Personality Assessment

The chapter focuses on the assessment of personality in an international context. Starting from the definition of personality, the chapter discusses the way culture and personality are mixed and sets then out to explain the emic (indigenous) versus etic (universal) debate in personality assessment. The combined emic-etic approach is outlined as an interesting evolution in cross-cultural personality assessment, and two measures based on this approach are discussed, the Cross-Cultural Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI) and the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI). Finally, the chapter discusses the currently dominant model of personality used in assessment internationally, the five-factor model, outlining some of the dilemmas still being debated related to this model, such as the broad versus narrow debate, the cross-cultural replicability issue, and the bandwidth-fidelity dilemma.