Veronica Benet

• PhD., University of California
• Professor at Pompeu Fabra University

Research on culture and personality has greatly enhanced personality science by bringing attention to the bidirectional processes by which socio-cultural factors shape personality and individuals in turn shape their social environments to fit and express their personalities. This review showcases the unique perspectives and topical contributions of...

There are notable parallels between processes leading to person-environment fit (PE-fit) and processes of selection and acculturation among U.S. immigrants. Thus, a natural question is: Do immigrants benefit from fitting their new environments? PE-fit appears to have uniformly positive effects in the education, career, and personality literatures,...

This chapter provides a broad overview of the field of personality psychology.

Recent research on social identity and identity integration suggests that individuals who have multiple identities and who also successfully integrate them are better adjusted. We combine predictions from these studies and examine how social identification, together with identity integration, are related to psychological well‐being using a person‐c...

The integration hypothesis is the proposal that individuals who engage in both their heritage culture and in the larger society (by using the integration strategy) have better psychological adaptation than those using other strategies (by engaging with only one or neither cultural framework). This hypothesis has received substantial support over th...

Past studies have shown that being exposed to ethnocultural diversity can positively impact individual creativity. Yet, little is known about the interplay between situational (i.e., diversity) and dispositional (e.g., personality) factors in predicting creativity. Taking a person-situation approach, we use social network data to test the moderatin...

The aim of this study was to examine workers’ psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic as a function of their individual coping, dyadic coping, and work-family conflict. We also tested the moderating role of gender and culture in these associations. To achieve this aim, we run HLM analyses on data from 1521 workers cohabiting with a part...

Culture and personality are two central topics in psychology. Individuals are culturally influenced influencers of culture, yet the research linking culture and personality has been limited and fragmentary. We integrate the literatures on culture and personality with recent advances in socioecology and genetics to formulate the Socioecological-Gene...

In order to analyze how individuals socialized into multiple cultures integrate their different socio-cultural belongings, Benet-Martinez and colleagues introduced the construct of Bicultural Identity Integration. More recently, this construct has been applied to the study of identity dynamics beyond ethnicity under the more general rubric of Ident...

Since February 2020, the world has faced a health emergency due to the rapid spread of COVID-19. Two of the first measures adopted by most countries to ensure social distancing were the closure of schools and childcare services, and the mandate to work from home. Millions of parents, while facing the threat of the virus infection, suddenly found th...

Since February 2020, the world has faced a health emergency due to the rapid spread of COVID-19. Two of the first measures adopted by most countries to ensure social distancing were the closure of schools and childcare services, and the mandate to work from home. Millions of parents, while facing the threat of the virus infection, suddenly found th...

Objective: In the present study, we adapted and validated the Bicultural Identity Integration Scale for Children (BIIS-C). Method: 259 bicultural children (119 males, 140 females; Mage = 11.07, SD = 1.24) were provided with a questionnaire. Based on adult versions of the scale, we tested the factorial structure of a set of 11 nonreversed items tapp...

There is some evidence that ethnocultural diversity encourages superordinate levels of categorisation, such as feeling identified with people globally. A remaining question is what type of engagement with diversity facilitates this link and why. We use immigrants' personal social network data and examine the link between global identification and e...

Ladakhi emerging adults have been exposed to cultural globalization through interaction with tourists and media, as well as through prolonged stays at globalized university contexts in major Indian cities. This globalization process has been hypothesized as detrimental to psychological health, in part because it poses the challenge of integrating a...

Research on self and identity has greatly enhanced personality science by directing inquiry more deeply into the person’s conscious mind and more expansively outward into the social environments that contextualize individual differences in behavior, thought, and feeling. After delineating key concepts and offering reasons why personality psychologi...

Diversity in social relations is important for reducing prejudice. Yet, the question of when this occurs remains open. Using a social network approach, we test whether the link between outgroup attitudes and number of intra- and intergroup contacts is moderated by type of relationship (strong vs. weak ties) and personality (openness to experience)...

