Culture and the Individual

1. Culture and the Individual Enculturation, Socialization & Personality Kimberly Porter Martin

2. Personality -characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of genetics, socialization, enculturation and life experience.

3. Personality Trait • A lasting characteristic attributed to persons in varying amounts of strength. Fiske, 1971

4. Anthony F.C. Wallace Societies deal with individual differences in personality in two general ways: 1. They enculturate and socialize children, shaping them to suit cultural expectations 2. They provide alternative roles that accommodate different personalities

5. Enculturation Vs. Social Stratification The Enculturation, Socialization and Personality PowerPoint ( this one!) focuses on enculturation and socialization of individuals to try to shape them to cultural ideals. The Social Stratification and Personality PowerPoint will deal with how society shapes personality and the kinds of roles it provides for individuals with different personalities.

6. Personality Models • Measures of personality are based on models of the range of and importance of specific personality traits. • Studying measures gives us insight about the emic views of the culture in which the measures were.

7. The Big Questions • To what extent are we using ethnocentric measures? • To what extent are we measuring ethnocentric concepts. • If some personality traits are completely outside the experience of the researcher, • How will the researcher know what to look for? • How will the researcher know how to measure them?

8. Big Five Personality Model

9. Western Culture’s Big Five • The Five Factor Model (FFM) • Conscientiousness • Persistence and reliability • Goal directedness • Agreeableness • Compassion, warmth • Gentle and sensitive • Openness to Experience • Curiosity and imagination • Extraversion • Positive attitude • Seeks stimulating social interaction • Neuroticism • Emotional instability • Anxiety and hostility http://www.personalitytest.net/cgi-bin/ipipneo1.cgip://

10. Kagitcibasi’s Three Family Styles Independent family • Afluent, educated, middle class • Nuclear family units • Smaller families • Independence, self-sufficiency, uniqueness training Interdependent family • Agrarian, • Children help w/ subsistence, care for aging parents • Intergenerational closeness, extended families • Obedience training Psychological interdepence family • Emotional interdependence between family members • Socialized for family loyalties • Childrearing for a combination of autonomy within the context of family loyalty • Compromise between the other styles

11. Eysenck Personality Model (EPQ)Western Culture • Three qualities: 1. psychoticism* 2. extroversion 3. neuroticism Psychoticism = aggression and interpersonal hostility. Predisposes for mental illness/schizophrenia.

12. Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI) • Added a sixth dimension to the Big Five: • Interpersonal Relatedness (importance of harmony, face and relationship orientation) • Openness dimension missing from CPAI • Interpersonal Relatedness (importance of harmony, face and relationship orientation) Found in China, Hawaii and Singapore. Western “blind spot” with regard to personality traits

13. Variability in Scale Results • Locally derived measures are better • Some traits overlap, but not predictable • Sometimes traits dropped or added • Other times blended into different variations

14. Examples of Indigenous Personality Models Ubuntu – Africa – “a person is a person through other persons” • Senegal – three layers of a person: • shell (body) • physiological functioning • psychological existence • spiritual existence

15. Sow’s African Model

16. Indian Jiva Personality Model

17. Examples of Indigenous Personality Models • Japanese Amae = passive love and dependence as an infant has for its mother. • Permeates Japanese culture throughout the lifespan. • Creates an expectation of passive connection to all others in the group. • Concealed amae leads to mental illness.

18. Examples of Indigenous Personality Models • Bambara • A symbolic system • Person is not separate from spirit world, human community and/or ecological context. • Sixty dimensions or elements in pairs, one male and one female. • Thought-reflection • Speech-authority • Future-destiny

19. Value Systems • Kluckhohn and Strodbeck • Hofstede • Locus of Control

20. Kluckhohn & Strodbeck’s Values Matrix (Item Examples)

21. Kluckhohn & Strodbeck’s Values Matrix (Core Value)

22. Hofstede’s Value Dimensions • 1. POWER DISTANCE • The degree of inequality between a less powerful person and a more powerful other (Mulder 1977). • The distance at which boss/supervisor and employee comfortably function within a given society. • The boss's style of decision making along with employees level of fear about disagreeing with superiors.

23. Hofstede’s Value Dimensions • 2. UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE • The tolerance for uncertainty in a society, coped with in society by technology, law and religion, and in organizations by technology, rules and rituals.

24. Hofstede’s Value Dimensions • 3. INDIVIDUALISM • The relationship between the individual and the collectivity in which prevails in a given society. • The degree to which the individual is valued over the group, or the group is valued over the individual.

25. Hofstede’s Value Dimensions • 4. MASCULINITY • The degree to which a society focuses on assertion and competition as opposed to nurturance and the development and maintenance of relationships.

26. Locus of Control • Who or what controls your life? • External = outside forces that you do not control or influence • Internal = you are empowered to make changes and choices in your life. You have control of your own life.