1. Chapter 13: Culture, Religion, and Ethnicity: Processes and Differences
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2. Applications of Personality Psychology
Why study culture in a personality class?
External influences help shape our personality
Who we are, and what makes us unique individuals is in part due to the values, behaviors, and customs we learn from our culture
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3. Layers of Group Influence
“No man is an island”
We are influenced by
Family
Peers
Social institutions
Cultural traditions
Social Class
Individuals are best understood in the context of their cultures
Individual versus group effects
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4. Two Approaches to Studying Culture
Etic
cross-cultural
focused on generalities across cultures
apply measures/ assessments from outside of the culture to that group
Emic
Culture-specific
focuses on a single culture
develops assessments within the group
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5. Individualism vs. Collectivism
Individualistic
Typical of Western societies
Strive to distinguish self as individual
Focus on the individual
Collectivist
Typically Eastern
Focus on fundamental relatedness of all individuals
Focus on the group
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6. History of Research on Personality and Culture
Contributions from cultural anthropology
Margaret Mead (1920s)
Studied adolescents in Samoa
Concluded that adolescence was not stressful in Samoa as it was in the U.S.
Whiting and Whiting (1970s)
Studied child rearing in different cultures
Found a relation between adult personality and child rearing experiences
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7. History of Research on Personality and Culture
Kurt Lewin’s experiments on political culture
Autocratic vs. democratic groups
Demonstrated that cultural issues can and should be studied, even in rigorously controlled laboratory research
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8. Errors of Scientific Inference: The Case of Race
Race as an approach to grouping people
We often overgeneralize and overattribute personality characteristics based on physical characteristics
The influence of race in the United States
The American Dilemma
Equality versus slavery
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9. Religion Religious identity as an aspect of personality
Spirituality as a core element of human experience
Religion can provide norms and expectations about behavior
Importance of evaluating a person in the context of institutions that influence behavior
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10. Socioeconomic Influences on Personality
The SES (Socioeconomic status) gradient
Those of higher SES are at lower risk of disease and premature death
SES effects on personality are not well documented
There appears to be a link between class and personality
Another source of influence on individuals
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11. Language and Identity
Language is a defining feature of a person’s identity
Idiolect—each individual's own unique version of his or her native language
Dialect—regional variants in vocabulary and syntactic forms
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12. Language and Thought
Our language influences not only how we say things, but even how we think about and understand the world
Linguistic relativity
e.g., Orwell’s novel 1984: “Newspeak”
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13. Personality and Bilingualism
Bilingualism and biculturalism
Each language/culture is a different context for behavior
A bilingual individual’s assessed personality varies with language context
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14. Language and Social Interactions
Language can influence our social interactions
We address powerful and important people in certain ways
The importance and intricacy of these language rules varies across cultures
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15. Gender and Language
Many languages include distinctions between word forms that are used by or for females versus males
Use of masculine pronouns as a generic for all people influences how we see the world, our capabilities, and our roles
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16. Culture and Testing
The item content of some tests may not adequately capture some cultural experiences
Culture-free tests
Culture-fair tests
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17. Stereotype Threat
The threat that others’ judgments or their own actions will negatively stereotype them
People faced with a difficult evaluative challenge such as an SAT test may react poorly if they see themselves as identified with a group that is expected to do poorly
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18. Incorporating Culture into Personality Theory
Culture should be incorporated into personality theories and research
e.g., Allport’s study of prejudice
Culture influences our roles, goals, cognitions, health, and behavior
Culture even influences the theories we create
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19. Culture and the Eight Aspects of Personality
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20. Culture and the Eight Aspects of Personality
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21. Culture and the Eight Aspects of Personality
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22. Culture and the Eight Aspects of Personality
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23. Some Current Research Developments
The nature of the self
Independent vs. cooperative
The interactions of people with situations as impacted by culture
The cultural composition of a group sometimes has an impact on behavior
Ethnic socialization
Racial-ethnic identity
Prejudice and discrimination
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