How a National Character Is Constructed: Personality Traits Attributed to the Typical Russian

Three thousand seven hundred and five participants drawn from 40 different samples and 34 regions all over the Russian Federation were asked to rate personality traits of the typical Russian living in their region using the 30-item National Character Survey (NCS). Compared with the crosscultural mean profile of autostereotypes across 49 nations (Terracciano et al., 2005), the ratings showed that the typical Russian rarely feels depressed or inferior, is dominant, forceful and speaks without hesitation, has vivid imagination, active fantasy life and intellectual curiosity, and is able to reexamine social and political values. There was only one prevalent stereotype of the typical Russian, spreading from Kamchatka to the borders of the European Union, without identifiable geographic or any other regularity in the sample-to-sample variation. Profiles of the typical Russian converged weakly with assessed personality traits of young Russians but not with older Russians. A strong relationship was established between social capital and national character stereotypes: individuals who were inclined to believe in the honesty of other people and trust them were also disposed to describe the typical Russian in more socially desirable terms.

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