This is the Chapter 16 of the book The Individual (de Bruin, E., 1st Edition). Which is content for the exam of the Theory component of Module 4 (The Individual) of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands

In what way does culture influence personality?  - Chapter 16

What is cultural personality psychology?

• Cultural variations: within-group similarity in their behaviour and thought, accompanied by profound intergroup differences
• Cultural personality psychology:
  
  • Principles underlying the cultural diversity
  • Discover how human psychology shapes culture
  • How cultural understandings, in turn, shape our psychology

Approaches to culture

MAJOR APPROACHES TO EXPLAINING AND EXPLORING PERSONALITY ACROSS CULTURE

• Evoked culture: cultural differences created by differing environmental conditions activating a predicable set of responses. Two ingredients necessary to explain cultural variation
  • First ingredient: universal underlying mechanism
  • Second ingredient: environment differences in the degree to which the underlying mechanism is activated
• Transmitted culture: ideas/values/attitudes/beliefs that exist in person’s mind that are transmitted to other people’s minds through their interaction with the original person
• Cultural universals: not all behaviours can be classified as either evoked culture or transmitted culture
• Markus and Kitayama (1991) ‘cultural tasks’:
  
  • Interdependence: involves how you are affiliated with, attached to or engaged in the larger group of which you are a member --> concerned with relational harmony
  • Independence: involves how you differentiate yourself from the larger group --> concerned with personal control
• Acculturation: contact between two cultural groups that leads to change in both groups but the change is often more prominent in the non-dominant group
• Personality shaped by emotional tendencies through cognitive, behavioural and social processes --> different cultures experience different emotions/have different words to describe emotional experience
• Honesty-humility factor: cross-cultural research discovered a six-factor personality factor