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This study performs a multilevel analysis of personality traits and cultural values. With data from 7489 participants across 40 nations, we explore the relationship between Big Five personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) and Hofstede's cultural values (power distance, collectivism, achievement and assertiveness, gender egalitarianism, long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and teamwork preference), considering multilevel data structures. We extend prior research by performing (1) variance decomposition tests to assess how differences in Big Five personality traits are explained by variations between nations versus individuals, (2) variance decomposition tests to determine how differences in Hofstedian cultural values are explained by variations between nations versus individuals, and (3) multilevel correlations to examine "true" personality-culture associations. Findings suggest some disparities between observed versus theoretically expected decomposition patterns. They also indicate minimal between-country variation, which underscores the challenges of categorizing individuals into distinct cultural groups and suggests globalization's shared cultural influence across borders. Multilevel analyses show weaker personality-culture associations than aggregate national-level analyses, emphasizing the need to consider nested data structures in research to prevent skewed correlation estimates and the risk of Simpson's paradox. Overall, findings highlight the importance of adopting multilevel approaches to human behavior theorizing and analysis.
Stackhouse et al. (Tue,) studied this question.