European Journal of Personality, Vol. 9, 109-124 (1995)

A Big Five personality inventory in two non-Indo-European languages

ALEKSANDER PULVER’ Department of Psychology, University of Tam, Tartu, Estonia

JURl ALLlK Department of Psychology, University of Tam, Tartu, Estonia and Department of Psychology, University of Jyv&kyI& Jy~iskyI& Finland

LEA PULKKINEN Department of Psychology, University of Jyv&kyl& Jyv&kyl& Finland

and

MINNA HAMAUINEN Department of Psychology, University of Psychology. university of J@skyl& Jyv&skyI& Finland

Abstract In this study we report on two successful replications of a five-factor personality inventory in two non-Indo-European languages, Estonian and Finnish, which both belong to the group of Uralic languages. Costa and McCrae’s (1985) NEO Personality Inventory was adapted to these two languages. By all relevant psychometric parameters neither developed construct differs from the original construct: the reliabilities of only I1 per cent for the Estonian and 36 per cent for the Finnish subscale were lower than those of the respective NEO-PI scales. The factor structure of both Estonian and Finnish inventories was very close to the five-factor structure of the NEO-PI, accounting for 71.7 per cent and 67.0 per cent of the variance, respectively. In spite of this generally good agreement, some language- or culture-dependent differences were observed. Both Estonian and Finnish women were more extraverted and conscientious than men, compared with their English-speaking counterparts. Also, some differences exist in the need for other people’s company and excitement seeking. In the Balto- Fennic culture gregariousness appears to presuppose some emotional stability and openness and excitement seeking is conceptualized more as a tool of rescuing from anxiety, depression, and low seu-esteem. This study is considered as a step toward &termination of which parts of the most popular instrument for the measurement of the Big Five personality dimensions are truly universal and which parts of it are specific to a particular language and culture.

1 Address all correspondence concernhg this article to Aleksander Pulver, Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, 78 Tiigi Street, Tartu EE-2400, Estonia. E-mail: sassa@psych.ut.ee.

CCC 0890-2070/95/02010%16 0 1995 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received I1 August 1994 Accepted 5 March 1995

1 10 A . Pulver et al.

INTRODUCTION

A five-factor model has become a norm against which different personality taxonomies and constructs are tested (Digman, 1990; Goldberg, 1993; John, 1990; John, Angleitner and Ostendorf, 1988; Wiggins and Pincus, 1992). Although the number and interpretation of dimensions are still debated, there is a rather universal tendency that personality-descriptive terms and items of personality questionnaires are persistently grouped into five major dimensions: (I) Extraversion or Surgency, (11) Agreeableness, (111) Conscientiousness, (N) Emotional Stability or Neuroticism, and (V) Intellect or Openness to Experience. The Big Five personality taxonomy was originally developed in English (Goldberg, 1993) and thereafter confirmed for other Germanic and Roman languages, such as German (Borkenau and Ostendorf, 1989; Ostendorf, 1990), Dutch @e Raad, 1992; De Raad, Hendriks and Hofstee, 1992), Norwegian (Engvik, 1993), Flemish (Mervielde, 1992), and Italian (Barbaranelli, 1993). There are, however, only a few studies of the taxonomy of personality terms in languages that do not belong to the Indo-European group of languages. Among these relatively sparse studies Chinese (Yang and Bond, 1990; Yik and Bond, 1993), Japanese (Bond, Nakazato and Shiraishi, 1975; Kashiwagi, Wada and Aoki, 1993), and Tagalog (Philippines) (Guthrie and Bennett, 1971; Church and Katigbak, 1989) can be named.

About 15 years ago Goldberg (1981) formulated a demanding scientific task: the discovery of the basic elements that underlie personality in various natural languages. Although the first results demonstrate that the Big Five personality structure appears to be fairly well generalizable across languages and cultures, its universality still needs to be demonstrated. It is hypothesized that those individual differences that are most significant in the daily transactions of persons with each other and central to human survival will eventually become encoded into their language. If the principles of social interaction and the tasks to human survival are universal, the most important individual differences, and the terms people use to lable these differences, should be universal as well (John, 1990). It is also possible that some cultural universals are neurophysiologically wired or preprogrammed in human being. For example, comparative linguistic and anthropological studies demonstrate that lexical universals exist for the way in which all human languages classify plants, animals, colours, spatial relations, and geometric forms (Berlin and Key, 1969; Brown, 1983, 1986; Burris, 1979). Along the same line of reasoning, recent psychological investigations indicate that certain properties of the human conceptual system for categorizing psychological processes are universal and largely independent of a particular language or culture. For example, emotion-related words in various languages such as Chinese, Croatian, English, Estonian, Greek, Gujarati, Japanese, and Polish can be represented in roughly circular order in a space definable by two dimensions: pleasuredispleasure and arousal-sleep (Russell, 1983; Russell, Lewicka and Niit, 1989). Therefore, it would not be very surprising if the personality-related terminology in various languages were ordered along a relatively small number of domains largely independent of a particular language or culture.

