The Importance of Psychological Traits: A Cross-Cultural Study

di John E. Williams (Autore)

Robert C. Satterwhite (Autore)

José L. Saiz (Autore)

Springer Science+Business Media, 1998

All traits were not created equal. -WORCHEL AND COOPER (1983, p. 180) This book reports the findings from extensive cross-cultural studies of the relative importance ofdifferent psychological traits in 20 countries and the relative favorability of these traits in a subset of 10 countries. While the work is devoted primarily to professionals and advanced students in the social sciences, the relatively nontechnical style - ployed should make the book comprehensible to anyone with a general grasp of the concepts and strategies ofempirical behavioral science. The project grew out of discussions between the first author and third author while the latter was a graduate student at Wake Forest University, U.S.A., in 1990. The third author, a native of Chile, was studying person-descriptive adjectives composing the stereotypes - sociatedwiththe Chilean aboriginal minority knownas Mapuche (Saiz &Williams, 1992). Asweexaminedthe adjectives usedinthisstudy,it was clear that they differed in favorability and also on another dim- sionwhichwe latertermed "psychologicalimportance," i.e., the degree to which adjectives reflected more "central," as opposed to more "- ripheral,"personality characteristics. More important descriptors were those which seemed more informative or diagnostic ofwhat a person "wasreally like"and, hence, might be ofgreater significance in und- standing and predicting an individual's behavior.

• Autore: John E. Williams, Robert C. Satterwhite, José L. Saiz
• Editore: Springer Science+Business Media
• Collana: The Springer Series in Social Clinical Psychology
• Anno: 1998
• Rilegatura: Hardback
• Pagine: 193 p.
• Dimensioni: 235 x 155 mm
• EAN: 9780306458897

Testo in English