Volume 8 of the Handbook of Advances in Culture and Psychology showcases contributions from internationally renowned culture scholars who span the discipline of culture and psychology and related disciplines and represent diversity in the theory and study of culture within psychology. The volume includes cutting-edge contributions on culture and me...

In this chapter, the authors examine the social-personality processes underlying multiculturalism and multicultural identity and the cultural and societal factors that influence these phenomena. They focus the discussion on bicultural identity integration (BII), an individual difference construct describing the extent to which a bicultural individu...

The field of acculturation spans a rich and broad spectrum of relevant topics, types of populations and geographic areas. It has, however, been slow in incorporating theoretical insights beyond the intergroup relations perspective, neglecting contributions from other social psychology areas, such as the socio-cognitive approach, and from discipline...

The present article proposes an integration between cultural psychology and developmental science. Such an integration would draw on the cultural-psychology principle of culture–psyche interactions, as well as on the developmental-science principle of person↔context relations. Our proposed integration centers on acculturation, which is inherently b...

Ethnic identity is a crucial developmental task for ethnic minority youth. The present study investigated the development of ethnic identity in a large sample of Mexican-origin youth ( N = 674) assessed biennially from age 10 to 19. Latent growth curve modeling was used to examine the trajectory of ethnic identity and its two facets: exploration (e...

This research note addresses the current and potential future role of psychologists in the study of international migration. We review ways in which psychologists have contributed to the study of migration, as well as ways in which psychological scholarship could be integrated with work from other social science fields. Broadly, we discuss four maj...

Intercountry adoptees constitute a distinct acculturating group that differs from traditional immigrant groups. Yet, there is a lack of research examining the psychosocial processes related to the well-being of this group and how these differ from other immigrant groups. A study carried out in Italy based on a sample group of young immigrants (N =...

This article proposes a social network approach to the study of multiple cultural identifications. We argue that social network theory and social network methodology are essential for a truly dynamic examination of how multiple cultural identifications develop and how they are negotiated. This article starts by defining some relevant concepts (i.e....

We examined two conceptualizations of bicultural identity – the Bicultural Identity Integration (BII) framework (cultural identity blendedness-distance and harmony-conflict) and cultural hybridizing and alternating (mixing one’s two cultural identities and/or switching between them). Utilizing data from a 12-day diary study with 873 Hispanic colleg...

Individuals socialized in multiple cultures actively construct their bicultural identity in the context of relevant life events. However, the content and meaning of these experiences, as subjectively constructed and understood by the individual, remain largely unexplored in relation to biculturalism outcomes. Using a narrative approach, two studies...

Previous studies have shown that the presence of age‐based stereotypes in the workplace is often associated with lower levels of work engagement and adjustment among older employees. This study examines possible mediators and moderators of this relationship using data from a sample of 2348 older (age > 50) employees at the Italian national rail com...

The intent of this Special Issue is to be a starting point for a broadly-defined European cultural psychology. Across seven research articles, the authors of this Special Issue explore what European culture(s) and European identity entail, how acculturation within the European cultural contexts takes place and under what conditions a multicultural...

This research examines how the social networks of immigrants residing in a European bicultural and bilingual context (Catalonia) relate to levels of adjustment (both psychological and sociocultural) and to bicultural identity integration (BII). Moroccan, Pakistani, Ecuadorian, and Romanian immigrants residing in Barcelona nominated 25 individuals (...

Bicultural Identity Integration (BII) is an individual difference construct that captures variations in the experience of biculturalism. Using multiple samples in a series of steps, we refined BII measurement and then tested the construct in a diverse sample of bicultural individuals. Specifically, we wrote new BII items based on qualitative data (...

