Anu Realo
Biographic Data
| ID | 80704 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anu Realo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anu |
| FAMILY NAME | Realo |
| SIGNATURE | REALO A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tartu |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0649-274X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 71 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 558 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 71 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Loneliness and Personality: Noise‐ and Bias‐Free True Correlations Between Loneliness and the Big Five Personality Domains
Objective While loneliness is intertwined with many mental and physical health problems, its origins are not yet well understood. We sought to better understand its link to personality in a large national cohort. Methods Combining self‐ and informant ratings in multiple samples, we conducted the largest study to date to examine loneliness' true correlations ( r true s) with the Big Five personality traits, free of single‐method biases and transie…
Mapping Life Satisfaction Over the First Years of Cohabitation Among Former Singles Living Alone in UK and Germany
Objective As social norms and relationship dynamics evolve, it is important to examine how transitions from singlehood to partnership, cohabitation, and marriage relate to well‐being. Method Using data from two large panel studies in the UK and Germany (1984–2019), we identified N = 27,459 individuals who reported being single and living alone at least once. Analyses focused on a subset ( N = 1103; M age = 38.35, SD age = 13.87; 43.8% women) who …
Age as a moderator of gender differences in Five-Factor Model personality traits: A cross-national and cross-sectional study
This study examines how age moderates gender differences in Five-Factor Model personality traits across cultures.Prior research suggests that women generally score higher than men on these traits, with a larger gender gap observed in personality traits in more economically developed, egalitarian, and individualistic countries.Gender differences also vary across age, yet the timing of these changes and the extent to which they are culturally unive…
Elusive specific variance: A marginal effect on the accuracy of personality judgment
Most people's life satisfaction matches their personality traits: True correlations in multitrait, multirater, multisample data
70 and its longitudinal associations with personality traits mirrored cross-sectional ones. We conclude that without common measurement limitations, most people's life satisfaction is highly consistent with their personality traits, even across many years. So, satisfaction is usually shaped by these same relatively stable factors that shape personality traits more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Being kind to self is being kind to sleep? A structural equation modelling approach evaluating the direct and indirect associations of self-compassion with sleep quality, emotional distress and mental…
Internet voting: The role of personality traits and trust across three parliamentary elections in Estonia
Some countries offer options to vote in elections remotely via the internet. However, not all voters take up this opportunity. This study investigates the role of the Five-Factor Model personality traits in the choice to use internet voting, and the potential mediating effects of trust in internet voting, controlling for sociodemographic variables. Survey data collected after national elections in Estonia in 2011 ( N = 482), 2015 ( N = 535), and …
The Self-Compassion Scale: Validation and Psychometric Properties within the Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling Framework
The Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) is one of the several tools for measuring compassionate self-attitude. Despite its popularity, there is an ongoing controversy regarding its factor structure. Previous studies employing exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) found support for the single-bifactor (one general and six group factors) model over the competing two-bifactor (two general factors representing compassionate and uncompassionate self…
The influence of sleep on subjective well-being: An experience sampling study
Previous research has associated sleep with subjective well-being (SWB), but less is known about the underlying within-person processes. In the current study, we investigated how self-reported and actigraphy-measured sleep parameters (sleep onset latency, sleep duration, sleep satisfaction, social jetlag, and sleep efficiency) influence SWB (positive affect [PA], negative affect [NA], and life satisfaction [LS]) at the within- and between-person …
Does personality predict traveling abroad as indicated by mobile phone data? The idea of the mobile personality revisited
The present study examines the associations between the Five-Factor Model personality traits and the trips abroad over a period of 12 months in a sample of 349 adults by using Call Detail Records. Our findings show that the modern-day traveler is likely younger, open to new values (O6) and experiences (O4) and seeking novelty and excitement (E5). Higher Extraversion, especially higher levels of social dominance (E3) and energy (E4), and higher sp…
On the relationship between valence and arousal in samples across the globe
Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question-the focus of the present study-is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in the world) arousal was found to vary with valence. One common finding is that arousal is lowest at neu…
Age differences in personality traits and social desirability: A multi-rater multi-sample study
Personality traits relate to chronotype at both the phenotypic and genetic level
