individual differences - culture Flashcards
culture and personality (Lu et al 2022)
definition of culture and personality
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)
how do culture and personality interact (Lu et al 2022)
-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.
how can culture shape personality
-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
cultures influence on personality
-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)
-
cultures influences are _______ rather than deterministic
explain
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
cross cultural differences
Heine and Buchtel (2009) (Are there near universalities of personality structure across cultures ?)
-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.)
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.
-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
what is a way to study why we find a good fit for personality structure in some countries and not in other countries
-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
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
-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)
so,
-is there less utility for self enhancement in east asian cultures?
-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)
measurement of personality across cultures
heine and buchtel 2009
-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
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?
-big five are likely not universal
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 ?
-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)
can we compare across the chinese structure and the us big five structure
-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? )
measurements of personality in Philippines
-heine and buchtel 2009
-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
