Mechanisms of the national character stereotype: How people in six

Mechanisms of the National Character Stereotype: HowPeople in Six Neighbouring Countries of Russia Describe

Themselves and the Typical Russian

ANU REALO1*, JURI ALLIK1, JAN-ERIK LONNQVIST2,MARKKU VERKASALO2, ANNA KWIATKOWSKA3, LIISI KOOTS4,

MAIE KUTT4, RASA BARKAUSKIENE5, ALFREDAS LAURINAVICIUS6,KONSTANTIN KARPINSKI7, ALEXANDR KOLYSHKO7,

SANDRA SEBRE8 and VIESTURS RENGE8

1University of Tartu and The Estonian Center of Behavioral and Health Sciences, Estonia2University of Helsinki, Finland

3Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland4University of Tartu, Estonia5Vilnius University, Lithuania

6Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania7Grodno State University, Belarus

8University of Latvia, Latvia

Abstract

Altogether, 1448 individuals from six neighbouring countries of Russia in the Baltic Sea

region (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Belarus) described a ‘typical’

member of their own nation and a ‘typical’ Russian, as well as rated their own personality,

using the National Character Survey (NCS). Results suggest that national character

stereotypes are widely shared, temporally stable and moderately related to assessed

personality traits, if all assessments are made using the same measurement instrument.

In all studied countries, agreement between national auto-stereotypes and assessed

personality was positive and in half of the samples statistically significant. Although

members of the six nations studied had a relatively similar view of the Russian national

character, this view was not related with self-rated personality traits of Russians but

moderately with the Russian auto-stereotype. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Personality psychologists are interested in individual differences—as, indeed, is the

average lay person. To function successfully in the social environment, it is important to

European Journal of Personality

Eur. J. Pers. 23: 229–249 (2009)

Published online in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/per.719

*Correspondence to: Anu Realo, Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78, Tartu 50410, Estonia.E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 3 December 2008

Revised 21 February 2009

Accepted 21 February 2009

know whether we can trust a salesperson, how a new boss will react to our jokes, and

what response we could expect from a friend in a critical situation. But people are

inclined to describe groups of people, a whole nation for example, as if they also had a

distinctive set of personality traits. For example, it is widely believed that Finns are silent,

British people are reserved and Italians are emotionally expressive. If such beliefs prevail

among members of a social group, these viewpoints are usually referred to as stereotypes.

National stereotypes, either favourable or unfavourable, are often reflected in jokes and

travellers’ stories; they appear to be most enduring and it is difficult to convince those who

believe in them that Finns, for instance, are in fact rather talkative or that British people are

actually quite jovial and outgoing. Thus, nations and ethnic groups, just like individuals,

are perceived to have a distinct character, which can be described in terms of personality

traits.

Researchers have suspected that, although some stereotypes may be unfounded, in

most cases they exaggerate some personality characteristics that do in fact exist.

According to the standard definition, ‘a stereotype is an exaggerated belief associated with

a category’ (Allport, 1978/1954, p. 191). This definition implies that stereotypes, in

general, have a ‘kernel of truth’. Thus, beliefs about a particular nation being punctual can

be verified through observations of how accurate public clocks in the country are, or how

accurate people in the country are in reporting the time on their watches (Levine, West, &

Reis, 1980). Another possibility is to compare beliefs about the national character with

assessed personality traits among members of the nation: the typical American is believed

to be an achiever and Americans indeed score higher than some other nations on an

achievement scale when they are asked to rate their own personality traits (Abate &

Berrien, 1967).

For that reason it was a surprising discovery that beliefs about national stereotypes

generally do not correspond to aggregated personality traits (Terracciano et al., 2005). In

Terracciano et al.’s (2005) study, respondents from 49 nations described the personality of a

typical member of their nation (the ingroup). When mean national character profiles were

compared with mean personality ratings of members of the same nations, in most cases

there was no correlation between the two profiles. This result seems to imply that the

‘kernel of truth’ theory may be not universally applicable, at least in terms of national

character stereotypes. Clearly troubled by this finding, some researchers have argued that

national stereotypes cannot be compared with aggregate self-report or observer-report

data, as it may be the self- or other-ratings, not the stereotype ratings, that are biased and

invalid (Ashton, 2007; Heine, Buchtel, & Norenzayan, 2008; Perugini & Richetin, 2007). It

was also proposed, as a theoretical possibility, that stereotypes about the character of other

nations are accurate, but that stereotypes people hold about their own nation are not

(Robins, 2005). Although there are many plausible explanations for the fact that

stereotypes do not reflect aggregated tendencies to think, feel and behave in a characteristic

way, one obvious consequence of many of these explanations is that exaggeration of typical

traits may not be the only mechanism through which national stereotypes develop.

However, knowledge about alternative mechanisms is still very limited, mainly due to the

lack of empirical studies (McCrae, Terracciano, Realo, & Allik, 2007; Terracciano &

McCrae, 2007). This study aims to take a step further towards better understanding the

mechanisms of stereotype formation by studying national character stereotypes in six

geographically close, yet culturally and historically diverse countries around the Baltic

Sea. More specifically, we will examine both the stability and consistency of national

character as well as potential mechanisms of national stereotypes.

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Pers. 23: 229–249 (2009)

DOI: 10.1002/per

230 A. Realo et al.

Stability of stereotypes

In a seminal study, Princeton University students were asked to select five personality

traits, from a list of 84, that in their opinion best described 10 different ethnic and national

groups (Katz & Braly, 1933). The results demonstrated that students held distinct beliefs

about each of the ethnic groups and that there was a relatively high degree of agreement

between different judges. Several replications and extensions of the Princeton trilogy

(Gilbert, 1951; Karlins, Coffman, &Walters, 1969; Katz & Braly, 1933) over the following

60 years have shown that it takes decades to change the content of national stereotypes

(Madon et al., 2001). These studies, along with more informal observations, seem to

suggest that national stereotypes are very stable over time and even significant events in the

world political landscape do not radically change their content, in the short term, at least.

