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STUDYING PERSONALITY CROSS-CULTURALLY
STUDYING PERSONALITY
CROSS-CULTURALLY
Editor
BERT KAPLAN
University of Kansas
HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS
New York, Evanston, and London
STUDYING PERSONALITY CROSS-CULTURALLY
Copyright 1961 by Harper Row, Publishers, Incorporated
All rights in this book are reserved.
No part of the book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written per-
mission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
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Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated,
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Library of Congress catalog card number
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To the Memory of Clyde Kluckhohn
KANSAS Cin (MU.) MJWJC UbKMflf
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editor's Introduction
PART I: CULTURE AND PERSONALITY
THEORY AND RESEARCH
"!,. A Survey of Culture and Personality Theory and Research
MILTON SINGER
PART II: SOCIAL THEORY AND PERSONALITY
2. Social Systems, Personality, and Functional Analysis
MELFORD SPIRO 93
3. The Psychic Unity of Human Groups
ANTHONY WALLACE 129
4. Social Structure and the Development of Personality
TALCOTT PARSONS 165
5. Modal Personality and Adjustment to the Soviet Socio-
political System
ALEX INKELES, EUGENIA HANFMANN AND HELEN BEIER 201
6. Two Types of Modal Personality Models
GEORGE DEVEREUX 227
7. Slavery and Personality
STANLEY ELKINS 243
vii
viii Contents
PART HI: METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES IN THE CROSS-
CULTURAL STUDY OF PERSONALITY
8. Personality and Social Interaction
DANIEL MILLER. 271
9. Personality Study and Culture
BERT KAPLAN 301
10. Linguistic Aspects of Cross-Cultural Personality Study
DELL HYMES 313
1 1 . Art and Mythology
GEORGE DEVEREUX AND WESTON LA BARRE . . . 361
12. Key Issues in the Cross-Cultural Study of Mental Disorders
DONALD KENNEDY 405
13. An American Researcher in Paris: Interviewing Frenchmen
DANIEL LERNER 427
PART IV: PROBLEMS OF CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH
14. Transcultural Variables and Conceptual Equivalence
ROBERT SEARS 445
15. Behavior Units for the Comparative Study of Cultures
ROGER BARKER AND LOUISE BARKER 457
16. A Modal Personality Technique in the Study of Menomini
Acculturation
LOUISE SPINDLER AND GEORGE SPINDLER . . . 479
17. Basic Personality in a New Zealand Maori Community
ERNEST BEAGLEHOLE AND JAMES RITCHIE . . . .493
18. Personality Study in Israeli Kibbutzim
ALBERT RABIN 519
PART V: APPROACHES TO CROSS-CULTURAL
PERSONALITY STUDY
19. Cross-Cultural Psychiatric Interviewing
G. MORRIS CARSTAIRS 533
20. Dream Analysis
DOROTHY EGGAN 551
Contents ix
21. The Interpretation of Dreams in Anthropological Field Work:
A Case Study
JOHN HONIGMANN 579
22. Projective Tests in Cross-Cultural Research
WILLIAM HENRY 587
23. Symbolic Analysis in the Cross-Cultural Study of Personality
GEORGE DE Vos 599
24. A Young Thai from the Countryside
LUCIEN HANKS AND HERBERT PHILLIPS .... 637
Editor's Epilogue: A Final Word
BERT KAPLAN 659
Index 671
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
Ihis volume is presented in the belief that progress in the social sciences
depends to a considerable degree upon the continued development of
the culture and personality field which stands at the crossroads of many
of the most important problems of both individual and societal function-
ing. One of the major roadblocks to this development is the difficulty
of collecting and interpreting adequate empirical materials descriptive
of personality processes in the world's cultures.
Although the culture and personality field is relatively new it has al-
ready passed through two main phases. The first, a period of tremendous
enthusiasm, began in the 1940's. Large numbers of workers eagerly em-
barked on cross-cultural personality studies and the swiftly mobilized
interest almost had the proportions of a fad. In part, this work was stimu-
lated by the availability of a ready-made methodology and a set of
methods mainly utilizing projective techniques which promised
definitive results with a relatively small commitment of time and energy.
This promise proved to be an illusion. The materials were easy enough
to collect but were difficult or impossible to interpret and to integrate,
with any reasonable claim to validity, into ongoing anthropological
studies.
The consequent disillusionment led to the second period, one charac-
terized by a sharp decrease in culture and personality research, although
interest in its positive accomplishments probably remains as high or
higher than ever. What has now come to be generally realized is that in
the culture and personality field there are few easy answers and the most
fundamental and elementary issues still need considerable clarification
and research.
This volume is an introduction to the culture and personality field
viewed from the vantage point of workers in it who are struggling to
clarify a variety of theoretical and methodological issues and to develop
adequate methods for collecting and interpreting empirical personality
2 Studying Personality Cross-Culturally
materials. It is not a manual describing how to go about doing cross-
cultural personality studies because, at this primitive stage, we do not
know how; a simple concentration on methods might give the impression
that we did. Rather, the book seeks to grapple with the issues prelimi-
nary to actual empirical study. These problems involve so much more
than personality study itself that they lead into almost every important
realm of social science and reveal the complex network of psychologi-
cal and social issues, at the nexus of which the culture and personality
field stands.
The volume thus comprehends a broad area of theory and research
but organizes materials in such a way that they become relevant to the
special problems of personality study. Through its various contributions
it presents successively, an extended historical account of the major is-
sues in the culture and personality field, a series of theoretical papers
analyzing the role of personality and motivational processes in societal
functioning, a discussion of the development of personality as it involves
socialization and preparation for social participation, a series of meth-
odological papers that clarify problems of doing cross-cultural research,
a survey of relations between linguistics and cross-cultural personality
study, an attempt to develop a framework for seeing the influence of
cultural factors in personality study, discussions of projective techniques,
dreams, and psychiatric interviewing, a discussion of the problem of in-
terpreting psychic symbolism across cultures, an analysis of the role of
myth and artistic productions and finally a discussion of methodological
issues in the cross-cultural study of mental illness.
An integral part of the present volume is a series of case studies pre-
sented in appropriate places throughout the book. These cases serve as
concrete illustrations of some of the issues discussed in the more theo-
retical chapters and show how the latter can be transformed into em-
pirical research or analysis. Many of the cases, moreover, are them-
selves major contributions to theory and methodology, although their
analysis is presented in the context of a particular set of empirical data.
