World War II Japan and South Korea went through “economic mira -
cles” for several decades. In that same period, Czechoslovakia and the
Soviet Union underwent a period of economic stagnation and decline.Life in the 1960s was relatively uneventful for Germans compared tothe upheavals of the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China. Yet in all thesecountries, by the mid-1990s, adolescents differed from adults in thesame ways.
Some Possible Interpretations
What are we to make of this cross-cultural uniformity in age differ-ences? There seem to be three plausible explanations. The first is thatthese are cohort differences attributable to historical events that allthese countries shared in common. For people all over the world, thesecond half of the 20th century was better than the first half, filled as itwas with World Wars I and II and the Great Depression. Health and nu -
trition have improved for almost all countries. Television was virtually
unknown to the public in the 1930; by the 1970s it was ubiquitous.Western influence and culture have permeated most of the world, witha concomitant decline in local traditions. Perhaps these influences haveproduced generational effects on personality traits that are common toall the cultures studied.
Although that possibility cannot be ruled out, on careful thought it
is not very persuasive. It is hard to think of a good reason why televi -
sion viewing would make more recent generations more anxious and94 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD
TABLE 10 (continued)
Country 1915–1945 1945–1965 1965–1995
South
KoreaJapanese occupation;
social discriminationagainst Koreans andKorean culture, severeeconomic hardship,widespread starvation,continued throughWorld War IIIntensive efforts at
economic recovery;Korean War and thepartition of Korea;military dictatorshipand social repression“Economic miracle”
introduces prosperity;continued militarythreat from NorthKorea; continuingdictatorship sporadicallyresisted by demon -
strations; civilian
democracy establishedin 1990s
Note. From Costa and McCrae (2000b).