The Cross-Cultural Big Two: A Culturally Decentered Theoretical and Measurement Model for Personality Traits

Abstract

A “big two” model has shown stronger cross-cultural replicability and links to theory than other contemporary models of personality trait structure. However, its theoretical and measurement models require better specification. We address this to create an initial English-language version of the Cross-Cultural Big Two Inventory with an empirically informed and culturally decentered approach, meaning that input from global contexts is used from the outset, without prioritizing Western perspectives. Four studies are reported: (1) Fifty-five items were identified from commonalities among 11 global lexical studies to define two factors. Communion/Social Self-Regulation captures the internalization of versus resistance to the normative codes of one’s society, with components of warmth, morality, respect, industriousness, and even temper. Agency/ Dynamism captures approach versus avoidance tendencies, with components of competence, confidence, fearlessness, positive mood, sociability, and surgency. (2) Items were reduced to the 45 most consistent across English-speaking contexts based on (a) frequency of use in World English corpora; (b) familiarity and exploratory factor analysis results among Africa Long Life Study participants, who were 18-year-olds from Namibia, Kenya, and South Africa (N = 2,958); and (c) distribution test statistics, exploratory factor analysis results, and test–retest reliability in online data from13 diverse English-speaking countries (N = 63,720). (3) The 45-item Cross-Cultural Big Two Inventory was assessed psychometrically and validated against external criteria in theAfrica Long Life Study samples and (4) in the online data and additionally compared to existing two-factor frameworks. The relation of the cross-cultural big two to other two-factor models and theories, its future development, and the potential and importance of culturally decentered models and inventories are discussed.