In order to balance the universal tendencies, doctrines of linguistic and cultural relativity have always stressed deviations from one universal pattern, even though this pattern is thought of as being highly constrained either by universal evolutionary regularities or neurophysiological regularities. There is much substantial evidence,

Estonian and Finnish Big Five inventories 11 1

besides anecdotes, to indicate that languages differ in their way of looking at reality. Although languages and cultures, may be quite similar in their basic assumptions about the world. This does not exclude the possibility that they categorize various aspects of reality, including personality-related concepts, slightly differently. For example, different languages do not categorize geometric relationships between objects in a similar way. As a result of these different categorizations, speakers of two different languages, for example, Indo-European and Uralic languages, may be strikingly different in their ability to recognize, learn, and memorize even simple events and life situations (Strrmnes, 1973, 1974). Thus, a theoretical position that assumes evolutionary or neurobiological universals, from which language- and culture-specific deviations may develop, appears to be more adequate and preferable.

Aim of the present study

In this study we report on two successful replications of the five-factor personality model in two non-Indo-European languages, Estonian and Finnish, which both belong to the Balto-Fennic group of Uralic languages. Although the general five- factor structure was replicable in these two non-Indo-European languages, several language- and culture-specific shifts in the interpretation of scales and subscales can be noticed.

INVENTORY CONSTRUCTION PROCEDURE

The item pool

The task of this study was to develop Estonian and Finnish five-factor personality inventories that would be, by their psychometrical properties, as close as possible to the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI; Costa and McCrae, 1985, 1989)’. Four criteria were formulated for the personality constructs developed in Estonian and Finnish: (i) the factor structure of the developed tests must correspond as closely as possible to the original factor structure of the NEO-PI; (ii) the reliability of subscales of these tests must be as good as it is in the original instrument; (iii) the distribution characteristics of the adopted scales and subscales must be close to normal; and (iv) the number of items in the developed tests that are, more or less, literal translations from the English original should be maximal.

The constructed item pool consisted of three parts. (i) All 181 items of the original NEO Personality Inventory (Costa and McCrae, 1985, 1989) were translated. The main concern was not linguistic closeness of translation per se but finding an equivalent expression for the respective personality concept expressed by the original item. Therefore a few characteristically American items (e.g. ‘I wouldn’t enjoy vacation in Las Vegas’ or ‘I love the excitement of roller coasters’) were omitted and replaced with less specific and universally understandable examples (‘I don’t like to play with my future and life for the sake of living on the edge’ or ‘Sometimes I have done something just for fun or excitement’). (ii) In addition to more or less direct

1 This project was started before facets for two global domains, A and C, became available (Costa, McCrae and Dye, 1991).

1 12 A . Pulver el al.

translation of the original items, 88 new items were generated on the basis of original items. These new items were restatements or some variations of the same major theme expressed by some of the original items. For example, on the basis of the original item ‘I rarely feel fearful or anxious’ an additional statement, ‘Generally, I manage to remain calm and unstressed’, was added to the pool of items expressing anxiety. All new statements were carefully compared, by a group of experts, for general characteristics of the respective global domains and facets given by Costa and McCrae (1985, 1989). (ii) For the purpose of appropriate item selection, eight statements from the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1964) Lie scales were added to the item pool to measure social desirability (SD). The final item pool, consisting of 277 statements in Estonian, was translated into Finnish. The translation of the original NEO-PI items was also checked using the English phrasing. Professor Paavo Pulkkinen, professor of Finnish language, who is equally fluent in Estonian and in his native Finnish, examined thoroughly the adequacy of the translation.

Subjects

In Finland a questionnaire with this item pool was sent by post (in the spring of 1992) to 800 individuals selected by the Finnish Population Centre in accordance with the census distribution of the Finnish population. The return rate was 41 per cent (324 individuals). After elimination of incomplete or improperly answered questionnaires, 31 1 individuals remained: 187 women and 124 men, with an average age of 38.8 and 41.7, respectively, born between 1932 and 1971. In Estonia, 301 persons were tested individually or in small groups during the second half of 1992. The Estonian sample consisted of people who had different educational and social backgrounds. After elimination of incomplete and improperly answered questionnaires, 290 individuals remained: 138 women and 152 men. The mean age of these subjects was 31.3 and 26.6 years for females and males, respectively. The age of the Estonian subjects ranged from 17 to 65 years.

