individual differences - culture Flashcards

1
Q

culture and personality (Lu et al 2022)
definition of culture and personality

A

culture
-collective meaning system
-symbols, beliefs , values ,norms and practices shared within a community

personality
-individual meaning system
-relatively stable patterns of emotion, cognition and behaviour (traits)

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2
Q

how do culture and personality interact (Lu et al 2022)

A

-culture and personality are mutually constitutive: culture shapes personalities and individuals’ personalities

“Cultural influences on individuals are probabilistic and plural rather than deterministic and singular, yielding personalized patterns of emotion, motivation, cognition, and behaviour (i.e., personalities).”

  • “Individuals with different personalities invoke varying cultural elements(symbols, beliefs, values, norms, and practices) as they engage with their environment on a daily basis. At the aggregate level, the common patterns emerging from these cultural elements can reproduce or change culture.
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3
Q

how can culture shape personality

A

-culture provides context
-for individuals emotions, motivation, cognitions and behaviours
-fundamental aspects of life such as listening, speaking, reading and writing
what is appropriate and inappropriate may be different between cultures

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4
Q

cultures influence on personality

A

-implicit rather explicit (its the environment that individuals find themselves in, that environment may increase probability of certian types of emotions and behaviours to occur)
-influences are plurarl,cosntantly interacting and evolving (e a turkish student raised in germany, influences of multiple cultures for this individual)
-

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5
Q

cultures influences are _______ rather than deterministic
explain

A

probabilistic rather than deterministic
-individuals internalise cultural elements differentially (depends on multiple factors)
-culture does not prescribe what an individual should look like, but it may increase the probability of specific behaviours and emotions etc

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6
Q

cross cultural differences
Heine and Buchtel (2009) (Are there near universalities of personality structure across cultures ?)

A

-asked two fundamental questions :
-Are there near universalities of personality structure across cultures ?
-does the big five cover the fundamental responses to core challenges faced by humans (does the big five provide the answer to what personality is across multiple cultures.)

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7
Q

heine and butchel 2009
-Are there near universalities of personality structure across cultures ?
-does the big five cover the fundamental responses to core challenges faced by humans (does the big five provide the answer to what personality is across multiple cultures.

A

-have a mix of results: there are studies showing that the five factor structure of personality was found across multiple diverse cultures such as Israel, Korea , Turkey and across more than 50 cultures
-based on this you would say yes the perosnality strcuture described by the big five is robust

-however some cultures did not replicate the five factor structure perfectly , some countries replicated a four factor structure without the openess to experience. So openess to experience just does not seem to be well representing personalities of specific cultures such as hong kong japan etc

-and then some countries where the structure was not supported at all (in some developing countries)
botswana, ethiopia, lebanon, malaysia, puerto rico, uganda

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8
Q

what is a way to study why we find a good fit for personality structure in some countries and not in other countries

A

-by asking : are there cultural differences in personality trait levels
heine and butchel 2009
: are there differences in how people evaluate themselves across cultures (trait level self esteem)
-so essentially are there differences across cultures in how useful self esteem is for individuals within that culture

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9
Q

are there differences in how people evaluate themselves across cultures (trait level self esteem)

-so essentially are there differences across cultures in how useful self esteem is for individuals within that culture

what do we know about east asians/westerners for this

A

-east Asians show far less motivation for self enhancement than westerners (comparing oneself to the average other)
-(one way of defining value for ourselves (self esteem) is by comparing ourselves to others -but east Asians simply do not seem to be doing this as compared to western cultures)

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10
Q

so,
-is there less utility for self enhancement in east asian cultures?

A

-for westerners, positive self views are positively correlated with subjective well being and negatively corelated with depression
-such correlations are much smaller for east Asians (so showing self enhancement is not too important)

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11
Q

measurement of personality across cultures
heine and buchtel 2009

A

-in most studies , what we do is we take big five that was developed in the us and we translate it into the language that is our target for investigation, but is this really appropriate?
-factor analyses can only reveal a structure emerging from the universe of items that were considered
-so big five was developed by people in the us based on english language descriptions of persoablity

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12
Q

is it possible that a different set of items (meaningful for specific cultural context) would reveal a different personality structure
-is big five factors universal?

