A cross-cultural study of the concept of “intelligent person” —Comparative study on the factor structures among six cultures—

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to clarify (1) people's concept of intelligence in the following six cultures : Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Canada and Mexico ; and (2) the difference between the three following Japanese concepts : ‘atamanoyoi’, ‘rikouna’, ‘kashikoi’, which express “intelligent” in Japanese. The results were as follows : 1) Five-factor solution was found to be valid. They were named “sympathy and sociability”, “interpersonal competence”, “ability to comprehend and process knowledge”, “accurate and quick decision making”, and “ability to express oneself”; 2) The factor structures of Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan were similar to each other, but dissimilar to those of Canada and Mexico ; 3) The patterns of the correlations among the five factors were rather similar, while the variances of the factors were different between the nations concerned ; 4) The concept of ‘kashikoi’ was different from that of ‘atamanoyoi’ in that ‘kashikoi’ implied sociability together with cognitive ability. © 1991, Department of Mathematics, Tokyo Institute of Technology. All rights reserved.