Item selection

We started our analysis with those items that were literal translations from the original NEO-PI. In order to overcome the discrepancy between the number of items in Neuroticism (Nl-N6), Extraversion (El-E6), and Openness (01-06) facet scales (eight items in each), on the one hand, and 18 items each in the Agreeableness (A) and the Conscientiousness (C) scales, on the other hand, the latter two were divided into three random sets consisting of six items in each (cf. Borkenau and Ostendorf, 1990). These 24 scales were then factor analysed (principal component analysis and varimax rotation). Figure 1 shows the plot of the eigenvalues for the Estonian and Finnish inventories composed from the translation of original items (open symbols and dashed lines).

Both the Estonian and Finnish scree plots demonstrate two important properties: (i) eigenvalues began to level off after the first five factors and (ii) beyond the first five factors eigenvalues dropped below 1 .O, usually considered as the minimal value for factor extraction. Thus, according to these two criteria, even the raw translation

Estonian and Finnish Big Five inventories 113

8

7 -

6 -

5 -

s > 4 [

3 -

2 -

1 -

0

~ I ~ ' " ~ " " ~ ' ' '

FINNISH

" ~ ~ ' " " * ~ " ' '

0 4 8 12 16 20

Figure 1 . Scree plot for the factor analysis of the Estonian and Finnish NEO Personality Inventories. Filled symbols and continuous curves correspond to the final test variants. Open symbols and broken lines correspond to the test versions that are based on the translated original items

114 A . Pulver et al.

demonstrates a clear five-factor structure, which accounted for 66.9 and 63.4 per cent of the variance for the Estonian and Finnish variants, respectively. In most cases the reliability of the translated scales was also satisfactory with the exception of the Feelings (03) facet scale, for which the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were 0.52 (Estonian version) and 0.46 (Finnish version). The main problem, however, was the rotated factor matrix. Both the Estonian and Finnish facets scales demonstrated many substantial secondary loadings. The number of such secondary loadings exceeding i0.30, was higher than in the original NEO-PI factor structure. In addition, the Estonian Impulsiveness ( N 5 ) facet scale had a higher loading on the Extraversion factor than on the Neuroticism factor itself. Analogously, the Finnish Warmth (El) scale loads more heavily on the Agreeableness factor than on Extraversion, to which it theoretically belongs. In order to improve the psychometric properties of the adapted instruments a number of items were replaced. Criteria for replacement were the following.

(i) Reliability. If an original item had a very low correlation with the total score of the scale to which it was supposed to belong, it was replaced with another item from the same item pool. For example, the Estonian translation of the statement ‘I tend to blame myself when anything goes wrong’ had no correlation with the Depression (N3) facet scale (r = 0.01).

(ii) Secondary correlation. If an item had a strong secondary correlation with other factors beside the appropriate one, a substitute item with a lower secondary correlation was searched for in the respective item pool. For example, the Finnish translation of the statement ‘I’m known as hot-blooded and quick- tempered’ was, in addition to Neuroticism (r =0.22), correlated with Extraversion (r = 0.39).

(iii) Skewness. Some of the translated items were extremely skewed. For example, in both languages virtually all subjects answered affirmatively to the statement ‘I really feel the need for other people if I am by myself for long’.

(iv) Social desirability. If an item from among the additionally generated items was, by all other properties, nearly equivalent to the original translation but had lower correlation with the SD subscale, it was used as a replacement for the original item. For example, in the Finnish population the disapproving answer to the statement ‘I’m attracted to bright colors and flashy styles’ appears to be, to a certain extent, socially desirable (r= -0.21).