INTRODUCTION: Diurnal preferences have been linked to personality but often with mixed results. The present study examines the relationships between sleep timing (chronotype), diurnal preferences, and the Five-Factor Model of personality traits at the phenotypic and genetic level. METHODS: = 45.76 years; 59% females). Genetic correlations were obtained through summary statistics of genome-wide association studies. RESULTS: Results showed that hig…
Can a ‘rewards-for-exercise app’ increase physical activity, subjective well-being and sleep quality? An open-label single-arm trial among university staff with low to moderate physical activity level…
The study suggests that mobile incentives-for-exercise applications might increase physical activity levels, positive affect, and sleep quality, at least in the short term. The observed changes were not sustained 12 months after the end of the trial
Bedtime social media use, sleep, and affective wellbeing in young adults: An experience sampling study
BACKGROUND: Findings from primarily cross-sectional studies have linked more extensive social media use to poorer sleep and affective wellbeing among adolescents and young adults. This study examined bedtime social media use, sleep, and affective wellbeing, using an experience sampling methodology with the aim of establishing a day-to-day temporal link between the variables. The study hypothesized a positive association between increased bedtime …
Factors Predicting the Scientific Wealth of Nations
It has been repeatedly demonstrated that economic affluence is one of the main predictors of the scientific wealth of nations. Yet, the link is not as straightforward as is often presented. First, only a limited set of relatively affluent countries is usually studied. Second, there are differences between equally rich countries in their scientific success. The main aim of the present study is to find out which factors can enhance or suppress the …
Source method biases as implicit personality theory at the domain and facet levels
OBJECTIVE: We tested predictions about the structure and magnitude of method biases in single-source personality trait assessments. We expected a large number of distinct biases that would parallel the observed structure of traits, at both facet and item levels. METHOD: We analyzed multimethod ratings on the Estonian NEO Personality Inventory-3 in a sample of 3,214 adults. By subtracting informant ratings from self-reports, we eliminated true sco…
What Makes Young Russians Happy and Satisfied With Their Lives
Participants ( N = 10,672 with the mean age of 20.7 years) of the Russian Character and Personality Survey (RCPS), involving 40 universities or colleges from across the Russian Federation, rated their happiness and satisfaction with life; the ratings were combined into an index of subjective well-being (SWB). Using the National Character Survey (NCS), participants also rated their own personality characteristics as well as those of an ideal perso…
Comparisons of Daily Behavior Across 21 Countries
While a large body of research has investigated cultural differences in behavior, this typical study assesses a single behavioral outcome, in a single context, compared across two countries. The current study compared a broad array of behaviors across 21 countries ( N = 5,522). Participants described their behavior at 7:00 p.m. the previous evening using the 68 items of the Riverside Behavioral Q-sort (RBQ). Correlations between average patterns …
SNP‐Based Heritability Estimates of Common and Specific Variance in Self‐ and Informant‐Reported Neuroticism Scales
OBJECTIVE: Our study aims to estimate the proportion of the phenotypic variance of Neuroticism and its facet scales that can be attributed to common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in two adult populations from Estonia (EGCUT; N = 3,292) and the Netherlands (Lifelines; N = 13,383). METHOD: Genomic-relatedness-matrix restricted maximum likelihood (GREML) using genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA) software was employed. To build upon pr…
The Relationship Between Social Capital and Individualism–Collectivism in Europe
Preferred Interpersonal Distances: A Global Comparison
Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of…
Mean Profiles of the NEO Personality Inventory
The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and its latest version, the NEO-PI-3, were designed to measure 30 distinctive personality traits, which are grouped into Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness domains. The mean self-rated NEO-PI-R scores for 30 subscales have been reported for 36 countries or cultures in 2002. As a follow-up, this study reports the mean scores of the NEO-PI-R/3 for 71,870 partici…
Genetic variants associated with subjective well-being, depressive symptoms, and neuroticism identified through genome-wide analyses
The World at 7: 00: Comparing the Experience of Situations Across 20 Countries
The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world. Local collaborators recruited 5,447 members of college communities in 20 countries, who provided data via a Web site in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Q‐sort (RSQ), participants described the situation they experienced the previous evening at 7:00 p.m. Correlations among the average situational profiles of eac…
Why can't a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in Big Five personality traits across 55 cultures
Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities equal with those of men. In this article, the authors report cross-cultural findings in which this unintuitive result was replicated across samples from 55 nations (N = 17,637). On responses to the Big Five Inventory, women reported higher levels of neuroticism, extraversion, agr…
Individualism-Collectivism and Social Capital
