Cultural psychology
Chapter 6
Self and personality

Who am I?

Culture influences on people’s identities in at least two ways: 1) Superficial, it might include some culturally shaped statements. Culture provides the content about the ways people think of themselves. 2) Deeper, what categories of statements we consider when we think of ourselves.

The degree to which people think of themselves in terms of both abstract psychological attributes and concrete roles and relationships varies across cultures.

Independent versus interdependent views of self

There are at least two ways people might see themselves 1) Independent view of self. The self can be thought to derive its identity from inner attributes. These attributes are assumed to reflect an inner essence of the individual in that they, are the basis of the individual’s identity, are viewed as stable across the lifespan, are perceived to be unique, are self-contained in that they are perceived to arise from the individual and not from interactions with others, are viewed as significant for regulating behaviour, individual feel an obligation to publicly advertise themselves in ways consistent with these attributes, and Interdependent view of self 2) The self is viewed as a relational entity that is fundamentally connected to, and sustained by, a number of significant relationships. Behaviour is recognized as contingent upon perceptions of others’ thoughts, feelings, and actions. Individuals are viewed as participants in a larger social unit. The experience of identity is reflexive in that it is contingent on their position relative to others, and their relationships with these close others. Internal characteristics are less central to the identity. People do not easily become ingroup members, nor do close relationships easily dissipate into outgroup relations.

The medial prefrontal cortex has been linked to self-representations.

Self-concepts organize information that we have about ourselves, direct our attention to information that is viewed to be relevant, shape the concerns that we have, guide us in our choice of relationships partners and the kinds of relationships that we maintain, and they influence how we interpret situations, which influences the emotional experiences we have.

Relations with ingroups and outgroups

People with independent selves have a number of close relationships with members of their ingroup. Those relationships are less self-defining than are the corresponding relationships of those with more interdependent selves. People with independent selves have a rather permeable boundary between their ingroups and outgroups. People with interdependent selves have a more clear-cut boundary between these groups.

Ingroup relations are critical for self-definition for people in more interdependent cultures, and serve to direct appropriate behaviours in those contexts. This makes it especially necessary to identify those with whom one has such significant relationships. Obligations to others are an important part of ingroup relations among interdependent people. The boundary distinguishing ingroup from outgroup people is salient for members with an interdependent self.

An independent person is likely to perceive him or herself as existing and functioning separately from the social environment. The people in that environment are relatively more tangential to the independent individual’s identity. The boundary distinguishing ingroups from outgroups is less consequential to self-construction for those with independent selves, and is experienced as fluid.

In a society characterized by strong group ties, feeling s of trust are confined to that group. The stronger the bonds among members within a group, the weaker the ties between groups. One cannot have strong loyalties that conflict with each other. When commitment is strong, there is less of a willingness to cooperate with outgroup members.

People with more interdependent views of self are more likely to conform than those with more independent views of the self. The conformity of people with more interdependent selves appears to be more contingent on the nature of the majority group than is for people with independent views of the self. When in a situation with strangers, people with interdependent selves conform as much as those with independent selves, or even less.

Individualism and collectivism

Self-concepts are shaped by the cultural practices that direct what individuals attend to, value, believe, and are able to attain.

Cultural practices are shared by the kinds of self-concepts a culture’s members have.

Independence and interdependence views of the self emerge in places where there are cultural practices that sustain them. 1) People participating in individualistic cultures are more likely to elaborate on independent aspects of themselves, and they come to feel distinct from others and emphasize the importance of being self-sufficient 2) Interdependent selves are more common in collectivistic cultures. There people are more likely to attend to interdependent aspects of their self-concepts.

Periods of economic growth tend to be linked with growing rates of independence and recessions with increasing interdependence.

Beyond individualism and collectivism

Social tightness versus looseness, (how strong cultural norms are and how tolerant cultures are of deviant behaviour) predicts many psychological phenomena, such as self-regulation.

10 Cultural values that distinguish cultures are values for universalism, benevolence, conformity, tradition, security, power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation and self-direction.

Other cultural dimensions are, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, vertical-horizontal social structure, relationship structure, context dependence, social cynicism and social complexity.

A not on heterogeneity of individuals and cultures

People cannot be categorized cleanly into discrete categories. The experience of the self follows a continuum. The same goes for cultures.

