European Journal of Personality

Eur. J. Pers. 21: 977–981 (2007)

Published online 21 August 2007 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/per.649

Comment

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King

MARCO PERUGINI1* and JULIETTE RICHETIN2

1
University of Milan Bicocca, Italy
2
University of Essex, UK

Abstract
A cautionary note is reported on the results and conclusions of McCrae et al. (this issue).
The main counter argument to a straightforward interpretation of mean differences at a
national level is the arbitrary nature of the metrics for personality traits. It is argued that
this fundamental property lies behind potential threats to the interpretation of mean scores,
such as frame-of-reference and accessibility effects. An empirical example of how
accessibility can also have an influence on correlations is reported. The main message
is that one should be very cautious in assuming that mean personality self-reports are
necessarily more accurate than national stereotypes. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley &
Sons, Ltd.

Key words: cross-cultural research; personality scales and inventories; decision making

McCrae et al. (this issue) have presented a very interesting and highly competent research
on personality traits and national character stereotypes. Without detracting anything from
the merits of this research, we wish here to flag some problematic issues that suggest
caution in interpreting some of their results.
We will start with an anecdotal semi-biographical consideration. The first author
happens to be originally from the Centre of Italy (that can be classified as South for the
purpose of the national character stereotype), he has moved to England for a number of
years and he is now back in Italy, but in Northern region. Had he participated in the first
study of McCrae et al. (this issue), he would have endorsed the view that Southern Italians
are higher in E and lower in C than Northern Italians, to discover later to his surprise that he
held an unfounded stereotype based on a probable confusion between climatic and
interpersonal warmth. In fact, as reported by McCrae et al. (this issue), Naples is on average
38C warmer than Milan. Yet, had he been asked to evaluate Northern and Southern English,

*Correspondence to: Marco Perugini, Faculty of Psychology, University of Milan-Bicocca, Viale dell’Innova-
zione 10 (U9), Milan 20126, Italy. E-mail: marco.perugini@unimib.it

Received 4 June 2007

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 4 June 2007
978 M. Perugini and J. Richetin

based on his personal experiences he would have responded that Northern English are
lower in C and higher in E than Southern English. This despite that in the period 1971–2000
on an annual basis, the North of England was about 28C colder, had 17 days and 160 mm
more of rain and 170 hours less of sunshine than the South of England (Met Office, 2007).
At least in this case, he would not have confounded climatic with interpersonal warmth—
the relationship is in the opposite direction in England—yet he would have been probably
left wondering once again how much is susceptible to personality judgements based on
stereotypes rather than on actual observations. In fact, although we are not aware of data
distinguishing between personality stereotypes and average national character for Northern
versus Southern English, it is likely that qualitatively they would mirror the findings
reported by McCrae et al. (this issue) for Italy.
Going beyond this anecdotal description, the main problem with McCrae et al. (this
issue) argument is that self-reported personality measures, as well as several other
psychological measures, have an arbitrary metrics that makes absolute comparisons
between different groups very difficult (Blanton & Jaccard, 2006). One of the implications
is that scores do not have an absolute interpretation and they can be affected by a host of
factors that underlie the process of translating one’s self-evaluation into an arbitrary score.
The observable score will therefore reflect the ‘real’ trait value alongside the influence of
factors affecting people’s decision making processes. After all, evaluating oneself in terms
of endorsing certain self-relevant behavioural descriptions is nothing but a decision making
process and therefore can be subject to the same biasing factors underlying human decision
making in general. The influence of these ‘extra-trait’ factors can be systematic. An
example of one such factors is the so-called frame-of-reference effect (Heine, Lehman,
Peng, & Greenholtz, 2002). The main idea behind this effect is that people judge
themselves by using reference groups. In fact, most of the time, people have no way to
judge in an absolute sense what they do, but they also need to rely on social comparisons
(even implicitly) with other relevant persons. The most likely reference persons are those
who live in a nearby place or anyway that form their psychological reference group.
Therefore, people’s judgements about themselves will be affected by the mean level of the
persons with whom they implicitly compare themselves. As a consequence, mean level
individual differences will tend to be a valid indicator of relative scores within a similar
environment (i.e., when people use a similar reference group) but not across different
environments, because the average mean levels will tend to be close. The extreme version
of this idea of relative evaluations would suggest that any two groups (e.g., English and
Italians, Northern Italians and Southern Italians) will not differ in terms of mean levels
because evaluations will distribute across a mean point that is roughly the same for each
group. Another way to express this concept is that average scores are ipsatised (i.e.,
expressed in a relative metrics) within groups and therefore they are equal across groups.
The results presented by McCrae et al. (this issue) suggest that this extreme version is
unlikely to hold, given that small but meaningful score differences exist between groups.
However, they are fully compatible with a weaker version that simply says that
self-evaluations are systematically and significantly affected by relative reference groups.
To illustrate how this can work, imagine Wilhelm and Michele. They are both 1.80 m but
Wilhelm lives in Groningen (North of The Netherlands) and Michele lives in Sicily (South
of Italy). The average height in Italy is 1.76 (
1.74 for Sicily) whereas in The Netherlands
it is 1.84 (
1.86 for Groningen) (Komlos & Lauderdale, in press). If we were to ask them to
evaluate whether they think they are tall, it is very likely that Michele will answer ‘yes’
whereas Wilhelm ‘no’, despite them being of exactly the same height. And, of course, the

