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Cross-Cultural Personality Assessment in Psychiatric Populations: The NEO-PI–R in the People’s Republic of China

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Abstract

The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI—R) is a measure of the 5-factor model developed on volunteer samples in the United States. To examine its validity in a non-Western, psychiatric sample, an existing Chinese translation was modified for use in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The instrument was administered to 2,000 psychiatric in- and outpatients at 13 sites throughout the PRC. Internal consistency was low for some facet scales, but retest reliability was adequate and the hypothesized factor structure was clearly recovered. Correlations with age, California Psychological Inventory scales, and spouse ratings supported the validity of NEO-PI—R scales, and diagnostic subgroups showed meaningful personality profiles. The 5-factor model appears to be useful for the assessment of personality among Chinese psychiatric patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... It is also worth mentioning that the psychological constructs being investigated here, particularly the five-factor model of personality, have repeatedly demonstrated cross-cultural validity. Additionally, there is evidence of measurement invariance of the assessment instruments described below, meaning that the relationships between test items are the same across different racial and ethnic subgroups and populations from different geographical areas (Rolland, 1993;Savla et al., 2007;Terracciano, 2003;Yang et al., 1999;Zecca et al., 2013). In prior research examining resilience and mental health factors among individuals with OUD from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds (N = 403) our study team found no indication of differences between ethnic/racial groups with OUD as it relates to resilience (Martinez et al., 2021). ...
... All instruments described above have been validated in diverse populations from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, some more extensively than others (e.g. NEO PI-R: Rolland, 1993;Savla et al., 2007;Terracciano, 2003;Yang et al., 1999;Zecca et al., 2013;BDI-II: García-Batista et al., 2018;Grothe et al., 2005;Kojima et al., 2002;CD-RISC-25: Khoshouei, 2009;Solano et al., 2016;Velickovic et al., 2020). However, studies that focus exclusively on individuals of African ancestry are less common (Wilkins et al., 2020). ...
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Background: Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a heterogeneous disorder. However, there is a lack of deep phenotyping investigations focusing on important psychological constructs such as resilience that may impact OUD. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between trait resilience and the five-factor model of personality (FFM) among individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD). We also explored whether the FFM and trait resilience form specific phenotypes associated with psychological functioning. Methods: This secondary analysis of an epigenetic study included participants of African ancestry (n = 72), an understudied population, who met DSM-5 criteria for OUD. Participants completed measures to assess personality traits, trait resilience, current and previous drug use, and psychological functioning (depression, anxiety, and stress). Results: Linear regression revealed a significant relationship between resilience (CD-RISC-25 score) and the FFM, R2 = 0.56, F(5,62) = 15.7, p<.001. Further, a two-cluster classification emerged as the optimal solution from the cluster analysis. Cluster 1 (n = 33, 45.8% of the sample) showed lower resilience (CD-RISC-25 score: M = 58.6, SD = 11.2) compared to Cluster 2 (n = 35, 48.6%; CD-RISC-25 score: M = 76.1, SD = 11.9). The "High-Resilience Cluster" (Cluster 2) was characterized by higher FFM traits of: Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, and lower Neuroticism versus Cluster 1. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed statistically significant differences between the two resilience clusters concerning other psychological symptoms, Λ = 0.732, F(4, 50) = 7.05, p < 0.003. Conclusions: These findings suggest associations between the FFM and trait resilience among individuals with OUD. Two distinct "resilience phenotypes" emerged, with high-resilience individuals displaying less stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. Results highlight the clinical importance of resilience as a potential target for intervention in people with OUD.
... There is no agreement on this issue. With regard to personality traits, smiling individuals are considered to have positive traits (Yang et al., 1999), smiling expressions were also seen as explicit features of friendly traits (Lane et al., 2013). People often speculate that individuals are friendly based on smiles. ...
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Two experiment examined the effect of relative accuracy and social characteristic strength on selective trust in young children aged 4-6. Experiment 1 manipulated relative accuracy, the results revealed that when the accuracy difference is relatively small, children’s choice of accurate dissenter turned into: 4 and 5 years old children chose consensus with low accuracy, 6 years old children chose dissenter with high accuracy ; Experiment 2 manipulated the strength of social characteristics, the results revealed that when the social characteristics were enhanced, 4 and 5 years old children chose smiling inaccurate consensus, 6 year old children chose serious accurate lone informant. To sum up, in conflict situations, relative accuracy and social characteristic strength can all influence children’s selective trust; moreover, this study further verified that the ability to make rational decisions of children would be more and more rational with age.
