Major psychological dimensions of cross-cultural differences: Nastiness, Social Awareness/Morality, Religiosity and broad Conservatism/Liberalism

Abstract

This paper presents the findings from a study based on 8883 participants from 33 countries. The Big Six measures of personality, and factor scores from studies of social attitudes, social axioms and social norms were analyzed in order to arrive at the main dimensions of cross-cultural differences. In the outcome, three factors captured the major proportion of variance at the pancultural level of analysis: Nastiness/Social Dominance, Social Awareness/Morality and Religiosity. At the between-countries' level, a broad Conservatism/Liberalism factor was identified. The largest cross-cultural differences were found on the Religiosity dimension. Cross-cultural differences on Social Awareness/Morality were negligible, and Nastiness/Social Dominance were in the middle. Overall, South Asian, South East Asian and African regions scored high on Religiosity and Nastiness/Social Dominance dimensions while Western and Eastern Europe and Anglo regions scored low. Three regions - Latin America, Middle East/North Africa and East Asia - were in the middle.