Chapter No# 6

SELF AND PERSONALITY

Chapter’s Focus:

• To understand the profound cultural differences in the way people come to understand
themselves.
• Role of culture in our self-concept, our personality, who we are?
• How culture shapes our attitudes towards gender.

INDEPENDENT AND INTERDEPENDENT VIEWS OF SELF:

→ These are the two fundamental ways people see themselves
→ Two models of self-concept

INDEPENDENT SELF-CONCEPT INTERDEPENDENT SELF-CONCEPT

• self drives its identity from inner
attributes
• reflects person's inner essence
• based on individual identity
• self-contained
• Arise from individual not from
interaction with others
• stable throughout life span
• e.g. western societies
• individual is relational identity
• A person is connected to and sustained
by number of significant relationships
• self is defined by social relationships
• Behaviors depend on perceptions of
others' thought, feelings and actions
• e.g. japanies societies

Implication of self-concept in Psychology:

The way people view themselves is central to topics involving human cognition, motivation,
emotions, and relationships. Understanding that there are different patterns in how self-
concepts are constructed enables us to make predictions about how specific psychological
processes will vary cross-culturally.

INGROUP AND OUTGROUP REALATIONSHIPS:

→ People with independent self-concept have permeable ingroup-outgroup boundry
→ People with interdependent self-concept have solid ingroup-outgroup boundry
Why would we expect to see people with independent and interdependent selves having
different views toward ingroups and outgroups?

Ingroup Relationship- Interdependent Self Outgroup Relationship- Independent Self

• Ingroup relationships serve to direct
appropriate behaviours
• People have several obligations toward
these relationships
• It’s essential for people to distinguish
those toward whom they have
obligations from those they do not
• it is rare for an insider to lose his or her
privileged status and fall into the
outgroup category
• The ingroup-outgroup boundaries are
stable
• an independent person perceives
himself or herself as functioning largely
separately from the social environment
• the people in that environment are
more tangential to the person’s self-
concept
• New relationships can be formed and
old ones dissolved without much
impact on individual identity
• People with independent selves should
be more willing to form new
connections
• it should thus be experienced as fluid
and permeable.

INDIVISUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM:

Individualistic Culture:
➢ People are more likely to engage in thoughts and behaviours that foster their own
independence
➢ they come to feel distinct from others
➢ emphasize the importance of being self-sufficient.

Collectivistic culture:
➢ People in a collectivistic culture are more likely to engage in thoughts and behaviours
that foster the interdependent aspects of their self-concept, such as their close
relationships and group memberships.
 The most individualistic country in the
world is the United States, closely
followed by other English-speaking
Where are countries and by Western European
individualistic nations.
and collectivistic
cultures found?
Collectivistic countries are in Asia,
Africa, southern Europe, eastern
Europe, and the South Pacific

DIVERSITY AMONG INDIVIDUALS AND CULTURES:

→ Every individual surely has both interdependent and independent aspects of self, yet people
do vary considerably in the degree to which they are closer to the independent or the
interdependent view.
→ One important factor in how often people experience their own independence or
interdependence is the situations they encounter every day.
→ For instance, in individualistic cultures, people more often face situations that highlight
independent aspects of the self, because cultural practices emphasize personal goals over
collective ones.

All cultures contain a great variety of

people as the people respond to the
cultural messages in various ways. The
fit between a person’s self-concept and
the dominant surrounding culture
predicts his or her behavior and sense
ofwell-being!

