culture-and-personality studies
- culture-and-personality studies
-
▪ anthropological school
also called psychological anthropology
branch of
cultural anthropology that seeks to determine the range of personality types extant in a given culture and to discern where, on a continuum from ideal to perverse, the culture places each type. The type perceived as ideal within a culture is then referred to as the “personality” of the culture itself, as with duty-bound stoicism among the English and personal restraint among traditional
Pueblo Indians.
Culture-and-personality studies apply the methods of
psychology to the field of anthropology, including in-depth interviews, role playing, Rorschach tests (
Rorschach Test), elaborate biographies, studies of family roles, and dream interpretation. Most popular in the 1930s and '40s, psychological anthropology is exemplified by the works of American anthropologist Ruth Benedict (
Benedict, Ruth),
especially Patterns of Culture (1934) and
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946). Benedict and other proponents of culture-and-personality studies directed the attention of anthropologists to the symbolic meanings and emotional significance of cultural features that had hitherto been considered primarily through functional analysis (
functionalism); at the same time, they led psychologists to recognize the existence of an inevitable cultural component in all processes of perception, motivation, and learning.
Culture-and-personality studies lost traction in the 1960s and '70s, an era characterized by shifting scholarly sensibilities and the critical reexamination of many fundamental anthropological concepts.
* * *
Universalium.
2010.
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