An adequate understanding of the acculturation processes affecting immigrants and their descendants involves ascertaining the dynamic interplay between the way these individuals manage their multiple (and sometimes conflictual) cultural value systems and identifications and possible changes in their social networks. To fill this gap, the present re...

Inspired by sociolinguistic scholarship, this study examines the influence of linguistic vitality, the social health of a language, on perceived in-group threat and out-group attitudes. Using an experimental design that manipulated perceptions of the linguistic vitality of French in Quebec, this study sought to ascertain the causal role of linguist...

Latino Americans have to navigate involvement and identification with two cultural groups—their ethnic culture and the dominant American culture. Differences in cultural identifications have been found to correlate with political affiliation and attitudes toward acculturation. Using a sample of U.S.-born Mexican Americans, we examined several corre...

This chapter reviews the construct of biculturalism, focusing on individuals with multiple cultural backgrounds. The chapter focuses on biculturalism as a heterogeneous label, and it covers several variants of biculturalism that have been studied. A number of biculturalism-related constructs are discussed, including endorsement of two or more cultu...

Introduction Acculturation has become a reality of life, as increasing numbers of individuals have moved from one culture to another, either for work or educational purposes (e.g., expatriates, employees of international firms or international students), or to find better living circumstances and happiness elsewhere (e.g., refugees or immigrants)....

The ethnic identity development plays a crucial role in adolescence and emerging adulthood and may be more complex for adoptees who do not share their ethnic identity with their adoptive families. Evidence from the studies was mixed, with strong ethnic identity not always found to be indicative of improved psychological adjustment. Recently researc...

The study of multicultural identity has gained prominence in recent decades and will be even more urgent as the mobility of individuals and social groups becomes the 'new normal'. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art theoretical advancements and empirical discoveries of multicultural identity processes at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and co...

This study examined, in a sample of recently immigrated Hispanic adolescents in Miami and Los Angeles, the extent to which bicultural identity integration (BII; involving the ability to synthesise one's heritage and receiving cultural streams and to identify as a member of both cultures) is best understood as a developmental construct that changes...

Current immigration societies consist of a growing number of culturally different immigrant groups and fading majority groups (Van Oudenhoven & Ward, 2013). The present paper states that, as a consequence of this new composition of societies, immigrants and native inhabitants will use increasingly more individualized ways of approaching members of...

We live in a world defined by cultural diversity, and, thus, multicultural experiences and identities have become a regular component of many individuals’ lives. The Oxford Handbook of Multicultural Identity: Basic and Applied Psychological Perspectives, which consists of 22 chapters written by some of the most accomplished scholars on the topic, r...

A number of studies have focused on Bicultural Identity Integration (BII) to explore whether and how migrants and ethnic minorities, who experience multiple cultural belongings, perceive their two cultural backgrounds as compatible (vs. conflictual) and to study the impact of these differences on their psychosocial well-being. Nevertheless, there i...

Numerous studies have documented subtle but consistent sex differences in self-reports and observer-ratings of five-factor personality traits, and such effects were found to show well-defined developmental trajectories and remarkable similarity across nations. In contrast, very little is known about perceived gender differences in five-factor trait...

Abstract Numerous studies have documented subtle but consistent sex differences in self-reports and observer-ratings of five-factor personality traits, and such effects were found to show welldefined developmental trajectories and remarkable similarity across nations. In contrast, very little is known about perceived gender differences in five-fact...

Consensual stereotypes of some groups are relatively accurate, whereas others are not. Previous work suggesting that national character stereotypes are inaccurate has been criticized on several grounds. In this article we (a) provide arguments for the validity of assessed national mean trait levels as criteria for evaluating stereotype accuracy; an...

The present study used a randomized design, with fully bilingual Hispanic participants from the Miami area, to investigate 2 sets of research questions. First, we sought to ascertain the extent to which measures of acculturation (Hispanic and U.S. practices, values, and identifications) satisfied criteria for linguistic measurement equivalence. Sec...

