An exploration of how Asian Americans respond on the Personality Assessment Inventory.

Abstract

This preliminary study investigated the role of Asian American (AA) ethnicity on Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) scores. Nonclinical college-aged AAs and a comparison group of European American (EA) students were recruited for the present study. The authors hypothesized that AA examinees’ scores on the PAI would reflect traditional Asian values, such as modesty, abasement, “saving face,” keeping private matters within the family, somatization, anxiety, formal interpersonal styles, and impulse-control. The results suggest nonclinical AAs respond differently on the PAI when compared with nonclinical EAs (i.e., significantly higher on the Paranoia, Anxiety, Anxiety-Related Disorders clinical scales). They also scored significantly different from EAs on validity and interpersonal scales (i.e., higher NIM and lower WRM scales, respectively). Whereas the AA sample size was too small to examine the effects of acculturation on PAI responding, descriptives on acculturation and enculturation levels were generated. This study provided a number of interesting findings and offers various hypotheses about AA personality. Future follow-up studies using larger sample sizes are needed to elucidate these preliminary results.