I’ve come to believe that psychology students should take at least one logic class and one language class, and get some real exposure to cultural thinking after the project I collaborated with a Vietnamese consulting firm past summer.
Content
- Translating BIG5 into Vietnamese
- Roadblock 1: Competing With MBTI’s Simplicity and “Cute” Clarity
- Roadblock 2: How Do We Describe People Without Judging Them?
- Roadblock 3: Okay But… What Do These Traits Really Mean?
- Roadblock 4: Cultural Differences Change Everything
- So What Does This All Mean?
- The Takeaway
Translating BIG5 into Vietnamese
I joined Talemy’s R&D team last the summer. We were building a BIG5 personality report for Vietnamese youth with the goal to encourage young adults understand themselves better and start their “self-discovery journey.”
My role was to write and check the content – which seemingly not to challenging after my Master’s training. But it was… not going as planned.
Over time, the team kept running into roadblocks. And each of them made me realize that understanding psychology isn’t enough when you’re trying to turn research into something non-academic folks can use.
Roadblock 1: Competing With MBTI’s Simplicity and “Cute” Clarity
Having a great tool – empirically tested, and widely accepted – is not enough to grasp people attention.
One of the first questions we hit was: How do we compete with the trendy test on the market – MBTI?
Most of us know our MBTI types. Mine flips between INFP and INFJ depending on the season, the weather, or maybe just my mood.
MBTI isn’t as scientifically grounded as the BIG5, but it’s simple. You get a clean label, a cute character, and a sense that the puzzle of “who am I?” has been solved.
Meanwhile, the BIG5 gives you… numbers. Percentages. A continuous scale.
As researchers, we can make sense of means and standard deviations. But individuals reading their results? They often don’t know what to do with that information.
Which reminded me of my long-lasting frustration:
A lot of psychological tools are designed for groups, not individuals.
But real people want to understand themselves, not the population.
I realized that without logical thinking and without understanding how measurement actually works, we easily assume a group-based tool should speak directly to the individual. It doesn’t.
Roadblock 2: How Do We Describe People Without Judging Them?
Another big question: How do we interpret the results that don’t accidentally make people turn on avoidance mode?
Even though the team knows that self-discovery journey may make people uncomfortable. However, If a personality report makes someone too uncomfortable, most people immediately stop reading.
While doing research, I came across some interpretations of the BIG5 that honestly shocked me. One source described highly disagreeable people as “manipulative.” That one word revealed so much judgment. It assumed low agreeableness equals bad intentions.
But is that true?
Is being disagreeable bad in every situation?
Or is this just one person’s interpretation?
Moments like this made me realize how dangerously easy it is to let personal judgment slip into psychological explanations.
A logic class would have trained me earlier to question underlying assumptions. A language class would’ve made me more sensitive to how one word can completely shift meaning.
Roadblock 3: Okay But… What Do These Traits Really Mean?
Another thing I noticed is that different versions of the BIG5 define traits a little differently. Factor analysis, what many psychological test is based on, doesn’t actually tell researchers what to name the traits. Humans do the naming. That means the labels are interpretations.
For example, the more times I re-read items of conscientiousness, the more I started thinking the trait felt closer to “methodicalness.” The behaviors looked similar, but the underlying meaning felt different: conscientiousness carries a sense of caring, while methodicalness doesn’t.
This made me realize: The actual items stay the same, but words change how people understand the trait.
Language shapes the science more than I had ever noticed.
Roadblock 4: Cultural Differences Change Everything
And then there’s the big cultural difference.
Some BIG5 items that work fine in Western contexts sound offensive or strange in Vietnamese. “I love a good fight,” for example, might feel normal in a culture that values competition. But in Vietnamese culture? It can feel rude or hostile.
Not surprisingly, when these items were tested in Vietnamese samples, their reliability and validity weren’t great. And I also doubted that test-takers answered honestly.
This made me wonder: If the BIG5 had been developed in Asia instead of the West, would the traits look different? Would we even have the same five traits?
Working on this project made me see that psychological tools are not neutral. They grow out of language and culture, and sometimes don’t translate well.
So What Does This All Mean?
After all these roadblocks, I started to see psychology differently. It’s not just the study of the mind. It’s also the study of:
- language
- culture
- interpretation
- assumptions
- and sometimes even mood and randomness
Psychological findings can easily mix with an author’s personal judgment if we’re not careful. And once that happens, it’s hard to tell where evidence ends and personal opinion begins.
That’s why I now think psychology students should learn logic, language, and culture, not as side subjects, but as core tools.
They help us interpret research responsibly, question our assumptions, and communicate human traits without turning them into labels or moral judgments.
The Takeaway
Working on the BIG5 Vietnamese project taught me that psychology doesn’t stand alone. To build tools that actually help people, we need more than theories. We need clarity, sensitivity, and careful thinking.
Logic helps us avoid faulty assumptions.
Language helps us express traits without judgment.
Culture keeps us aware of context.
And honestly? Without these, it’s way too easy for psychological products to slip into the territory of “self-help opinions” instead of scientific insight.
I didn’t expect this project to “change” my perspective so deeply, but it did. And now I think every psychology student should learn these skills, not later, but from the start.