For example, perceptions of the ‘typical American’ from 49 cultures around the world

before and after the Iraq invasion changed very little, even in countries like Lebanon,

situated very close to the site of the invasion (Terracciano & McCrae, 2007). Except for

these few studies; however, information about the temporal stability of national stereotypes

is rather incomplete. One goal of this study is thus to fill the gap in our knowledge and

provide more detail about the temporal stability of stereotypes.

Mechanisms of stereotypes

Since exaggeration of characteristic traits observed in the nation is not a likely device by

which national stereotypes are created, it is necessary to look for other candidates. So far

the search for a general principle explaining how national stereotypes come into being has

not been very successful. In some cases it is possible to explain stereotypes through an

association between particular aspects of the national character and some external

variables. For example, a pervasive correlation between climatic warmth and perceived

interpersonal warmth seems to suggest a metaphorical link between climate and

personality: other things being equal, people from physically warmer environments are

presumed to be friendlier than thosewho live in colder climates (McCrae et al., 2007). Such

results, however, leave open the discouraging conclusion that a mechanism common to all

national stereotypes may not exist (Terracciano & McCrae, 2007). Since national

stereotypes are ‘pictures in our heads’ (Lippmann, 1922), they are acquired by individuals

from a number of unpredictable sources, such as gossip, anecdotes, books and films. There

may be multiple sources for the emergence of national stereotypes and their origin may

vary from country to country (Terracciano & McCrae, 2007).

Nevertheless, in some cases it is possible to deduce what the mechanisms of national

character stereotype formation are. For example, Canadians describe themselves as

agreeable, emotionally stable and timid—in direct opposition to how Americans are

perceived by themselves and their neighbours: mostly arrogant, hostile and assertive

(Terracciano et al., 2005). Since Canadians perceive their national character as an almost

mirror image of the American character, it is very likely that Canadians have come up with

this stereotype through opposition to what they think about Americans (cf. Adams, 2003).

It is improbable that Americans define themselves in reference to Canadians; however, so

their views must be of a different origin. It is also clear that neither national stereotype

reflects actually observed personality dispositions, which were virtually identical for

Canadians and Americans (Terracciano et al., 2005). Another well-documented case of


DOI: 10.1002/per

National character stereotypes 231

such stereotype polarization concerns beliefs about personality traits in North versus South

Italy (McCrae et al., 2007).

There are several reasons to believe that polarization of stereotypes in neighbouring

cultures is quite common. It has been observed that stereotypes are often compensatory in

nature: the target country is perceived as warmer but less competent when the comparison

country is stereotypically high (vs. low) in competence and low (vs. high) in warmth

(Kervyn, Yzerbyt, Demoulin, & Judd, 2008). In the same way, it can be expected that

Russia, like the United States, has played a significant role in the formation of national

stereotypes in countries bordering it. Besides being a dominant political and cultural force

in the region, Russia is believed to belong to a completely different cultural tradition than

many of its neighbours. Several political scientists, both before and since the collapse of the

Soviet Union, have proposed the view that the cultural distinction between Russia and its

more Western neighbours is insurmountable, rooted in the incompatibility of two different

types of civilization (Huntington, 1993). For this reason, Russia is often perceived by its

neighbours not only as a dominant political power but as a constant threat to the existing

cultural traditions of these countries. In Estonia, one of Russia’s neighbouring nations, for

instance, there is a popularly held belief that Estonians are passionately individualistic

(Realo, 1998, 2003). Such a belief; however, seems to be based on a comparison with

Russians, who are usually portrayed as quite collectivistic (Realo, 1998). In a similar vein,

studies have shown that when asked about the national character stereotypes of six ethnic

groups (Estonians, Jews, Latvians, Germans, Finns and Russians), Estonian students depict

Russians as the antithesis of Estonians—Estonians are seen as selfish, superior, ironic,

conscientious, intelligent and honest, whereas Russians are described as helpful,

sympathetic, friendly, but also less conscientious and not particularly smart (Valk, 1998).

It is likely that most national stereotypes are acquired by word of mouth, through

everyday experience. When a large nation has played a dominant role in the political and

everyday life of its neighbours, it is expected that this pre-eminence will have left some

traces in the way in which neighbours think about themselves as well as their influential

neighbours. For example, it has been observed that neighbours (Poles, Finns, Hungarians

and Czechs) who have been invaded by the Russians see them both as less modern and less

self-controlled than they are seen elsewhere (Boster & Maltseva, 2006). It is not entirely

improbable, furthermore, that these stereotypes about their powerful neighbour are

somehow reflected in their own national stereotypes. Indeed, the nations living on shores of

the Baltic Sea not only share some common attributes between their otherwise very

different languages, such as vowel harmony (Jakobson, 1931/1962), but also a history of

sustained contact with the Russians. There are sharp differences among neighbouring

countries of Russia on the shores of the Baltic Sea in terms of everyday contact with

Russians; however, due to clear differences in the ethnic composition of the various

populations. For example, Russians constitute 29 and 26% of population in Latvia and

Estonia, respectively, while in Poland and Finland the Russian population is less than 1%.

But of course, contact with Russians in the countries in our study is not limited to their

share in the population. Poland, for instance, has a long history of shopping and transit

tourism, with large numbers of sellers and buyers coming mostly from Russia (as well as

from Belarus and the Ukraine). As for Finland, over 850 000 Russian tourists visited

Finland in 2007. Finally, Belarus, out of six countries in our study has the closest

associations with Russia—‘the preponderant Russophile orientation in Belarus stems from

the Orthodox cultural tradition, Russia being the prime cultural donor of Belarus, and

Russia’s pre-eminent role in shaping Belarus’ statehood’ (Ioffe, 2003, p. 1267).


DOI: 10.1002/per

232 A. Realo et al.

Aims of this study

The main aim of this study to examine how people in six neighbouring countries of Russia

describe themselves and the typical Russian. More specifically, we focussed on the follow-

ing research questions: (1) Do national character stereotypes reflect mean personality

traits? (2) Are stereotypes about the character of other nations accurate? (3) How the intensity

of contact, both actual and symbolic, has affected the national character stereotypes of

Russia’s neighbours located around the Baltic Sea? (4) How stable are stereotypes?

