PERSONALITY TRAITS AND SOCIAL IDENTITIES IN NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The study investigated the relationship between personality traits and social identities among undergraduates. A total of 170 students, men 93(56%) and women 77 (44%), age range 17 to 32 years, with mean age 21.95 years and standard deviation 2.67 participated in the study. Participants were from year one (26), year two (32), year three (50) and year four (62) students. The participants were Christians and their States of origin were; Ana mbra state 93, Imo 49, Ebonyi 5, Enugu 11, Abia 5, Ogun 3, and Akwa-Ibom 4. Four instruments were deployed for data collection: National Identity Scale (NIS) developed by Lilli and Deihl (1999), Global Identity Scale (GIS-10) developed by Turken and Rudmin (2003), Big Five Personality Inventory (BPI) by Golberge (1993) and satisfaction with life scale by Diener, Emmons, Larsen and Griffin (1985). Statistics used was Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. Design for the study was correlation design. Participants were selected through simple random and accidental random sampling. Zero order correlation coefficient of personality traits and national identity showed that only openness to experience correlated significantly positively with national identity. Similarly, zero order correlation coefficient of personality traits and global identity revealed that all personality traits correlated significantly positively with subjective well being. Also, global identity correlated significantly positively with subjective well being. The implication of the result for policy formation is that global identity has better prospects than national identity in national development. It is recommended that government should enshrine global identity ideology among school pupils to enhance sense of globalization from early years. Policy makers should adopt globalized views on all areas of public life especially leadership positions. Finally, law makers should incorporate sense of global identity as law in Nigerian public life to ensure public compliance. Basically, well being beats in every heart among diverse cultures.