Aneesah Nishaat
The purpose of this study is to investigate differences in personality traits between Nepalese and Japanese university students using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (Gosling et al., 2003), which includes extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experiences. The survey was conducted using random sampling method. The participants consist of 305 Nepalese (124 male, 181 female) and 248 Japanese (131 male, 117 female) students aged between 17 and 23. Independent samples t-tests and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were performed to analyze the data. Both the t-test and ANOVA results revealed a significant difference in personality traits between Nepalese and Japanese students. Nepalese students scored higher on conscientiousness and openness to experience, whereas Japanese students scored significantly higher on neuroticism and extraversion. No significant differences were observed in agreeableness. Furthermore, the ANOVA indicated both male and female Nepalese students scored higher on conscientiousness and openness to experience, whereas male and female Japanese students scored higher on neuroticism and extraversion. The finding that Nepalese students scored higher on openness to experiences than their Japanese counterparts can be attributed to the multicultural society of Nepal. A higher score on conscientiousness can be attributed to scarcity of employment opportunities in Nepal, which makes employment market very competitive and requires a strong academic background for securing a good job. Regarding neuroticism, Japanese students scored higher than Nepalese students. Many comparative studies of personality between Japanese people and people from other countries show that Japanese people score higher in neuroticism than others (Schmitt et al., 2007).
