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In this article we will discuss about the role of culture in the development of personality.
According to some sociologists, the development of personality and the acquisition of culture are not different processes, but one and the same learning process. The studies carried out in 1937 by Linton, the social anthropologist, and Kardinar, the psychoanalyst, demonstrate that each culture tends to create and are supported by a “basic personality type”.
In their view, the basic personality type found among most of the members of a particular society is the result of the culturally similar early childhood experiences, and not of instincts or inherent ‘drives’. The child is not born in a vacuum but in a cultural context which affects his mental make-up, habits and attitudes.
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A given cultural environment sets off its participant members from others operating under different cultural environments. The following illustrations may be cited in support of the above thesis. Culture consists of both material and non-material elements. According to Ogbum, both of these elements have a bearing on personality.
By way of illustrating the influence of material elements of culture, he referred to the influence of plumbing on the formation of habits and attitudes favourable to cleanliness and to the relation of clocks to punctuality.
Ogbum says that the American Indians who had no clocks or watches in their culture had little notion of keeping appointments on an exact time.
According to him, the difference in the personality of an American Indian from that of a white American in the matter of punctuality may be traced to differences in the material elements of their culture (in the instant case, the possession of watches or clocks or their absence in their respective cultures).
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Likewise, some cultures greatly value cleanliness, as is clear from the saying – “Cleanliness is next to godliness”.
The trait of cleanliness is greatly encouraged by the technology of plumbing and other cultural aids that are found with it. Language affords an instructive example with regard to the connection between the non-material or abstract elements of culture and personality.
Since language is the medium through which an individual obtains his knowledge about the basic premises and various facets of the “culture” of his community, it may be regarded as the principal agency for moulding his personality. This is evident from the fact that people who cannot speak generally exhibit warped personality.
It is evident from the aforesaid examples that culture has a very close bearing on the development of personality. Ideas, values, and behaviour patterns of an individual are largely the outcome of cultural conditioning.
It should not, however, be concluded that culture is a massive die that shapes uniformly all those who come under it with an identical pattern. Within the same culture, personality traits differ— some more aggressive and some less, some more submissive and some less, some more sensitive and some not so sensitive, and so on. In fact, culture is only one among many determinants of personality.
In fact, neither psychology, with its emphasis upon individual differences, nor sociology, with its emphasis upon cultural similarities, can by itself give an adequate account of personality. It would be better to regard personality also as a bio-social phenomenon. Two facts about the confrontation of the individual and his culture should, however, be stressed.
First, it is a two-way process. Ernest van den Haag has very poetically expressed it thus – “One lives in the tension between society and solitude”.
Second, the process is a continuous one, not something that begins in infancy and ends at adulthood.
Ruth Benedict in her book, The Patterns of Culture, emphasizes these aspects thus:
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“…. anthropologist with a background of experience of other cultures has ever believed that individuals were automatons, mechanically carrying out the decrees of their civilisation. No culture yet observed has been able to eradicate the difference in the temperaments of the persons who compose it. It is always a give and take. The problem of the individual is not clarified by stressing the antagonism between culture and the individual, but by stressing their mutual reinforcement. This rapport is so close that it is not possible to discuss patterns of culture without considering specifically their relation to individual psychology”.