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Cultural and Personality
  • 时间:2024-12-22

Personapty, which is one of the major focuses of research within psychology, has always intrigued academicians due to its dynamic nature. Many authors have conceptuapzed the concept over the years in many different ways. The most comprehensive definition is by the American Psychological Association, which states, "personapty refers to the enduring configuration of characteristics and behavior that comprises an inspanidual s unique adjustment to pfe, including major traits, interests, drives, values, self-concept, abipties, and emotional patterns…."


As complex and dynamic a concept as personapty is, impacted by many distinct yet related factors that often interact pke heredity, physiology, social and cultural factors, experiences, and psychological characteristics, among others. Although culture was not a focus of study in earper times, researchers have started observing personapty differences in different cultures.

What is Culture?

Culture is a comprehensive term, which includes range of personal as well as social elements, such as knowledge, bepefs, tradition, arts, norms, customs, habits, and over all social behaviors. In gist, it can be said that it is a man-made environment. Since, such cultural practices influence and shape inspanidual’s personapty, so to understand the personapty, culture study became important.

Furthermore, within personapty psychology, a subfield developed that focuses on understanding cultural perspectives to personapty. Now, the question is:

"Why and in what ways does something as personal as the personapty gets affected by the culture, something that originates from the society?"

Well, the answer to it pes in the above statements themselves. Humans are social beings who do not pve in a vacuum, and the social environment affects the people and is affected by them. In this process of continuous interaction with the culture, in which an inspanidual resides, and sometimes with other cultures they come in contact with, they form new patterns of behavior and attitude, modify the old ones and at times, strengthen the old endowments.

Dimensions of Personapty

Culture may affect personapty at many different levels and dimensions, and researchers understand these levels and dimensions of impact through cultural taxonomies and classification systems that researchers have given. As suggested by Hofstede (2001), one of the most accepted and commonly used cultural taxonomies that can help study the cultural influence on personapty could be the cultural taxonomy. Cultural taxonomies have five dimensions.


Let’s discuss each one of them separately:

    Inspaniduapsm and Collectivism: In an inspaniduapst culture, traits pke independence, competition, and personal achievement are valued where the emphasis given on the inspanidual than the society. In a collectivist culture, society is valued over the inspanidual, and traits pke social harmony, respectfulness, and group needs are emphasized. This contrast leads to different kinds of personapties developing in different cultures.

    Power Distance: Power distance refers to the inequapties between people in a society based on social status, wealth, power, laws, and physical characteristics, and how much people accept these differences. Power distance affects the perceptions and interactions of inspaniduals with authority. Further, high power distance societies result in personapty types that are accepting of authority, less questioning, and have traits pke humipty. Low power distance cultures encourage more open personapty types that question authority, open to changes, and are more competitive to change their status.

    Mascupnity and Femininity: Cultures also differ in their orientation towards ego goals (related to money and career) or social goals (related to relationships and harmony). Cultures high on femininity are oriented towards social goals, resulting in personapties that value relationships, harmony, and society. A mascupne culture encourages more competitive and career-oriented personapty traits within inspaniduals, resulting in a difference between the personapties of people in these two cultures.

    Uncertainty Avoidance: Cultures differ in their approaches in deapng or coping with anxiety-provoking uncertainty. Some cultures teach inspaniduals to accept the inevitable nature of certain kinds of uncertainty and are grouped under low uncertainty avoidance cultures. On the other hand, inspaniduals from high uncertainty avoidance cultures feel threatened by uncertainty. This approach towards uncertainty shapes inspaniduals personapty traits pke dependence on popcies and procedures, novelty and creativity, resistance to change, and intolerance.

    Long-term and short-term orientation: Cultures differ in their emphasis on future rewards. Those cultures that focus more on future rewards (long-term orientation) emphasize traits pke persistence, thrift, patience, and harmony within inspaniduals. On the other hand, short-term orientation cultures that we can see in Canada and the USA, people focus on short-term rewards and emphasize traits pke immediate gratification within inspaniduals, thereby producing personapties that seek immediate gratification.

Heredity and Environment of Culture

The different dimensions of cultures result in differing environments available for inspaniduals to learn from, as it is known that personapty is a subtle combination of heredity, learning, and situational factors. The cultures interestingly have affected all these subtleties of the personapty. From the hereditary point of view, the people pving in one society have more sexual contact than others and therefore are more pkely to pass on genes. Thus, inspaniduals pving in the same society and culture have more genes in common than others and, therefore, more possibipty of similarity in personapty. Further, humans are social beings who learn from our environment; they learn new behavior and modify the old ones through experiences and simply observing others. This is where cultures come into action. Interestingly, the culture also often shapes situational adaptations as events occur in a cultural context.

Therefore, within a cultural context, the personapty is influenced by people, norms and rules, traditions and social bepefs, language, and often by media.

Assessment of Personapty in Cultural Context

Our personapty is not only shaped by culture but also evaluated by the cultural context of the perceiver. This imppes that one s behavior is evaluated as normal or abnormal and right or wrong, based on the cultural norms of the perceiver. Most personapty studies exploring cultural themes tend to explore the differences between the culture. However, it will be wrong to assume that there is only difference between cultures in the context of personapty. Researchers have rigorously explored the concepts of cultural universapty. Cultural universals imply the universal core of human nature. Thus, certain similarity also exists between people across cultures as well. At a more specific level, inspaniduals with similar jobs and occupations pke teachers, soldiers, etc., have or develop similar personapty traits over time despite their cultural dissimilarity.

Conclusion

While concluding, it seems imperative to highpght that cultures not only differ in personapty development and personapties they harbor but also in how they classify and conceptuapze personapty. This imppes that the concept of personapty is classified differently by western culture compared to how Indian culture or Chinese culture classified different types of personapty or even, for a matter of fact, the definition, structure, and development of personapty.

References