Today's diverse society often includes culturally rich environments that contain cues pertaining to more than one culture. These cultural cues can shape cognitive processes, such as creativity. Recent evidence shows that bicultural experience enhances creativity, and that for culture-related domains, this effect is particularly evident among bicult...

Today’s diverse society often includes culturally rich environments that contain cues pertaining to more than one culture. These cultural cues can shape cognitive processes, such as creativity. Recent evidence shows that bicultural experience enhances creativity, and that for culture-related domains, this effect is particularly evident among bicult...

OBJECTIVE: Whether language shapes cognition has long been a controversial issue. The present research adopts a functional approach to examining the effects of language use on personality perception and dialectical thinking. We propose that language use activates corresponding cultural mindsets which in turn influence social perception, thinking, a...

Biculturalism (having two cultures) is a growing social phenomenon that has received considerable attention in psychology in the last decade; however, the issue of what impact (if any) biculturalism has on individuals’ adjustment remains empirically unclear. To answer this question, we conducted a meta-analysis that included 83 studies, 322 rs, and...

Age trajectories for personality traits are known to be similar across cultures. To address whether stereotypes of age groups reflect these age-related changes in personality, we asked participants in 26 countries (N = 3,323) to rate typical adolescents, adults, and old persons in their own country. Raters across nations tended to share similar bel...

This chapter tries to strike a balance between "what is" and "what should be" the practice of measurement in social-personality research. The authors review the traditional reliability coefficients but urge the reader to think about facets of generalizability, such as time, items, and observers, and to explicitly adopt a generalizability framework....

We applied the concept of naïve dialecticism (Peng & Nisbett, 1999), which characterizes East Asians’ greater tendency to encompass contradictory, ever-changing, and interrelated features of an entity, to bicultural contexts and examined its effects on psychological well-being across various acculturating groups. We administered questionnaire measu...

This chapter discusses the psychological and societal processes involved in the phenomenon of multiculturalism. An emphasis is placed on reviewing and integrating relevant findings and theories stemming from cultural, personality, and social psychology. The chapter includes sections devoted to defining multiculturalism at the individual, group, and...

Given the growing numbers of bicultural individuals in the United States and around the world, bicultural identity integration(BII) is an important construct that helps researchers to better capture the diversity within this group. In this chapter, we organize and summarize the limited literature on individual differences in bicultural identity, wi...

An emerging body of empirical research highlights the impact of acculturative stress in the lives of culturally diverse populations. Therefore, to facilitate future research in this area, we conducted 3 studies to examine the psychometric properties of the Riverside Acculturation Stress Inventory (RASI; Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005) and its 5 s...

In this chapter, we define and discuss the constructs of multiculturalism and multicultural identity from both an individual and societal perspective, and also quickly summarize the relevant issues in acculturation theory, from which current cultural identity research took its roots. Second, we identify some concerns in multicultural identity resea...

This study explored the role of acculturation and bicultural identity processes in the interpersonal conflict resolution preferences of monoculturals (Koreans and European Americans) and biculturals (Korean Americans). Koreans and European Americans differed in their conflict resolution styles in a manner congruent with individualism-collectivism t...

College students (N=3,435) in 26 cultures reported their perceptions of age-related changes in physical, cognitive, and socioemotional areas of functioning and rated societal views of aging within their culture. There was widespread cross-cultural consensus regarding the expected direction of aging trajectories with (a) perceived declines in societ...

Understanding score reliability is a necessary step in examining the validity of acculturation instruments. Thus, the authors evaluate the aggregate reliability of three multigroup, bidimensional acculturation instruments: General Ethnicity Questionnaire– Abridged, Stephenson Multigroup Acculturation Scale, and Vancouver Index of Acculturation. Rel...

In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in the study of biculturalism and bicultural identities. Broadly speaking, bicultural individuals may be immigrants, refugees, sojourners, indigenous people, ethnic minorities, those in inter-ethnic relationships, and mixed-ethnic individuals. More strictly defined, bicultural individuals are thos...

