Chapter 5 discusses anthropological studies on personality in light of the culture and personality tradition. Anthropology has developed diverse theoretical perspectives in general such as evolutionism, functionalism, structuralism, conflict theory, and last but not least phenomenalism.

Anthropology is what?

1. Is a broad field(the study of of man or humans) that includes many subfields, such as physical anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, social anthropology and linguistics
2. The most relevant however is the cultural anthropology which is: the comparative study of various cultures
3. Ethnography is: the intensive descriptive study of one single culture

Robert LeVine addressed three basic questions as a anthropologist?

1. Are these psychological differences between humans populations?
2. What are the causes in individual development of psychological differences between human populations?
3. How are psychological differences between populations related to the sociocultural environments of those populations?
4. Answers to first must be answered so that the last questions themselves could be answered, however, there assertions have not been supported by alternative empirical evidence to give an unqualified “no” to the first question due mainly to methodological limitations.
5. A majority of scholars however seem to share engagement in the cross cultural studies seem to share the basic assumption that there are cross cultural differences in personality as LeVine expressed

Robert LeVine classified the basic theoretical position on the relation of culture and personality in five categories:

1. Anti-culture-personality
2. Reductionist
3. Personality is culture view
4. The personality mediation view
5. The two system views

Ruth Benedict pioneered the earliest approach in culture and personality studies commonly known as the configurational approach.

• Benedict analyzed distinctive cultural patterns or configurations of three groups of people in relation to basic personality characteristics: the pueblo indians of new mexico, the dobu islanders in melanesia, and the Kwakiutl indians of northwest coast of north america
• Benedict analysis of the Zuni culture was based on her own observations made during the period of 1924-25
• The data on the Dobu and the Kwakiutl cultural patterns came entirely from the works of Reo Fortune and Franz Boas
• The conclusion Benedict made was that she seemed convinced that each culture has a dominant or typical pattern of configuration which molds the basic personality of its partcipants.
• Benedicts view was that culture was personality

Margaret Meads was as well a world renowned anthropologist  in the twentieth century and took the same cultural determinist approach as benedict, however; her studies were usually more focused on specific research problems or topics.

• Each study had a different focus of inquiry and however all the studies were designed under the same common research theme
• Mead spent nine months studying behavior patterns of 50 adolescent girls in Somoa and concluded that the Somoa adolescents did not experience tensions, conflict,rebellion,or the so called “storms and stress”
• In the western people such life events such as birth, marriage, sickness and death, which are usually considered stressful
• The Somoa people saw these events as normal facts of life without deep emotional involvement
• Example: premarital sex among the adolescents was regarded as a natural process of growing up and didn’t really need any emotional commiment
• A similar theme cultural differences in socialzation  and personality were also evident in the rest of Meads trilogy
• Freedman and Australian anthropologist who also did his fieldwork in Somoa and however thought that Mead misinterpreted Somoa society  in the 1940s and 1960s by her bias cultural determination

Abram Kardiner founded the dynamic model of culture and personality an outgrowth of a seminar as well as had his collaborators

• Kardiner defined the concept “basic personality structure” as the effective adaptive tools of the individual  which are common to every individual in the society
• According to Kardiner the common adaptive characteristics are acquired by the members of a society primerly through common formative experiences in childhood, such as culture specific techniques of nursing, toilet training, and discipling sexual and other behavior
• The basic personality formed through primary institutions which include family organizations, in group formation, basic disciplines, feeding ,weaning, institutionalized care or neglect of children, and training, etc.
• However Kardiner did not elaborate on factors  or sources that may account for the exsisting differeneces in primary institutions among various societies
• Example; he gave no clear answer as to why some societies had severe child training practices then others

Beatrice Whitening studied similar  theoretical model but over the years they developed more elaborate model

• Revised model of the personality mediation approach, major variables are more specified for rigorouos empirical testing, particularly the ecological, socioeconmic and political factors
• example : used a panel of judges and intensive field studies to reexamine the validity of their findings and interpretations
• To illustarte the model they took a hypothesis, such as children brought up by their mothers who make  a substutional contribution to the subsistence of the family will more concerned with the welfare of others then children brought up by mothers who do not make contribution
• Whitening and his collaborators works have been subjected to critcism and some critics questioned the theoretical significance of correlational analyses and however others accused them for neglecting the unique and idiosyncratic aspect of a given culture
• Their works have became invaluable milepost in the athropological study of personality mainly because of their comparative analysis of massive cross cultural data

Ronald P. Rohner which was the most recent development in the cross cultural study of child socialization and personality

• According to his studies, parental warmth  and control are found in two major dimensions of parenting in all human societies.
• Individually and together they are significantly associated with a number of distinct personality characterstics and with many aspects of individual and culutral organized behaviors
• Example: children rejected or neglected by parents need to experience a higher degree of anxiety, frusteration, dependence, and aggresion then children accepted by parents and hence the former have more problems then the latter establishing close interpersonal  relationships
• Neglected children form a negative view of the world and would even reject their own children
• Rohner and his associates have illuminated many unanswered questions  on child training and personality by their intensive field work and extensive analyses of cross cultural data

Third Approach is the area of culture and personality study in which LeVine called the two systems view

• This approach views culture and personality as two different systems, however; each has its own interrelated elements and requirements for its maintenance
• These two systems are functionally interdependent  , both sets of requirements make demands of individual behavior, the personality system for satisfaction of psychological needs, the sociocultural system for socially valued performance in the roles that are institutionalized in the social structure
• Example: an average american business man is most likely to satisfy his need of self esteem by attaining an individual success in the highly competitve corporate world
• Another example: the individualistic need of self esteem and the capitalistic social demand are functionally interdependent

The Two System Approach of Inkeles and Levinson

• • They argue that most descriptions of group personality  are not directly derived from study of personality traits of adults but inferred from the patterns of child rearing practices, cultural themes, and social structure
  • According to them national character ought to be equated with modal personality variants within a given society
  • The study requires  primerly the psychological investigation of representive samples of adult individuals in a given society rather then analysis of collective products such as rituals, institutional structures, mass media
  • Basic questions; What is the behavioral ideological structures? What is the role of social cultural forces in producing and changing modal personality trends?
  • Inkeles and Levinson argue that most descriptions of group personality are not directly derived from study of the personality traits of adults but inferred from patterns of child rearing practices, cultural themes, or social structure
  • Inkeles and Levinson suggest  four ideal types of the relationship between modal personality and social structure system:ideal congruence, unstable congruence, institutionally induced noncongruence, and characterological included noncongruence.

• Ideal congruence: is the type of relationship in which high degree of compatibility between personality needs and social role demands pervails

• Unstable congruence: happens when a seemingly stable relationship between modal personality and socialcultural system precipitates a high potential  for abrupt social change or generates widespread personality deviance

• Institionally induced noncongruence: characterized by a situation where there arise institutional changes so marked that the societys relatively well established and internally stable modal personality types experience serious strain in meeting the new role  demands made on them

• Characterologically induced non congruence: a hypothetical situation in which fully elaborated and relatively stable modal personality type introduced into an already established institutional order with which it is not capatible

• The sum is that they provided us with a typology and comprenhisive theoretical framework for studying multi demensional interactions between personality and social cultural systems in cross cultural perspective.

There is a growing need of anthropologist to engage in the comparative study of peoples in complex societies such as these stated above all with different aspects of people as well as studies and critcism of others to ellaborate on new evidence to help the world have a better understanding.