Applying these criteria, 31.1 per cent of the original translated items were replaced with the modified statements from the Estonian item pool; the percentage of replacement in the Finnish inventory was 21.7 per cent. The overlap between Estonian and Finnish items was 75.0 per cent. In order to assure that the replacements did not change scale content, the correlation between the final Estonian version and the initial translation was 0.96, 0.96, 0.98, 0.96, and 0.88, for N, E, 0, C, and A, respectively. Analogous correlations for the Finnish questionnaire were 0.98, 0.98, 0.98, 0.95, and 0.94. Correlations of the subset of Estonian-derived items in the Finnish inventory with the final version of the Estonian NEO-PI and correlations between Finnish-derived items in the Estonian inventory and the final version of Finnish inventory were in the same range. High correlations among three different samples indicate the homogeneity of the item pool

Estonian and Finnish Big Five inventories 115

Table 1. Means and standard deviations

Estonian Finnish Females Males Females Males (N= 138) (N= 152) ( N - 187) (N= 124)

M SD M SD M SD M SD

Domain scales Neuroticism (N) 83.3 Extraversion (E) 117.1 Openness (0) 121.4

Conscientiousness (C) 49.9

Anxiety 15.0 Hostility 12.7 Depression 12.9 Self-Consciousness 15.4 Impulsiveness 15.3

Agreeableness (A) 50.2

Neuroticism (N)

Vulnerability 12.0

Extraversion (E) Warmth 233 Gregariousness 17.8 Assertiveness 15.5 Activity 19.9 Excitement Seeking 18.8 Positive Emotions 21.9

Fantasy 21.1 Openness (0)

Aesthetics 22.6 Feelings 24.4 Actions 16.5 Ideas 17.5 Values 19.3

29.3 31.7 25.6 11.7 8.8

7.0 5.9 6.6 5.3 6.6 6.3

6.1 7.5 6.7 6.4 6.8 7.2

6.7 6.7 4.3 6.1 7.7 4.7

82.5 107.0 103.6 47.0 45.2

13.8 12.3 13.3 16.1 15.3 11.7

20.2 16.1 15.4 17.5 19.6 18.2

19.0 14.2 20.0 14.9 16.9 18.5

29.9 28.8 26.0 11.2 7.4

6.9 5.3 6.6 6.0 6.1 6.1

5.7 6.3 6.0 6.2 6.1 6.6

6.7 7.5 5.5 5.6 7.0 4.2

92.5 107.1 115.4 46.6 44.4

17.8 13.8 15.2 16.4 17.1 12.2

20.7 15.7 17.1 17.9 15.2 20.4

19.8 18.5 22.5 17.5 16.4 20.8

24.7 22.9 21.5

8.8 7.5

5.3 5.0 6.1 5.1 5.3 5.2

4.8 5.2 5.1 5.0 5.7 5.5

5.8 6.6 4.2 4.9 5.5 3.5

86.8 100.4 104.7 44.2 42.8

15.8 12.6 15.0 15.5 16.6 11.3

18.6 13.9 16.3 17.3 16.5 17.7

16.7 15.9 20.3 15.9 16.4 19.5

22.0 22.1 20.0 8.6 7.8

5.0 4.6 5.8 4.9 4.7 4.8

5.1 5.5 4.4 5.4 4.6 5.7

5.7 6.2 4.0 4.6 5.9 3.5

Nore: Signifcant differences (p < 0.05) between the means of females and males are shown in boldface.

and suggest that the derived item set is very close to the original translation in both Estonian and Finnish.

ESTONIAN AND FINNISH FIVE-FACTOR PERSONALITY INVENTORIES

The scree plot for the factor analysis of the constructed Estonian and Finnish inventories is also shown in Figure 1 (filled circles and continuous lines). The distribution of eigenvalues clearly supports the five-factor solution. The first five factors account for 69.3 per cent (Estonian version) and 64. 3 per cent (Finnish version) of the total variance.

The means and standard deviations for the self-ratings for both the Estonian and Finnish populations are shown in Table 1. Although it is not entirely meaningful to

116 A . Pulver et al.

Table 2. Internal consistency (alpha coefficient)

Estonian Finnish Females Males Total Females Males Total

Domain scales Neuroticism (N) Extraversion (E) Openness (0) Conscientiousness (C) Agreeableness (A)

Anxiety Hostility Depression Self-Consciousness Impulsiveness Vulnerability

Extraversion (E) Warmth Gregariousness Assertiveness Activity Excitement Seeking Positive Emotions

Openness (0) Fantasy Aesthetics Feelings Actions Ideas Values

Neuroticism (N)

94 95 91 89 78

84 78 82 66 79 84

83 86 82 81 80 87

83 84 61 77 87 62

94 93 91 86 62

85 72 83 76 76 83

77 78 78 79 77 83

83 85 75 73 83 50

94 94 92 87 73

85 75 82 72 78 83

81 82 80 81 79 86

83 88 75 75 85 56

93 91 90 80 73

78 73 84 75 74 80

73 74 75 72 76 82

83 82 66 72 80 50

91 91 88 80 76

74 73 83 72 66 76

78 80 66 79 61 82

83 79 59 68 83 45

92 91 90 81 74

77 73 83 73 71 78

76 77 72 75 72 83

84 82 66 71 81 49

Note: Decimal points are omitted.