The book does not attempt to offer complete and comprehensive
coverage of the culture and personality field. Students should be directed
to use it in conjunction with three or four other works with which most
workers will be familiar. Salient among these are Inkeles and Levinson's
paper, "National Character: The Study of Modal Personality and Socio-
cultural Systems" which ably clarifies the present course of the culture
and personality field, Honigmann's textbook, Culture and Personality
which provides an admirable and comprehensive account of the field,
and Mead and Metraux's provocative collection of essays on The Study
of Culture at a Distance which embodies a wide variety of imaginative
approaches to the problem of personality study. It also should be supple-
Editor's Introduction 3
mented by discussions of particular methods like Hallowell's fine paper,
"The Rorschach Technique in Personality and Culture Studies."
Although the great bulk of the work in the culture and personality
field has been done by anthropologists, the authors of these chapters
come from a half dozen different disciplines: anthropology, psychology,
psychiatry, sociology, psychoanalysis and history. This reflects the nature
of the problem of cross-cultural personality study, which so urgently re-
quires interdisciplinary collaboration. The field as a whole is one of the
great meeting grounds of the social sciences, a situation that virtually in-
sures its continuing to be exciting, important, and reactive to crosscur-
rents of ideas coming from many different directions. Unfortunately,
there are disadvantages as well; the most obvious is the difficulty in com-
munication among workers who have different backgrounds and the dif-
ferences in professional values which lead workers to approach the same
problem with a variety of conceptions of what is important. It is well to
recognize that culture and personality research in general and cross-
cultural personality study in particular can occur in quite different
frameworks. The sociologist and anthropologist for example, preoc-
cupied with the problems of societal cohesion and functioning, of under-
standing the bases of social order and of social change, utilize the data of
personality studies in a way that undoubtedly seems strange and alien to
the psychologist and psychiatrist, concerned with the understanding of
personality development and functioning and only interested in those as-
pects of socio-cultural systems that have to do with these problems. The
need for interdisciplinary collaboration does not eliminate the basic dif-
ference in the problems that concern the social and the psychological
sciences. In the midst of this collaboration a chasm exists, which can be
ignored only at the risk of confusion and frustration.
From the sociologist's perspective the main question is whether the
kind of personality processes that exist in a group make a difference in
the way that societies function. The hypothesis which has most domi-
nated the culture and personality field derives from the work of such
thinkers as Max Weber, Abram Kardiner, Erich Fromm, Talcott Par-
sons and David Riesman. It holds that efficient societal functioning de-
pends upon the existence in its members of congruent personality or mo-
tivational structures, sometimes referred to as social character. This
congruence is thought to be produced by the shaping of personality by
society's socialization institutions. While the correctness of this theory is
generally taken for granted, there are enough doubts that its testing and
evaluation are one of the main tasks of empirical cross-cultural research.
Inkeles, for example asks, "Is there a significant difference between vari-
ous national and sub-national populations in the distribution of dis-
crete traits or personality types, and if so how does this affect the
4 Studying Personality Cross-Culturally
functioning of the social system? Can we assume that a given social
structure will operate in much the same way regardless of the set of per-
sonalities placed in that context?" He asserts, "No one has ever tested a
national population or even a main sub-population rising either on ade-
quate sample or adequate psychological instruments. All assertions ^or
details of national, sub-national, regional or class differences of major
magnitudes therefore remain mere statements of faith. And until we have
accumulated the basic facts, the other questions of course must be held
in abeyance." *
The culture and personality field is no less important for an under-
standing of personality functioning than it is for social functioning. The
question that is most generally posed by psychologists and psychiatrists
concerns the nature of the influence of the social environment in which
the person develops, and its effect on the course of his development.
Almost all of our present theories hold that this social influence is a pro-
found one. There is much room, however, for more differentiated theo-
ries to tell us what sorts of environmental conditions will produce what
kinds of effects. Cross-cultural personality studies have a vitally impor-
tant role in providing the necessary data. The problem of influence it-
self is an interesting one. Work in the field of communication has been
especially concerned with what actually goes on when one person influ-
ences another. One might ask as well, what happens when a person is
influenced by a culture pattern.
While the volume provides a general introduction to the culture and
personality field its main focus is the problem of cross-cultural personal-
ity study. A number of workers have given this problem attention, no-
tably Margaret Mead and her colleagues and A. I. HaHowell. But
there has in general not been the realization that, until much greater
progress is made, the data collected in empirical studies of personality
may be actually incorrect and misleading. The tendency during the past
fifteen years has been to apply techniques developed in our own society.
This is done reluctantly because it is not clear how valid they are in other
cultures. Still, in the absence of a real science of cross-cultural study,
there is no good alternative. It is the purpose of this book to contribute
to the development of this science. Its contribution consists principally
in calling attention to the importance, and interest of cross-cultural
studies and pointing to some directions from which they may be ap-
proached. The science itself is undoubtedly a great many years from
fruition and is dependent in part on the development by psychologists
and psychiatrists of more sophisticated and more valid ways of studying
personality in our own society. It depends also, however, on the an-
* "Personality and Social Structure," in Merton, R. K., Broom, L., and
Cottrell, L. S., Sociology Today, Basic Books Inc., New York, 1959.
Editor's Introduction 5
thropologist's ability to comprehend and apply what goes on in the per-
sonality study situation, and on the ability of social scientists to fathom
the difficulties of communication and understanding between people
who are different from each other. When these problems are even par-
tially solved the benefits will extend far beyond the confines of the
culture and personality field and become relevant to the general prob-
lem of intercultural understanding.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the conception of this volume and in its editing, I have been helped
by a great many friends and colleagues. I would like especially to ex-
press my gratitude to Dorothy Eggan, Rollin Posey, Melford Spiro, Jay
Jackson, Louise and George Spindler, A. Irving Hallowell and Milton
Singer. Although they had no direct connection with the book I am most
keenly aware of the great influence of Clyde Kluckhohn, Talcott Par-
sons, Gardner Murphy, David Riesman, Robert W. White, Henry A.
Murray and Alex Inkeles. My appreciation is deepest to my wife Her-
mia.
I
CULTURE AND
PERSONALITY THEORY
AND RESEARCH
About the Chapter
Dr. SINGER'S survey of the culture and personality field sets the stage for
our consideration of the more specific questions of cross-cultural personality
study. He delineates the main theoretical and empirical issues in the field
and places them in historical perspective. Major empirical studies and theo-
retical works are reviewed critically. The relationship of the study of the
personality characteristics of individuals to such concepts as cultural charac-
ter, social character, basic personality structure, and modal personality is
clarified. The chapter also explores the field of national character and relates
it to culture and personality study.
