with suspicion by developmentalists. If birth cohort and the subsequent
experience of historical events are important determinants of adult per -
sonality , then people who were raised in the People’s Republic of China
would be expected to show a different cross-sectional profile than peo -
ple who grew up in North America. Indeed, it is hard to think of a more
powerful “natural experiment” than that inflicted by Chairman Mao onhis country: the Cultural Revolution. Yet cross-sectional studies of theCalifornia Psychological Inventory (CPI) show very similar patterns ofage differences in China and the United States, patterns that can be ex -
plained by the intrinsic maturation of the five factors (Yang et al.,
1998).
How can that be? FFT says that External Influences do not affect
Basic Tendencies, which instead follow a species-wide path of intrinsicdevelopment. Cross-cultural studies confirm this prediction.
Social Role Theory (Eagley , 1987) holds that personality traits are
influenced by the roles assigned to men and women. Because there arehuge cultural differences in the treatment of men and women (as recentevents in Afghanistan have vividly illustrated), it would not be surpris-ing if there were cultural variation in gender differences in traits. FFTdoes not offer any guidance about whether there should be gender dif-ferences or what they would be, but it does discount cultural influenceson traits. Whatever gender differences are found among Americansought to be found everywhere. Do the data support Social Role Theoryor FFT? Clearly , FFT (Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001). Althoughthe magnitude of gender differences varies, the direction is always thesame: Women were higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Open -
ness to Feelings; Men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to
Ideas in the 26 cultures studied.
Anthropologists and cross-cultural psychologists delight in point -
ing out the myriad ways in which people from different cultures dif -
fer—not only in language and religion, but also in personal space, in
kinship patterns, in time orientation, in food preferences, in taboos, in amillion particulars. FFT does not deny such differences; instead, it ex -
plains them by saying that Characteristic Adaptations are, in large part,
the product of External Influences—in this instance, the culture. Unde -
niable cultural differences can be made compatible with demonstrated
universals of personality by separating Characteristic Adaptations fromBasic Tendencies, and that is the heart of FFT.A Five-Factor Theory of Personality 203