compare means of the scales from two different languages, it may be still instructive to notice some conspicuous differences. There are four major differences (on the basis of standard scores) in the Estonian and Finnish means from the respective means of the English domain scale norms (cf. Costa and McCrae, 1989, Table 1): (i) both Estonian groups (z=3.69) and Finnish men (z=6.40) and Finnish women (z = 5.63) are considerably more neurotic; (ii) Estonian women (z = 4.14) are more extraverted; (iii) Estonian women (z=2.61) are more open to experience, but both Estonian men (z= -2.49) and Finnish men (z= -2.30) are less open to experience; and (iv) both Estonian (z= -6.54) and Finnish (z= -8.86) males and Finnish women (z = - 8.68) are considerably less conscientious. While the cross-cultural differences between means can be partly explained by the problem of translation, gender differences within culture are obviously free from such linguistic problems. According to the English norms, women score higher on all five domain scales, most clearly exceeding men in N and 0 (Costa and McCrae, 1989, Table 1). The same general tendency is valid for both the Estonian and the Finnish data (significant gender differences are indicated by boldface).

Tabl

e 3.

Fa

ctor

load

ings

for N

EO-P

I (En

g), E

ston

ian

(Est

), an

d Fi

nnis

h (F

in) p

erso

nalit

y in

vent

orie

s ~

~~

N

E 0

A

C

En

g Es

t Fi

n En

g Es

t Fi

n En

g Es

t Fi

n En

g Es

t Fi

n En

g Es

t Fi

n

Neu

rotic

ism

(N)

Anx

iety

H

ostil

ity

Dep

ress

ion

Self-

Con

scio

usne

ss

Impu

lsive

ness

V

ulne

rabi

lity

Extra

vers

ion

(E)

War

mth

G

rega

rious

ness

A

sser

tiven

ess

Act

ivity

Ex

cite

men

t See

king

Po

sitiv

e Em

otio

ns

Ope

nnes

s (0)

Fant

asy

Aes

thet

ics

Feel

ings

A

ctio

ns

Idea

s V

alue

s A

gree

able

ness

(A)

Con

scie

ntio

usne

ss (

C)

84

88

85

-10

-15

81

78

80

-19

-35

72

70

76

-29

-33

73

80

80

-25

-26

59

78

64

01

19

55

58

53

21

18

- 10 05

-15 - 20 35

- 16

- 02 05

- 03

-1

1 11

- 13

-02

03

03

00

-01

08

-59

-31

02

03

-01

-08

-20

-15

13

-02

-02

08

-06

-13

-10

-19

12

06

- 00

- 5

2 - 1

0 06

- 27

-01

- 07

-

14

- 23

- 1

0 -3

8 - 25

07

05

- 06

- 10

- 6

2 - 2

6

02

04

- 08

- 06

- 42

- 19

-08

-26

-11

67

73

-12

-07

-30

72

80

-22

-19

-26

59

73

18

-06

-05

57

78

-06

-13

-14

47

64

-01

-27

-01

70

74

15

30

50

38

02

14

11

13

17

26

-4

5 -3

4 14

-0

3 -3

0 -0

8 12

12

-3

9 -1

9 14

20

23

23

67

71

61

68

64

77

00

-21 16

37

10

- 42

- 13

- 1

9 28

12

- 24 19

38

- 47

- 0

4

03

- 19

12

15

- 4

2 - 25

25

-11 10

36

-30

- 07

16

12

25

25

19

22

13

20

13

-02

01

18

08

34

18

16

56

41

-19

-20

-25

24

27

-17

-18

-19

07

03

-10

-21

-13

09

14

-14

-23

-16

15

01

-15

-41

-22

28

18

27

- 04

43

38

14

33

11

14

57

68

44

54

72

58

02

- 05

54

79

57

59

84

42

14

07

52

11

85

23

58

12

52

19

76

-06

54

05

07

81

03

-12

10

30

44

- 10

- 12 12

82

22

21

12

18

- 14

- 23

03

82

16

- 39 09

10

- 25

10

-

06

29

79

- 45

07

07

-40

- 02

- 5

3 11

71

- 40 05

20

-3

1 07

- 33 17

79

Not

e: Lo

adin

gs ov

er 0.

