This valuable text presents an exhaustive examination of the relative importance and favorability assigned to different psychological characteristics in a variety of cultural settings. Importance ratings in a worldwide sample of twenty countries, and the relative favorability of these traits in a subset of ten, are calculated in terms of the Five-Factor Model of personality and other scoring systems. One noteworthy chapter summarizes findings from previous cross-cultural studies evaluating gender and age stereotypes and self concepts. A unique feature is the extensive set of appendices, of which two let readers test hypotheses of their own devising and provide the individual item values for the Five-Factor Model scoring system.