Many social scientists have predicted that one inevitable consequence of modernization is the unlimited growth of individualism, which poses serious threats to the organic unity of society. Others have argued that autonomy and independence are necessary conditions for the development of interpersonal cooperation and social solidarity. We reanalyzed available data on the relationship between individualism-collectivism and social capital within one…
The role of positive and negative emotions in life satisfaction judgment across nations
This study examined how the frequency of positive and negative emotions is related to life satisfaction across nations. Participants were 8,557 people from 46 countries who reported on their life satisfaction and frequency of positive and negative emotions. Multilevel analyses showed that across nations, the experience of positive emotions was more strongly related to life satisfaction than the absence of negative emotions. Yet, the cultural dime…
Radius of Trust: Social Capital in Relation to Familism and Institutional Collectivism
Countries in which people believe that "most people can be trusted" and where citizens belong to a larger number of different voluntary associations are more individualistic, emphasizing the importance of independence and freedom to choose one's own goals. The present study examines the relationship between social capital and individualism/collectivism using a measure that distinguishes between familism and institutional collectivism. Familism co…
The Hierarchical Structure of Collectivism
Gender Stereotypes of Personality: Universal and Accurate
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 traits in spite of their potential implications for gender biases at the interpersonal and societal level…
Preferred Interpersonal Distances: A Global Comparison
Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of…
Social representations of HIV/Aids in Central and Eastern Europe
Stereotypes of age differences in personality traits: Universal and accurate
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 beliefs about different age groups; adolescents were seen as impulsive, rebellious, undisciplined, pref…
Why are moderators of self-other agreement difficult to establish
Agreement between the self and other rated personality profiles was studied in two samples involving 11,096 speakers of two languages, Dutch and Estonian, who completed two different personality questionnaires, the NEO-PI-3 and HEXACO-PI-R. An outstanding agreement was achieved in the most occasions: in only 4–6% of dyadic pairs was the correlation between two randomly paired profiles higher than the actually observed correlation between true pai…
Cross-rater agreement on common and specific variance of personality scales and items
Values and Sexual Behaviour in Central and Eastern Europe
Despite the profusion of social cognitive models for the prediction of sexual behaviour, we have only limited knowledge as to the role of individual values in predicting risky sexual activity. This study assessed the relationship between a recently developed value structure and sexual behaviour in the context of rising HIV infection in central and eastern Europe. Five hundred and three respondents (business people, doctors and nurses) from Estoni…
A comparison of self-other agreement in personal values versus the Big Five personality traits
Comparison of Public and Academic Discourses: Estonian Individualism and Collectivism Revisited
The article studies the meaning of individualism and collectivism from two different perspectives—from the viewpoints of the academic discipline of cross-cultural psychology and of Estonian public discourse. More specifically, the aim of this study is to explore and understand the difference between Estonians' autostereotype of their extreme individualism and the opposing opinion held by the cross-cultural research community that sees Estonia as …
Mean Profiles of the NEO Personality Inventory
The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and its latest version, the NEO-PI-3, were designed to measure 30 distinctive personality traits, which are grouped into Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness domains. The mean self-rated NEO-PI-R scores for 30 subscales have been reported for 36 countries or cultures in 2002. As a follow-up, this study reports the mean scores of the NEO-PI-R/3 for 71,870 partici…
The emergence of sex differences in personality traits in early adolescence: A cross-sectional, cross-cultural study
Although large international studies have found consistent patterns of sex differences in personality traits among adults (i.e., women scoring higher on most facets), less is known about cross-cultural sex differences in adolescent personality and the role of culture and age in shaping them. The present study examines the NEO Personality Inventory-3 (McCrae, Costa, & Martin, 2005) informant ratings of adolescents from 23 cultures (N = 4,850), and…
The Relationship Between Social Capital and Individualism–Collectivism in Europe
The Relationship Between Life Satisfaction and Emotional Experience in 21 European Countries
In the current study, the relationship between life satisfaction (LS) and the affective components of subjective well-being (SWB) was examined in a sample of 40,487 people across 21 European countries using data from the European Social Survey. After running multilevel confirmatory factor analyses in order to establish the measurement invariance of the constructs across the countries, the individual-level dataset was linked to available country-l…
Does life satisfaction change with age? A comparison of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Sweden
How people see others is different from how people see themselves: A replicable pattern across cultures
