How to apply personality as a worldwide common concept: Big Five, Big More, or should we?

Chair

Nico SMID (PiCompany, The Netherlands)

Symposium Abstract

The ‘Big Five’ personality concept is often put forward as a unifying comprehensive framework to describe adult personality worldwide. At the same time, debate goes on regarding four main issues. First, are ‘Five’ factors enough or are more factors needed to account for the empirical data collected so far. Second, do persons respond to personality items in the way their responses are modeled. More specifically, which factors might give rise to different response strategies. Third, is personality a useful concept in the prediction of organizational behavior for selection purposes, both regarding the incremental validity above other factors and regarding ethical issues. Fourth, how cross culturally valid is any personality framework. The present symposium will discuss the mentioned issues against the background of globalization of test use. Questions like the following then become relevant. Which personality factors are cross culturally valid and which might be specific for which culture? Are there cultural specifics as regards disclosing information on personal behavior? In particular, to what extent is the self report methodology as in personality questionnaires equally applicable in various cultures and which models have to be used to model response processes over various cultures? Are there cultural specifics as regards the predictive validity and ethics of test use in applied psychological practice? Contributors to the symposium will focus on one or more of the above aspects. In a general discussion similarities and differences between cultures will be discussed and consequences will be formulated for both research and practice.