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Cultural influences on temperament development: Findings from the Global Temperament Project

Thu, March 21, 2:15 to 3:45pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 3, Room 313

Integrative Statement

A growing number of studies have demonstrated cross-cultural differences in the temperament of infants and children. Nearly all previous studies have involved comparisons between only two cultures, with the largest to date including 17 nations (Putnam & Gartstein, 2017). Furthermore, the majority of studies have considered only a single age group (cf., Gaias et al., 2012), and only one sample per country (cf., Cozzi et al., 2013). These limitations lower the generalizability of the findings obtained, and limit inference regarding the role of society-level factors associated with cross-cultural differences. The current study addresses these shortcomings through analyses of temperament in infants, toddlers and children using 301 datasets gathered in 51 countries.
Methods: Researchers from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Curacao, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Spain, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay and United States provided parent-report data gathered with the Infant Behavior Questionnaire – Revised (n = 18,991; 32 countries), Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (n = 15,593; 37 countries) and Child Behavior Questionnaire (n = 31,427; 42 countries),yielding scores for Surgency (SUR), Negative Affectivity (NEG) and Regulatory Capacity (REG).
Results: Sex*Nation ANOVAs, with age included as covariate, indicated substantial effects of nation (partial eta squared ranging from .04 to .17) for the three dimensions for all questionnaires. For descriptive purposes, standardized dimension scores averaged across the questionnaires for each country are provided in Figure 1. As shown in this figure, countries in which children were rated high on SUR included Serbia, Pakistan, the Slovak Republic, Malta and Iran; whereas children from China, Latvia and Japan were rated low. Results concerning NEG suggested higher scores in Columbia, Kosovo, Nigeria and Pakistan; and low scores in the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Ireland. REG scores were higher in Malta, Hungary, Denmark and Suriname than in most nations; and lower than most in Columbia, Japan and Brazil.

Nation-level marginal means for the dimensions were then correlated with archival scores on Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural orientation (see Table 2). Consistent with meta-analytic results reported by Putnam and Gartstein (2017), across different age groups, high NEG was linked with Collectivism and high Power Distance; and high SUR with Short-Term Orientation.

This investigation provides the most extensive perspective to date on worldwide patterns of individual differences in infants and children, and suggests multiple directions for future research. Primary among these is the degree to which parent reports represent objective differences or subjective interpretations of child characteristics. Current views (e.g., Rothbart & Bates, 2006) suggest temperament scores reflect both, and each perspective is useful for understanding implications of culture for human development. Another critical direction concerns exploration of proximal mediators of the distal force of societal differences. It is our hope that the Global Temperament Project database becomes a valuable tool for developmental scientists to explore these connections.

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