A sense of fairness plays a critical role in supporting human cooperation. Adult norms of fair resource sharing vary widely across societies, suggesting that culture shapes the acquisition of fairness behaviour during childhood. Here we examine how fairness behaviour develops in children from seven diverse societies, testing children from 4 to 15 years of age (n = 866 pairs) in a standardized resource decision task. We measured two key aspects of fairness decisions: disadvantageous inequity aversion (peer receives more than self) and advantageous inequity aversion (self receives more than a peer). We show that disadvantageous inequity aversion emerged across all populations by middle childhood. By contrast, advantageous inequity aversion was more variable, emerging in three populations and only later in development. We discuss these findings in relation to questions about the universality and cultural specificity of human fairness.

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.

In cross‐national studies, mean levels of self‐reported phenomena are often not congruent with more objective criteria. One prominent explanation for such findings is that people make self‐report judgements in relation to culture‐specific standards (often called the reference group effect), thereby undermining the cross‐cultural comparability of the judgements. We employed a simple method called anchoring vignettes in order to test whether people from 21 different countries have varying standards for Conscientiousness, a Big Five personality trait that has repeatedly shown unexpected nation‐level relationships with external criteria. Participants rated their own Conscientiousness and that of 30 hypothetical persons portrayed in short vignettes. The latter type of ratings was expected to reveal individual differences in standards of Conscientiousness. The vignettes were rated relatively similarly in all countries, suggesting no substantial culture‐related differences in standards for Conscientiousness. Controlling for the small differences in standards did not substantially change the rankings of countries on mean self‐ratings or the predictive validities of these rankings for objective criteria. These findings are not consistent with mean self‐rated Conscientiousness scores being influenced by culture‐specific standards. The technique of anchoring vignettes can be used in various types of studies to assess the potentially confounding effects of reference levels. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Several personality models are known for being replicable across cultures, such as the Five-Factor Model\ud (FFM) or Eysenck’s Psychoticism–Extraversion–Neuroticism (PEN) model, and are for this reason considered universal.\ud The aim of the current study was to evaluate the cross-cultural replicability of the recently revised Alternative FFM\ud (AFFM). A total of 15 048 participants from 23 cultures completed the Zuckerman–Kuhlman–Aluja Personality Questionnaire\ud (ZKA-PQ) aimed at assessing personality according to this revised AFFM. Internal consistencies, gender differences\ud and correlations with age were similar across cultures for all five factors and facet scales. The AFFM structure was very\ud similar across samples and can be considered as highly replicable with total congruence coefficients ranging from .94 to\ud .99. Measurement invariance across cultures was assessed using multi-group confirmatory factor analyses, and each\ud higher-order personality factor did reach configural and metric invariance. Scalar invariance was never reached, which\ud implies that culture-specific norms should be considered. The underlying structure of the ZKA-PQ replicates well across\ud cultures, suggesting that this questionnaire can be used in a large diversity of cultures and that the AFFM might be as\ud universal as the FFM or the PEN model. This suggests that more research is needed to identify and define an integrative\ud framework underlying these personality models

Abstract— Research on African children has made key contributions to the emergence of a more globalized developmental science, advancing theory and providing illuminating examples in the domains of motor development, cognitive growth, attachment, and socially responsible intelligence. Because the environments for children’s development are culturally structured, local knowledge is necessary to understand development and to devise social programs to promote healthy outcomes, as illustrated in this article by a case study in Senegal. This argues for advancing the research activities of local scholars. At the same time, action at the global level is necessary to weave such local knowledge into a global science of human development.