30 a

re sh

own i

n bo

ldfa

ce; d

ecim

al po

ints

are o

mitt

ed. NEO-PI d

ata

are f

rom

Cos

ta an

d M

cCrae

(198

9, T

able

4). T

he c

onve

ntio

nal v

arim

ax m

ethod

wa

s use

d fo

r Esto

nian

and

Finn

ish d

ata;

a n

ew v

alidim

ax m

ethod

was

used f

or th

e NEO-PI.

118 A. Pulver et al.

Table 4. Factor congruence coefficients (Tucker) for English (Eng), Estonian (Est), and Finnish (Fin) NEO-PI

~ ~ ~ ~~ ~~

N factor E factor 0 factor A factor C factor

Eng vs Est 96 97 96 85 83 Eng vs Fin 98 96 94 89 92 Est vs Fin 97 97 97 93 87

Note: Decimal points are omitted.

Table 2 gives the Cronbach alpha coefficients for men and women separately for all domain scales and facet scales for the Estonian and Finnish five-factor inventories. These values are generally acceptable and, in most cases, even higher than they are in the NEO-PI (Costa and McCrae, 1985, Table 13). In total, there are 36 facet scales (two sexes by 18 N, E, and 0 facet scales). The reliability of only four Estonian (11 per cent) and 13 Finnish (36 per cent) subscales was lower than the reliability of the corresponding English version of the NEO-PI facet scale. For both the Estonian and Finnish inventories major difficulties were caused by the 0 6 (Values) subscale for which Cronbach’s alpha dropped to the range from CL = 0.45 to a = 0.62 without any extra resources in the item pool to improve it.

In constructing the Estonian and Finnish five-factor inventories one of the concerns was to avoid contamination between separate domains and facets. Thus, our goal was to develop scales with an internal factor structure as close as possible to the original NEO-PI. In Table 3, the results of the principal component analysis with the varimax minimization procedure are shown for the Estonian and Finnish five- factor inventories together with the original NEO-PI pattern (Costa and McCrae, 1989, Table 4). In general, the factor groupings of both the Estonian and the Finnish inventories demonstrate a clear five-factor grouping of N, E, and 0 facets and two domains, A and C; without grouping A and C domains into three random packages, these five factors accounted for 71.7 per cent and 67.0 per cent of the variance in the Estonian and Finnish data, respectively. Table 3 reveals that the structure of factor loadings is very similar in all three languages. This informal observation can be confirmed by more rigorous analysis. Table 4 gives the Tucker coefficients of congruence between the English, Estonian, and Finnish factor structures of the NEO-PI. Although the degree of similarity between the A and C factors is lower than between the N, E, and 0 factors, the overall picture of congruences between factor structures is satisfactory. Thus, in spite of the different rotation methods, the factor loadings for the Estonian and Finnish inventories are very similar to the original NEO-PI five-factor structure.

As in the original NEO-PI, the Estonian and Finnish inventories demonstrate some secondary correlations between some facets and the other factors beside their own. The number of such secondary correlations exceeding f 0.30 (shown in Table 3 in boldface) is slightly larger in the newly constructed instruments (14) than in the original NEO-PI (10). In most cases these secondary correlations replicate the pattern that is observed in the original NEO-PI. For example, in all three inventories the Conscientiousness item ‘I try to perform all the tasks assigned to me conscientiously’ is negatively correlated with the Impulsiveness (N6) item ‘I have trouble resisting my cravings’. Thus, it appears to be a rather universal conception

Estonian and Finnish Big Five inventories 119

that impulsiveness is somehow antagonistic to conscientiousness. In a comparative study of three personality questionnaires, namely Eysenck’s EPQ, Costa and McCrae’s NEO-PI, and Zuckerman and Kuhlman’s ZKPQ, the NEO-PI Impulsivity facet scale (N5) has its primary loading not on Neuroticism, but on a factor that can be identified as Conscientiousness (C) (Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta and Kraft, 1993, Table 6). Another scale of the NEO-PI with an extremely high secondary loading is Warmth (El), which is regarded in the NEO-PI as a facet of Extraversion. John (1990) and Goldberg (1990), however, consider the adjective ‘warm’ as one of the central factor markers for Agreeableness. Indeed, the Warmth (El) loading on the Agreeableness factor is 0.50 (the correlation between El and A is r = 0.47). A similar positive association between Warmth and Agreeableness exists for the Estonian and the Finnish inventories, r=0.37 and r=0.41 (P<O.Ol), respectively.