A

-big five are likely not universal

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13
Q

measurement of personality cross cultures
-cheung et al 1996: chinese personality traits
-what did they use
-what structure did they arrive at
-what did the structure consist of ?

A

-in this study researchers focused on Chinese personality traits
-used novels, proverbs, self descriptions , Chinese psychology literature
- 26 unique personality constructs resulting in a four-factor structure:
* Dependability (responsibility, optimism, trustworthiness)
* Interpersonal relatedness (harmony, thrift, relational orientation, tradition)
* Social potency (leadership, adventurousness, extraversion)
* Individualism (logical orientation, defensiveness, self-orientation)

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14
Q

can we compare across the chinese structure and the us big five structure

A

-depedability correlated positivley with neuroticism , social potency with extraversion and individualism with agreeableness (closley related constructs)
-tells us there is something universal at ;east in part of the presonality structure
-no correlation for openness /interpersonal relatedness (additional trait in chines cultures? )

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15
Q

measurements of personality in Philippines
-heine and buchtel 2009

A

-filipinno personality traits
-five traits highly similar to big five
-two additional factors : tempermentalness and negative valence
-so if we just used the big five for fillipinos we could still learn something, but we would be missing out-seem to be making use of additional personality traits
-we can only reveal those traits if we study personality in the local language

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16
Q

measurements of personality across cultures

-Spanish personality constructs (vs big five)
-green personality constructs

A

-spanish :seven factors not well mapped to the big five

-greek : six factors not well mapped to big five

17
Q

conclusion for measuring personality by the big five

A

-although the big five may be robust, the factors are probably not exhaustive
-if we want to truly understand the structure of personality in a specific culture we should study personality through their local language

18
Q

big five and cross culture differences
-what countries score highest on traits

A

-if you administer the big five to people from multiple countries
- people in spain score highest on neuroticism
-highest extraversion: norweigans
-Highest conscientiousness: Japanese
* Highest openness to experience: Austrian
* Highest agreeableness: Malaysian

19
Q

Do cross-cultural differences point to a “national character”? or a national stereotype

-mcCrae and Terracciano (2006) is ‘national character’ correlated with peoples self reported personality traits?
experiment

A

-they asked a large number of people ; hoe extraverted is the typical British person’
-focused on a typical personality of an average person in the uk

-after answering this question participants would be asked to rate their individual responses to the big five.

20
Q

-mcCrae and Terracciano (2006) is ‘national character’ correlated with peoples self reported personality traits?
experiment
results

A

-they correlated the responses to the average person living in the uk with their individual responses
-they found zero correlation
-people living in Britain are highly diverse

21
Q

utility of personality across cultures
-west
-

A

western cultures
-self tends to be identified more as an independent entity grounded in internal traits (their personality is who they are, their self)

rest of the world
-interdependent self concept, where personality traits might be of less utility for understanding oneself (personality isn’t what defines a person but is more fluid)

22
Q

individualistic vs collectivist societys and culture (and the theories of self)

A

-individualistic countries are defined bye evidence and self reliance (entity theory of self)
-collectivist societies define themselves based on community and group values (incremental theory of self)

23
Q

how can different level of personality across cultures be measured and studies?
-how do findings vary in individualist and collectivist cultures

A

-using the 20 statements test
-asked to respond to 20 statments starting with ‘i am’

-individualistic cultures - list pure psychological attributes as descriptions of self concept
eg i am sociable , i am kind
-collectivist cultures - list social roles or specific descriptors instead of traits

24
Q

consistency of traits
peoples perceptions about their personality may be stable (______ cultures) or variable across situations (_________ cultures)

A

individualistic
collectivistic

25
Q

how utility of personality across cultures is studied
-attributions for behaviour
-responses of those in ind cultures and those in collec cultures

A

-people are asked to explain the behaviour of others in various situations
-ind cultures participants pay attention to persons dispositions while ignoring context (fundamental attribution error)
-col cultures - peop

26
Q
A