Personality and Culture

Personality and Culture

• Personality relates strongly to self and identity, it is a key area in cultural psychology.
• Investigating the bases of individual differences, at the heart of understanding personality, has conceptual and empirical connections with culture.

Defining Personality

• Personality is a broad concept encompassing different aspects of an individual's uniqueness.
• It is comprised of enduring behavioral and cognitive traits or predispositions.
• These traits influence how individuals interact with situations, contexts, and others, and contribute to individual differences.
• Personality includes features that form a distinctive individual, aggregating distinct behavioral and mental characteristics.
• Personality is considered relatively stable over time and consistent across situations and contexts.
• Traits refer to a characteristic that sets a person apart, such as an outgoing or shy character.
• Identity comprises perceived life roles, aggregate life experiences, narratives, and values, forming the basis for personality aspects.

Perspectives

• Three perspectives inform the understanding of personality across cultures.
• Psychological anthropology involves ethnographic fieldwork by anthropologists.
• Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict developed culture and personality theories for cross-cultural personality comparisons.
• "National character" refers to the perception that each culture has a modal personality type and shares aspects.
• Psychological anthropology views personality as culturally specific, shaped by cultural forces, emphasizing learning over biological factors.
• Cross-cultural perspectives view personality as discrete and separate from culture, treating cultures as independent variables.
• Cultural indigenous perspectives view personality as constellations of characteristics found only in a specific culture, with culture and personality mutually constituted.

Measuring Personality Across Cultures

• In the etic, universal view, aspects of personality exist across cultures and measurements can be validly compared.
• In the emic, indigenous view, measures of personality with the same meaning across cultures are difficult to create because of culture-specificity.
• Concerns arise regarding measurement if there exists aspects of personality that can be measured and compared across cultures.
• Most personality measures were originally developed and validated within a single language and culture.
• Psychometric evidence is needed to demonstrate a measure's reliability and validity within a single culture.
• It is common to simply translate and use a personality scale developed in one culture in another culture.
• It is assumed that the personality dimension measured is equivalent between the two cultures, and measurement is psychometrically valid and reliable.
• One cannot safely conclude that the personality dimensions represented by an imposed etic are equivalently and meaningfully represented in all cultures included in a study.
• Cross-cultural validation requires psychometric evidence from all cultures where the test is used and to select instruments that have acceptable psychometric properties in cultures of interest.
• Psychometric properties should be established empirically, and data addressing the psychometric evidence would provide the safest route to demonstrate equivalence.
• Alternative explanations range from poor test translation and response style issues to different analytic methods.
• Recent studies have become sensitive to the issue, with researchers taking steps to ensure some degree of psychometric equivalence across cultures.

Five-Factor Model (FFM)

• FFM argues that five personality dimensions are universal to all humans.
• Neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
• Researchers noticed similarities in dimensions after trait adjective analysis from the English lexicon.
• Cross-cultural validity for the FFM spans different countries and cultures in Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, and Australia.
• McCrae published self-report data for 26 countries in 2001, which expanded to 36 cultures in 2002.
• The five-factor model was replicated in 51 cultures studied, supporting that the FFM represents a universal taxonomy for all humans.
• In previous research, the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) was mainly used and evolved into the NEO PI-3.
• The NEO PI-3 is a 240-item tool that measures agreement (or disagreement) with characteristic of them.
• These instruments produce scores on the five major personality traits, while two important traits for describing differences are extraversion and neuroticism.
• Extraversion indicates the degree to which an individual experiences positive emotions and is outgoing.
• Neuroticism refers to the degree of emotional stability in an individual.
• Concerns arose with findings that scales may reflect biases on the respondent, with a follow-up study asking adults and college students in 50 groups to rate someone they know well.
• The same model emerged, suggesting that the results were determined by ratings made for a target person.
• Another study showed personality traits were not related to geographic location (defined as distance from the equator or mean temperature).
• Geographically or historically close cultures have more similar personality profiles, with strong evidence indicating that the FFM is a universal model of personality structure.
• Table 6.2 Traits Associated with the Five-Factor Model

Perceptions of National Character

• They are stereotypes about the average personalities of people of different cultures.
• Relatively high agreement about the perceptions of the various cultures' national character existed.
• Perceptions were not correlated with the actual personality trait levels of the individuals of those very same cultures.
• Perceptions of national character may be unfounded stereotypes of the personalities of the members of those cultures.
• Unfounded stereotypes are one of the functions for the maintenance of national identity.

Five-Factor Theory (FFT)

• The five-factory theory explains the source of traits within the FFM, and is important to distinguish it from the FFM.
• FFT is a theoretical framework about the source of the traits, consisting of basic tendencies, characteristic adaptations, and the self-concept
• Basic tendencies are the traits that influence internal dispositions to respond accordingly; personality traits underlying tendencies are biologically based.
• The same personality traits are found in all cultures and use different research methods, and Parent-child relationships demonstrate minimal impact.
• The traits remain generally stable across adult lifespans, and twin studies reveal identical twins have personalities that are similar while identical twins reared apart are more similar than fraternal twins.
• Trait studies can be used to predict variations for individuals with the FFM and recent studies demonstrate culture-level association between levels of neuroticism and serotonin transportation.
• Traits are expressed in characteristic way and largely influenced by one's culture and cultural adaptations. Culture can influence the self-concept.

