The passionate Italians, the apathetic or rude French and the neutral Swiss.
These are national stereotypes we’re all familiar with. But stereotypes often bend or break the truth… or do countries genuinely have personality traits most people are not aware of?
If they do, how can marketers leverage these cultural traits and impulses to win over potential customers in a new market (and in the process get the upper hand on competitors)?
In this article, we’ll cover how countries can have a personality and why this matters for marketers looking to break into a new region.
Different personality types (and why it matters for marketers)
Personality traits influence the way your target demographic interacts with brands, how they shop and even which professions are popular in certain countries.
A BBC article references psychological experiments which found that personality test results provide different results across cultures. Tests with sample sizes from hundreds to thousands of people have shown that the average English personality genuinely is different to the average American personality, for example.
Prominent research from Robert McRae published in 2005 has helped to shape some of the following analyses. The research profiled more than 12,000 university students from around the world.
Let’s see how accurate our stereotypes of country personalities are, or whether they are inaccurate and outdated.
Extraversion vs introversion
In the study, Europeans and Americans were among the highest-scoring continents for the trait extraversion, scoring higher than Asians and Africans.
Turning our attention to particular countries, Brazilians, French and Maltese people scored the highest in terms of extraverted personality traits. The lowest scores came mainly from the African continent, with Nigerians and Moroccans scoring low for extraversion, while Indonesia was the lowest on the extraversion scale among various Asian nations.
For marketers, considering how a shy, reticent person predominantly concerned with their own thoughts and feelings rather than with external things would frame a product or service in comparison to an outgoing socially confident person could mean a massive change in positioning.
A person predominantly concerned with external things or objective considerations may buy or use products for a fundamentally different reason when compared to an introvert.
Individualism vs collectivism
As the stereotype goes, Western countries favour an individualist outlook; this is heavily influenced by our understanding of the American dream, and the Western world’s development into capitalist service-based economies. On the flipside, in Eastern countries, it is much more common for a collectivist outlook to be highly valued. But, just how true are these clichés?
Another study into cross-cultural differences by David Schmitt at Bradley University published in 2007 found that the highest scores for neuroticism were in Japan and Argentina. The Japanese also scored the lowest for agreeableness, which appears to contradict the assumption of collectivist thinking in the country.
We would always strongly recommend you carry out market research into the personality types of your target audience.
In his book, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Partially Prosperous, Harvard professor Joseph Henrich, explores Western personality traits. “WEIRD” stands for Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. Henrich states that western people focus on personal attributes, intentions and achievements, while the East, particularly Asian cultures think holistically, focusing on relationships, situations and a collective goal.
Germ theory and COVID-19
Corey Fincher and colleagues from the University of Warwick found in 2008 while analysing epidemiological data, that an area’s score of individualism and collectivism correlates with the rate of disease.
The theory is that the more individualist a nation the more likely that disease is to spread. This is based on the notion that individualist cultures and people are more interested in their own lives than others, prompting them to be less willing to adopt behaviours that protect others. Collectivist cultures however are more conformist and show higher deference to others; it is theorised that this means they will go to greater lengths to protect others.
When considering the approach to COVID-19 and population compliance of Western cultures it is tempting to see some truth in the theory. However, other factors are at play in the spread of viruses, such as the relative wealth of a nation and the preparedness of its medical sector. Both the US and China have had high COVID-19 infections, but is it too simplistic to trace them to the perceived individualist selfishness of the West and a lack of medical facilities in the East?
A pinch of salt – don’t make assumptions!
Robert McCrae’s study made some surprising findings. When testing local assumptions about national personality he interviewed so-called experts in cross-cultural psychology. A panel of eight experts were asked to group 26 different cultures with the personality traits they believed best described them.
Compared to the average personality data McCrae produced, when asked to organise each culture into a list of the seven highest and lowest scorers against the five main personality traits, the experts’ performance left much to be desired.
The experts performed no better than the layperson. A 2005 study by Antonio Terracciano surveyed almost 4,000 college students from 49 cultures, asking them to estimate the average personality profile of someone in their culture. In this case, the participants’ answers did not match the country’s personality results. A study in 2013 had similar results.
Tap into our cultural expertise
Personality differences indeed exist between different cultures. However, we would always note that caution should be taken when relying on stereotypical assumptions, without careful analysis and interrogation. It’s also true that countries, languages and humans are not a homogenous whole, but this research holds a fascinating insight into how to adapt your marketing to the target persona. This may mean re-thinking how you position your product completely, or subtly refining the features and benefits used to sell your products and their order, hierarchy or architecture so that they appeal to fundamentally different personalities.
That’s why when facilitating local translations for our clients we rely on our network of translators based across the globe. We work with almost 4,000 translators in more than 280 countries, meaning we’ve got every language covered, with feet on the ground in the market you are looking to break into.
To work with our translators, contact us to discuss your requirements today, or learn more about our translation services.
