Personality science is the study of the individual. It aims to understand what makes people similar to others, different from some, and unique to themselves. However, research in personality lacks a thoughtful consideration of culture, race, and ethnicity that is essential for understanding individual differences in patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. High impact personality journals rarely include such factors into the interpretation of results, and cross-cultural and ethnic minority publications are limited within the discipline. This paper offers a brief, non-exhaustive overview of how culture, race, and ethnicity are examined in relation to personality, showing that: 1) social structures continue to be neglected in the research, 2) we can learn from research being conducted in neighbouring areas, 3) and valuable work is already being done within personality psychology. We offer recommendations that include community based participatory research methods, combined emic-etic approaches, and contextualizing research findings to improve the consideration of culture, race, and ethnicity in personality research.
Practical recommendations for considering culture, race, and ethnicity in personality psychology