Although results showing that national character stereotypes did not correspond to mean

personality trait levels in 49 countries are rather convincing (Terracciano et al., 2005), it is

important to note that in Terracciano et al.’s (2005) study, national character was measured

by the 30-itemNational Character Survey (NCS), while personality was rated with the 240-

item version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992). While

there is a strong conceptual correspondence between these two instruments, there is no

information on how comparable the measures are when administered with different

instructions. In order to eliminate possible biases inherent in particular measurement

instruments, it would be necessary to measure national character and self-rated personality

traits with exactly the same instrument. This is one of the main research strategies of this

study: we use the same measuring instrument, specifically the NCS, to measure how people

perceive both a typical member of their nation and a typical Russian, as well as how they

rate their own personality.

Finally, as mentioned above, we were interested in studying the temporal stability of

stereotypes. As argued above, it has been shown by several researchers (Madon et al., 2001;

Terracciano & McCrae, 2007) that national character stereotypes appear to be relatively

durable phenomena. Yet, it should be noted that the data collection interval in Terracciano

and McCrae’s study (2007) was only 3–6 months. In this study, we had the opportunity to

examine the stability of stereotypes in two countries—Estonia and Poland—across a time

interval of 5 years, by comparing our data with those reported by Terracciano et al. (2005).

METHOD

Participants

Altogether, 1320 college students in the social sciences and the humanities (933 women,

385 men and 2 participants who did not report their gender, mean age¼ 22.1, SD¼ 3.5)

and 128 working adults (77 women and 51 men, mean age¼ 31.6, SD¼ 7.3) from six

neighbouring countries in the Baltic Sea region (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,

Poland and Belarus) participated in this research. All these countries have a border with

Russia: Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Belarus border with mainland Russia, whereas

Lithuania and Poland border with the Russian enclave of the Kaliningrad Oblast. All

participants volunteered for the study. Students were assessed in group sessions in lecture

rooms of their respective university or college, except for the Finnish sample, which

completed the questionnaire online. Working adults were tested individually or in small

groups at their workplace. Data were collected in spring 2008.

Finnish sample

The Finnish sample consisted of 286 undergraduate (social science) students (247 women

and 39 men) from the Universities of Helsinki, Turku, Jyvaskyla, Tampere and Joensuu.


DOI: 10.1002/per


The mean age of participants was 24.4 years (SD¼ 5.8). The Finnish version of the

questionnaire was administered over the Internet.

Estonian sample

The Estonian sample consisted of two subsamples: students and working adults from an

Estonian real estate company. Two-hundred and one Estonian undergraduate students (129

women and 72 men) enrolled in various introductory psychology classes at the University

of Tartu participated in this project. The mean age of the students was 21.2 years

(SD¼ 2.3). The working adult sample consisted of 74 individuals (44 women and 30 men)

with a mean age of 33.8 years (SD¼ 7.2). The instructions were given in Estonian and the

participants completed the Estonian version of the questionnaire.

Latvian sample

The Latvian sample consisted of 200 undergraduate students (158 women and 42 men;

21.0% males; mean age¼ 22.1 years, SD¼ 3.0) in the social sciences and the humanities

from the University of Latvia and of 54 working adults (33 women and 21 men; mean

age¼ 28.5 years, SD¼ 6.5) from the Latvian office of the same (Estonian) real estate

company used in the Estonian sample. The language of instructions and of the

questionnaire itself was Latvian.

Lithuanian sample

The Lithuanian sample consisted of 204 students (110 women, 93 men and 1 individual

who did not report his/her gender) from theMykolas Romeris University. Participants were

students in the social sciences, with a mean age 20.6 years (SD¼ 0.9), ranging between

19 and 24 years. They were instructed, and completed the questionnaire, in Lithuanian.

Polish sample

Participants in the Polish sample were 229 undergraduate students (189 women, 39 men

and 1 respondent who did not report his/her gender) from the Warsaw School of Social

Sciences and Humanities Psychology and the University of Bialystok. Participants were

students of psychology and the educational sciences, with a mean age 22.2 years

(SD¼ 2.0), ranging between 19 and 32 years. The language of instructions and the

questionnaire itself was Polish.

Belarusian sample

The Belarusian sample consisted of 200 students (100 women and 100 men) from the

Grodno State University. Participants’ ages ranged between 18 and 26, with a mean age of

20.9 years (SD¼ 1.5). Participants were students of the social sciences, linguistics and

economics. The instructions were given in Russian and the participants completed the

Russian version of the questionnaire.

Finally, for purposes of comparison, we used data from the Russian Character and

Personality Survey (RCPS), which involved 40 universities and colleges from across the

Russian Federation (Allik et al., 2009). Three thousand seven hundred and five participants

with a mean age of 20.7 years (SD¼ 2.9 years, 75% of them women) were asked to rate a

typical Russian living in their region on the NCS scales. We used data from this and an

additional group of participants (total N¼ 10 672) which also used NCS to rate their own

personality. Both groups of respondents were given similar instructions as in this study.


DOI: 10.1002/per

234 A. Realo et al.

Questionnaire and instructions

The NCS (Terracciano et al., 2005) consists of 30 bipolar items intended to parallel the

facets of the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992). For example, the Neuroticism facet,

depression, was assessed by asking how likely, on a five-point scale, the typical Finn was to

be depressed, sad and pessimistic versus contented and optimistic. The NCS was already

available in Estonian, Polish and Russian (Terracciano et al., 2005) and was translated into

Finnish, Latvian and Lithuanian for the purposes of this study by bilingual colleagues.

Translators were instructed to choose words or phrases that best conveyed the intended

construct, using the description of the 30 facets from the NEO-PI-R manual for reference

(Costa &McCrae, 1992). Robert R. McCrae, one of the two authors of the NCS, examined

independent back-translations into English, and any items that appeared problematic were

reconsidered by the translators.