About the Author
Milton Singer is Paul Klapper Professor of the Social Sciences in the De-
partment of Anthropology and in the College, University of Chicago. He re-
ceived his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1940. During 1954-55,
he travelled in India and Asia. He is co-author, with Gerhart Piers, of
Shame and Guilt, A Psychoanalytic and a Cultural Study. With Robert Red-
field he wrote "The Cultural Role of Cities," for Economic Development
and Culture Change, and for Man in India. Dr. Singer was co-editor with
Robert Redfield of the series Comparative Studies of Cultures and Civiliza-
tions; editor of Introducing India in Liberal Education, Proceedings of a
Conference; and editor and co-author of Traditional India: Structure and
Change. His special interests are the comparative study of civilizations and
particularly India, the relations of cultural anthropology to psychology, and
philosophy of the social sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Anthro-
pological Association and, for 1957-58, was a Fellow at the Center for the
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
A cknowledgments
This article is based on material developed by the author over a period of
years in classes and seminars at the University of Chicago. Colleagues and
students there provided a unique interdisciplinary forum for the free exchange
of ideas. To the late Robert Redfield especially and the program of Compara-
tive Studies of Cultures and Civilizations under his direction, and supported
by the Ford Foundation, the author owes much in intellectual stimulation and
professional support. While a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in
the Behavioral Sciences during 1957-58, discussions with John Tukey and
Edgar Anderson elucidated some of the statistical issues in personality and
culture research. Helen Singer, Dorothy and Fred Eggan, Bert Kaplan,
Alfred Kroeber, Clyde Kluckhohn, and Melford Spiro were kind enough to
read the manuscript and to make helpful suggestions for its improvement.
The author is indebted to Margit Gerow and Barbara Dwyer for help in
preparing the manuscript for press.
A Survey of Culture and Personality
Theory and Research
MILTON SINGER
University of Chicago
EMERGENCE OE THE FIELD
Until a few years ago the field of culture and personality theory and
research was considered an American heresy in anthropology. Today
it is no longer a heresy, and in a few more years it will no longer be dis-
tinctively American.
Before 1920, anthropology in the United States was predominantly
non-psychological if not anti-psychological, and the culture and person-
ality approach was unknown (Kluckhohn, 1944b). Within the next fif-
teen years, say from 1920 to 1935, not only were the ideas inherent in
such an approach actively discussed, but field research was undertaken
and collaboration between anthropologists and psychiatrists was begun.
This was the period of Margaret Mead's South Sea studies, Ruth Bene-
dict's articles and book on patterns of culture, and Edward Sapir's influ-
ential articles on the relations of anthropology and psychiatry.
In 1931, after Sapir left Chicago for Yale, he collaborated with John
Dollard on a special seminar on culture and personality at the sugges-
tion of Lawrence Frank, then of the Rockefeller Foundation. During
this same period the Social Science Research Council recognized the
9
10 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
new interdisciplinary field by sponsoring symposia and by having Wil-
liam I. Thomas prepare a special report on the possibilities and prob-
lems of research on culture and personality (Volkart, 1951).
The most important stimulus during this formative period was psycho-
analytic psychology. It was in fact the encounter of anthropology, and to
a lesser extent sociology and political science, with psychoanalysis, that
gave rise to culture and personality studies. One of the first public rec-
ords of this encounter is A. L. Kroeber's review of Freud's Totem and
Taboo, which appeared in the American Anthropologist in 1920. Al-
though he found the book "an important and valuable contribution" to
the psychology underlying cultural anthropology, which "every ethnolo-
gist must sooner or later take into consideration," and expressed interest
in extending Freud's point of view, Kroeber devoted most of the review
to demolishing Freud's principal thesis that the origins of culture and
society meet in the Oedipus complex. The general tone of the review is
highly critical: "This book is keen without orderliness, intricately rather
than closely reasoned, and endowed with an unsubstantiated convincing-
ness." Psychoanalysts who wish to establish serious contacts with histori-
cal ethnology are told that they "must first learn to know that such an
ethnology exists."
Twenty years later, in 1939, Kroeber wrote another review of Totem
and Taboo, in which he said he saw "no reason to waver" over his ear-
lier critical analysis. Nevertheless, as an amende honorable, he took a
kindlier view of psychoanalysis. He now thinks Freud's explanation of
culture would deserve, aLJgast "serious consideration as a scientific hy-
pothesis," if it were restate^ as a proposition about the constant opera-
tion of certain psychic processes for example, the incest drive, incest
repression, and filial ambivalence in widespread human institutions.
He still finds that psychoanalysis refuses to undertake such a restate-
ment, because of its indifference to history and to accepted scientific at-
titudes, and its dogmatic all-or-none attitude which resists influences
from without. Kroeber cites as examples of this last trait Ernest Jones's
resistance to Malinowskfs discovery of a matrilineal form of the Oedipus
complex among the Trobriand Islanders and Roheim's Psychoanalysis
of Primitive Culture Types of 1932.
In this later review, nevertheless, Kroeber lists Freud's concepts of
repression, regression, infantile persistences, dream symbolism, over-
determination, guilt sense, and the affects toward members of the fam-
ily, as ideas which have "gradually seeped into general science and
become an integral and important part of it." On the other hand, the con-
cepts of the censor, the superego, and the castration complex, and the
explanations of specific cultural phenomena have not, he says, found
their way into science. The conclusion of the review is a tribute to Freud:
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 1 1
We ... if I may speak for ethnologists, though remaining unconverted,
have met Freud, recognize the encounter as memorable, and herewith re-
salute him.
Anthropology's encounter with psychoanalysis was not restricted to
the United States. In 1924 the British anthropologist, C. G. Seligman,
then president of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and Ireland, took for his presidential address the subject "Anthropology
and Psychology: A Study of Some Points of Contact." In this address,
Seligman suggests several possible developments in the "little known
borderland where social anthropology, psychology, and genetics meet in
common biological kinship." He discusses Jung's introvert and extrovert
"types" in relation to racial genetics, as exhibited in art, and as charac-
teristic of some races. Seligman's classifications are a bit casual: "sav-
ages" belong to the extrovert type, although chiefs and medicine men
may be introverts; Europeans are predominantly extrovert, and Hindus
are introvert. The same address also suggests "the beginning of a pur-
posive investigation of the unconscious among non-European races"
through the study of their dreams. Referring to dreams collected for him
by officials and missionaries in the Sudan as well as to those he himself
collected among Sudanese Arabs, Nile Negroids, Papuo-Melanesians,
and Veddas, Seligman concludes that the dream-mechanisms of non-
Europeans "appear to be the same as in ourselves" and include dreams
with the same manifest content, to which identical unconscious meanings
attach.
