Ch 17 Culture and Personality

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4 17 07

• Ch 17 Culture and Personality
• 1. Cultural Universals and Differences
• 2. Markus Kitayama (1991) Model
• 3. Suh Self-Consistency

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Ch 17 Culture and Personality

• Some Cultural Universals
• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• Higher status person is Dr. blank or Mr. So
  and so
• Lower status person is Jack or Bob
• 5.

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• What About Sex Roles?
• Margaret Mead (1935)
• Documented particular culture in which women were
  more dominant
• Today

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• Men active, aggressive, conceited, loud,
  pleasure-seeking, reckless, tough
• Women affectionate, dependent, emotional,
  fearful, modest, patient, prudish, timid, warm

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• Williams Best (1990)
• Both men and women are viewed favorably as well
  as disfavorably
• However, in terms of different attributes
• Such sex differences have some support (Ch 16)

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• Ekman (1973)
• Set of emotional facial expressions
• Traveled to Fore foragers of New Guinea
• No exposure to Western culture
• Also Japan, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, USA
• Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• Ekman (1973) your child has died, etc.
• Lazarus (1991) studies of blind children
• Thus, emotion expression

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• Interpersonal circumplex
• Why?
• We dont know for sure
• But knowing dominance and warmth of others is
  presumably a universal benefit

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• Is personality a Western thing?
• In describing the spontaneous self (TST)
• In evaluating the behaviors of others (e.g.,
  Miller, 1984)
• Recent research has evaluated this

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• Is personality a Western thing?
• No
• Big 5 factor structure replicates in France,
  Holland, Philippines, Sino-Tibetan,
  Hamito-Semitic, Malayo-Polynesian cultures, so on

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• Cultural diffs in traits
• Stereotypes or reality?

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• McCrae et al. (2005)
• 80 colleagues
• 51 cultures
• 12,156 participants
• Big 5 inventory

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Ch 17 Culture and Personality

• Cultural universals
• Cultural differences
• Also pronounced, however..

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Ch 17 Culture and Personality

• Americans oysters
• French snails, frog legs
• Zulus locusts
• Chinese snakes
• Jale, New Guinea people

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Ch 17 Culture and Personality

• Middle Eastern men kiss each other on the cheek
• Germans do not visit Herr Professor during
  office hours
• Iranians do not eat French Fries with their hands
• Japanese have many customs that Americans frankly
  do poorly with

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Ch 17 Culture and Personality

• Norms
• However, aware when go to other cultures
• Scotland fork stays in left hand
• Americans cut, drop knife, then pick up fork
  with right hand
• Other examples of being fish out of water?

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Ch 17 Culture and Personality

• Very loose with time
• Often late
• Very tight with time
• Perceived as obsessive by southern Europeans

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Ch 17 Culture and Personality

• With strangers, larger
• With intimates, smaller
• Those near equator prefer less space
• Northern Europeans want more space

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Ch 17 Culture and Personality

• India 84
• United States 47
• Germany 9
• Iceland 3

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Chapter 17 Culture and Personality

• Brahmins not OK
• Americans OK
• Brahmins OK
• Americans not OK
• Brahmins not OK
• Americans not OK
• What is considered acceptable varies by culture

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Short film clip

• Cultural differences
• Are they chaotic and random?
• Or can we understand them more systematically?
• Recent work contrasts
• Americans, Europeans
• Vs. Japanese, Korean, Chinese, African, Indian
• Loosely Western versus Eastern
• And self-concept differences
• Film fact sheet

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Cultural Differences

• Markus Kitayama (1991) model
• Very influential
• Cultures differ in self-concept

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Cultural Differences

• Markus Kitayama (1991) model
• American, European
• Self exists apart from others

father
mother
self
girlfriend
friend
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Cultural Differences

• Markus Kitayama (1991) model
• Asian, Indian, African
• Self overlaps with others

father
mother
self
girlfriend
friend
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Cultural Differences

• Consequences for cognition
• (1)
• Self varies across contexts (or not)
• Contradictions allowed (or not)
• Me as friend caring, submissive
• Me as boss hard-assed, uncaring

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Cultural Differences

• Consequences for cognition
• (2)
• Independent
• Behaviors attributed to traits (e.g., he is a
  jerk)
• Interdependent
• Behaviors attributed to situation (e.g., he must
  be in a hurry)

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Cultural Differences

• (1)
• - ego focused anger, pride
• Own needs wants
• Independent self, Western self
• - other focused sympathy, shame, caring
• Others needs wants
• Interdependent, Eastern self

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Cultural Differences

• Consequences for emotion
• (2)
• amae need to be at anothers indulgence
• oime feeling of indebtedness

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Cultural Differences

• Consequences for emotion
• (3)
• Yes
• Internal attributes (feelings) seen as authentic
  reflection of self
• No
• Feelings seen as selfish, disruptive, primitive
• (4)
• Japan less intense feelings, expressions
• China, Ghana emotions seen as body problems not
  social ones

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Cultural Differences

• Consequences for motivation
• (1)
• - deference need to defer, follow
• - similance need to emulate
• abasement need for self-deprecation

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Cultural Differences

• Consequences for motivation
• (2)
• Japan - no desire to view self gt other
• - the nail that stands out gets pounded
• (3)
• Western - yes
• - success me failure situation
• Eastern - no
• - success not me failure me

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Culture and Self-Consistency (Suh, 2002)

• Western conception of mental health
• Self-actualization
• Self as guidance, meaning
• Others just screw you up

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Culture and Self-Consistency (Suh, 2002)

• Eastern conception of mental health

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Culture and Self-Consistency (Suh, 2002)

• Importance of self-consistency in West
• People seek, trust feedback that confirms self
  concept
• Maintaining coherent self-view an important
  motive
• More inconsistency across roles
• more depression, neuroticism

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Culture and Self-Consistency (Suh, 2002)

• Less cognitive dissonance arising from behavior
  that violates ones prior attitudes
• Less critical of public behavior that mismatches
  private
• Americans would call this hypocrisy

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Culture and Self-Consistency (Suh, 2002)

• A tree changes colors, loses leaves, etc.
• It is still the same tree
• Thus, acting differently in different situations
  is natural

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Culture and Self-Consistency

• Personal Pentagram
• self interacting with different people
• Romantic partner, parents, same-sex friend,
  stranger, teacher/professor
• How characteristic of you is each trait?
• Talkative (T), serious (S), nervous (N),
  intellectual (I), cheerful (C)
• Rank from 1 most characteristic to 5 least
• Connect each trait across contexts

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Culture and Self-Consistency (Suh, 2002)

• Extent to which equally talkative across
  situations
• Extent to which equally serious across situations
• traited in this sense
• Always the same regardless of who Im interacting
  with

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Ch 16 Culture and Personality

• Self is always the same
• Self changes
• Koreans pentagrams less ordered (more variation)
• Consistency more predictive of happiness for ___