... Such an analysis was conducted for the first time by Fiske [31] in 1949, and later his results were confirmed and developed by other scientists [32][33][34][35]. Factor analysis showed that the five personality dimensions exist across cultures and contexts [36] and among people with mental disorders [37]. There is no clear definition of each dimension, but they can be described as follows: Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions like fear, sadness or anger. ...
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Citation: Strońska-Pluta, A.; Suchanecka, A.; Chmielowiec, K.; Chmielowiec, J.; Boroń, A.; Masiak, J.; Sipak-Szmigiel, O.; Recław, R.; Grzywacz, A. The Relationship between the Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Gene Polymorphism (Val66Met) and Substance Use Disorder and Relapse. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2024, 25, 788. https:// Abstract: Substance addiction is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by a recurring desire to continue using a substance despite harmful consequences. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a protein that plays a role in the activity-dependent remodeling of neural function in adult nervous systems. This study analyzed the association of the rs6265 polymorphism of the BDNF gene in a group of patients addicted to psychoactive substances who were participating in addiction treatment for the first time, in a group of post-relapse psychoactive substance abusers and in a control group. The study also assessed personality and anxiety in all study groups. Statistically significant differences in the frequency of genotypes and alleles were found between all study groups. Compared to the control, both study groups had statistically significantly higher scores for trait and state anxiety. Addicted patients in both groups also had higher scores on the Neuroticism and Openness scales and lower scores on the Extraversion and Agreeableness scales. The results of this study provide further evidence that personality traits, anxiety and the rs6265 polymorphism of the BDNF gene may be risk factors for susceptibility to addiction to psychoactive substances. In addition, they can be a predictor of addiction relapse, but further extensive studies are required to confirm these findings.
... This scale has 12 items that are scored on a 5-point scale, with scores of 1-5 indicating strongly disagree, largely disagree, no opinion, largely agree, and strongly agree, respectively. A higher score corresponds to more pronounced the neuroticism (Yang et al., 1999). The Cronbach's α, convergent validity (AVE) and variance contributions of the first factors of the NEO-Five Factor Inventory-Neuroticism Subscale (NEO-FFIN) in this study were 0.841, 0.518, and 28.98%, respectively. ...
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Objective Several studies reported that adverse reactions to treatment, neuroticism, marital relations, and quality of life may impact the development of depression in cervical cancer patients treated with radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy, but the associations between them remained unclear. This study investigated the associations between these factors using moderated mediation models. Methods Data were extracted from a survey involving cervical cancer patients treated with radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy at five tertiary hospitals in Hubei Province, China, from June to December 2022. The SPSS-PROCESS program was used to develop a moderated mediation model to study the roles of neuroticism, quality of life, and marital relations in the association between adverse reactions and depression in the study population. Results A total of 802 cervical cancer patients treated with radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy (54.84 ± 9.68 years) were recruited. The prevalence of depression among these patients was 72.72%, with four symptom clusters of dizziness-ringing in the ears, digestive system-related symptoms, skin dryness and itching, and urinary frequency-urgency-leakage. Adverse reactions directly and positively affected the occurrence of depression, neuroticism mediated the association between adverse reactions and depression, while this association varied according to the quality of life and marital relations. Conclusion Our findings suggest that depression is common among cervical cancer patients receiving radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy. Intervention targets for depression in cervical cancer patients should be precisely selected and targeted according to the quality of life and marital relations differences in patients, taking into account the cost of the intervention and the benefit to the patient.
... Each domain includes six facet-level traits assessed with eight items. Here we used the Chinese version of the NEO-PI-R, revised by Yang et al. (1999), which has good reliability and validity among the Chinese population. ...
Article
Existing research has consistently supported a relationship between creative achievement and specific personality traits (e.g., openness to experience). However, such work has largely focused on univariate associations, potentially obscuring complex interactions among multiple personality factors, rendering an incomplete picture of the creative personality. We applied a psychometric network approach to characterize the multidimensional personality structure of highly creative individuals in the arts (“artists”) and sciences (“scientists”), using data from three samples (N=4,015): college students, a representative adult sample, and the Big-C project of eminent creative professionals. Replicating past work, we found that artists showed reliably higher levels of openness to experience compared to scientists and a control group of less creative people. Psychometric network analysis revealed that artists were characterized by higher connectivity (i.e., co-occurrence) with other personality traits for openness, indicating that openness may be more heterogeneous in how it co-occurs with other personality traits in highly creative people. Across all three samples, we found that the scientists’ personality network structure was more cohesive than the personality network of artists and the control group, indicating greater homogeneity in the personality characteristics of scientists. Our findings uncover a constellation of traits that give rise to creative achievement in the arts and sciences.