In a later paper of 1932, "Anthropological Perspective and Psycho-
logical Theory," Seligman appeals to anthropologists "to study more
deeply than has hitherto been the common practice the ideas, seldom,
I think, verbally expressed, that lie behind the beliefs and customs which
we, as anthropologists, are accustomed to describe." In this paper he ap-
plies a Freudian theory to a group of observances which dramatize the
desire or fear of an individual. He also suggests that the works of Freud
and Jung are important for anthropology because the psychological prob-
lems arising in anthropology "lie for the most part not in the sphere of
cognition to which most attention has been paid in the psychology of
consciousness but in the sphere of motive and emotion." This too is
the reason Seligman gives for the failure of the psychological research
of the Torres Straits expedition to raise fresh questions: ". . . it was
almost entirely limited to the experimental psychology of the sense or-
gans and to reaction time."
Perhaps better known and more directly influential than Seligman's
efforts to bring anthropology and psychoanalysis together were the stud-
ies of Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands, particularly his Sex and Re-
pression in Savage Society (1927) and The Sexual Life of Swages
12 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
(1929). The first of these was in part the outcome of a debate in writ-
ing with the British analyst, Ernest Jones. Malinowski acknowledges,
however, the stimulus of Seligman in the preface to the 1927 edition of
Sex and Represssion:
The instructions sent to me by my friend Prof. C. G. Seligman, and some
literature with which he kindly supplied me, stimulated me to reflect on the
manner in which the Oedipus complex and other manifestations of the "un-
conscious" might appear in a community founded on mother right. The ac-
tual observations on the matrilineal complex among Melanesians are to my
knowledge the first application of psychoanalytic theory to the study of sav-
age life . . .
What these instructions were Malinowski does not say, but they prob-
ably were not too different from the list of questions which Seligman dis-
cusses in his 1932 paper and which he says were proposed by Evans-
Pritchard:
( 1 ) Can the anthropologist collect data full enough and of sufficient rele-
vance to throw light on psychoanalytic theory?
(2) Are the phases called by the psychoanalyst "oral", "anal", "genital",
and "latent" in the life-history of the individual, common to all races and cul-
tures?
(3) If so, are these stages universally determined by biological factors, or
by social conditions?
(4) Are the same symbols used by different races in similar circumstances
or identical situations?
(5) Do the symptom-formations of members of our Western civilization
differ from those of other communities? (p. 209)
In addition to these anthropologists who saw the relevance of psycho-
analysis for their work, there were also psychoanalysts who ventured
into anthropological applications. Freud's Totem and Taboo may have
been an irritant, but it was also a stimulant. His Civilization and Its Dis-
contents (1930) and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
(1922) were more direct applications of psychoanalysis to culture and
society. Rank, Jones, and Sachs also wrote in these fields. It was, how-
ever, Geza Roheim, a psychoanalytically trained ethnologist, whose
fieldwork and point of view came closest to what was to become the
culture and personality approach. Roheim did some psychoanalytic
field studies in 1928-31 in Central Australia, Somaliland, and the Nor-
manby Islands, with the support of Marie Bonaparte. The first report on
these studies was published in a special number of The International
Journal of Psychoanalysis for 1932 under the title "The Psychoanalysis
of Primitive Culture Types." R6heim says that much of this report was
written as preparation for lectures which he gave during his return jour-
ney at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, the New York
Psychoanalytical Society, the Paris Psychoanalytical Society, the Berlin
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 13
Psychoanalytical Institute, and the Budapest Psychoanalytical Society
and Ethnographical Society.
While Roheim eventually came to influence many anthropologists,
this early report and the lectures were too strong a brew for most of them
to swallow. Roheim on his part was, like many of his fellow analysts,
pretty haughty toward anthropologists. Here is his comment on Mali-
no wski:
Some of you may be under the impression that psycho-analysis has already
been applied in anthropological field-work by Professor Malinowski. Al-
though he does not claim to be a psycho-analyst himself, some of his state-
ments are rather misleading. Thus, for instance, he mentions that when he
was in the Trobriands and Professor Seligman sent him some of Freud's
books to read he set out to test the validity of Freud's dream-theory on the
Trobrianders. Fancy! Somebody who admits that he has never analysed a
dream himself for the obvious reason that he does not know how to do it
is testing Freud's theory! (1932, p. 7)
On the side of method, Roheim stressed that the aim of anthropology
should be "to find the latent wish-fulfilment in each specific type of so-
cial organization just as we can reduce a dream or a neurosis to such a
latent formula." In order to do this, he proposed that anthropologists
collect and interpret data which would open the door to the unconscious
information on dreams, life histories, sexual life, rearing of children,
myths, ceremonies, customs interpreted with the help of a personal
knowledge of the informant, jokes, casual remarks, slips of the tongue,
etc. This "new anthropology" would not be able to do what the clinical
analyst can do, but it could do "all that the old style anthropology could
do and much more besides." On the basis of investigations similar to
his, he believed that it would be possible to set up a psychological classi-
fication of mankind.
Despite these early and serious interests of Seligman, Malinowski, and
Roheim in bringing anthropology and psychoanalytic psychology closer
together, their example was not immediately followed in Europe by a
significant number of anthropologists and did not result in the recogni-
tion of a new field (Evans-Pritchard, 1929; Richards, 1932; Fortes,
1957). In the United States, the pioneer writings of Margaret Mead,
Sapir, and Benedict were quickly followed after 1935 by a rapid in-
crease of research, teaching, and publication in personality and culture.
A growing number of anthropologists were psychoanalyzed, and some
leading psychoanalysts and psychiatrists collaborated with anthropolo-
gists or were influenced by anthropology. One of the most notable in-
stances of such collaboration was a series of seminars organized by Dr.
Abram Kardiner, a psychiatrist, at the New York Psychoanalytic Insti-
tute from about 1936 to 1940. Among the anthropologists who partici-
14 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
pated in these seminars were Cora DuBois, Ruth Benedict, Ruth Bun-
zel, and Ralph Linton. Several important publications resulted directly
or indirectly from these seminars. (See the sections on "Basic Personal-
ity Structure" and "Modal Personality" in this chapter.)
A larger scale example of collaboration at the research level was the
Indian Education Research Project organized by the United States Bu-
reau of Indian Affairs in 1941 in cooperation with the Committee on
Human Development at the University of Chicago. This project studied
personality development among the Hopi, Navaho, Papago, Sioux, and
Zuni. Monographs on the first four tribes have already appeared.
(Thompson and Joseph, 1944; Kluckhohn and Leighton, 1946; Mac-
Gregor, 1946; Joseph, Spicer, and Chesky, 1949.) In addition to an-
thropologists, psychologists and psychiatrists participated. The influence
of psychoanalysis was more indirect here than in Kardiner's seminars,
but psychological tests were systematically used.
After the Second World War, another large-scale research project
was organized in New York City to apply the personality and culture
approach to the study of modern nations. This research was directed
first by Ruth Benedict at Columbia University and later by Margaret
Mead at the American Museum of Natural History. This series of proj-
ects, which ended in 1953, involved a group of more than 120 research-
ers, representing fourteen disciplines and sixteen nationalities. Many
publications have resulted from it, and others are still to appear.