The questionnaire was administered in three steps to assure that respondents did not

know that they were rating two target nations and themselves before they started. In each

sample, we asked respondents to complete the NCS by, firstly, describing a typical member

of their own nation (e.g. ‘Finns are likely . . .’). When everyone had finished, respondents

were asked to turn to the next page and to write ‘Russians are likely to be . . .’ at the top ofthe page and to complete the survey just as they did before. Finally, participants were once

more asked to turn to the next page, to write ‘I am . . .’ at the top of the page and to rate theirown personality using the same set of 30 NCS items. NCS scores for the five factors were

calculated as the sum of the six relevant facets.

Internal consistency

Analyses of the 1448 individual responses from the total sample indicated that Cronbach’s

a for the five factor scales of the NCS ingroup ratings were .63, .69, .63, .75 and .73 for

Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness to Experience (O), Agreeableness (A) and

Conscientiousness (C), respectively. For the ratings of typical Russians, Cronbach’s a of

the abovementioned five factor scales were .45, .69, .66, .71 and .76. Finally, the reliability

coefficients of self-ratings were .67, .74, .56, .63 and .74, respectively. These reliability

coefficients, except for one, are acceptable for a six-item scale. Only one of the scales—

Neuroticism in the ratings of typical Russians—had a relatively low internal consistency

coefficient (a¼ .45). The main problem occurred with facet N5: Impulsiveness, which had

a virtually zero-correlation with the other five items on the N scale. As previously found in

Russian samples using the NEO-PI-R self- and other-ratings (Allik & McCrae, 2004;

Konstabel, Realo, & Kallasmaa, 2002; Martin, Costa, Oryol, Rukavishnikov, & Senin,

2002), N5 was more strongly related with Extraversion (r¼ .23, p< .000) and

Conscientiousness (r¼�.36, p< .000) than with Neuroticism (r¼ .04, n.s.).

Factor structure

A principal components analysis followed by a varimax normalized rotation was

conducted on the 30 items for the entire sample of 1448 subjects for the (1) ingroup ratings,

(2) ratings of typical Russians and (3) self-ratings. For ingroup ratings, five factors had

eigenvalues greater than one, explaining 48.4% of the total variance. For the ratings of a

typical Russian and self-ratings, six factors had eigenvalues above one but both a scree-test

and parallel analysis clearly indicated that five factors should be retained. The five-factor

solution explained 47.8 and 47.9% of the variance for the ratings of typical Russians and

self-ratings, respectively. In order to examine how well the NCS factor solutions replicated


DOI: 10.1002/per


the NCS structure, as found in previous research (Terracciano et al., 2005), exploratory

principal component analyses were followed by Procrustes targeted rotations and by the

computation of an index of factorial agreement across the cultural groups (van de Vijver &

Leung, 1997). More specifically, the varimax normalized factor loadings were targeted

towards the factor structure of the NCS ingroup ratings obtained on the international

sample of 3989 respondents from 49 different nations (Terracciano et al., 2005). After the

target rotations were carried out, the factorial agreement with the international data was

estimated for all three conditions. The mean coefficients of congruence between the five-

factor structures of the international data and our sample for Neuroticism, Extraversion,

Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were .91, .91, .70, .95 and

.98 (ingroup ratings), .93, .94, .92, .96 and .96 (ratings of a typical Russian) and .91, .88,

.90, .96 and .95 (self-ratings), respectively. Thus, nearly all congruence coefficients—

except for two—were above .90, thereby providing a reasonable replication of the

expected factor structure. But even these two somewhat lower coefficients of congruence

do not suggest total randomness as the means of the distributions of factor congruencies

based on Procrustes rotations of randomly permuted data range from .32 to .34 for the five

factors of personality (McCrae, Zonderman, Costa, Bond, & Paunonen, 1996).

Interjudge reliability

Interjudge reliability between single raters showed modest agreement between individual

judgments of ingroup national character, with coefficients ranging from .02 (C1:

Competence) to .38 (Agreeableness) for ingroup ratings with a median value of .14 for the

30 facets. This coefficient is slightly lower than what was reported by Terracciano and

colleagues (2005) in their study on national character in 49 countries (median¼ .17). By

aggregating the judgments of an average of 181 respondents per sample, reliability coeffi-

cients ranged from .95 (Conscientiousness) to .99 (Agreeableness). Thus, aggregation

across a large sample of judges yielded highly reliable values, supporting the perception

these are shared by the group as a whole. Intraclass correlation coefficients were calculated

according to the following formula: reliability of (a) single raters [ICC(1,1)¼MSR�MSW/

MSW/ MSRþ (k�1) MSW] and of the (b) culture–average ratings [ICC(1,k)¼ (MSR�MSW)/MSR], where k is the mean number of raters per culture, MSR is the mean square for

facets and MSW is the mean square for residual sources of variance of an ANOVA model

with cultures as the independent variable (McGraw &Wong, 1996; Terracciano et al., 2005).

Analytic strategy

In this paper we are mostly interested in agreement of cultures across trait profiles, not in

agreement on traits or in correlations for individual traits across cultures. Any two profiles

may be similar not only because their distinctive features are well matched but also because

they both reflect an average profile. In order to eliminate or reduce the component common

to all ratings irrespective of particular instruction, usually called the concept of

‘generalized other’ (Cronbach, 1955), all NCS stereotype scores (i.e. mean ratings of a

typical ingroup member and of a ‘typical Russian’) were converted into T-scores using

mean scores of national character ratings from 3989 people in 49 different cultures

(Terracciano et al., 2005). Unfortunately, there are no world norms for self-reports on the

NCS. Therefore, self-ratings were standardized using the seven-culture unweighted means

(total N¼ 12 120) to compensate for the very large Russian sample. Thus, the mean values

of self-ratings on the NCS items were transformed into a distinctive profile which show


DOI: 10.1002/per

236 A. Realo et al.

how each individual culture is above or below average of the seven studied cultures

(cf. Furr, 2008).

Profile agreement, if not otherwise said, was calculated as the intraclass correlation

(ICC) across the 30 facets, using the double-entry method (Griffin & Gonzalez, 1995).