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Pers. 21: 977–981 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/per
 In the land of blinds, one-eyed man is king 979

contextual and relative nature of an evaluative judgement is even more pronounced for
personality relevant self-judgements.
The frame-of-reference effect is but one of the potential evaluative biases. The literature
on decision making has produced robust evidence of the contextual and relative nature of
human evaluations, as encapsulated for instance by prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky,
1979) the anchoring and adjustment model (Lopes, 1982) and the principle of accessibility
(Higgins, 1996). This latter principle offers another interesting example of the importance
of contextual factors in self-relevant judgements. Briefly, the principle of accessibility
states that recently activated knowledge has a disproportionate influence on subsequent
judgements and decisions. However, as argued by Schwarz, Bless, Wänke, and
Winkielman (2003), the most important determinant is the experience of accessibility.
In other words, judgements do not depend simply on what comes to mind (accessibility)
but on how easily it comes to mind (accessibility experience). Although most research on
these issues has focused on attitudinal surveys, the consequences of this principle for
personality research can be very important (Schwarz & Oyserman, 2001). Indeed, an
influence of accessibility experience on self-reported personality scores has already been
demonstrated. Schwarz, Bless, Strack, Klumpp, Rittenauer-Schatka, and Simons (1991)
asked participants to recall either 6 (easy) or 12 (difficult) examples of their own assertive
behaviour. In line with the idea that judgements depend on the subjectively experienced
ease of accessing relevant mental content, participants who were asked to recall six
examples of assertive behaviour subsequently rated themselves as more assertive than
participants who were asked to recall 12 experiences, despite the latter having more
examples in mind of their own assertive behaviour. These contextual effects can have an
influence not only on mean scores but also on correlations.
To illustrate this possibility, we briefly report a relevant experimental study. Forty six
participants (12 men and 34 women, M age ¼ 21.8, SD ¼ 4.49) were first asked to write
down 5 (easy accessibility) versus 10 (difficult accessibility) specific examples about them
behaving honestly and afterwards to complete the computer administered 32 items
measuring the Honesty/Humility scale of the HEXACO Personality Inventory
(HEXACO-PI, Lee & Ashton, 2004). Participants were then introduced to the next task
that was presented via computer either as boring and long (watch and rate a long clip of
Condoleezza Rice answering to questions at the US Senate) or as funny and short (watch
and rate a short series of funny clips), depending on a random device assigning participants
to the experimental condition. In fact, all participants were assigned to the boring task.
However, when pressing the button to start the assigned boring task, allegedly because of a
series of unexpected software loops, participants were actually offered five possibilities to
select instead the funny task. In other words, to proceed to the assigned boring task,
participants had to resist for five times to the temptation of cheating and going for the
funnier and shorter task. The point at which they accepted the funnier task despite being
assigned to the boring task was the dependent variable of cheating with a score from 0 (no
cheating until the end) to 5 (cheating at the first opportunity). The main hypothesis was that
the predictive validity of the Honesty/Humility scale of the HEXACO-PI would be greater
in the difficult than in the easy accessibility condition. The reasoning was that in general
people tend to over-evaluate and over-report their honesty. However, when experiencing
difficulty in recalling specific instances of their honest behaviour, they will correct their
subsequent relevant self-evaluations (‘after all, if I find it so difficult to remember
occasions when I have behaved honestly, it means that I’m not that honest as I thought’).
This effect should produce more valid scores because it should diminish the portion of

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Pers. 21: 977–981 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/per
980 M. Perugini and J. Richetin

