Social Identity,
Personality, and Gender
Lecture Outline
Nature-nurture controversy
 Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory
 Piaget’s Cognitive Development theory
 What is enculturation?
 How does enculturation influence personality?
 World-view beliefs
 Are different personalities characteristic of
different cultures?
 Stereotypes
 Gender
 Normal behaviour

The Self and the
Behavioral Environment
Culture is created and learned rather
than biologically inherited.
 All societies must ensure that culture is
transmitted from one generation to the
next.
 Enculturation begins soon after birth.

Piaget’s Cognitive
Development theory
- Sensorimotor stage – birth to year 2
- Preoperational stage – 2 to 6 or 7
(conservation, centration, irreversability,
egocentrism, animism)
- Concrete operations stage - 6 or 7 to 11
- Formal operational stage - 11 through
adulthood
Transition from stage to stage – gradual
2 mechanisms responsible for movement from one stage to the
next:
- Assimilation
- Accomodation
Enculturation
AGENTS:
-
People – parents, siblings,
extended families, peers
-
Institutions and organizations
Parents
Parenting styles:
-
-
Authoritarian
Permissive
Authoritative
Uninvolved
Exposure to peer groups
-
Postfigurative cultures
-
Configurative cultures
-
Prefigurative cultures
(according to Margaret Mead)
Self Awareness

The ability to:
–Identify oneself as an object.
–React to oneself.
–Appraise or evaluate oneself.

Attaching positive value to the self
ensures individuals act to their own
advantage.
Requirements for Selfawareness
Object orientation - aware of the world
of objects other than self.
 Spatial orientation - the ability to get
from one object, or place, to another.

Requirements for Selfawareness
Temporal orientation - able to connect
past actions with those in the present
and future.
 Normative orientation - understanding
of cultural values, ideals, and
standards.

Personality
Refers to the distinctive ways a person
thinks, feels, and behaves.
 Most anthropologists believe adult
personality is shaped by early childhood
experiences.
 The economy helps structure the way
children are raised and this influences
their adult personalities.

Oedipus Complex

Oedipus complex, a concept used in psychoanalysis, is a
child's unconscious desire for the exclusive love of the
parent of the opposite sex. This desire includes jealousy
toward the parent of the same sex and the unconscious
wish for that parent's death.
The term Oedipus complex was first used by the
Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. It comes from the
myth of Oedipus, a Greek hero who unknowingly killed
his father and married his mother. Freud used the term
to describe the unconscious feelings of children of both
sexes toward their parents. However, later researchers
used the term Electra complex for the complex in girls.
According to Greek legend, a woman named Electra
helped plan the murder of her mother.
Freud believed that the Oedipus complex is a normal
part of human psychological growth. The Oedipal phase
of development is commonly considered to last from the
age of 2 to 6. During this period, children experience
intense feelings - love and hate, yearning and jealousy,
fear and anger - that produce emotional conflicts. Most
people outgrow the Oedipal phase, but some mentally ill
individuals have a strong Oedipus complex as adults.
According to Freud, the principal reason for the
weakening of the complex in boys is the fear of
punishment from the father.
Freud thought that all peoples experience the Oedipus
complex. But many anthropologists and researchers in
psychoanalysis doubt that the complex exists in certain
non-Western societies. They believe it develops as a
result of a person's social environment and does not
occur in everyone.
What Are Your World-view
Beliefs? (complex of motivations,
perceptions, and beliefs that we internalize and that
strongly affect how we interact with other people
and things in nature.)
1.
Do you believe that things are interrelated
in complex ways and that there are degrees of
difference? In contrast, do you see things in
terms of sharp distinctions? To put it another
way, are issues usually black and white for you
or do you see them as having gray areas? For
example, is lying to a friend always
wrong? Are some lies less bad because they
are intended to prevent your friend from
feeling bad about something or being
disillusioned?
2. Do you prefer things to be unchanging
and stable? Do you like to do things
the same traditional way every
time? In contrast, do you prefer to do
things in new ways, and do you enjoy
having a changing and unpredictable
life? For example, when you go out to
dinner, do you like to go to the same
restaurant every time and order the
same sort of food or do you like to take
a risk and try new restaurants and
foods that are unknown to you?
3. Do you like to take unnecessary personal
physical risks or are you content with the safe
path through life? For example, do you enjoy
rock climbing, surfing big waves, or other
sports that inherently involve a high risk for
your safety? Do you get bored when you are
not looking forward to such risky
activities? When mentally calculating the risk
potential of an activity, you probably compare
it subconsciously to your own personal internal
anxiety-security scale. High risk activities
move you in the direction of anxiety. Low risk
ones move you toward security. At which end
of this scale are you the happiest? Does
security mean boredom for you or comfort?
4.Do you prefer competition or cooperation? For
example, do you like games in which there are
clear winners and losers or would you rather
spend your time in non-competitive activities
in which winning is not a goal? It is worth
noting that businesses in the Western World
run on the basis of competition with each
other. The winners make more money and the
losers go broke. Likewise, most sports are
highly competitive. Basketball, football,
hockey, and track events are all designed to
result in winners and losers. Are you
comfortable with this?
Two Patterns of Child
Rearing
Dependence training - promotes
compliance in and favors keeping
individuals within the group.
 Independence training - emphasizes
individual independence, self-reliance,
and personal achievement.