GENDER AND CULTURE:

Gender Equality and Gender Norms:

• There are cultural differences in the way people view issues of gender equality.
• People in some cultures believe women should be treated the same as men; in others, people
believe men should be granted more rights, privileges, and power than women.
• For example, women represent only about 3% of elected officials in Arab nations, whereas
they represent 45% of the Swedish parliament. In Brazil, about the same percentage of men
and women are literate; in Pakistan, twice as many men as women are literate.
 Several Variables

RELIGION Geographical Agriculture

Christian countries- Location
In shifting
likely to have More northern cultivation where
egalitarian gender countries had mostly
views Muslims- not much of the
egalitarian views, and
associated with more more southern
muscular power is
traditional gender countries had needed, women
views primarily traditional do most of the

SELF CONSISTENCY:
➢ Cultures vary considerably in the degree to which individuals are motivated to be
consistent across all situations.
➢ North Americans appear to aspire toward self-consistency, whereas East Asians are concerned
with being consistent with others. So, although there is a cross-cultural similarity in the
motivations to be consistent, what people try to keep consistent varies. These differences can
have marked effects on behaviour.
➢ Festinger (1957) proposed that we have a powerful motivation to be consistent, and that
cognitive dissonance is the distressing feeling we have when we observe ourselves behaving
inconsistently, or against our own sense of self-consistency. This distress is so disturbing that
we feel the need to rid ourselves of it. One way is to start acting more consistently, but that
can be hard to do
➢ Another strategy is to change our attitudes so we no longer appear to be so inconsistent. This
is known as dissonance reduction.

SELF AWARENESS
The self is a unique entity because it has two different vantage points.
 Self-Awareness

Subjective self- Objective self-awareness

awareness

A state of mind in which we can consider

A state of mind we can consider ourself ourself from the outside in, looking at
from the inside out, with the ourself objectively, the perspective of an
perspective of the subject—the “I” that object, the same way we perceive the
observes and interacts with the world. rest of the world.

How might culture affect self-awareness?

There are a few ways we might expect cultural differences in self-awareness to emerge. First,
consider how people would think about themselves if they were adopting an objective,
outside-in perspective as opposed to a subjective, inside-out perspective. If someone is trying
to meet the expectations of others, it would follow that her thoughts about herself (e.g.,
“What kind of person am I?”) would be guided by how she thinks other people perceive her.
For example, suppose I believe other people think I’m rude, and if I'm in a state of objective
self-awareness, I should come to think of myself as rude as well. My self-view should be
guided by impressions of how others perceive me. But if I’m in a state of subjective self-
awareness, my thoughts about myself should be less affected by what I believe others might
think about me.

Implicit Theories on the Nature of the Self:

It represents a set of beliefs

we take for granted

Guide our interpretation of

much of what happens in the
"Implicit Theories" means
world

Way to explore cultural

influences on psychology

1. Incremental theory of self: We might believe, for instance, that our self-concept is largely
fluid and responds to the efforts we make. The belief that we can easily change, and are
expected to change, is referred to as an incremental theory of self.
 2. Entity theory of self: it says that aspects of the self are resistant to change; this is known as
an entity theory of self. People who endorse this theory view their abilities and traits as fixed,
innate features of the self.

Example: when people with an entity theory about intelligence encounter a failure, they are more
likely to blame their intellectual ability. People with an incremental theory, in contrast, respond to
failure by focusing on their efforts and the strategies they used.

PERSONALITY
FIVE FACTOR MODEL
➢ It is also known as “Big Five”.
➢ According to the theory, there are five underlying core traits of personality.
➢ The large number of personality traits has been reduced to five by using factor analysis
method.
➢ Factor analysis is a statistical method for identifying groups of things that are alike or different

Openness to experience reflects a person’s creativity and curiosity

about the world.

Conscientiousness indicates how responsible, dependable, and self-

disciplined a person is.

BIG FIVE Extraversion indicates how outgoing, social, or dominant a person is

Agreeableness refers to a warm, pleasant, and considerate

temperament.

Neuroticism indicates emotional instability and unpredictability.

➢ The Big Five have been studied in the context of thousands of people in dozens of cultures
around the world.
➢ Around the world people seem to think of themselves and others in terms of the same five
basic personality traits. And in dozens of countries, people’s personality seems to mature in
similar ways, with people tending to become more agreeable, more conscientious, and less
neurotic as they age (Bleidorn et al., 2013).