Mead, Benedict, DuBois, Linton, Kardiner, Whiting and Child

The Culture and Personality school emerged in American anthropology during the 1920s and 1930s. It focuses on the intersection of individual psychology and cultural environment. Theorists in this field examine how child-rearing practices and social norms shape the personality types characteristic of different societies.

Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead was a student of Franz Boas and a prominent researcher in psychological anthropology. Her work challenged the belief that human behavior is biologically determined, emphasizing instead the role of cultural conditioning.

Key Studies

• Coming of Age in Samoa: Mead studied adolescent girls in Samoa and found that the stress and turbulence associated with adolescence in Western societies were absent in Samoa. She attributed this to the cultural openness regarding sexuality and the lack of rigid societal expectations.
• Growing Up in New Guinea: She examined child-rearing practices among the Manus people, focusing on the transition from childhood play to adult responsibility.
• Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies: Mead compared the Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli tribes. She demonstrated that personality traits traditionally considered masculine or feminine are culturally constructed rather than biological.

Ruth Benedict

Ruth Benedict was a student of Franz Boas and a pioneer in the study of national character. She applied the concept of configurations to describe cultures as integrated wholes.

Key Concepts

• Patterns of Culture: Benedict argued that every culture selects a specific segment of the total arc of human possibilities. She classified the Kwakiutl as Dionysian, characterized by emotional excess, and the Zuni as Apollonian, characterized by moderation and restraint.
• The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Commissioned to study Japanese society during World War II, Benedict categorized it as a shame culture, where social behavior is regulated by external judgment, as opposed to Western guilt cultures, which rely on internal moral conscience.

Cora Du Bois

Cora Du Bois introduced the concept of modal personality to refine the study of national character. She moved away from the idea that all individuals in a society share the exact same personality.

Key Concepts

• Modal Personality: This term refers to the personality type that occurs most frequently within a specific population. It acknowledges individual variation while identifying a central tendency created by shared cultural experiences.
• The People of Alor: Du Bois conducted a multi-disciplinary study in Alor, an Indonesian island, using life histories and projective tests like the Rorschach to link childhood experiences to adult personality traits.

Ralph Linton

Ralph Linton was a central figure in integrating anthropology with social psychology. He focused on the relationship between the individual and the cultural framework.

Key Concepts

• Status and Role: Linton defined status as the position an individual occupies in a social system and role as the behavior expected of that status. These concepts are essential for understanding how individuals internalize cultural norms.
• Basic Personality Type: Linton collaborated with Abram Kardiner to differentiate between basic personality and the overt behaviors of a culture.

Abram Kardiner

Abram Kardiner was a psychoanalyst who provided the psychological mechanism for the Culture and Personality school.

Key Concepts

• Primary Institutions: These include child-rearing practices, basic subsistence activities, and family structures. Kardiner argued these shape the basic personality structure of a society.
• Secondary Institutions: These include religion, folklore, and social ideologies. He proposed that these are projections of the basic personality formed by the primary institutions.
• Basic Personality Structure: This represents the core personality traits shared by the members of a society due to common experiences in their formative years.

John Whiting and Irvin Child

John Whiting and Irvin Child shifted the field toward cross-cultural comparative research. They used statistical methods to test hypotheses about the relationship between child training and adult behavior.

Key Concepts

• Child Training and Personality: Their work Child Training and Personality analyzed cross-cultural data to correlate specific practices like weaning, toilet training, and aggression management with adult beliefs about illness and personality.
• Dependency and Aggression: They developed standardized codes for analyzing how societies handle childhood dependency and aggression, providing a scientific basis for psychological anthropology.

Comparative Summary of Theoretical Focus

Essential Facts on Psychological Anthropology

• The Culture and Personality school was heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, particularly the emphasis on early childhood experiences.
• National character studies gained immense popularity during World War II as governments sought to understand the psychological foundations of enemy nations.
• Projective tests, such as the Rorschach inkblot test, were frequently used in the field to identify deep-seated personality traits that might not be visible through standard interviews.
• Critics have argued that the school often relied on generalizations and could not account for the high level of individual diversity within a culture.
• The shift toward statistical cross-cultural research by Whiting and Child marked the transition toward a more empirically testable psychological anthropology.

Many of the early theories are now viewed as overly deterministic, but the core investigation into how culture influences human cognition remains a central pillar of modern social science.