Double-entry intraclass correlations are similar to Pearson correlations, but they are

sensitive to differences in profile elevation as well as shape (McCrae, 2008). The p-value is

based on the non-doubled n of 30.

Abbreviations

Throughout the paper we use the following system of abbreviations: BLR¼Belarus;

EST¼Estonia; FIN¼ Finland; LAT¼Latvia; LIT¼Lithuania; POL¼ Poland; RUS¼Russia; self¼ self ratings. In abbreviation pairs, the first part indicates the country of the

judges. Number 2 added to Estonia and Latvia indicates adult samples. The second part

refers to the target. If this is a country code, then the instruction was to describe a typical

person from this country. If it is ‘self’ then participants were instructed to evaluate their

own personality. For example, POL_RUS means that Polish participants rated a typical

Russian and LAT2_self means that adult Latvians assessed their own personality.

RESULTS

Using unstandardized scores, we performed an ANOVA with cultural group as an

independent variable (with student and adult samples being combined for Estonia and

Latvia) for each dimension in three different conditions (i.e. ingroup ratings, perceptions of

typical Russians and self-ratings). To estimate the effect size, we used the partial Eta

squared (h2), which is computed as the ratio of the effect variance (variance between

cultures) to the sum of the effect and error variance (variance within cultures). The

proportion of variance that can be attributed to the effect of culture varied from 8.48%

(Conscientiousness) to 35.00% (Agreeableness) with a median value of 20.47% for

ingroup ratings and from 4.18% (Agreeableness) to 17.82% (Openness) with a median

value of 11.59% for ratings of typical Russians. In case of self-ratings, the proportion of

variance that is attributable to the effect of culture varied from 0.58% (Openness) to 6.61%

(Extraversion) with a median value of 3.52%. A similar estimate was found in the

Personality Profiles of Cultures (PPOC) study of 51 cultures (McCrae & Terracciano,

2008). Based on those results, it can be concluded that national character stereotypes about

one’s own nation are particularly sensitive to respondents’ cultural background. In other

words, differences in ingroup stereotype ratings between six cultural samples were six time

bigger than differences in self-ratings of personality.

NCS mean ratings

NCS mean ratings in T-scores of a typical ingroup member and of a ‘typical Russian’ as

well as self-report personality ratings for five personality domains are given in Table 1. In

all eight samples, respondents saw a typical member of their own nation as high in

Conscientiousness and low in Extraversion as compared to international average

(cf. Terracciano et al., 2005). Respondents from all nations, except Belarus, also believed

that their compatriots are open to new experience below theworld average. Russians, on the

other hand,were quite uniformly seen as high in Extraversion andOpenness to Experience but

low in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness as compared to international norms.


DOI: 10.1002/per


Table

1.

National

CharacterSurvey

meanratingsoftheingroup,Russians,andself-ratings.Intraclass

correlationsbetweeningroupratingsandself-ratings

andbetweeningroupstereotyperatingsandratingsofthetypical

Russian

Culture

NCSmeanratingsoftheingroup

NCSmeanratingsofRussians

NCSmeanself-ratings

Intraclass

Correlations

NE

OA

CN

EO

AC

NE

OA

CICC1

ICC2

ICC3

ICC4

Belarus

45.87

48.63

53.68

57.39

54.59

46.89

51.94

54.69

47.93

50.73

46.98

49.78

51.10

53.03

51.55

.35

�.11

.31

.81��

�

Estonia

Students

50.41

44.68

46.65

47.81

53.69

51.85

54.68

52.59

47.16

46.86

50.62

49.58

49.80

49.27

48.04

.07

�.65��

�.01

.25

Workingadults

49.25

44.63

46.63

48.34

54.78

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etal.(2009).

Allstereotyperatings(ingroupratingsandtheratingsofatypicalRussian)werestandardized

usinginternationalnorm

s(Terraccianoetal.,2005),self-ratingswerestandardized

using

theseven-culture

unweightedmeansforself-reports(thisstudy).N¼Neuroticism

;E¼Extraversion;O¼Openness;A¼Agreeableness;C¼Conscientiousness;ICC1¼intraclass

correlationbetweeningroupstereotyperatingsandself-ratings(auto-stereotypeaccuracy);ICC2¼intraclass

correlationbetweeningroupstereotyperatingsandratingsofatypical

Russian;ICC3¼intraclass

correlationbetweenRussians’self-ratings(A

llik

etal.,2009)andratingsofatypical

Russian(thisstudy;hetero-stereotypeaccuracy);ICC4¼intraclass

correlationbetweenRussianingroupstereotyperatings(A

llik

etal.,2009)andratingsofatypical

Russian(thisstudy).


DOI: 10.1002/per

238 A. Realo et al.

Consistency and stability of stereotypes

The following analysis demonstrates that national stereotypes are beliefs shared by

different groups in the population and that they are relatively enduring. In Estonia and

Latvia, samples of working adults were used as raters in addition to university students and

yielded fairly similar profiles of both ingroup ratings and perceptions of typical Russians.

In Estonia, the ICCs across the 30 facet profile elements were .94 and .95 for ingroup

stereotype ratings and perceptions of Russians, respectively. In Latvia, the respective ICCs

were .84 and .88 (all correlations significant at p< .001). These high correlations indicate

that national character stereotypes of one’s own nation and of typical Russians are

consistent across samples and not restricted to college students alone.

Next, we had the opportunity to test the temporal stability of stereotypes for a period of

5 years in two countries, namely Estonia and Poland. Both countries had participated in 2003 in

the previous study inwhich auto-stereotypes were collected (Terracciano et al., 2005). The ICCs

between the student samples from 2003 and 2008 (this study) were .93 and .80 for Estonia and

Poland, respectively (p< .001). These relatively high correlations show that profiles of national

character are relatively stable and have not changed considerably during the last 5 years.

Similarity of profiles

One of the most elegant ways to summarize similarities between different profiles is

through multidimensional scaling (MDS). Figure 1 was created from pairwise distances

Figure 1. Multidimensional scaling plot of stereotype and assessed personality profiles. BLR¼Belarus; EST¼Estonia; FIN¼Finland; LAT¼Latvia; LIT¼Lithuania; POL¼Poland; RUS¼Russia; N¼Neuroticism;E¼Extraversion.