To explore the possible socio-cognitive consequences of biculturalism, we examined the complexity of cultural representations in monocultural and bicultural individuals. Study 1 found that Chinese-American biculturals’ free descriptions of both American and Chinese cultures were higher in cognitive complexity than that of Anglo-American monocultura...

In two samples of Latino biculturals, we examined the link between bicultural identity integration (BII; degree of compatibility vs. opposition perceived between ethnic and mainstream cultural orientations; Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 20052. Benet-Martínez , V. and Haritatos , J. 2005. Bicultural identity integration (BII): Components, and psycho...

The present article explores whether effects of cultural primes are influenced by identity motives as well as by construct accessibility. The authors hypothesized that assimilative responses (shifting one’s judgments toward the norm of the primed culture) are driven by identification motives, whereas contrastive responses (shifting away from this n...

The present investigation examined the impact of bicultural identity, bilingualism, and social context on the psychological adjustment of multicultural individuals. Our studies targeted three distinct types of biculturals: Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong, Filipino domestic workers (i.e., sojourners) in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong and Mainland...

Personality is shaped by both genetic and en­ vironmental factors; among the most impor­ tant of the latter are cultural influences. Cul­ ture consists of shared meaning systems that provide the standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating, communicating, and acting among those who share a language, a historic period, and a geographic location (...

Cultural contact due to migration, globalization, travel, and the resulting cultural diversity, has led to growing numbers of bicultural individuals, which demands further research on this group. In this article, we introduce the concept of biculturalism and provide the foundation necessary for understanding literature on this topic, beginning rese...

This study examines the relationship between bicultural individuals' identity structure and their friendship network. A key dimension of identity structure for first-generation immigrants is the degree to which the secondary, host-culture identity is integrated into the primary, ethnic identity. Among first-generation Chinese Americans, regression...

The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is a self-report measure designed to assess the high-order personality traits of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, the BFI was translated from English into 28 languages and administered to 17,837 individuals from 56 nati...

The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is a self-report measure designed to assess the high-order personality traits of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, the BFI was translated from English into 28 languages and administered to 17,837 individuals from 56 nati...

This study examines how the valence of cultural cues in the environment moderates the way biculturals shift between multiple cultural identities. The authors found that when exposed to positive cultural cues, biculturals who perceive their cultural identities as compatible (high bicultural identity integration, or high BII) respond in culturally co...

To explore the possible cognitive consequences of biculturalism, the authors examine the complexity of cultural representations in monocultural and bicultural individuals. Study 1 found that Chinese American biculturals' free descriptions of both American and Chinese cultures are higher in cognitive complexity than that of Anglo-American monocultur...

ABSTRACT Recent research has established the structural robustness of the Big Seven across samples and targets. In this study we analyze a diverse pool of Spanish personality terms to assess the cross-cultural and cross-language robustness of the Big Seven model. Trait terms were culled from an unabridged Spanish dictionary following the nonrestric...

Four studies examined and empirically documented Cultural Frame Switching (CFS; Hong, Chiu, & Kung, 1997) in the domain of personality. Specifically, we asked whether Spanish–English bilinguals show different personalities when using different languages? If so, are the two personalities consistent with cross-cultural differences in personality? To...

Personality has consequences. Measures of personality have contemporaneous and predictive relations to a variety of important outcomes. Using the Big Five factors as heuristics for organizing the research literature, numerous consequential relations are identified. Personality dispositions are associated with happiness, physical and psychological h...

The present study examines the underresearched topic of bicultural identity; specifically, we: (1) unpack the construct of Bicultural Identity Integration (BII), or the degree to which a bicultural individual perceives his/her two cultural identities as "compatible" versus "oppositional," and (2) identify the personality (Big Five) and acculturatio...

