Contemporary approaches to cross-cultural research of personality

Cross-cultural research has in recent years become one of the central topics of personality psychology. According to numerous authors such research has been given new momentum by the appearance of the Big-Five personality model whose development and promotion has been contributed to by researchers from many countries. An array of data speaking in favour of the cultural universality of the five dimensions proposed, as well as the possibility of their being validly measured in different cultures encouraged considerable cross-cultural comparison within the approach called today cross-cultural personality psychology based on personality traits, According to McCrae (2000), this research can be divided into three levels: the transcultural level, dealing with universal traits, intercultural level, dealing with cultural differences, and intracultural level engaged in culturally specific expressions of certain traits, The second very important approach is cultural psychology, which questions the western concept of personality traits itself and represents the viewpoint that culture and personality are inseparable. Today's trends of development indicate that cross-cultural personality psychology will probably offer in the future a synthesis of these two approaches as well as new solutions to methodological limitations in this increasingly important research area.