DOI: 10.1002/per


between profiles, defined as one minus Cohen’s correlation across the 30 facet scores using

the ordinal MDS algorithm (Roskam & Lingoes, 1981). Although the stress value was .14,

increasing the number of dimensions did not alter the original two-dimensional

representation. Since the actual orientation of axes in MDS is arbitrary, we rotated the

whole configuration into the position that maximized the correlation of the dimensions

with Neuroticism and Extraversion (cf. Allik & McCrae, 2004).

The most conspicuous feature of Figure 1 is that personality profiles produced by ratings

of the typical Russian (triangles) occupy the right side of the plain which corresponds to

Extraversion. All other national character auto-stereotypes (squares), except for Russian

sample, are on the left side of the figure. The average self-ratings circles tend to occupy the

space between the profiles of national auto-stereotypes and the profiles of the typical

Russian. Arrows connect self-ratings in each sample to the ratings of their typical ingroup

member. In some cases the arrows are rather short (e.g. Belarus, Finland, Estonian adult

sample and Russia) which demonstrates that there is a considerable similarity between self-

rated personality and national character profiles. Except for the Belarusian and Russian

samples, the average vector of arrows points to the left-upper corner of the figure which

corresponds to higher levels of Introversion and/or Neuroticism. This indicates that a common

feature of most national character stereotypes was that a typical ingroup member was

perceived as more neurotic and/or less extraverted than their rating of their own personality.

To what extent do NCS ingroup ratings correspond to the outgroup ratings of a typical

Russian? The ICCs between NCS ingroup ratings and ratings of Russians ranged from

�.77 (p< .001) to .38 (p< .05) for Poland (see Table 1; ICC2), the latter being the only

positive correlation. Averaged across the eight samples, the median ICC between NCS

ingroup ratings and ratings of a typical Russian was �.44. As predicted, Estonians (both

samples) but also Latvians (students) and Finns described their nation as a mirror image of

Russians (or the other way around: that is, they described a typical Russian as a mirror

image of a typical member of their own nation), perhaps in an effort to differentiate

themselves and establish an independent national identity. To illustrate these findings,

Figure 2a shows the ingroup ratings and ratings for Russians in the Estonian sample of

working adults. Estonians, when compared to Russians, are seen as very introverted, low in

openness and highly conscientious. A typical Pole, on the other hand (Figure 2b), is

thought to be not so different from a typical Russian, especially in terms of Extraversion

and Openness to Experience. As for the remaining three main personality traits, Poles see

themselves as more neurotic, agreeable and conscientious compared to Russians.

Do national character stereotypes reflect mean personality traits?

To answer this question we compared national character ratings (auto-stereotypes) with

mean self-ratings in the same culture. ICCs between national character auto-stereotypes

and self-report profiles were all positive, ranging from .07 (Estonian and Latvian students)

to .52 (Russia) with a median value of .35 (see Table 1; ICC1). In four countries—Russia,

Finland, Estonia (working adults) and Poland did people perceive a typical ingroup

member similarly to how they rated their own personality (p< .05). In Belarus, Latvia,

Lithuania and among Estonian students there was no statistically significant correlation

between auto-stereotypes and self-rated personality. Figure 3 provides an example of

Finland where national character stereotypes appeared to be relatively accurate. Finns

described themselves, as well as a typical Finn, as average in Neuroticism and high in

Agreeableness. At the same time, a typical Finn was seen as introverted, closed to

experience, yet more conscientious as compared to self-ratings.


DOI: 10.1002/per

240 A. Realo et al.

Figure 2. National Character Survey ratings, T-scores for NCS factor and facet scales. (a) Solid lines show theNCS profile of a typical Estonian as judged by Estonians (working adults); dotted lines show the NCS profile of atypical Russian as judged by Estonians (working adults). The ICC between ingroup and outgroup ratings¼�.77(p< .001). (b) Solid lines show the NCS profile of a typical Pole as judged by Polish students; dotted lines showthe NCS profile of a typical Russian as judged by Poles. The ICC between ingroup and outgroup ratings¼ .38(p< .05). Scores were standardized using international norms (Terracciano et al., 2005).


DOI: 10.1002/per


Are stereotypes about the character of other nations accurate?

If stereotypes about the character of one’s own nation are sometime moderately accurate,

how about the stereotypes about the character of other nations (Robins, 2005)? In this

study, we were directly able to examine this question. How accurate are stereotypes of

Russians in these six neighbouring countries of Russia? To answer this question, we first

examined the degree of agreement between our samples on their perceptions of the

character of a typical Russian. The ICCs across the 30 facet profile elements between

samples were all positive, ranging from .13 (Belarus vs. Poland) to .95 (two Estonian

samples). Only six correlations did not reach statistical significance and the median of the

28 ICCs was high at .58 (p< .001). This suggests that, in spite of some disagreement, there

is a common belief about the Russian national character shared by the members of these

six particular neighbouring countries of Russia.

Having established agreement between our samples in the perception of the Russian

national character, we next examined whether national character ratings of the typical

Russian converged with the average self-reported personality scores of Russians. ICCs

between Russian NCS self-report profiles (Allik et al., 2009) and perceptions of a typical

Russian from the six different nations ranged from �.39 (Poland, p< .05) to .31 (Belarus,

ns) (see Table 1; ICC3). Out of eight correlations, fivewere positive (median, .01), only one

of them statistically significant at p< .05. Thus, we can conclude that, although

representatives of the six nations have a relatively similar perception of the Russian

national character, this perception does not converge with self-assessed personality traits of

Figure 3. National Character Survey ratings, T-scores for NCS factor and facet scales. Solid lines show the NCSprofile of a typical Finn (ingroup ratings); dotted lines show mean self-rated NCS profiles of the Finnish sample(self-ratings). The ICC between ingroup ratings and self-ratings¼ .44 (p< .05). Ingroup rating scores werestandardized using international norms (Terracciano et al., 2005), self-ratings were standardized using the seven-culture unweighted means for self-reports (this study).