As can be expected from the comparison of factor loadings, the matrices of intercorrelations among scales are very similar for all three languages. There was not a single case of a statistically significant correlation between two scales in one language that was also significant in one of the two remaining languages, but with the opposite sign. In spite of this agreement, some contrasts exist in the pattern of intercorrelations, which could reflect language and/or culture differences. By counting the number of differences in significant intercorrelations it was possible to establish three facets in the Estonian and Finnish inventories that differed most from the original NEO-PI: Gregariousness (E2), Excitement Seeking (E5), and Openness to Values (06).

(i) Gregariousness (E2). This aspect of extraversion is supposed to measure the preference for other people’s company (Costa and McCrae, 1986). This preference seems to be independent of being anxious (Nl), having an active fantasy life (Ol), a willingness to try different activities ( 0 5 ) , and intellectual curiosity (06), at least among the English speaking population. Contrary to this, both Estonians and Finns appear to think that gregariousness and the need for other people’s company require also some emotional stability (E2-N1: r = - 0.20 and r = - 0.3 1, p < 0.01, respectively), an active fantasy life (E2-01: r = 0.23 and r= 0.24, p C 0.01), willingness to try different activities (E2-05: r = 0.10, NS, r = 0.25, p < 0.01), and intellectual curiosity (E2-06: r = 0.25 and r = 0.32, p < 0.01); Thus, for both Balto-Fennic populations the need for other people’s company is strongly associated with emotional stability and higher openness to experience.

(ii) Excitement Seeking (ES). Another facet of extraversion implies craving for excitement and sensations. People scoring high on this scale like bright colours and noisy environments (Costa and McCrae, 1986). In the NEO-PI, Excitement Seeking is negatively correlated with Agreeableness (A) (r = -0.29) and positively with Hostility (N2) (r =0.18). The Excitement Seeking facet is positively correlated with Jackson’s (1984) Personality Research Form (PRF) Dominance (r = 0.41) and Aggression (r = 0.3 1) subscales (Costa and McCrae, 1988, Table 2). In other words, in the English speaking population excitement seeking is associated with a negative orientation towards others, competitive rather than cooperative attitudes, and with the tendency to experience anger and related emotional states. These associations are lacking in the Estonian and

120 A. Pulver et al.

Finnish populations. In turn, the excitement seeking of Estonians and Finns is very strongly associated with emotional stability. Highly significant negative correlations exist between E5 and Anxiety (Nl), Depression (N3), and Self- Consciousness (N4) (correlations range from -0.16 to -0.27). This means, in particular, that excitement seeking, ‘I often crave excitement’, is to some extent perceived as opposite to the emotions of shame and embarrassment (‘At times I have been so ashamed I just wanted to hide’). Thus, if for English speaking people the search for excitement is to a certain extent a form of hidden aggression, then for Fenno-Baltic people it appears to be a way of becoming free from anxiety, depression, and low-self-esteem.

(iii) Openness to Values (06) . Openness to Values is usually interpreted as readiness to reexamine social, political, and religious values (McCrae and Costa, 1985). The Openness to Values facet may be seen as the opposite of dogmatism (Rokeach, 1960): individuals scoring high on various dogmatism scales have a tendency to score low on the Openness to Values scale. The NEO-PI norms (Costa and McCrae, 1989, Appendix A) for 0 6 show no associations with Hostility (N2), Impulsiveness (N5) , Warmth (El), or Conscientiousness (C). However, among Estonians, the Openness to Values is negatively correlated with Hostility (r= -0 .17 ,~ CO.01) and Conscientiousness (r= -0.13, p CO.01). Both Estonians and Finns demonstrate strong positive correlations between antidogmatism and close emotional ties to others (Warmth), r =0.27 and 0.25, respectively (p c O.Ol), and, somewhat surprisingly, with the inability to control cravings and urges (Impulsiveness), r = 0.17 and 0.20 (p C 0.01), respectively. On the basis of our data alone, it is impossible to decide whether these differences are caused by cross-cultural differences or by ambiguity of the openness concept itself (cf. McCrae, 1990). As was noticed above, the Value (06) facet had the lowest internal consistency (see Table 2); previous cross-cultural comparisons demonstrate lowest agreement for this factor. Bond and coworkers (1 979) found that those trait descriptive adjectives associated with Openness or Culture have the lowest replication in Japanese. John, Goldberg and Angleitner (1 984) studied highly verbal bilinguals and also found the lowest English- German consistency for the Culture/Openness/Intellect-related adjectives.

