Cultural differences in the personality triad: The interplay of personality traits, situation characteristics, and behavioral states around the world

Understanding the interplay of persons, situations, and behavior (the Personality Triad) is a key task of psychology. However, previous research has largely focused on Western samples. We examined the Personality Triad across cultures with N = 15,221 participants from 61 countries and one geographic region. Participants reported on one situation from their daily lives. We examined (a) situation characteristic–behavioral state, (b) trait–behavioral state, and (c) trait–situation characteristic associations, as well as (d) Trait × Situation Characteristic interactions predicting behavioral states. We focused on six traits (Big Five, Honesty-Humility), seven situation characteristics (Duty, Intellect, Adversity, Mating, pOsitivity, Negativity, Sociality), and three self-reported behavioral states (Agency, Enthusiasm, Self-Negativity). Importantly, we included 15 country-level variables (collectivism, self-construal, cultural value orientations, tightness, independent and interdependent happiness, national socioeconomic status) as moderators that might contribute to country differences in the Personality Triad. Bayesian multilevel models showed sizable and expected situation characteristic–behavioral state and trait–behavioral state associations with a high degree of generalization across countries, some cultural differences, and moderator effects contradicting theoretical expectations. For instance, we found weaker situation characteristic effects in collectivistic cultures and stronger trait effects in embedded cultures. Trait–situation characteristic associations were meaningful but smaller, and Trait × Situation Characteristic interactions were small and less often significant (although we observed some expected interactions). We found little evidence for country differences in the latter two relations. We discuss implications and future directions for cross-cultural work on the Personality Triad, including replications and extensions using intensive longitudinal designs.