DOI: 10.1002/per

242 A. Realo et al.

Russians. In other words, stereotypes about the character of other nations appear to be less

accurate than the character stereotypes about one’s own nation.

If stereotypes about the Russian national character in these six neighbouring countries

do not reflect the mean personality traits of Russians, we can pose a slightly different

question: do perceptions of a typical Russian from the six countries converge with what

Russians think about their own national character? Figure 4 shows mean NCS ingroup

ratings by Russians and by the respondents in our study. The ICC across the 30 facet profile

elements was positive and statistically significant, ICC¼ .40, p< .05. Both sources depict

a typical Russian as rather emotionally stable and extraverted, but there were notable

differences in the case of the other three personality traits. In support of the ethnocentric

bias hypothesis, Russians rated themselves as higher in Openness to Experience, and

especially in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, than others rated them. In other words,

members of the six neighbouring countries had a less favourable view of Russians than

Russians had of themselves. The degree of agreement with the ingroup profile of Russians

(see Table 1, ICC4) varied significantly across the samples in our study (median¼ .24).

Belarusians and Latvians (both working adults and students) showed the highest degree of

agreement (ICCs¼ .81, .50., 40, respectively, all significant at p< .05), Finns and

Estonians (students and adults) showed weak agreement (ICCs¼ .22, .25 and .21,

respectively), whereas Lithuanians and Poles showed no agreement at all (ICCs¼ .06 and

�.15). The degree of agreement clearly reflects the ethnic composition of the six countries.

In Latvia and Belarus—where people have a relatively similar view of Russians to that

Figure 4. National Character Survey ratings of Russians by Russians (solid lines; Allik et al., 2009, Table 1) andby members of six other nations (dotted lines; this study). ICC¼ .40 (p< .05). Scores were standardized usinginternational norms (Terracciano et al., 2005).


DOI: 10.1002/per


which people from Russia have—Russians (or Russian speakers) form a sizeable part of

the population (Latvia—29%, Belarus—ethnic Russians constitute about 12% of Belarus’

total population but for most Belarusians, Russian is the only language in which they are

fluent (Ioffe, 2003). Of course, one cannot rule out the possibility that the very high

similarity between the Russian auto-stereotype and the Belarusians’ perception of Russian

national character is due to the fact that in both samples respondents completed the Russian

version of the NCS. But more likely, the high degree of agreement reflects the cultural and

linguistic closeness of Russians and Belarusians as has been emphasized repeatedly by

historians and political scientists (Drakokhrust & Furman, 2003; Ioffe, 2003). In Lithuania

and Poland; however, where perceptions of a typical Russian do not converge with what

Russians themselves think about their national character, Russians constitute a relatively

minor percentage of the population (Lithuania—5%; Poland—less than 1%). Thus, with

increased first-hand experience and contact with Russians as well as with cultural,

linguistic and economic closeness, the perceptions of Russian national character seem to

become more similar to the Russian auto-stereotype.

GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

In this article we sought to contribute to the existing literature on national character

stereotypes by examining the mechanisms of national character stereotype formation.

More specifically, we studied the temporal stability of stereotypes, the spread of

stereotypes among different groups of the population and the degree of agreement between

self-rated personality and ingroup ratings as well as between ingroup and outgroup ratings

of Russians. As opposed to similar previous studies (e.g. McCrae et al., 2007; Terracciano

et al., 2005; Terracciano & McCrae, 2007), all assessments were made using the same

measure—the NCS—which should exclude the possibility of the method effect in the

comparison of the ratings of personality and national character.

The first major conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that people assess the

personality traits of their typical ingroup or outgroup member rather similarly to how they

describe their own tendencies to feel, think and behave in a consistent way. Since the factor

structures of both self-rated personality and national character were remarkably similar, if

somebody described a typical Russian as high in Neuroticism, for example, the same

meaning appeared in the self-descriptions.

Our data from Estonia and Poland showed that perceptions of national character

stereotypes appear to be indeed quite stable, even over a period of 5 years (2003 vs. 2008).

During those 5 years, some politically and economically crucial events took place in both

countries, such as joining the European Union and NATO in 2004, which brought about

considerable changes in public opinion. For example, the percentage of people in Estonia

who said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with their life increased more than 20%

from 2003 (53%) to 2008 (76%) (http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/index_en.htm). The

perceptions of the typical Estonian or Pole; however, remained unchanged. Moreover,

these national character stereotypes appear to be shared by different groups of the

population—in Estonia and Latvia, samples of adults were used as raters in addition to

college students and both yielded very similar profiles of the national character.

One of the most interesting and innovative findings of this study, we believe, was the

direct comparison of self-ratings of personality with perceptions of national character. Our

findings do not support the conclusion made by Terracciano et al. (2005) that, as a general


DOI: 10.1002/per

244 A. Realo et al.

rule, national character ratings do not converge with assessed traits. When the same

instrument was used for the evaluation of national stereotypes and the rater’s own

personality, the relationship between national stereotypes and observed personality traits

was positive in all studied seven countries. Among Russians (Allik et al., 2009), Finns,

Estonian working adults and Poles, mean self-rated personality profiles were in a relatively

good agreement with perceptions of their national character. In other four samples, profiles

of the self-rated personality and national character were similar but did not reach statistical

significance. This seems to imply that in some places, such as Finland, for instance,

respondents may base their assessment of a typical ingroup member on themselves, that is,

on their own personality traits. In some other cultures (e.g. Lithuania), however, people

portray a typical ingroup member differently from what they think about themselves. It is

worth noting here that the significant positive correlation found for Poland in this study

replicates one of the few positive correlations found by Terracciano et al. (2005).

Stereotypes about the character of other nations appear; however, to be less accurate than

stereotypes about one’s own nation: although the representatives of the six nations had a

relatively similar perception of the Russian national character, this perception did not

converge with the self-assessed personality traits of Russians.

