Summary

Scientific personality assessment cannot be accurate without considering cultural factors. Cultural variations affect the linguistic, conceptual, and measurement equivalence of psychological assessment when these measures are translated and/or applied to different cultural groups, posing challenges to their reliability and validity. International psychologists have adopted various approaches to personality assessment during different stages in the development of cross-cultural psychology. The etic approach assumes that personality constructs are universal, and measures are directly applied in another culture. Although international guidelines have been developed to promote best practices in the translation and adaptation of these measures across cultures, the cultural relevance of etic measures remains a potential bias. The emic approach rejects the universality assumption and derives indigenous personality measures to suit the local context at the expense of cross-cultural comparisons. In response to the criticisms of these two approaches, the combined emic–etic approach has been demonstrated to be a useful method to develop personality assessment measures that are maximally relevant for different cultures. To enhance cultural sensitivity in science, practice and training in cross-cultural and multicultural assessment and mainstreaming culture in all aspects of assessment are called for.