... It contains five factors, namely Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, which are further classified into 30 facets, with six facets for each factor and eight items for each facet. The NEO-PI-R has been shown to be reliable and valid not only in Western but also in Asian cultures [38,39]. Given that the descriptions of specific personality traits in historical documentation are often limited, we used a forced-choice rating (yes = 1; no = 0; for judge's reasoning, see Section 2.3.) to standardize the results. ...
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Background: The association between personality and life outcome has been widely studied in Western countries, and one might question whether the association exists in China. The official documentation from the Twenty-Six Histories of Imperial China, which presents life-long data on the social elite, may offer a convenient way to realize this effort. Meanwhile, a possible association might help identify competent personalities and offer treatment hints for personality disorders or other psychiatric deviations worldwide. Methods: Based on these historical records (about 618–1911 AD) on 18 social elite groups with long longevity (Macrobian group) and 30 with normal lifespans (Control group), we assessed personality traits/facets using the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and destiny using the Destiny Evaluation Questionnaire (DEQ). Results: Compared to the Controls, the Macrobian group scored higher on the DEQ’s Health and Destiny in General and lower on the NEO-PI-R traits Openness to Experience and Extraversion and facets such as Openness to Fantasy, Openness to Aesthetics, Openness to Feelings, Excitement-Seeking, and Self-Consciousness. In the Macrobian group, the Trust and Compliance facets predicted the DEQ’s Family and Marriage and Social Relationships aspects, respectively; Conscientiousness and its facets Dutifulness, Self-Discipline, and Competence predicted Family and Marriage, Career Achievement, and Destiny in General, respectively; and the Self-Consciousness facet predicted worse performance in Career Achievement, Family and Marriage, and Social Relationships and the Depression facet of Destiny in General. In the Control group, Openness to Feelings positively and Anxiety negatively predicted Health. Conclusions: Less self-focused attention and more interdependence between individuals were beneficial to several aspects of individual destiny in Imperial China, which might be profound for the individual career development and clinical treatment of personality disorders in contemporary society.
... Neuroticism was measured using a subscale of the Chinese version of the Revised NEO-Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) [21,62]. This subscale comprises 48 items rated on a five-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). ...
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This study explored the relationship between cumulative ecological risk exposure and academic burnout among Chinese college students and the mediating and moderating effects of neuroticism and gender, respectively. A total of 580 college students were selected as participants. They completed a battery of questionnaires that measured cumulative ecological risk, neuroticism, and academic burnout. The results showed that: (1) cumulative ecological risk was positively related to neuroticism and academic burnout; (2) cumulative ecological risk positively predicted academic burnout; (3) neuroticism partly mediated the relationship between cumulative ecological risk and academic burnout; and (4) gender moderated the effect of cumulative ecological risk and academic burnout. A high level of cumulative ecological risk had a greater impact on neuroticism among women, compared to men. These findings advance our current knowledge of the specific effects of cumulative ecological risk on academic burnout and the underlying internal mechanisms of this relationship. Furthermore, this study provides a constructive perspective on preventing and reducing academic burnout among college students.
Chapter
Chapter 1 outlines the major research paradigms in personality investigations, corresponding to the psychodynamic, behaviorist, phenomenological, cognitive social learning, and trait approaches. It highlights their main theoretical assumptions and discusses alternative personality measurements. Among them, the Five Factor Model (FFM; Costa & McCrae, 1985, 1992) is elaborated on in more detail since, firstly, it underlies a vast body of research into personality, and secondly, it constitutes the theoretical framework for one of the research instruments applied in the empirical study discussed in Chaps. 4 and 5. The constituents of the FFM, that is, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism are analyzed in terms of their underlying facets, and accounted for with regard to heredity. They are also discussed with reference to the affects-behaviors-cognitions-desires framework (ABCDs; Wilt & Revelle, 2015, 2017), considered over human lifespan, and reflected on from the angle of people’s objective biographies as well as considered from the perspective of their impact on learning and the language learning process.
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Critics have argued that personality factors believed to represent a vulnerability to depression are not stable and are therefore state dependent. However, conclusions regarding the stability of personality and the relation between personality and depression have been drawn (a) without differentiating relative stability among individual differences from absolute stability of change scores and (b) without explicitly modeling change in personality as a function of change in depression. The relation between neuroticism and depression was examined in a sample of depressed outpatients (N = 71) receiving a 5-week trial of pharmacotherapy. Measures of neuroticism and extraversion demonstrated both relative stability and absolute change, and changes in neuroticism and extraversion scores were modestly or not at all accounted for by changes in depression scores. Claims that personality scores are not stable and are state dependent must be reconsidered.
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Chapter
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