Thus, it seems that the agreement between self-rated personality judgments and

perceptions of a typical ingroup member is a variable in itself, the magnitude of which can

vary across nations from being close zero to highly positive. Thus, instead of a fixed

relationship, we seem to have a variable relationship which could be used as a basis for a

typology of cultures. It is possible to speculate that some cultures appear to be ‘realistic’,

where personality traits attributed to a typical member of the nation accurately reflect the

personality traits of these members. On a two-dimensional plot of stereotype and

personality profiles (such as Figure 1, for instance), the aggregate self-rated personality

profiles of such nations or cultural groups would be located very near to the profiles of their

ingroup national character. In some other cultures, the portrait of a typical ingroup member

has no resemblance to the actual personality traits of members of this culture. With this

present level of understanding, we may only speculate howmeaningful this typology could

be and how well it could predict other aspects of culture.

How do national character stereotypes arise? If they are not always based on observable

personality traits of the members of a nation, there must be some other mechanisms

underlying their formation. The results of this study provide one of the first insights into the

mechanism that makes stereotypes different from an average self-rating. As shown in

Figure 1, a typical member of a culture is perceived as more neurotic and introverted

compared to the average self-description. Thus, in a certain sense, people perceive

themselves more positively than they perceive others (John & Robins, 1994; Krueger,

1998). Yet, this does not mean that people perceive their own nation (ingroup) more

positively than they perceive other nations or other outgroups (Brewer, 2007), as would be

predicted by social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). In some cases people’s opinions

about their own nation were even more critical than those concerning their neighbours. In

this study we saw, for example, than in nearly all samples a typical compatriot was seen as

less extraverted and less open to experience than a typical Russian. Latvians, Lithuanians

and Poles also described their typical ingroup member as more maladjusted and distressed

than they perceived a typical Russian.

There appears to be a common belief about the Russian national character shared by the

six neighbour countries in this study. As said above, Russians were seen as high in

Extraversion and Openness but low in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Yet, the


DOI: 10.1002/per


degree of agreement between auto- and hetero-stereotype ratings of a typical Russian in our

study (ICC¼ .40) was at a much lower level than in a similar study by Terracciano and

McCrae (2007) which examined perceptions of the typical American from 49 cultures

around the world. In Terracciano and McCrae’s (2007) study, a relatively strong agreement

was found between ingroup and outgroup ratings on the American profile, ICC¼ .71,

p< .001. Our findings do, however, seem to support other previous studies which have

demonstrated a substantial difference between ingroup and outgroup judgments of

Russians (Peabody, 1985; Peabody & Shmelyov, 1996; Stephan et al., 1993). Most

commonly, Russians are judged as impulse-controlled and conscientious (e.g. disciplined,

hardworking, serious, active) in outgroup judgments (mostly by Americans or Western

Europeans), whereas ingroup ratings are more in the opposite direction: impulsive,

inactive, generous, impractical and very likeable (Peabody & Shmelyov, 1996). In our

study, in contrast, Russians see themselves as above average on Conscientiousness,

whereas their six neighbours see them as low in Conscientiousness. As found in earlier

studies (Boster & Maltseva, 2006), our findings seem to indicate that people in

neighbouring countries of Russia see Russians differently than people in other parts of the

world. In Estonia and Finland, for instance, Russians are often depicted as lazy and lacking

conscientiousness (Lehtonen, 1993; Realo, 2003; Valk, 1998). Also in other neighbouring

countries of Russia, (e.g. Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic), Russians are typically

seen as less modern (e.g. bound by tradition, devoutly religious, old-fashioned) and less

self-controlled (e.g. easily lose their tempers, know how to have fun, lazy, sexually active,

generous) than how they are seen by people in Southern and Western Europe, or in other

parts of the world (Boster &Maltseva, 2006). It is possible that we have another foundation

for a cultural typology: cultures which have national stereotypes strongly (e.g. United

States) or only weakly (e.g. Russia) resembling the perception of their neighbours,

irrespective whether these stereotypes resemble assessed personality traits or not.

In conclusion, the obtained data provided some insight into the mechanisms of national

stereotype construction. National character stereotypes about one’s own nation are indeed

widely shared and temporally stable and, most importantly, moderately related to self-rated

personality traits if all assessments are made using the same measurement instrument.

Furthermore, national character stereotypes about one’s own nation appear to be formed, at

least to a certain extent, in reference to a dominant neighbouring nation (e.g. USA, Russia)

or to people’s self-rated personality traits: a typical ingroup member is often portrayed as

less extraverted and emotionally stable than people’s rating of their own personality. As for

the latter, it remains to be proved whether this is a mere consequence of the self-

enhancement which accompanies social comparison, in which people perceive themselves

more positively than they perceive others (John & Robins, 1994; Krueger, 1998), or is,

indeed, a separate mechanism.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Anu Realo, Juri Allik, University of Tartu and the Estonian Center of Behavioral and

Health Sciences, Estonia; Jan-Erik Lonnqvist, Markku Verkasalo, University of Helsinki,

Finland; Anna Kwiatkowska, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland;

Liisi Koots, Maie Kutt, University of Tartu, Estonia; Rasa Barkauskiene, Vilnius Univer-

sity, Lithuania; Alfredas Laurinavicius, Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania;


DOI: 10.1002/per

246 A. Realo et al.

Konstantin Karpinski, Alexandr Kolyshko, Grodno State University, Belarus; Sandra

Sebre, Viesturs Renge, University of Latvia, Latvia.

This project was supported by grants from the Estonian Ministry of Science and

Education (SF0180029s08) and the Estonian Science Foundation (ESF7020) to the second

author. The writing of this article was supported by a Primus grant, number 3-8.2/60 from

the European Social Fund to the first author. Portions of this article were presented at the

14th European Conference on Personality, July 2008, Tartu, Estonia. We are grateful to

Robert R.McCrae (NIA, NIH), Antti Hulsi, Anneli Portman (University of Helsinki), Gints

Malzubris (University of Latvia) and DelaneyMichael Skerrett (University of Queensland)

for their assistance at different stages of this project. We also thank anonymous reviewers

for constructive remarks and suggestions which helped us to improve the quality of the

manuscript to a great extent.

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