The interest stimulated by psychoanalysis in the individual life history
and in personal documents afiected not only anthropology but sociology,
political science, and other social sciences. This interest seems in fact to
have had sources partly independent of psychoanalytic theory and
technique. In sociology one of the influential sources was The Polish
Peasant (1917-18) by W. I. Thomas and R Znaniecki, a work that
made extensive use of personal documents and included a lengthy meth-
odological note on their use (Hinkle, 1952; Volkart, 1953). From the
Social Science Research Council's selection of this work for appraisal
(Blumer, 1939) grew a special series of studies on personal documents
in psychology (Allport, 1942), in history (Gottschalk, 1945), in an-
thropology (Kluckhohn, 1945), and in sociology (Angell, 1945).
The pioneer life histories in anthropology (e.g. Radin 1913, 1926)
were not psychoanalytically or even psychologically oriented. Only in
the late thirties and early forties do the full-length life histories begin to
appear (Dyk, 1938, 1947; Ford, 1941; Simmons, 1942). In addition to
Seligman's early efforts, an important collection of primitive dreams,
culturally as well as psychoanalytically interpreted, was published in
1935 by Lincoln.
In political science, Lasswell was one of the first to introduce personal
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 15
documents and psychoanalytic orientations, and to see their implica-
tions for personality and culture theory (Lasswell, 1930, 1937, 1939,
1948). John Bollard's Criteria for the Life History, 1935, was a major
formulation by a psychologist which both reflected and influenced the
social scientist's growing preoccupation with the individual personality.
One may measure the present status of personality and culture as a
field in anthropology by noting that the first comprehensive collection
of readings from periodical literature was published in 1948 by Kluck-
hohn and Murray. For their selections, the editors say they examined
over a thousand relevant articles. A second and revised edition ap-
peared in 1953. Other collections of readings by Haring (1949, 1956),
and by Sargent and Smith (1949), also appeared about the same time.
The second edition of Kroeber's general survey of anthropology ap-
peared in 1948 and contains a substantial discussion of "cultural psy-
chology," whereas the first edition of 1923, which I used as an under-
graduate in the 1930's, contained nothing on this subject. The first
general textbook on culture and personality was published in 1954 by
John Honigmann. Courses in the field are now an accepted part of the
anthropology curriculum, and papers on it are regularly presented at
professional meetings and appear in the professional journals.
MAJOR PROBLEM AREAS
The relationship of personality and culture theory to research has al-
ways been a close one. Very little theory has been developed without
immediate reference to ongoing research, and the research has usually
been designed to answer questions raised by theory. This fruitful inter-
action of theory and research has tended to cluster about problem areas
which constitute the dominant themes in the development of the field. I
discern three such major problem areas: the relation of culture to hu-
man nature; the relation of culture to typical personality; and the rela-
tion of culture to individual personality. There are additional important
problem areas, among them the relation of culture change to personal-
ity change and the relation of culture to abnormal personality. But these
grow out of and are subsidiary to the dominant three problems which
have been the persistent preoccupations of the field. The prominence
of just these three groups of problems is not surprising, for they reflect
the efforts of anthropologists to relate culture to the three elementary
logical possibilities which Kluckhohn and Murray (1948, 1953) have so
clearly stated and explained, namely, that every man is in certain re-
spects like all other men, like some other men, and like no other man.
If we ask how far a man's resemblance to all other men is a matter of
culture, we raise the question of culture and human nature; if we ask
1 6 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
how far his resemblances to some other men derive from the fact that
those others are members of his tribe, his nation, his class, his occupa-
tion, and the like, we raise the question of culture and typical personal-
ity; and finally, if we ask how far an individual's uniqueness is a matter
of culture, we raise the question of how the individual personality is
related to culture.
All these problem areas have received some attention, but there have
been significant relative shifts in the attention given to each group of
problems. In the formative period, i.e., about 1920-1935, the relation
of culture to human nature was the chief preoccupation of theory and
research; then this problem receded and has only recently been return-
ing to the forefront of interest. The relation of culture to typical personal-
ity has probably been the most persistent and popular problem; it was
taken up immediately after the formative period and has continued to
the present. Although the relation of individual personality to culture is
in a sense the heart of the culture and personality field, this problem area
has been somewhat underdeveloped in both theory and research as com-
pared with the other two. There are evidences of increasing attention in
some recent publications. I shall now describe in greater detail some of
the most significant contributions to each of these problem areas.
CULTURE AND HUMAN NATURE
In the preface to the 1939 reissue of her South Sea studies, Margaret
Mead graphically describes the climate of opinion in the 1920's which
stimulated her and other anthropologists to concern themselves with the
relation of culture to human nature:
It was a simple a very simple point to which our materials were organ-
ized in the 1920's, merely the documentation over and over of the fact that
human nature is not rigid and unyielding, not an unadaptable plant which in-
sists on flowering or becoming stunted after its own fashion, responding only
quantitatively to the social environment, but that it is extraordinarily adapta-
ble, that cultural rhythms are stronger and more compelling than the physio-
logical rhythms which they overlay and distort, that the failure to satisfy an
artificial, culturally stimulated need for outdistancing one's neighbours in
our society, for instance, or for wearing the requisite number of dog's teeth
among the Manus may produce more unhappiness and frustration in the
human breast than the most rigorous cultural curtailment of the physiologi-
cal demands of sex or hunger. We had to present evidence that human
character is built upon a biological base which is capable of enormous diver-
sification in terms of social standards, (p. x)
Educated opinion in the 1920's and 1930's quickly accepted the an-
thropologists' evidence of human nature's plasticity. Theories of original
human nature were put on the defensive and became unfashionable. Al-
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 17
though psychoanalysis was becoming popular with this same group,
psychoanalytic theories about the universal Oedipus, the ubiquity of
dream symbolism, the stages of personality development, and the dif-
ferences between male and female psychology, were generally regarded
as over-generalizations^from a single culture and in need of qualification
by such cross-cultural studies as Margaret Mead's and Malinowski's.
The general stance was critical and disposed to reiterate the formula:
"It's not human nature, but only our culture."
This formula was first stated and developed in this period not by an-
thropologists but by a social philosopher. It will be found very persua-
sively presented in John Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct, pub-
lished in 1922 on the eve of the field studies that were to document it.
