The impact of cultural similarity and level of acquaintance on personality

Abstract

The aim of this study was to ascertain whether people’s personality appeared to change depending on how well they knew other people they were interacting with, and whether those persons were from the same culture or not. This is a challenging question for two reasons. Personality is relatively stable by its nature, and the relationship between social context and personality is not at all well understood. Until recently studies in this area have used a relatively static model of personality. Recent research in this area is moving toward a more dynamic model to explain how personality and social context may interact with each other. Ninety-two participants took part in the study. The protocol utilized a within-subject experimental design where participants were asked to rate the personality of someone they knew well, in a number of different social situations. The results indicated that people appeared to be more self-disclosing, displayed more power-seeking behaviour, and were more empathic to others who were culturally similar. People also trusted their friends and family more, and were more self-conscious with strangers. While culture similarity and level of acquaintance did affect personality at least to some degree, they did not appear to interact.