Culture & Personality Flashcards
Personality
aspects of an individual’s unique characteristics.
Set of enduring behavioural and cognitive characteristics, traits or predispositions.
Trait
a characteristic/quality (stable/consistent over time) distinguishing a person.
State refers to quality referring to a quality – e.g. anxiety before an exam.
Identity
perceived roles in life, life experiences and narratives, values and motives.
Psychological anthropology perspective on personality
(study of norms and values of societies)
Based on the ethnographic fieldwork by anthropologists who developed theories about culture and personality.
Forms the basis for national character.
National character – perception that each culture has a model personality type and people in that culture share aspects of it.
CC perspective on personality
Focus on traits
View personality as discrete and separate from culture, and as a dependent variable in research.
Cultural Indigenous Perspective on personality
Views culture and personality as combined entities that are interdependent on each other.
Indigenous personality – constellations of personality traits and characteristics found only in a specific culture.
Etic perspective of personality
assumes that personality can be measured and compared across cultures.
Emic perspective
suggests that it’s difficult to create measures of personality with the same meaning (and validity) across cultures.
CC validation of personality measures requires…
psychometric evidence from all cultures.
Issues in CC personality assessment
How familiar is paper-and-pencil testing to people in the culture in question?
- Procedural bias.
Are the respondents proficient in reading English?
- Linguistic bias
Is the translation done accurately?
Is the translated test equivalent to the original test at the item level, scale level, and construct level?
Are there cc differences in the means and distribution of the test scores?
- Interpretation bias
How can cc differences in test scores be interpreted?
- Interpretation bias & response bias
5 factor model
Model based on 5 distinct and basic personality dimensions that appear to be universal for all humans.
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Evidence for the 5-factor model
Found based on the similarities in personality dimensions within and between cultures.
Support arose out of factor analyses of trait adjectives from English lexicon that were descriptive of self and others.
Factors were similar to dimensions found in the analysis of questionnaire scales operationalising personality.
Widely used measure – Revised NEO Personality Inventory.
Cultural differences in mean aggregate levels of traits raise questions about why these differences exist. 2 hypotheses:
Personalities are consequences of cultures
OR
Reverse causation – cultures are the consequences of personalities
Groups of individuals with higher mean levels of a personality trait banded together in or migrated to certain geographic regions (selective migration).
Evolutionary approach to personality
Proposes universality of human interests and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying trait variations.
Views personality structure as a universal psychological mechanism, which is a product of natural selection.
Suggests hierarchical model based on motivation.
Culture produces specific behavioural manifestations that individuals engage in to achieve universal affective goals.
CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH ON OTHER DIMENSIONS OF PERSONALITY
From The Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI)
Interpersonal relatedness:
- Harmony
- Relationship orientation
- Modernisation
- Thrift vs. Extravagance.
- Ah-Q mentality
- Externalisation of blame, belittling another.
- Social behaviour related to face
Personality structure in the Philippines
- Extra traits found in Filipino cultures: temperamentalness and self-assurance.
Personality structure in Denmark and Netherlands
- A 6th personality dimension: authoritarianism.
Locus on control
differences in how much control we believe we have over our own behaviour and our relationship with environment and others.q
External locus on control
behaviour and relationships contingent on forces beyond one’s control.
Internal locus on control
behaviour and relationships are dependent on one’s own behaviour.
e.g. might blame poor grade on not studying.
Types of control across Cultures
Direct
Self acts as agent, and one feels more self-efficacious when agency is made explicit, leading to feelings of autonomy and efficacy.
Indirect
One’s agency is hidden or downplayed.
Pretend as if they aren’t acting as an agent even though in reality they are doing so.
Proxy
Control by someone else for the benefit of oneself
Collective
Attempt to control environment by being a member of a group and the group serves as the agent of control.
Each culture has a different way of understanding their world, give examples.
African model – 3 layers of personality
Japanese – Amae, passive child-like dependence of one person on another.
Korean – Cheong, human affection
Indian – Hishkama karma, detachment
Chinese – Ren qing, relationship orientation
Mexican – Simpatia, harmony, avoidance of conflict.
Filipino – Pagkikipagkapwa, shared identity, pakikiramdam, sensitivity, empathy and pakikisama, going along with others.
INTEGRATING UNIVERSAL AND CULTURE-SPECIFIC UNDERSTANDING OF PERSONALITY
Involves accepting personality as a multidimensional construct.
Aspects of personality
- Traits – rooted in biology and genetics.
- Identities – less influenced by biology and more influenced by culture.
Possible sources of personality
- Biologically innate and evolutionarily adaptive factors that create genetic predispositions to certain types of personality traits.
- Culture-constant learning principles and processes.