Consensus studies from 4 cultures--in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Germany--as well as secondary analyses of self- and observer-reported Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) data from 29 cultures suggest that there is a cross-culturally replicable pattern of difference between internal and external perspectives for the Big Five personality traits. People see themselves as more neurotic and open to experience compared to how t…
Variance determines self-observer agreement on the Big Five personality traits
Mind-reading ability: Beliefs and performance
The inaccuracy of national character stereotypes
"Personality Profiles and the "Russian Soul: Literary and Scholarly Views Evaluated
Many domestic and foreign observers have claimed that Russians have a unique constellation of personality traits that mirrors their distinctive historical and cultural experience. To examine the hypothesized uniqueness of Russian personality, members of the Russian Character and Personality Survey collected data from 39 samples in 33 administrative areas of the Russian Federation. Respondents ( N = 7,065) identified an ethnically Russian adult or…
An attempt to validate national mean scores of Conscientiousness: No necessarily paradoxical findings
The Hierarchical Nature of Individualism-Collectivism: Comments on Matsumoto et al. (1996)
Matsumoto, Kudoh and Takeuchi's (1996) article is challenged in this commentary by pointing to the discrepancy between theoretical assumptions of the dynamic nature of culture, and measurement of individualism-collectivism in terms J of traditional psychometric scales. Data from an Estonian study of a similar kind are provided to add to the complex picture of statements about individualism and collectivism in different countries. The counter-intu…
On the relationship between personality and totalitarian regimes: A critique of Western stereotypes
(1996). On the relationship between personality and totalitarian regimes: A critique of Western stereotypes. Journal of Baltic Studies: Vol. 27, No. 4, pp. 331-340
Psychological and Cultural Mechanisms of Suicide
At the cultural level, persistent associations exist between three groups of psychological variables, individualism-collectivism, locus of control, and subjective well- being, and the suicide rate. These associations may be opposite to what would be expected of purely individual-level analysis. There are several forms of suicide which are controlled by different social and cultural factors: individualism and the perceived locus of control, which …
Emotional Experience and Its Relation to the Five‐Factor Model in Estonian
In this article we studied relations between self‐rated emotional experience and the five‐factor model of personality. Replicating previous findings we found that two dominant dimensions of emotional experience, Negative Affect and Positive Affect (that accounted for three to five times more total variance among Estonian emotion‐related terms than any other factors) are selectively related to Neuroticism and Extraversion. Data supported the hiera…
The Hierarchical Structure of Collectivism
Collectivism in an Individualist Culture: The Case of Estonia
In this article the position of Estonia on the map of individualism-collectivism, is examined. Since Schwartz's (1994) worldwide study of human values, covering more than 40 cultural groups in 38 nations, Estonia has occupied a firm position among the collectivistic countries in cross-cultural literature. The Estonians themselves, however, seem to have quite a contrary opinion on that matter: being labeled as "collectivists" is in sharp contrast …
Theme issue “Multiculturalism: Diversity in Action”
Diversity<iS a fact of life; whether it is the "spice" or the "irritant" to people is the fundamental psychological, social, cultural and political issue of our times (Berry, 1997a:138)
On the Relationship Between Collectivism and Empathy in the Context of Personality Traits
The current research was undertaken with an aim to provide empirical evidence to the proposed relationship between the constructs of empathy and collectivism. Accordingly, following the hierarchical model of collectivism The results showed that links between the collectivistic attitudes and empathy were first and foremost due to correlations between the affective aspect of empathy and the family-and society-related forms of collectivism. To test …
The Nature and Scope of Intra-Cultural Variation on Psychological Dimensions
Much of the research in cross-cultural psychology is done using countries (national cultures) as main units of comparison, disregarding other important characteristics of the participants such as their ethnicity, language, religious or territorial affiliation. Thus, despite the fact that there exist clearly distinguishable sub-cultures within many countries or national cultures, they are often regarded as uniform and homogenous entities in cross-…
Values and Sexual Behaviour in Central and Eastern Europe
Despite the profusion of social cognitive models for the prediction of sexual behaviour, we have only limited knowledge as to the role of individual values in predicting risky sexual activity. This study assessed the relationship between a recently developed value structure and sexual behaviour in the context of rising HIV infection in central and eastern Europe. Five hundred and three respondents (business people, doctors and nurses) from Estoni…
Comparison of Public and Academic Discourses: Estonian Individualism and Collectivism Revisited
The article studies the meaning of individualism and collectivism from two different perspectives—from the viewpoints of the academic discipline of cross-cultural psychology and of Estonian public discourse. More specifically, the aim of this study is to explore and understand the difference between Estonians' autostereotype of their extreme individualism and the opposing opinion held by the cross-cultural research community that sees Estonia as …
Mind-reading ability: Beliefs and performance
Social representations of HIV/Aids in Central and Eastern Europe
