, 11 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
“Tests For the 'Big Five' Personality Traits Don't Hold Up In Much of the World”

This article is a fantastic example of misleading and inaccurate science reporting. [THREAD] 1/

blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/0…
Is the Five Factor Model (FFM) WEIRD? Are the Big Five personality traits — statistically, the factor structure yeilding 5 traits — only valid in western countries?

Well, no. The research article shows primarily a methodological problem, not a cultural problem, with the FFM. 2/
Problem 1. The article has three data groups. A US dataset, an cross-cultural internet set, and a cross-cultural face-to-face interview “survey” dataset.

Important: both cross-cultural sets have data from the SAME countries. 2/
Also, total N ~300K across all three datasets. The 90K N is for only the face-to-face survey dataset.

Note. The article refers to the face-to-face dataset as the “survey data” or STEP data throughout. 3/
So, is the FFM of personality valid only in WEIRD countries?

No. The FFM is not valid in the survey/STEP data. It is valid in the internet sample in the SAME countries.

Thus “cultural diffs are unlikely to be the main driver of low validity in the survey data” 4/
Statistically, the correlations between items within each factor (“trait”) reproduce pretty well in the US and cross-cultural internet sample.

Again, the results differ for the cross-cultural survey dataset.

This is suggestive of a methodological, rather than cultural prob 5/
The article investigates numerous methodological reasons, as well as WITHIN country/region differences for the diffs btw internet and survey data in the SAME countries. For example, participants taking test online vs in person differ.

Not one conclusive reason, but several 6/
the main conclusion of the article findings — that the lack of FFM structure in the survey data vs the internet data in the SAME country — is NOT primarily a result of cultural differences.

The science report presents a conclution directly opposed to the articles main result 7/
This inaccurate reporting is unfortunate. Broad conclusions based on only WEIRD data are very real problems in behavioral sciences.

Misrepresenting data to fit a narrative only serves to increase skepticism of real issues & increases public mistrust of scientists. /end
And, here is another write up of this research from @medical_xpress that also fails to accurately report what the research actually found, simply avoiding discussion of the other 190K participants in the study
Missing some Tweet in this thread?
You can try to force a refresh.

Like this thread? Get email updates or save it to PDF!

Subscribe to Nicole Barbaro
Profile picture

Get real-time email alerts when new unrolls are available from this author!

This content may be removed anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!