ALLIK PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS ACROSS CULTURES PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS ACROSS CULTURES Jüri Allik, PhD In order to generalize the dimensional structure of personality—relatively independent groups of covarying traits—across languages and cultures, a large number of cultures must be studied. Until recently only a few worldwide personality datasets have been available. The first large–scale studies indicate that the pattern of covariation between personality traits is universal and is relatively easily generalizable across languages and cultures. In contrast to the structure of personality, the comparison of the mean trait scores across cultures is much more problematic because cross–cultural differences turned out to be very small in their magnitude, about one–third of the magnitude of individual differences within cul- ture. More integral (e.g., the similarity between personality profiles) or subtle (e.g., the disparity between positively and negatively worded items) measures can reveal more systematic relationships with relevant socio- economic and geographic variables than the mean scores themselves. Relatively modest sizes of cross–cultural differences in the mean values may imply that a reasonable scalar equivalence can be achieved, and all individuals, irrespective of their language and culture, can be represented in a common metric. Many popular psychological assessment instruments, originally developed in English, have been translated into numerous languages and are now commonly used throughout the world. Most of these translations were made with an explicit or at least tacit assumption that the core psychological con- structs assessed by the measures substantively transcend human language and culture. The generalizability across languages and cultures, however, was in most cases presumed, not demonstrated. Therefore it is not surpris- ing that some researchers have expressed concern with this assumption, and especially with practices guided by this assumption (Shweder, 1991). Skeptics have questioned, for instance, whether the uncritical extension of “Western” ways of thinking to the rest of the world should serve as standard procedure in psychological science. From a cultural constructionist point of view, all personality models are based on conceptions of personhood and Journal of Personality Disorders, 19(3), 212-232, 2005 © 2005 The Guilford Press 212 From the Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia, and The Estonian Center of Behavioral and Health Sciences. The author thanks Jeff McCrae and Dave Schmitt for discussions, collaboration, and sharing their data. The preparation of this article was supported by the Estonian Science Foundation and the Es- tonian Ministry of Science and Education. Address correspondence to Jüri Allik, Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78, Tartu 50410, Estonia; E-mail: juri.allik@ut.ee.