variance that it is associated to desirable responding relative to the variance of the ‘true’
personality dimension. Therefore, the individual ranking in the scale should reflect better
the ‘true’ ranking in terms of self-reported Honesty. The hypothesis was confirmed in a
moderated regression on the dependent variable cheating. First, the manipulation check
showed that participants in the difficult accessibility condition found the task significantly
more difficult (Likert-type rating from 0 to 10) than in the easy accessibility condition
(F (1,45) ¼ 12.27, p ¼ .001, 8.09 vs. 6.28). In terms of substantial effects, when considering
only the two main independent variables, the experimental condition did not show a
significant influence on cheating (b ¼ .19, p ¼ .21), whereas the Honesty/Humility scale
showed a borderline significant effect (b ¼ .29, p ¼ .06). However, this effect was
fundamentally qualified by a significant interaction. The moderated regression model
explained 20% of variance. The Honesty/Humility scale and the level of accessibility
(low vs. high) were not significant predictors (b ¼ .005, p ¼ .98; b ¼ .20, p ¼ .16,
respectively) whereas the interaction term was a significant predictor (b ¼ .42, p ¼ .03).
The simple slope analysis (Aiken & West, 1991) showed that in the low accessibility
condition, the Honesty/Humility scale did not predict cheating behaviour (b ¼ .005,
p ¼ .98) whereas it was a robustly significant predictor (b ¼ .66, p ¼ .003) in the high
accessibility condition. This result was further corroborated by a parallel moderated
regression whereby there was a significant interaction term between rated Difficulty and
the Honesty/Humility scale (b ¼ .26, p ¼ .048), showing therefore that the experimental
manipulation did actually work via subjective experience of ease of accessibility, as the
theory suggests. Interestingly, the effects were not present at the mean level, that is, the
average scores of Honesty/Humility were not significantly different in the two
experimental conditions (F (1,45) ¼ 0.93, p ¼ .339, 3.46 vs. 3.59 for the difficult and
easy condition, respectively). Despite some obvious limitations of this study (e.g., small
sample size), its results show that subtle decision making biases can have a remarkable
influence not only on self-reported personality scores but also on their correlations with
relevant criteria.
To sum up, we have argued that a number of factors can have an influence on both average
scores of self-reported personality questionnaires and their correlations with relevant criteria,
given the fundamentally arbitrary nature of the metrics of self-reported evaluations. This
influence can be systematic and have a profound effect at different levels. The results of
McCrae et al. (this issue) should be read in this light. They can be affected to an unknown
extent because there are different sources of variation contaminating personality trait ratings
and national character judgements. McCrae et al. (this issue) can be even correct in their
claims, but the data that they have presented do not prove it. On the contrary, the
circumstantial evidence concerning substantial differences between South and North of Italy
in different objective indicators (cf. Ashton, this issue) would seem to suggest that
stereotypes can have a kernel of truth. In fact, the national character ratings (stereotypes) line
up better than the average mean level of personality traits with existing extra-personality
evidence showing profound and systematic differences between North and South of Italy.
We do not want to suggest that henceforth personality scores are not valid:
Uncontroversial and overwhelming evidence has accumulated over the years supporting
their validity. However, we suggest much caution in interpreting them in a straightforward
manner as if they would only reflect true traits and not also the operations that translate
self-relevant memories and reflections into an arbitrary metric scale. The main problem is
the contextual nature of human judgement, including judgements about one’s self. In the
land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Pers. 21: 977–981 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/per
 In the land of blinds, one-eyed man is king 981

REFERENCES

Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Ashton, M. (this issue). Self-Reports and Stereotypes: A Comment on McCrae et al. European
Journal of Personality. DOI: 10.1002/per.650
Blanton, H., & Jaccard, J. (2006). Arbitrary metrics in psychology. American Psychologist, 61,
27–41.
Heine, S. J., Lehman, D. R., Peng, K., & Greenholtz, J. (2002). What’s wrong with cross-cultural
comparisons of subjective Likert scales: The reference-group problem. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 82, 903–918.
Higgins, E. T. (1996). Knowledge activation: Accessibility, applicability, and salience. In E. T.
Higgins, & A. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 133–168).
New York: Guilford Press.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An analysis of decision under risk.
Econometrica, 47, 263–291.
Komlos, J., & Lauderdale, B. E. (2007). The mysterious trend in American heights in the 20th
century. Annals of Human Biology, 34, 206–215.
Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2004). Psychometric properties of the HEXACO personality inventory.
Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39, 329–358.
Lopes, L. L. (1982). Toward a procedural theory of judgment. Wisconsin Human Information
Processing Program, Technical Report, 17, 1–49.
McCrae, R. R., Terracciano, A., Realo, A., & Allik, J. (this issue). Climatic warmth and national
wealth: Some culture-level determinants of national character stereotypes. European Journal of
Personality. DOI: 10.1002/per.647
Met Office. (2007). Retrieved May 30, 2007 from http://www.metoffice.gov.uk
Schwarz, N., & Oyserman, D. (2001). Asking questions about behavior: Cognition, communication
and questionnaire construction. American Journal of Evaluation, 22, 127–160.
Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991). Ease of
retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 61, 195–202.
Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Wänke, M., & Winkielman, P. (2003). Accessibility revisited. In G. V.
Bodenhausen, & A. J. Lambert (Eds.), Foundations of social cognition: A Festschrift in honor of
Robert S. Wyer, Jr. (pp. 51–77). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Pers. 21: 977–981 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/per