Are indigenous personality dimensions culture specific? Philippine inventories and the five-factor model

The authors addressed the culture specificity of indigenous personality constructs, the generalizability of the 5-factor model (FFM), and the incremental validity of indigenous measures in a collectivistic culture. Filipino college students (N = 508) completed 3 indigenous inventories and the Filipino version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). On the basis of the factor and regression analyses, they concluded that (a) most Philippine dimensions are well encompassed by the FFM and thus may not be very culture specific: (b) a few indigenous constructs are less well accounted for by the FFM: these constructs are not unknown in Western cultures, but they may be particularly salient or composed somewhat differently in the Philippines; (c) the structure of the NEO-PI-R FFM replicates well in the Philippines: and (d) Philippine inventories add modest incremental validity beyond the FFM in predicting selected culture-relevant criteria.