ABSTRACT
Most people hold beliefs about personality characteristics typical of members of their own and others' cultures. These perceptions of national character may be generalizations from personal experience, stereotypes with a "kernel of truth," or inaccurate stereotypes. We obtained national character ratings of 3989 people from 49 cultures and compared them with the average personality scores of culture members assessed by observer ratings and self-reports. National character ratings were reliable but did not converge with assessed traits. Perceptions of national character thus appear to be unfounded stereotypes that may serve the function of maintaining a national identity.
Subject(s)
Character , Culture , Ethnicity , Personality , Adolescent , Adult , Cross-Cultural Comparison , Female , Humans , Male , Personality Assessment , Reproducibility of Results , Social Perception , Stereotyping , Surveys and QuestionnairesABSTRACT
The suitability of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) to assess adolescents' personality traits was investigated in an unselected heterogeneous sample of 469 adolescents aged 12 to 17 years. They were further administered the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC) to allow an examination of convergent and discriminant validity. The adult NEO PI-R factor structure proved to be highly replicable in the sample of adolescents, with all facet scales primarily loading on the expected factors, independent of the age group. Domain and facet internal consistency coefficients were comparable to those obtained in adult samples, with less than 12% of the items showing corrected item-facet correlations below absolute value .20. Although, in general, adolescents reported few difficulties with the comprehensibility of the items, they tend to report more problems with the Openness to Ideas (05) and Openness to Values (06) items. Correlations between NEO PI-R and HiPIC scales underscored the convergent and discriminant validity of the NEO facets and HiPIC scales. It was concluded that the NEO PI-R in its present form is useful for assessing adolescents' traits at the primary level, but additional research is necessary to infer the most appropriate facet level structure.
Subject(s)
Personality Inventory , Personality , Psychology, Adolescent , Adolescent , Adult , Belgium , Child , Factor Analysis, Statistical , Female , Humans , Male , Psychological Theory , Psychometrics , Reproducibility of ResultsABSTRACT
In the framework of an extensive health survey of viscose rayon workers in Belgium, 187 workers underwent a neuropsychological examination. Of these, 120 had been exposed for at least a year to carbon disulfide (CS&inf2;) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and 67 served as a non-exposed control group. Measurements showed that many of the 17 jobs in the factory involved exposures to CS&inf2; ranging from 3 mg/m(3) (centrifuge operator) to 147 mg/m(3) (spinning cake regulator), far in excess of the threshold limit value (TLV) of 31 mg/m(3); H2S exposures remained below the recommended TLV of 14 mg/m(3). The neuropsychological investigation included subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the entire Wechsler Memory Scale, the Bourdon-Wiersma Test, the Santa Ana Dexterity Test, the Gibson Spiral Maze, and the Bimanual Sinusoidal Movement Test. Specific questions were included to account for the effects of age, educational level, eye complaints, alcohol consumption, medication intake, and test motivation. Only the group exposed to values exceeding three times the recommended TLV for CS2; had significant impairments in both the speed and the quality of psychomotor performance. Exposure to CS2; and H2S had no significant effect on memory and attention. Covariance analysis revealed the confounding influences of educational level and eye complaints for explaining observed "differences" in memory and attention tasks found by univariate analysis.
