The big five in the USA and Japan

Purpose – To examine whether the “big five” personality factors operate similarly from a psychometric perspective across dissimilar cultures.Design/methodology/approach – Managers from the USA and Japan were administered a work‐oriented measure of the big five and overall assessment ratings were collected. Independent groups t‐tests were used to examine mean differences in personality scores across samples. Factor analysis was used to examine the structure of the big five across samples. Relative importance analyses were used to examine whether assessors across samples differentially weighted the big five in arriving at overall assessment ratings.Findings – Big five personality dimension scores were significantly higher in the US sample compared to the Japanese sample. Across both samples, relative importance analyses revealed extraversion to be the most important correlate of predicted job performance, whereas conscientiousness was the least important correlate of predicted job performance.Research limit...

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