Indigenous Personality Structure in East and West Africa: Lexical Studies of Personality in Maa and Senufo

Indigenous lexical studies of personality define the most salient person-descriptive concepts and their structure in a population. Such studies can provide important tests of the generalizability of currently popular models of personality structure. Results are presented from studies in two non-industrialized communities, representing two of the four main language families of Africa. Maasai participants, herders in rural Kenya, have a “tight”, highly traditional culture. Supyire-Senufo participants are agriculturalists in Mali. The 203 most common person-descriptive terms in Maasai were administered to 166 participants, who described 320 persons (166 highly regarded, 154 less so). In the Maasai context, descriptions of well-regarded individuals were more uniform than in Western settings. A four-factor model with domains interpreted as Anger, Laziness, Virtue, and Happiness was the best emic solution. The Maasai emic two-factor model had some overlap with the Big Two, but little with other etic models, including the Big Five and Big Six. In Senufo, 114 participants used 208 person-descriptive terms to describe 228 targets (104 highly-regarded and 107 less admired were analyzed). A six-factor model was the best emic solution, and this overlapped to an extent with the etic Big Six. The four-factor structure in Senufo matched that found in Maasai, providing a basis for a potential Africa-specific model of personality structure, which can be tested in additional regions and languages in future studies.