personality and the environment

Question 1

group socialisation

Answer 1

Regarding how non-shared environment affects development of personality, the group socialisation theory (Harris, 1995) applies

With social categorisation, i.e., individuals tend to place other individuals into social groups, being important

An individual’s social identity is based on and derived from the groups one feels belong to and one’s perception of similarities and differences in relation to different social groups

This theory attempts to explain what makes people similar as well as what makes people unique in personality

Question 2

group processes

Answer 2

Context-specific socialisation: we learn from many sources and the learning is highly context-specific

Group socialisation: we are socialised by the social groups we identify with

Transmission of culture: culture is transmitted group-to-group, not merely parent to child

Between-group contrasts: we behave in ways depart from the group we reject

Within-group differentiation: while we imitate peer models, we also differentiate ourselves from our peers within-group

Question 3

Culture dimensions and personality

Answer 3

A wealth of cross-cultural personality research has been carried out using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, with individualismcollectivism being the most intensively studied

In a review, Triandis (2001) summarized that, comparatively, people in collectivist cultures are more likely to

– describe themselves as group members instead of as individuals

– emphasize collective goals

– pay more attention to external than internal determinants of social behaviour, and – be self-effacing

Question 4

Culture dimensions and self-construals

Answer 4

The links between cultures and psychosocial outcomes can be explained by independent versus interdependent self-construals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991)

In particular, people in individualist cultures tend to construct a self as independent of others and emphasise self-esteem

In contrasts, people in collectivist cultures tend to construct a self that is inter-connected to their social groups and emphasis relationship harmony

Relationship harmony can be seen as the functional equivalence of self-esteem in contributing to subjective well-being (Kwan et al., 1997)

Question 5

Different cultures, different minds

Answer 5

Independent versus interdependent self-construal has been found to predict different ways of cognitive processing

For instance, Jiang & Sui (2022) found that experimentally priming the interdependent self-construal led to a reduced self-bias effect (i.e., faster and more accurate processing of self-relevant stimuli)

In another study (Zhang et al., 2017), priming independent self construal caused Chinese participants to self-evaluate more favourably when faced with threatening feedback (without the same priming threatening feedback resulted in less favourable self-evaluation among Chinese participants than non-threatening feedback)

Question 6

culture dimensions

Answer 6

Hofstede (1980) collected survey data on attitudes of employees
of IBM, involving close to 117,000 cases from 71 countries
* Four relatively independent dimensions were identified:
– individualism-collectivism – the degree to which a person is integrated into
groups
– power distance – acceptance of economic and social inequality
– uncertainty avoidance – the discomfort experienced in ambiguous or
unstructured situations
– masculinity-femininity – assertiveness (masculinity) versus nurture
(femininity)