National Character
Studies
Focused on the modal characteristics of
modern countries.
 Many anthropologists believe national
character theories are based on
unscientific and overgeneralized data.
 Francis Hsu - Core values

Eg. Chinese – value kin ties and cooperation
North Americans of European descent – „rugged
individualism” (competition, rise of unmarried couples)
Stereotypes
Stereotypes are very different from legitimate cultural
generalizations that are based on careful scientific study
or positive personal experience.
Stereotypes are social constructs
 they originate in & reflect the power relations in society
because they are part of a culture's ideology

they foster values that reinforce group and individual
subordination

they marginalize people, treating them as "the other„

they categorize people into groups whose members
supposedly share inevitable characteristics, most
typically, negative ones
Characteristics of
stereotypes





stereotypes are categorical & general,
suggesting the traits apply to all group
members
they are inflexible or rigid, thus not
easily corrected
they are simplistic
they are prejudgements not based on
experience (They could be reinforced by
negative personal experience.)
can be conscious or unconscious
Logical form of sentence asserting a
stereotype: All x's are y.
For example, complete the blank with an
adjective:





All women are _____________.
Black men are ______________.
White women are ___________.
Athletes are _______________.
Lesbians are ________________.
Stereotypes
Stereotypes
Stereotypes
Stereotypes
Stereotypes
Stereotypes
Stereotypes
Gender
Gender role – refers to the degree to which a
person adopts the gender-specific bahaviours
ascribed by his/her culture
Gender identity – refers to the degree to which a
person has awareness or recognition that
he/she adopts a particular role
Gender sterotypes- refer to the psychological or
behavioral characteristics typically associated
with men and women
Intersexuals
Transgenders
people who crossover or occupy a culturally acceptable
intermediate position in the binary male-female gender
construction:
Lacota – winkte – third-gender individuals, a male”who
wants to be a woman”
-
Tagolag-speaking people of the Philipines – bakla – „a
male with a female heart”
„two-spirit”
Normal Behavior
What defines normal behavior in any
culture is determined by the culture
itself.
 What may be acceptable in one culture
may not be in another.

Abnormality involves the development of a delusional
system of which the culture does not approve.
People are considered insane when they fail to conform to
a culturally defined range of normal behaviour.
Reading for next Lecture:

Chapter (from Haviland):
Sex and Marriage
- Article from The New York Times: Russian
Adoptees Get a Respite on the Range
- Article: Nature v nurture? Please don't
ask