New research done on cross-culture personality traits may help WSU researchers understand how to help improve moods in a more successful way.

A study found that people who participate in extroverted behaviors experienced more positive moods, said Timothy Church, WSU professor of counseling psychology.

The study was unique because the researchers studied college students’ personalities in the U.S., Venezuela, China, Japan, and the Philippines. Their cross-culture findings help the researchers understand how similarly people from different cultures behave, Church said.

Application of the study’s findings carries over to Church’s work as a counselor.

“(This) suggests some understanding of how personality will predict how people will behave,” Church said.

In an earlier study about personality, researchers also found that across cultures people use the same dimensions to describe personality traits, which was generalized to the big five personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, Church said.

“One reason that we found that personality traits predict behavior and mood is because there’s evidence that personality is biologically based, and not just based on what’s happening in environment around us,” Church said.

To conduct the study researchers used the big five personality traits to create a survey that students filled out. They also asked students to track their moods three times per day over the course of 20 days, said Charles Matthew Ching, community partner graduate assistant in counseling services.

The day-to-day data collection helped the researchers test whether the big five traits actually can predict how people feel or act on a daily basis and whether it’s different across cultures, Church said.

Researchers at WSU collected data here while collaborators at colleges in the other countries collected data and sent it back to Church and his team, Ching said.

“People between cultures might respond similarly to these potential treatments or approaches in trying to improve mood,” Ching said.

The study could help the application of counseling with foreign exchange students. The findings will help the team to more accurately predict if a student will be academically successful, successful speaking a foreign language, said Fernanado Ortiz, director of counseling at Gonzaga University.

“The study builds on previous research, continues to benefit humanity,” Ortiz said.

Researchers hope to continue studying personality traits to try and refine questions and make more specific predictions, Ortiz said.

The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality and funded by the National Science Foundation, Church said.

“The ability to pull researchers together takes a lot of work,” Ortiz said. “(We are) very grateful for that.”