Evolutionary Approach

• This approach is based in an evolutionary approach and overlaps conceptually with the FFT, positing universality both of human interests and of neurophysiological mechanisms underlying trait variation.
• Personality structure is viewed as a universal psychological mechanism that serves social and nonsocial functions, and personality systems are expected to be organized within the brain.
• Consciences (organization, persistence, etc.) and neuroticism (experiencing negative emotion) are adaptive functions.
• One hierarchical model shows that evolved disposition serves affective goals by managing resources, leading to concerns, projects, and tasks.
• An FFM universal may not minimize influence; rather, culture and variability can have influence through resources, social structures, and systems.
• The culture provides difference in what matters and its components and actions, and as such, cultures produce universal affective goals.

Dimensions of Personality

• Cheung led research in Asia on traits by developing scales to measure personality traits including: Harmony, Ren Qing (relationship orientation), Modernization, Thrift v Extravagance, Ah-Q Mentality and Face.
• They named these dimensions “interpersonal relatedness”.
• These dimensions were found in studies from Singapore, Hawaii, and the Midwestern United States.
• Studies on Filipino structures tested out Filipino traits by techniques that were used for FFM, with 7 dimensions from Filipino language (tempermentalness and self-assurance being the additional traits).
• These were found previously from Spanish-speaking samples from Europe.
• Two indigenous Filipino personality scales used 463 adjectives and a Filipino version of the NEO PI-R tested on 511 students.
• considerable overlap existed on the FFM, several indigenous factors emerged (pagkamadaldal/social curiosity), pagkamapagsapalaran (risk-taking), and religiosity.

Dominance

• Psychologists suggested the existence of an "authoritarian personality,” and created scales.
• Related to the concept of dominance, and refers to the fact that one depends on authority and higher levels of differences.
• Analyzed data in Denmark and the Netherlands tested this out, with five related to the FFM and the addition “authoritarianism".
• Studies suggest this is inherited among animals.
• Social dominance theory has highlighted social dominance for social hierarchies, and ideology, values, and attitudes provide justification.

Internal versus External Locus of Control

• Rotter suggests people differ in control over behavior, with internal and external control from an individual.
• Internal control suggests behavior depends on one's own behavior, while others rely on forces outside of their control.
• Research examining this shows differences across culture, including that European Americans have higher internal locus than East Asians, Swedes, etc.
• Americans tend to place responsibility for negative events on others rather than themselves, but some studies suggest it is a domain that is multifaceted.
• Future research needs to address concerns or potentially different factors in order to further discover influences.

Direct, Indirect, Proxy and Collective Control

• Yamaguchi distinguished between direct, indirect, proxy, and collective control across cultures.
• With direct control, people are more self-efficacious, leading toward feelings of autonomy and efficacy (preferred mode of behavior in cultures promoting autonomy and independence).
• For indirect control, agency is hidden and one pretends they are not an agent,.
• Proxy control refers to control by someone else for the benefit of oneself.
• In collective control, one attempts to control as a member of a group.
• Direct personal control may be the strategy of choice, otherwise value the maintenance of interpersonal harmony through collective strategies.

Autonomy

• Autonomy has been been discussed within a theory known as self-determination theory, stating that all cultures share basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness..
• It's been suggested that people are autonomous when their behavior is willingly enacted and actions are fully endorsed, and there can be distinctions from separateness.
• Support has been found around the world, suggesting that internalizing different cultural practices are influenced by autonom, but is universal through self-efficacy (competence).

Indigenous Personalities

• They are conceptualizations of personality specific and relevant only to developed populations.
• Concepts of personality are tested and rooted in the particular culture, and use nonstandardized methods.
• Over the years, scientists have been interested in indigenous conceptions of personality, including ones of the Arabs, the Japanese, the Fulani, etc.
• This has uncovered culture's organization structure, with each being fundamentally from Amreica or Western concepts.

Integrating Universal and Culture-Specific

• A middle ground integrates both understandings and findings with personality as a multidimensional construct.
• Traits are enduring aspects referring to underlying dispositions, rooted in biology and genetics.
• Identities are less influenced by biology and more by culture, with their meaning constructed through the value of one's thoughts, feelings, and actions.
• An integrated perspective moves beyond the division, rather considering how aspects can be influenced by both, while some traits may be organized universally.
• It would appear more beneficial to be studying each sides of personality as sides of the same coin, and come to understand better and solve the coexistence.
• The one side of data does not necessarily argue against the other; they both may exist simultaneously and are likely accurate.