Research examining personality, gender and culture has shown that links between these concepts are complex. To what extent does psychological evidence suggest that personality trait structure is universal

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Research examining personality, gender and culture has shown that links between these concepts are complex. To what extent does psychological evidence suggest that personality trait structure is universal?

Introduction

Personality is composed of "the individual's characteristic patterns of thoughts, emotions and behaviors" (Funder, 2004) that reflect the individual differences and similarities and remains fairly consistent throughout life(Costa, McCrae& Arenberg ,1980; Helson &Wink,1993), study in personality (i.e. Personality psychology) is constantly updated and improved for understanding and predicting human's behaviours and actions. With the development of personality study, the personality theories has develop from the early psychoanalytic theory which is mainly emphasizing in the effect of the unconscious on personality to the now on that behaviorism and social learning theories, biological and evolutionary theories, type theories and traits theories.

And the traits theories are the block of the personality trait structure including many trait approach, single trait approach and essential trait approach. Currently, a number of trait psychologists believed that personality traits structure was well represented by the 5 Big Traits known as "Big Five"model (Goldberg, 1993; Costa & McCrae, 1985).In this case, traits were defined as inherited and distinguishing characteristics (Costa & McCrae,