Family-Related Allocentrism and HIV Risk Behavior in Central and Eastern Europe
The recent rapid spread of HIV infection in Eastern Europe raises important questions about the role of individual attitudes in the prediction and control of this epidemic. This article examines the relationship of family-related allocentrism (familism) to HIV risk behavior and perceived vulnerability to HIV/AIDS across five Central and Eastern European countries. Respondents completed questionnaires measuring allocentric attitudes, giving inform…
Social representations of HIV/Aids in five central European and eastern European countries: A multidimensional analysis
Cognitive processing models of risky sexual behaviour have proliferated in the two decades since the first reporting of HIV/AIDS, but far less attention has been paid to individual and group representations of the epidemic and the relationship between these representations and reported sexual behaviours. In this study, 494 business people and medics from Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Poland and Russia sorted free associations around HIV/AIDS in a ma…
The relationships between collectivist attitudes and elementary forms of human relations: Evidence from Estonia
This study examined the extent to which collectivist attitudes predict preference for the basic models of social relations. According to Fiske (1991), all social relations can be reduced to four basic forms - communal sharing (CS), authority ranking (AR), equality matching (EM), and market pricing (MP) - that guide people's social initiatives and help them to understand and respond appropriately to the social actions of others. The preference for…
Individualism-Collectivism and Social Capital
Many social scientists have predicted that one inevitable consequence of modernization is the unlimited growth of individualism, which poses serious threats to the organic unity of society. Others have argued that autonomy and independence are necessary conditions for the development of interpersonal cooperation and social solidarity. We reanalyzed available data on the relationship between individualism-collectivism and social capital within one…
National Character Does Not Reflect Mean Personality Trait Levels in 49 Cultures
Most people hold beliefs about personality characteristics typical of members of their own and others' cultures. These perceptions of national character may be generalizations from personal experience, stereotypes with a “kernel of truth,” or inaccurate stereotypes. We obtained national character ratings of 3989 people from 49 cultures and compared them with the average personality scores of culture members assessed by observer ratings and self-r…
The role of positive and negative emotions in life satisfaction judgment across nations
This study examined how the frequency of positive and negative emotions is related to life satisfaction across nations. Participants were 8,557 people from 46 countries who reported on their life satisfaction and frequency of positive and negative emotions. Multilevel analyses showed that across nations, the experience of positive emotions was more strongly related to life satisfaction than the absence of negative emotions. Yet, the cultural dime…
Why can't a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in Big Five personality traits across 55 cultures
Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities equal with those of men. In this article, the authors report cross-cultural findings in which this unintuitive result was replicated across samples from 55 nations (N = 17,637). On responses to the Big Five Inventory, women reported higher levels of neuroticism, extraversion, agr…
Interpreting GLOBE Societal Practices Scales
Some of the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Societal Practices scales ask for descriptions of typical personality traits that might be interpreted as judgments of national character. Ratings of national character reflect cultural identities and social dynamics, but previous research suggests that they are unrelated to the mean personality traits of the culture's members. Analyses at the culture level comparing …
Radius of Trust: Social Capital in Relation to Familism and Institutional Collectivism
Countries in which people believe that "most people can be trusted" and where citizens belong to a larger number of different voluntary associations are more individualistic, emphasizing the importance of independence and freedom to choose one's own goals. The present study examines the relationship between social capital and individualism/collectivism using a measure that distinguishes between familism and institutional collectivism. Familism co…
Perceptions of aging across 26 cultures and their culture-level associates.
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 societal views of aging, physical attractiveness, the ability to perform everyday tasks, and new learning;…
Age-related differences in emotion recognition ability: A cross-sectional study
Experimental studies indicate that recognition of emotions, particularly negative emotions, decreases with age. However, there is no consensus at which age the decrease in emotion recognition begins, how selective this is to negative emotions, and whether this applies to both facial and vocal expression. In the current cross-sectional study, 607 participants ranging in age from 18 to 84 years (mean age = 32.6 +/- 14.9 years) were asked to recogni…
An attempt to validate national mean scores of Conscientiousness: No necessarily paradoxical findings
Psychology (64 works) · Social Psychology (59 works) · Personality (39 works) · Big Five personality traits (32 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (25 works) · Personality Traits and Psychology (25 works) · Developmental psychology (23 works) · Social Psychology (21 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Political science (19 works)