The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world. Local collaborators recruited 5,447 members of college communities in 20 countries, who provided data via a Web site in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Q‐sort (RSQ), participants described the situation they experienced the previous evening at 7:00 p.m. Correlations among the average situational profiles of each country ranged from r = .73 to r = .95; the typical situation was described as largely pleasant. Most similar were the United States/Canada; least similar were South Korea/Denmark. Japan had the most homogenous situational experience; South Korea, the least. The 15 RSQ items varying the most across countries described relatively negative aspects of situational experience; the 15 least varying items were more positive. Further analyses correlated RSQ items with national scores on six value dimensions, the Big Five traits, economic output, and population. Individualism, Neuroticism, Openness, and Gross Domestic Product yielded more significant correlations than expected by chance. Psychological research traditionally has paid more attention to the assessment of persons than of situations, a discrepancy that extends to cross‐cultural psychology. The present study demonstrates how cultures vary in situational experience in psychologically meaningful ways.

While a large body of research has investigated cultural differences in behavior, this typical study assesses a single behavioral outcome, in a single context, compared across two countries. The current study compared a broad array of behaviors across 21 countries ( N = 5,522). Participants described their behavior at 7:00 p.m. the previous evening using the 68 items of the Riverside Behavioral Q-sort (RBQ). Correlations between average patterns of behavior in each country ranged from r = .69 to r = .97 and, in general, described a positive and relaxed activity. The most similar patterns were United States/Canada and least similar were Japan/United Arab Emirates (UAE). Similarities in behavior within countries were largest in Spain and smallest in the UAE. Further analyses correlated average RBQ item placements in each country with, among others, country-level value dimensions, personality traits, self-esteem levels, economic output, and population. Extroversion, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, self-esteem, happiness, and tolerant attitudes yielded more significant correlations than expected by chance.

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The current project measures personality across cultures, for the first time using a forced-choice (or idiographic) assessment instrument - the California Adult Q-set (CAQ). Correlations among the average personality profiles across 13 countries (total N = 2,370) ranged from r = .69 to r = .98. The most similar averaged personality profiles were between USA/Canada; the least similar were South Korea/Russia/Poland and China/Russia. The Czech Republic had the most homogeneous personality descriptions and South Korea had the least. In further analyses, country differences in CAQ-derived Big Five scores were compared to results obtained from previous research using nomothetic Likert scales (i.e., the NEO; the BFI). The Big Five templates produced generally similar findings to previous research comparing the Big Five across countries using Likert-type methods.