References to this work of Dewey's as a standard text recur in Malinow-
ski, Mead, Benedict and other anthropologists. Malinowski quotes sev-
eral apt paragraphs from it as the motto for his Sex and Repression in
Savage Society, among them the following:
We need to know about the social conditions which have educated original
activities into definite and significant dispositions before we can discuss the
psychological element in society. This is the true meaning of social psychol-
ogy . . . Native human nature supplies the raw materials but custom fur-
nishes the machinery and the designs . . . Man is a creature of habit, not
of reason nor yet of instinct, (p. xv)
In the same 1939 preface, Margaret Mead sums up the general result
of this "battle" against human nature:
The battle which we once had to fight with the whole battery at our com-
mand, with the most fantastic and startling examples that we could muster,
is now won. As the' devout in the Middle Ages would murmur a precau-
tionary "God willing" before stating a plan or a wish, those who write about
the problems of man and society have learned to insert a precautionary "in
our culture" into statements which would have read, fifteen years ago, merely
as "Adolescence is always a time of stress and strain," "Children are more
imaginative than adults," "All artists are neurotics," "Women are more pas-
sive than men," etc., with no such precautionary phrase, (pp. x xi)
From our present vantage point, the issues appear more complex, the
victory less decisive. A good deal of psychoanalytic theory, for example,
was incorporated in the very process of resistance to it, and the problem
of integrating this theory of individual psychology with cultural theory
itself became and continues to be a major issue. The work of Lorenz,
Tinbergen, and other "ethologists" has again made "instinct" a respecta-
ble word. Since the second world war, also, "human nature" and the
"psychic unity of mankind," or at least the problem of their relation to
culture, has reasserted itself among anthropologists. Kroeber, recogniz-
18 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
ing that the "psychic unity of man" cannot be considered to be either a
proved fact or an axiomatic principle, thinks it is
... so overwhelmingly borne out by the run of total experience that the
anthropologist or the sociologist feels warranted in assuming the principle of
essential psychic unity as at least a sufficient approximation to the truth, and
to employ it as a working hypothesis, or at any rate as a convenient symbol.
(1948, pp. 527-73)
The facts of cultural transmission from generation to generation and
from one population to another would not, according to Kroeber, be
what they are if we did not have a uniform human nature. Basing him-
self on a somewhat different order of facts, Roheim feels that
the psychic unity of mankind is more than a working hypothesis, it is so ob-
vious that it hardly needs proof. Even if mankind should prove to be derived
from a variety of semi-anthropoid ancestors, it is evident that some sort of
common process is involved in becoming human and that we have more in
common even with a South African Bushman than with an ape or monkey.
(1950, p. 435)
But what is so obvious for Roheim that this common process is the
unconscious and its mechanisms is not so obvious for others. For
Roheim, the basic oedipal tendencies are the same in all, although the
"customary traumata" involved in different child-rearing practices may
introduce quantitative variations and, in primitive cultures at least, dif-
ferent basic personalities.
Roheim's polemic against Kardiner and the cultural anthropologists is
the recent counterpart of Ernest Jones' polemic against Malinowski.
But the present argument has profited from the earlier, and from what
has happened since. The antagonists are now closer together than they
-were in the 1920's. Both sides have scaled down Freud's "archaic herit-
age" to some inherited dispositions and capacities, a limited number
of unconscious mechanisms, and possibly a bit of universal symbolism.
The recapitulation theory has been abandoned, as has the theory that
the Oedipus complex was at the origin of prehistoric cultures. The
points of disagreement are some details in the assumptions about human
nature and the degree to which specific institutions can modify the "com-
mon process" involved in becoming human.
This more complex and sophisticated position has been stated on the
side of the psychoanalysts by Hartman, Kris, and Loewenstein in their
comments on personality and culture (1951). These analysts "assume
readily" that "cultural conditions produce variations of behavior during
the [oedipal] conflict situation." They are inclined to believe in the wide
range of these variations, many of which they have observed in clinical
situations. They also do not find it necessary "to stress as much as he
[Freud] the hereditary elements in the formation of the oedipus com-
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 1 9
plex." Yet they are not prepared to accept reports concerning the ab-
sence of the Oedipus complex under given social situations. Such state-
ments seem to them "frequently due to the fact that observers have too
simple or too narrow a view of what is meant by oedipal conflict." Al-
leged variations of oedipal phantasies, e.g. the phantasy of adoption
among American children, can be meaningfully related to American
family size, frequency of adoption, etc., "if seen against the background
of the universal patterns." Anthropologists, they believe, are still tempted
"to draw conclusions from observed behavior to underlying motivations
and neglect frequently, paradoxically enough, to take into account that
in different environments similar impulses may find different expres-
sions." They do this when they emphasize institutional factors in per-
sonality formation, overlooking the fact that "institutions affect different
individuals in different degrees and in different directions," and when
they rely on external observations of mother-child relationships with-
out reference to the psychoanalyst's reconstructive studies of life his-
tories.
The anthropologist's position too has been moving closer to the uni-
versalism of psychoanalytic theory and away from an exclusive preoc-
cupation with differences. A very interesting "confession" of Kluck-
hohn's published in 1951 sets forth this shift:
When I began serious field work among the Navaho and Pueblo Indians,
my position on psychoanalysis was a mixed one. I had been analyzed and was
thoroughly convinced that Freudian psychology was the only dynamic depth
psychology of much importance. I had also been influenced by the writings
of psychoanalysts on anthropological matters, notably Roheim. On the
other hand, I tended to believe that psychoanalysis was strongly culture-
bound. I was persuaded, for example, that Malinowski's interpretation of the
oedipal situation in the Trobriands was substantially correct.
Over the years, at least in certain crucially important respects, my position
has steadily drawn closer to that of Roheim. I still believe that some of the
cautions uttered by Boas and others on the possible extravagances of inter-
pretations in terms of universal symbolism, completely or largely divorced
from minute examination of cultural context, are sound. But the facts un-
covered in my own field work and that of my collaborators have forced me
to the conclusion that Freud and other psychoanalysts have depicted with
astonishing correctness many central themes in motivational life which are
universal. The styles of expression of these themes and much of the manifest
content are culturally determined, but the underlying psychologic drama
transcends cultural difference.
This should not be too surprising except to an anthropologist overindoc-
trinated with the theory of cultural relativism for many of the inescapable
givens of human life are also universal. Human anatomy and human physiol-
ogy are, in the large, about the same the world over. There are two sexes
with palpably visible differences in external genitalia and secondary sexual
characteristics. All human infants, regardless of culture, know the psycho-
logical experience of helplessness and dependency. Situations making for
20 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
competition for the affection of one or both parents, for sibling rivalry, can
be to some extent channeled this way or that way by a culture but they can-
not be eliminated, given the universality of family life. The trouble has been
because of a series of accidents of intellectual and political history that
the anthropologist for two generations has been obsessed with the differences
between peoples, neglecting the equally real similarities upon which the
"universal culture pattern" as well as the psychological uniformities are
clearly built. (Kluckhohn and Morgan, 1951)
In several other papers (1946, 1953, 1956) Kluckhohn qualifies this
thesis and presents longer lists of the "universals." The Oedipus complex
is included in all these lists. Hallowell (1950), Spiro (1954), Howells
(1955), Kroeber (1955), Redfield (1957), and others have also^re-
turned to this earlier problem in later papers, and in several publica-
tions Mead acknowledges the importance of "human nature" for com-
parative studies of personality and culture (Mead and McGregor, 1951;
Mead 1954b; Mead and Wolfenstein, 1955).
