Last May (5/30/07), we discussed the "International Sexuality Description Project" (ISDP) - a cross-cultural psychological inventory of over 16,000 participants (largely college students). Of course, with a data set that large, it would be surprising if only one paper resulted from it. For the rest of this week, we'll look at other studies published from the ISDP data.

Schmitt et al (2008) examined culture's effect on gender differences on the Big Five personality tests collected in the ISDP. Comparing test scores from 55 cultures, they found that gender differences in personality were higher in more egalitarian cultures, and attenuated in "less fortunate social and economic conditions." As the authors point out, a purely social role explanation of gender differences would predict the opposite effect: that more equality would mean less difference. Two alternative explanations are offered: evolutionary and artifact. The evolutionary explanation suggests that more progressive cultures are actually closer to stone age conditions than less egalitarian ones; the artifact explanation is that there's a problem with the measurement system.

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I don't think I can approach this one free of bias. My immediate response upon reading the article title was that there's a problem with the measurement system. Hell, I think there's a problem with the Big Five in general. I don't buy into stable personality theory -- but it's not hard to see why I would be personally invested in the idea that people change.

Speaking of changes. I'm having a hysterectomy on Thursday morning. I'm going to try to set up posts in advance, like I did for a vacation last spring, but there's a distinct possibility that there won't be posts on Thursday and Friday. I don't want to make any promises either way at this point.