tests. In this chapter, the new guidelines on test translation and adaptation issued by the International Test Commission are introduced as best practice. Notwithstanding improved test translation and adaptation, current personality assessment research and practices are dominated by Western theories and measures that affect the cross‐cultural validity of personality assessment as important indigenous constructs have been ignored. The combined emic–etic approach can fill important gaps in understanding personality from a local perspective while providing the framework for cross‐cultural comparison. Research on the Cross‐cultural (Chinese) Personality Assessment Inventory illustrates the considerations and procedures for developing an indigenous personality measure using the combined emic–etic approach. Further research confirms the incremental validity of emic dimensions of personality in explaining life satisfaction, social beliefs, trust, and persuasion tactics, career choice and decision‐making efficacy, leadership, job performance, ...