In the study of personality and culture we start with the recognition of the
biologically given, of what all human beings have in common. . . . Because
of these recurrent biological similarities of growth, of parent-child rela-
tionships, of needs and fears, and reassurances it is possible to compare
childhood in one society with childhood in another. (Mead and Wolfenstein,
1955, pp. 6-7)
And this common human nature includes the capacity to accumulate
and to participate in culture.
Humanity as we know it is not merely a matter of human physique, of our
prehensile thumbs, upright posture, and highly developed brains, but of our
capacity to accumulate and build upon the inventions and experiences of pre-
vious generations. A child who does not participate in this great body of
tradition, whether because of defect, neglect, injury, a disease, never be-
comes fully human, (ibid., pp. 6-7)
I do not, however, wish to give a misleading impression of a simple
pendulum swing in the intellectual climate of opinion. There has been an
important swing, but the present position is not a return to the status quo
ante. It has benefited from the earlier work and suggests new directions
of inquiry.
The earlier position on "human nature" was not, as is usually sup-
posed, a tabula rasa position. It was assumed, on the contrary, that there
is a core of original human nature which is universal, but that this core
is very small in comparison to what is culture-made, and that its nature
can be disclosed only through a wide range of cross-cultural studies
(Mead 1942b, Benedict, 1934b).
In essentials, this position is probably still accepted at the present
time, but there is now a stronger and more direct interest in stating the
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 2 1
content of the core and in developing new methods for research. Kroe-
ber, for example, noting that attempts to inventory common denomina-
tors of culture and universal human needs have not proved very fruitful
in research, proposes two methods for finding out more about original
human nature; one is to study the extremes to which particular cultures
have pushed particular facets of human nature, and the other is to un-
dertake a systematic comparison of human and non-human traits. There
are now sufficient data, he believes, for these studies. These data, we
may note in passing, have been in the main products of cross-cultural
research.
In the recent revival of interest in "human nature," there is also evi-
dent a desire to develop a concept of "human nature" that goes beyond
the phylogenetic core to include a "developed human nature" which is
found in all human societies. Redfield, who shortly before his death
brought forward this concept, argued the need for it because it is true of
men that "in whatever established group they develop, certain out-
comes of the development are always the same" and these similarities
cannot be explained entirely on the basis of the "modal inborn poten-
tialities" in Homo sapiens. He believes that this "universally or fre-
quently developed human nature" is a reality, but "it is not a reality
that is easily amenable to investigation by precise method and subject to
dependable proof. The intuitions as to this reality are stronger than the
demonstration of its content." There are, he suggests, two contrasting
ways in which this "developed human nature" may be conceived and
described: culturally as a universal culture pattern, and psychologically
in terms of the modal personality of mankind. He finds some sugges-
tions about the latter method in certain sociologists, social psychologists,
and philosophers (Cooley; Park and Burgess; Paris; Riezler). Examples
of such universal statements are the following: "All people feel shame
or guilt or some combination of these; all take satisfaction in or feel
dissatisfaction with regard to the enterprises and productions."
To these, attributed to Cooley, Redfield adds others: "All men are
aware of self, distinguish an I and a Me. All men look out upon a not-
self, a universe in which people are distinguished, one from another, as
persons. All are disposed to feel and think more intimately and kindly
toward the members of their own immediate group than they feel and
think about people in more remote groups in situations where a choice
of loyalties is required. All recognize and adjust themselves to the alter-
nation of day and night; all know the passage of time; all anticipate
death and have thoughts and feelings about death that are serious and
important, not just trivial" and so on (1957, p. 159).
Redfield's concluding comment on a remark of Park's expresses the
mood of the 1950' toward human nature:
22 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
Robert E. Park admired Sumner's Folkways and used to quote Sumner's
dictum, "The mores can make anything right." Then Park would add: "But
they have a harder time making some things right than others.*' I think now
that this was a profound remark. I am sure that the mores have an easier
time making it right for mothers to cherish their children or somebody's chil-
dren, than they have to make it right for a mother to cherish her child and
then eat it. The insight we have in condemning as "inhuman" certain ex-
tremes of conduct such as the cold cruelty of the Nazis, or cannibalism within
the in-group, is an insight into a truth that might perhaps some day be ex-
pressed in scientific form: that the rules of conduct, in the societies the world
has known so far, have their modality, their tendency toward a very general
similar content. (Redfield, 1957, pp. 159-60)
CULTURE AND TYPICAL PERSONALITY
From the time when the first battle against human nature was won
until the question was reopened, say from about 1935 to 1950, per-
sonality and culture theory and research concentrated heavily on the
problem of the relation of culture to typical personality. The theories of
configurational personality, of basic personality structure, of national
and cultural character, and of modal personality were all developed and
served as guides to field research during this period. It has become
usual to consider these theories as more or less equivalent, and the dif-
ferences among them as primarily semantic. This is a mistake. Such a
view overlooks significant differences in concepts, methods, data, and
fields of application. These theories have obviously influenced one an-
other and have some features in common, but there is more to be said
about them.
They all agree that every culture has a typical personality which is
characteristic and distinctive of that culture and which is produced or
conditioned by some aspect of the culture. This much of the theory is not
very far from older theories of national character and "genius" of peo-
ples, except that the units are now cultures rather than "races" or "peo-
ples," and the typical personalities are conceived as products of learning
rather than of genetics. Beyond this shared core, however, the contem-
porary theories differ in many significant respects: the particular psy-
chological types employed, the number of personality types attributed to
a given culture, the number of individuals who are supposed to bear a
given type within a culture, how a particular type is learned, whether it
is derived from cultural or psychological data, whether it is attributed to
the culture as a whole as well as to individuals, by what causal theory it
is related to the culture at a given time and historically, whether it ap-
plies only to primitive cultures or to modern nations as well. I shall now
analyze briefly some of the major theories with respect to these criteria
of differentiation and shall indicate the relevant research studies.
