Personality-Outcome Links in Sub-Saharan Africa

Personality traits - characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors - have been found to predict outcomes across various important life domains, including educational attainment (Noftle & Robins, 2007), relationship success (Wagner et al., 2015), income (Denissen et al., 2018), health limitations (Jokela et al., 2018; Kern & Friedman, 2011), the occurrence of major life stressors (Santee et al., 2023), and mortality (Jokela et al., 2013; Martin et al., 2007). The predictive power of personality traits seems to be on par or even surpasses that of other commonly studied predictors like socio-economic status or cognitive abilities (Roberts et al., 2007). Furthermore, personality-outcome links have been replicated across studies, a range of possible covariates, and different research methods (Beck & Jackson, 2022; Soto, 2019; Wright & Jackson, 2023), underlining the practical relevance of personality traits (Bleidorn et al., 2019). However, findings on personality-outcome relations stem almost exclusively from Western countries. For example, the systematic review by Roberts et al. (2007) included only one study conducted in Asia and not a single study conducted in Africa. Similarly, the mega-analysis by Beck and Jackson (2022) included only datasets that were collected in Western countries. Although a handful of studies examined personality-outcome relations in African countries, these studies were typically limited by the use of small samples, non-validated personality inventories, or cross-sectional designs (Kinyanjui & Sum, 2023; Nel et al., 2017). These limitations leave it unclear whether findings on personality-outcome associations generalize to African countries. As most psychological phenomena are impacted by cultural context, it cannot just be assumed that findings from Western countries generalize to all people (Henrich et al., 2010). In fact, there are several reasons to assume that findings on personality-outcome associations from Western countries might not generalize to African countries. First, the structure of personality traits seems to be different in African countries compared to Western societies (Thalmayer et al., 2022). While most research in Western countries has focused on the Big Five personality traits (Bleidorn, 2024), it has recently been shown that personality in Africa may better be captured by the Big Two personality traits, Agency and Communion (Thalmayer, Mather, et al., 2024). Second, individuals living in Africa are faced with a myriad of contextual challenges, including social, economic, and political risks (Herrero Romero et al., 2018), making them vulnerable to poverty, high levels of crime, and domestic violence (Gradín, 2019; Theron et al., 2022). These challenging conditions may influence what kind of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are adaptive and thus influence personality-outcome associations. Relatedly, there is initial evidence that young adults living in Africa report different kinds of life events and differ in their personality-event transactions compared to young adults from Western countries, indicating that the interplay between personality and the environment may differ across cultural contexts (Haehner et al., 2025). Third, contexts differ in what kind of behaviors are rewarded or punished, which again may influence personality-outcome associations (Hofstede, 2011). With the present study, we aim to provide a better understanding of the cross-cultural generalizability of personality-outcome links. To do so, we will use longitudinal data from the Africa Long Life Study (Thalmayer, Asatsa, et al., 2024), which assessed personality traits and life outcomes over 3 years among young adults from Namibia, Kenya, and South Africa. We will examine longitudinal associations between personality traits and seven important life outcomes: self-reported health, subjective well-being, depression, anxiety, relationship status, employment status, and subjective financial status. Furthermore, we will use specification curve analysis to investigate the robustness of these associations across various methodological decisions, such as the included covariates or the examined country.