One important determinant of how often people experience themselves as independent or interdependent is the situations they encounter on a daily basis.

All cultures are highly heterogeneous and contain a great variety of people.

Gender and culture

Women are more interdependent than men only with respect to their attention to other’s feelings. And concerns.

Culture and gender equality

There are cultural differences in the ways people view issues of gender equality.

Within a culture, men and women tend to share fairly similar views about gender equality. Attitudes toward gender equality are part of the cultural discourse and shape people’s views in those cultures.

Features of a culture that predict egalitarian (as opposed to traditional) gender views are: 1) The percentage of people who embraced a particular religion 2) The more urbanized the country, the more people have egalitarian views 3) The country’s individualism score.

Seemingly simple cultural innovation in agricultural cultivation might have had far-reaching implications for gender norms. Two ways that traditional agricultural cultivation is generally conducted 1) Shifting cultivation, characterized by the earth being dug up with a tool similar to a garden hoe. Where shifting cultivation is practiced, women do most of the agricultural work, which entails planting and weeding, with their children nearby. 2) Plow cultivation, a large animal is used to pull the plow to turn over the soil. This requires much muscular strength and quick bursts of energy, which is why it tends to be done by men. It is difficult to take care of children when controlling the plow, because the work requires much concentration, it cannot be stopped and resumed easily, and it can put children at risk.

Because child care is undertaken more by women than men around the world, shifting cultivation is more likely to be adopted by women and plow cultivation by men. In societies where plow cultivation is practiced, women do not participate much at all in the labour sphere, by instead tend to almost exclusively do domestic affairs. Even when a country moved out of agriculture into industrial endeavours, it tended to preserve some of the gender norms.

Gender and essentialism

A way to consider how culture influences people’s perceptions of gender is to determine which gender identity is viewed to be more essentialized. Essentialized means that something is thought to reflect an underlying unchangeable essence.

In general, the gender that is associated with more power in a culture is the one that is more likely to be essentialized.

Some other ways that cultures differ in the self-concept

Self-consistency

One way that the self-concept shapes our psychology is in how we think and act in different situations. What is the degree of self-consistency, to what degree people act the same in different situations.

Cultures vary in the degree to which individuals are motivated to be consistent across situations. People with an interdependent self-concept have a lower degree of self-consistency.

A desire to be consistent can lead to cognitive dissonance.

People in collectivistic cultures are consistent in other ways, they try to be consistent with others.

Self-awareness

The self can be considered form two different vantage points 1) Subjective self-awareness, from the perspective of the subject, the I that observes and interacts with the world Our concerns are with the world outside of ourselves and we are largely unaware of ourselves. Our attention is directed away from ourselves 2) Objective self-awareness, consider ourselves from the perspective of an object, the same way that we perceive the rest of the world. Our concerns are directed specifically at ourselves.

Individuals who have more of an interdependent view of self would tend to focus more on monitoring their sense of belongingness and connection with others, objective self-awareness.

Ways in which cultural differences in self-awareness emerge 1) How people would think about themselves if they were adopting an objective, outside-in perspective as opposed to a subjective, inside-out perspective of the self, collectivistic cultures are more influenced by what people think other people think of them 2) The perspective you take in memories 3) The accuracy of one’s self-views.

Implicit theories regarding the nature of the self

The nature of our self-concept is shaped by our implicit theories about it. Implicit theories guide our interpretation of much of what happens in the world. These theories represent a set of beliefs we take for granted, usually without engaging in much active hypothesis testing.
 
One kind of implicit theory is about the nature of ourselves 1) Incremental theory of self, we can easily change, and are expected to change. The self-concept is largely in flux and respond to the efforts we make 2) Entity theory of self, aspects of the self are largely resistant to change. Attributes are largely inborn.

Whether individuals possess more incremental theories or more entity theories for a given domain in life can have a large impact on the efforts they make.  

Personality

People in any given culture differ from their compatriots in many ways.

The five factor model of personality

According to the five factor model, there are five underlying personality traits, or ‘core traits’. These traits are: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

The five factor model proposes that all personality traits largely reflect some combination of the five core traits. The model has the same factors around the world.

But, in other countries, there are factors other than the big five. It does not provide an exhaustive list of personality traits in other cultures.