University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2012 Nov;38(11):1423-36. doi: 10.1177/0146167212451275. Epub 2012 Jun 27.
Rankings of countries on mean levels of self-reported Conscientiousness continue to puzzle researchers. Based on the hypothesis that cross-cultural differences in the tendency to prefer extreme response categories of ordinal rating scales over moderate categories can influence the comparability of self-reports, this study investigated possible effects of response style on the mean levels of self-reported Conscientiousness in 22 samples from 20 countries. Extreme and neutral responding were estimated based on respondents' ratings of 30 hypothetical people described in short vignettes. In the vignette ratings, clear cross-sample differences in extreme and neutral responding emerged. These responding style differences were correlated with mean self-reported Conscientiousness scores. Correcting self-reports for extreme and neutral responding changed sample rankings of Conscientiousness, as well as the predictive validities of these rankings for external criteria. The findings suggest that the puzzling country rankings of self-reported Conscientiousness may to some extent result from differences in response styles.
国家在自我报告的尽责性平均水平上的排名继续困扰着研究人员。基于这样一种假设，即跨文化差异在倾向于对顺序评分量表的极端反应类别而不是中间类别做出反应的倾向，可能会影响自我报告的可比性，本研究调查了反应风格对 20 个国家的 22 个样本中自我报告的尽责性平均水平的可能影响。极端和中性反应是基于受访者对 30 个简短情景描述的假设人物的评分来估计的。在情景评分中，出现了明显的跨样本极端和中性反应差异。这些反应风格差异与自我报告的尽责性平均得分相关。对极端和中性反应进行自我报告校正改变了尽责性的样本排名，以及这些排名对外部标准的预测有效性。研究结果表明，自我报告的尽责性令人困惑的国家排名在某种程度上可能是由于反应风格的差异造成的。
