Culture and spontaneous self-concept among Filipino college students

Responses of 157 Filipino college students to the Twenty Statements Test (TST) were analyzed for content and compared with earlier responses to the TST by U.S. and Hong Kong Chinese college students. Despite the supposedly collectivist nature of the Filipino culture, far fewer Filipino students than U.S. and Hong Kong Chinese students described themselves in terms of social roles. Contrary to theoretical claims, the Filipinos made greater use of the global identity category than did either the U.S. or Hong Kong Chinese students. Evidence also supported the cross-cultural validity of 4 of the Big Five (McCrae & Costa, 1988) personality traits. However, there are questions about the relevance of Openness to Experience to any of these three cultures. Moreover, the finding that the Filipino respondents reported a higher percentage of positive self-descriptions than did either the U.S. or Chinese respondents indicated that such differences cannot be explained in terms of the individualism-collectivism dimension.