Cross-cultural studies usually compare the psychology of people from different countries and thus focus on how cultures influence people's psychology. In contrast, in 2000, Hong, Morris, Chiu, and Benet-Martínez demonstrated the dynamics of cultural influence within individuals who have been exposed extensively to two cultures (biculturals); they s...

This study explored how personality and cultural variables influence subjective well-being (SWB) in two different U.S. ethnic groups: Asian Americans and European Americans. Structural equation modeling analyses supported a hypothesized culture?personality model of SWB, in which the cultural syndromes of individualism and collectivism predict varia...

This paper presents recent work examining the meaning and impact of individual variations in the way bicultural individuals organize their two cultural identities, a construct that we call Bicultural Identity Integration (BII). While biculturals high on BII describe their two cultural identities as ‘compatible’ (fluid and complementary), bicultural...

The authors propose that cultural frame shifting—shifting between two culturally based interpretative lenses in response to cultural cues—is moderated by perceived compatibility (vs. opposition) between the two cultural orientations, or bicultural identity integration (BII). Three studies found that Chinese American biculturals who perceived their...

So-called highly ‘evaluative’ personality judgments (e.g. describing someone as exceptional, odd, or vile,) are an integral component of people's daily judgments of themselves and others. However, little is known about the conceptual structure, psychological function, and personality-relevance of these kinds of attribution. Two studies were conduct...

This research argues that the meaning embedded in consumption symbols, such as commercial brands, can serve to represent and institutionalize the values and beliefs of a culture. Relying on a combined emic-etic approach, the authors conducted 4 studies to examine how symbolic and expressive attributes associated with commercial brands are structure...

This research argues that the meaning embedded in consumption symbols, such as commercial brands, can serve to represent and institutionalize the values and beliefs of a culture. Relying on a combined emic-etic approach, the authors conducted 4 studies to examine how symbolic and expressive attributes associated with commercial brands are structure...

Can the Big Five be recovered in Spanish? Several recent cross-cultural studies indicate that imported (i.e., translated) Big Five measures replicate in Spanish but that existing indigenous Spanish personality taxonomies map only partially onto the Big Five domain. This article outlines a complementary midlevel approach that involves identifying a...

The authors present a new approach to culture and cognition, which focuses on the dynamics through which specific pieces of cultural knowledge (implicit theories) become operative in guiding the construction of meaning from a stimulus. Whether a construct comes to the fore in a perceiver's mind depends on the extent to which the construct is highly...

Spanish-language measures of the Big Five personality dimensions are needed for research on Hispanic minority populations. Three studies were conducted to evaluate a Spanish version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI) (O. P. John et al., 1991) and explore the generalizability of the Big Five factor structure in Latin cultural groups. In Study 1, a cros...

Spanish-language measures of the Big Five personality dimensions are needed for research on Hispanic minority populations. Three studies were conducted to evaluate a Spanish version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI) (O. P. John et al., 1991) and explore the generalizability of the Big Five factor structure in Latin cultural groups. In Study 1, a cros...

The discovery of the Big Seven factor model of natural language personality description (Tellegen, 1993; Tellegen & Waller, 1987; Waller, in press; Waller & Zavala, 1993) challenges the comprehensiveness of the Big Five factor structure. To establish the robustness and cross-cultural generalizability of the seven-factor model, a Big Seven (Tellegen...

The discovery of the Big Seven factor model of natural language personality description (Tellegen, 1993; Tellegen & Waller, 1987; Waller, in press; Waller & Zavala, 1993) challenges the comprehensiveness of the Big Five factor structure. To establish the robustness and cross-cultural generalizability of the seven-factor model, a Big Seven (Tellegen...

ABSTRACT Recent Studies of person-situation correspondence demonstrate that people actively select environments that are congruent with their personality, attitudes, motives, and goals (cf. Emmons, Diener, & Larsen, 1986). But do these individual difference variables also influence a person's propensity to remain in an environment over time? To ans...