Big Six Personality Traits in the Africa Long Life Study

• We created short, single-term Big 6 scales using an item selection algorithm. • The scales were measurement invariant across Kenya, Namibia, and South Africa. • The Big Six were robustly associated with mental/physical health and religiosity. • Honesty, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness matched US/European findings. • Extraversion and Emotionality showed cross-cultural differences. We explored Big Six personality traits and their correlates among 18-year-olds from Kenya, Namibia, and South Africa ( N = 1,746). Established Big-Five and Six-inventories contain culture-specific phrasing and lack fit and measurement invariance in Africa. Using the original maker terms from diverse lexical studies used to build the HEXACO, we created new, single-term Big Six scales with good fit and measurement invariance across countries, which we used to explore concurrent and predictive associations with mental/physical health, and religiosity. Results for Honesty, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness replicated findings from North America and Europe, while Extraversion and Emotionality did not, indicating more cultural-specificity. Our method represents a middle path between imported and culture-specific personality research, a promising approach for cross-cultural research.