In the English variant Conscientiousness and Agreeableness have been shown to be positively correlated, and Neuroticism negatively correlated, with Eysenck‘s Lie scale (r=0.30,0.34, and -0.20 respectively; Zuckerman et al., 1993, Table 7). In our final versions these three correlations were r = 0.55,0.47, and - 0.35 for the Estonian variant, and r=0.50, 0.39, and -0.30 for the Finnish variant. Again, the general pattern of correlation is very similar to that of the original NEO Personality Inventory.

CONCLUSIONS

The number of various personality concepts, and scales designed to measure them, is enormous. As a result of the widespread practice of item borrowing, there is a substantial item overlap between inventories developed from completely different practical needs or theories of personality (Goldberg, 1971). Therefore, many scales with quite different names and interpretations often contain similar or identical

Estonian and Finnish Big Five inventories 121

items. At the same time, scales with the same name can contain different items and measure concepts that are obviously not the same. As observed by John (1990), the systematic accumulation of findings and communication among researchers continues to be difficult in the present day Babel of concepts and scales. Therefore, there is a great need for a taxonomic structure that can represent a common framework, for various personality descriptions that are currently in use. The Five-Factor Model or the Big Five provides such a common framework, which makes the comparison of various personality descriptions possible (for a contrary view, however, see Eysenck, 1991). In spite of some reservations, the NEO-PI/NEO- PIR (Costa and McCrae, 1985; Costa et al., 1991) has become an instrument that is very well suited for measuring quickly and in a reliable way the Big Five dimensions of personality. This unique position of the NEO-PI was achieved by systematically relating it to virtually all major personality measurement instruments and research traditions (McCrae, Costa and Busch, 1986; McCrae and Costa, 1987; Zuckerman et al., 1993).

Besides the replication of the Big Five structure across different measurement instruments, generalizability across languages and cultures is another important task for the development of a universal personality taxonomy. The need for a common framework in crosscultural studies is even more demanding than in the area of personality assessment itself. It may seem paradoxical, but concrete particulars that make one object different from the other can be recognized only if something common and more abstract uniting these two objects is already established (Hayek, 1978). This means, in particular, that language- and culture-specific individual differences presuppose personality universals that are generalizable across languages and cultures. In this regard, the present study provided evidence that the Big Five dimensions of personality can be extended to two non-Indo-European languages, Estonian and Finnish, which belong to the Uralic languages. We were able to replicate all relevant psychometric properties of the NEO-PI in two five-factor inventories developed for these two languages. This success seems to suggest that languages of very different origins categorize personality-related concepts basically in a similar way, at least on the level of the most robust personality dimensions.

Some interesting peculiarities of different languages and/or culture can still be noticed (cf. Stumpf, 1993). First, personality-related individual differences between men and women may be patterned differently in English and non-English speaking populations. This suggests that gender-related stereotypes may be slightly different for Americans and the two Fenno-Baltic nations. As stated above, Estonian and Finnish women are much more extraverted and conscientious than men compared with their American counterparts. If both American men and women think that conscientiousness is associated with femininity, then extraversion is typically believed to have a strong positive correlation with masculinity (Lippa, 1991, Table 8). The latter appears to be at variance with our data indicating that Estonian and Finnish women, not men, are more extraverted. Suggestions about the reasons for these higher extraversion scores would be premature at this stage of research. Second, some observed differences seem to indicate that the structure of interpersonal dispositions in both Estonian and Finnish is slightly different than that in English. Our data indicated that the need for other people’s company and excitement seeking may be psychologically differently motivated compared with the English-speaking population. Gregariousness presupposes some emotional stability

122 A. Pulver et al.

and is perceived more as a new exciting experience. Excitement seeking, in turn, is conceptualized, partly at least, as a tool for rescue from anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem.

Although the NEOP-PI happens to be rather smoothly generalizable from one language to another, not all of its domains and facets are culturally unbiased. We consider this study as a step towards the determination of which parts of the most popular instrument for the measurement of the Big Five personality dimensions are truly universal and which parts of it are specific to a particular language and culture.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project was supported by a research grant from the University of Jyvaskyla. We are extremely grateful to Els Tasa and Heiti Pakk for their active role in the early stage of this project and Paavo Pulkkinen for his patience and excellent linguistic help. We would like to thank Paul Costa, Robert McCrae, and the Psychological Assessment Resources Inc. for the permission to translate and adapt the NEO-PI into Estonian and Finnish. We are indebted to two anonymous referees for their very helpful suggestions on an earlier version of the manuscript. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the invaluable help of Professor Marion Cohn.

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