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The relationship between personality factors 
and cross- cultural traits
The main question for psychologists and for recruitment and HR managers 
has been whether research into personality factors and traits translates 
across cultures. In other words, if you are a Chinese manager intending to 
work in Nigeria or Brazil, are there certain personality traits that will allow 
you to adapt more easily and, if so, should these be a factor in deciding 
whether you are fit to do the job? In the selection and assessment of execu-
tives for relocation, the key factors tend to be qualifications and experience 
rather than adaptability to a particular social or cultural environment. 
As discussed in Chapter 6, we have seen that failure to adapt to foreign 
customers and environments is a major cause of failure in overseas assign-
ments and contracts. We should therefore try to compare key personality 
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266 Cross-Cultural Communication
traits across cultures and, where appropriate, use this comparison as a tool 
in recruitment.
Personality testing
When attempting to understand a community or group you are dealing 
with, it is important that you begin by understanding yourself and your 
own prejudices. Understanding your own attitude and values is the first 
step in understanding others and dealing with them sensitively, not just 
in cross- cultural dealings but in business itself. This is why psychologists 
and business trainers have invested in developing tools for understanding 
personality and management styles. The first of these is personality 
testing.
Cattell’s 16 personality factors
The ‘father’ of personality testing is the British psychologist Raymond 
Cattell, who made exhaustive studies of personality traits in the 1930s 
and 1940s. He produced a typology of 16 personality types based on his 
16 PF (16 personality factors) questionnaire (Cattell, 1946). The question-
naire was released in 1949. In some form, this is still used today as a way 
of assessing suitability for particular jobs and as a tool in recruitment. 
Cattell’s 16 personality factors, as they are known, have been translated 
and used throughout the world in assessment centres and by recruitment 
officers.
Cattell distinguished 16 primary personality factors: warmth, reasoning, 
emotional stability, dominance, liveliness, rule consciousness, social bold-
ness, sensitivity, vigilance, abstractedness, privacy, apprehension, openness 
to change, self- reliance, perfectionism and tension. He also identified low-
range and
high- range descriptors for each characteristic. For example, if 
you take the first primary factor, warmth, a low- range descriptor would be 
impersonal, cool and reserved, whereas a high- range descriptor would be 
outgoing, attentive to others and people- centred.
The research into Cattell’s 16 personality factors was replicated by 
W.T. Norman in 1963, who suggested that five key traits would be sufficient 
to form an effective personality assessment. Many researchers have debated 
how Cattell’s 16 factors relate to the Norman’s ‘big five’, with some arguing 
that ‘dominance’, for example, is spread across all five, with little specific 
influence on any one of them (Cattell and Mead, 2008).
Norman’s five key traits are as follows:
extroversion/introversion;
high anxiety/low anxiety;
tough-mindedness/receptivity;
independence/accommodation;
self-control/lack of restraint.
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Cultural Profiling and Classification 267
In his formulation, Norman matches his five traits to Cattell’s personality 
characteristics. For example, in the first characteristic, extroversion/
introversion, an extrovert personality is likely to be warm, lively, bold, 
forthright and self- reliant. An introverted personality is likely to be more 
reserved, serious, shy, private and group- oriented.
These ‘big five’ personality traits have become a standard frame of 
reference within recruitment and assessment.