Chapter 6
Social Identity, Personality, and
Gender
1
What Will You Learn?
• Assess the cultural forces that shape
personality and social identity.
• Explain how cultures are passed on and
learned by offspring.
• Distinguish between sex and gender from a
cross-cultural perspective
• Illustrate the cultural relativity of normal and
abnormal.
• Identify culturally specific mental disorders.
2
Enculturation: The Self and Social
Identity
• Human children are biologically ill-equipped
to survive without culture.
• There are several case studies around the
world of “feral” children, none of which had
happy endings.
3
Self Awareness
• Enculturation begins with the development of
self-awareness or the ability to:
– Identify oneself as an individual.
– To reflect on oneself.
– To evaluate oneself.
• Self-awareness does not come all at once. In
modern industrial and postindustrial societies,
for example, self and nonself are not clearly
distinguished until a child is about 2 years old,
lagging behind other cultures.
4
Self-Awareness
• Self-awareness develops in concert with
neuromotor development, which is known to
proceed at a slower rate in infants from
industrial societies than infants in many small
scale farming or foraging communities.
• While it is not clear what accounts for this yet,
the amount of human contact and stimulation
that infants receive appears to play a role.
5
Self-Awareness
• In the majority of the world’s societies, infants
routinely sleep with their parents, or at the
minimum their mothers.
• They are carried most of the time
• Any cry or fuss is quickly responded to with
the offering of the breast
– Example: a Ju/’hoansi child is with their mother
70% of the time and an American child is with
their mother 20% of the time. (In close contact).
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Social Identity Through Personal
Naming
• Personal names are important devices for selfdefinition in all cultures.
• A personal name will establish a child’s
birthright and social identity.
• Some cultures wait until birth or soon after
and other’s might pick a name before the child
is born (typical in the United States).
• These naming ceremonies are special events
or rituals that mark the naming of a child.
7
Naming Practices Across Cultures
• While naming practices and timing vary crossculturally, names can also be changed after birth.
• When an ethnic group or nation falls under the
control of a more powerful and expanding
neighboring group, its members may be forced to
assimilate and give up their cultural identity. Thus
making naming of a child more difficult because
of the abandoned practices.
• People may be forced to change their names into
more culturally accepted names by mainstream
society to avoid racial discrimination or ethnic
stigmas.
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Critical Thought
• Tuareg of Niger naming
ceremony. Child is named
on 8th day. People come
from neighboring villages
to celebrate in the
naming process and see
the new member of the
clan.
• An animal might also be
sacrificed.
• How do we choose a
name for our children?
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The Self and the Behavioral
Environment
• There are four main orientations that must be
learned by an individual as they mature into
their culture and natural environment.
– Object Orientation
– Spatial Orientation
– Temporal Orientation
– Normative Orientation
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Orientation
• Object Orientations are when individuals
must learn about all objects in the world and
then they tend to ignore or lump together
those which are deemed unimportant by their
culture.
• Spatial Orientations are when one must
remember or recall how to travel from one
place to another; incorporates placing yourself
in a geographical context.
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Orientation
• Temporal Orientation allows people to have a
sense of their place in time. Also a part of the
behavioral environment.
• Normative Orientation deals with the
understanding of moral values, ideals, and
principles which are relative to one’s culture.
12
Culture and Personality
• As children are enculturated, each individual is
introduced to a society's natural and humanmade environment along with a collective body
of ideas about the self and others.
• One’s personality is typically a generalization
about that person’s internalized map over time.
• These personalities are products of enculturation,
as experienced by individuals - each with their
own unique genetic makeup.
• Personality is the distinctive way a person thinks,
feels and behaves.
13
How Personality is Acquired
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Personality Development: A CrossCultural Perspective on Gender
• Not only is what one learns important to
personality development but also how one
learns.
• Traditional Western society emphasizes that
men should be tough, aggressive, assertive,
and self-reliant whereas women have been
expected to be gentle, pliable and caring.
• Margaret Mead identified through her studies
that biology is not destiny when it comes to
gender.
15
Two Patterns of Child Rearing
• Dependence training - promotes child rearing
practices that foster compliance in the
performance of assigned tasks and
dependence on the domestic group rather
than reliance on oneself.
• Independence training – child rearing
practices that foster independence, selfreliance, and personal achievement.
– Which best describes the United States?
16
Dependence Training
• This technique is common to non-industrial
societies where co-habitation with extended
families is a necessity.
• Family members all actively work to help and
support each other, rather than one doing the
work for the whole family.
17
Independence Training
• Common to industrial and postindustrial
societies where these traits (independence
and self reliance) are best for success, if not
for survival.
• Infants in these societies typically spend less
time with their parents than in non-industrial
societies.
18
Group Personality
• Often it is possible to characterize a “group”
personality without falling into a stereotype,
especially among more traditional societies.
• The larger and more complex a society
becomes the more diverse it may become.
Here we may speak of cultural personality in a
broad sense.
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Modal Personality
• The modal personality of a group is defined as
the character traits that occur with the highest
frequency in a social group and therefore the
most representative of its culture.
• Modal personality is a statistical concept.
• It opens up for investigation the questions of
how societies organize diversity and how
diversity relates to culture change.
20
National Character Studies
• Focused on the modal characteristics of modern
countries.
• National character studies were flawed in the
1930-1940s because they were generalizations
based on limited data, relatively small samples of
informants, and questionable assumptions about
developmental psychology.
• Although still debatable in their relevance they
did help to shift focus to modern cultures as
opposed to traditional non-industrial small scale
societies.
21
Core Values
• An alternative to national character studies
that allows for the fact that not all
personalities will conform to cultural ideals.
• Studying the Core Values or values promoted
by a particular culture can be a way to study a
group of people.
22
Alternative Gender Models
• When there are only two biological sexes
among humans (male/female) how does one
identify their personality and social identity if
it does not fit clearly into one of those sexes?
• Many societies identify more than one sex
(third gender) and have developed special
roles for these individuals.
– Intersexual is a person born with reproductive
organs, genitalia, and/or sex chromosomes that
are not exclusively male or female.
23
Transgenders
• People who cross over or occupy an
intermediate position in the binary malefemale gender construction are usually
referred to as transgenders.
24
Critical Thought?
• Around the world many societies accept and
consider a third gender. These people may
even hold a status higher than someone of a
traditional gender.
• Do we recognize a third gender in the United
States? Why or why not?
25
Eunuchs
• Historically the practice of castration – the
damaging, cutting, or crushing of testicles has
been practiced world-wide.
• Often Eunuchs could rise to a high status such as
a priest or administrator during the Persian,
Byzantine and Chinese empires.
• Largest population of eunuchs in the world today
is found in India known as hijras. They are
performers and may even perform at important
rights of passage such as births or marriages.
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Mental Disorders Across Time and
Cultures
• Despite odd or even rare cultural practices it is
possible for there to be “abnormal” activities,
thoughts, or actions no matter what the
culture.
• Although each culture might identify the
disorder in a different capacity.
• Culture Bound Syndrome or Ethic psychosismental disorders specific to particular ethnic
groups.
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