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 23
CONFIGURATIONAL PERSONALITY
"Cultures . . . are individual psychology thrown large upon the
screen, given gigantic proportions and a long time span." (Benedict,
1932, p. 24)
Ruth Benedict is generally and properly credited with the theory of
culture configurations. There are some anticipations of the theory in
several of Sapir's early papers (1924, 1927) and some parallels to as-
pects of it in the applications of Jungian and Freudian typologies to cul-
tures by Seligman (1924) and Roheim (1932). But it was Patterns of
Culture (1934b) with its highly readable formulation of the theory, to-
gether with a detailed application to three primitive cultures, the Zuni,
the Dobu and the Kwakiutl, which brought the theory of configurations
to the attention of a wide professional and lay public.
In two earlier papers (1928, 1932), Benedict sketched the essentials
of the theory and acknowledged Dilthey, Spengler, Nietzsche, and Ge-
stalt psychology as intellectual sources. In another paper, published
simultaneously with Patterns of Culture in 1934, she elaborated the im-
plications for a comparative psychiatry.
The earlier papers are significant because they show that the problem
with which Benedict starts is not psychological but cultural. She wanted
to know how and why the culture of the Southwest Pueblos differed so
strikingly from its neighboring cultures. She did not think that explana-
tions in terms of the presence or absence of certain traits, such as ritual-
ism, and their diffusion, could account for the difference, and suggested
instead that the dissimilarity was due to variations in the "psychological
type" or "psychological set" of the various cultures:
The ritual of the sun dance, the peace pipe ceremonies, the cult groups,
and age-societies of the Plains, or the winter ceremonial of the Northwest
Coast bulk perhaps slightly less prominently in the total life of these people
than the calendric dances and retreats of the Southwest, but it is not by any
such matter of gradation that the Southwest is set off from other American
Indian cultures. There is in their cultural attitudes and choices a difference
in psychological type fundamentally to be distinguished from that of sur-
rounding regions. It goes deeper than the presence or the absence of ritual-
ism; ritualism itself is of a fundamentally different character within this area,
and without the understanding of this fundamental psychological set among
the Pueblo peoples we must be baffled in our attempts to understand the
cultural history of this region. (Benedict, 1928, p. 572)
This is not necessarily an attempt to explain cultural facts in terms of
individual psychology, for Benedict's "psychological types" were at first
the Apollonian and Dionysian types Nietzsche described in his studies of
Greek tragedy, a classification essentially of "confidence in two diamet-
24 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
rically different ways of arriving at the values of existence" (1932).
Such psychological "types" or "sets" derive from an analysis of cultural
data and describe the ethos of cultures; they need not be applied to in-
dividuals at all. Their primary use might be to describe the differences
among cultures, and the processes of culture change. This certainly
seems to have been Benedict's first approach to the problem:
The cultural situation in the Southwest is in many ways hard to explain.
With no natural barriers to isolate it from surrounding peoples, it presents
probably the most abrupt cultural break that we know in America. All our
efforts to trace out the influences from other areas are impressive for the
fragmentariness of the detail; we find bits of the weft or woof of the culture,
we do not find any very significant clues to its pattern. From the point of
view of the present paper this clue is to be found in a fundamental psycho-
logical set which has undoubtedly been established for centuries in the cul-
ture of this region, and which has bent to its own uses any details it imitated
from surrounding peoples and has created an intricate cultural pattern to
express its own preferences. It is not only that the understanding of this
psychological set is necessary for a descriptive statement of this culture;
without it the cultural dynamics of this region are unintelligible. For the typi-
cal choices of the Apollonian have been creative in the formation of this cul-
ture, they have excluded what was displeasing, revamped what they took, and
brought into being endless demonstrations of the Apollonian delight in for-
mality, in the intricacies and elaborations of organization. (Benedict, 1928,
pp. 74-5)
But by the time Benedict wrote Patterns of Culture and "Anthropol-
ogy and the Abnormal," the analogy between a culture and an individ-
ual personality had been enlarged. Not only was a culture, as was an in-
dividual personality, an organized whole which develops through a series
of basic choices that select a "character" from among a wide range of
possibilities, but the "psychological types" of character attributed to cul-
tures now also drew upon the classifications psychiatrists used for in-
dividuals. The dominant cultural ethos is characterized in psychiatric
terms. In Patterns of Culture both kinds of typologies are employed: the
Zuni are described as Apollonian and the Plains Indians as Dionysian,
as they were in the earlier papers, but the Dobu are characterized as
"paranoid" and the Kwakiutl as "megalomaniac paranoid." Margaret
Mead (1959) has recently given some of the sources for Benedict's
psychological interests at this stage of her thought.
This shift from a typology of "values of existence" to a typology of
individual personality types transforms the theory of configurations
from a characterization of different cultures in terms of collective ethos
into a theory of the relations of different kinds of cultures to different
personality types. If Kwakiutl culture has a "megalomaniac paranoid
trend," one wants to know how many individual Kwakiutl share this
trend and whether they acquired it from their culture. Benedict, quite
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 25
aware that her metaphor of culture as an individual personality was turn-
ing into a theory of personality and culture, suggested definite answers to
these questions implicitly in Patterns of Culture and explicitly in "An-
thropology and the Abnormal." The gist of her answers is contained in
the following paragraph from the latter work:
I have spoken of individuals as having sets toward certain types of be-
havior, and of these sets as running sometimes counter to the types of be-
havior which are institutionalized in the culture to which they belong. From
all that we know of contrasting cultures it seems clear that differences of tem-
perament occur in every society. The matter has never been made the subject
of investigation, but from the available material it would appear that these
temperament types are very likely of universal recurrence. That is, there is
an ascertainable range of human behavior that is found wherever a suffi-
ciently large series of individuals is observed. But the proportion in which be-
havior types stand to one another in different societies is not universal. The
vast majority of the individuals in any group are shaped to the fashion of that
culture. In other words, most individuals are plastic to the moulding force of
the society into which they are born. In a society that values trance, as in In-
dia, they will have supernormal experience. In a society that institutional-
izes homosexuality, they will be homosexual. In a society that sets the gather-
ing of possessions as the chief human objective, they will amass property.
The deviants, whatever the type of behavior the culture has institutionalized,
will remain few in number, and there seems no more difficulty in moulding
the vast malleable majority to the "normality" of what we consider an aber-
rant trait, such as delusions of reference, than to the normality of such ac-
cepted behavior patterns as acquisitiveness. The small proportion of the num-
ber of the deviants in any culture is not a function of the sure instinct with
which that society has built itself upon the fundamental sanities, but of the
universal fact that, happily, the majority of mankind quite readily take any
shape that is presented to them. (p. 196)
Restated, this theory may be summarized in terms of the following
distinct propositions:
1. In every culture there is a wide range of individual temperament
types (genetically and constitutionally determined) which recur uni-
versally.
2. Every culture, however, permits only a limited number of types to
flourish, and they are those that fit its dominant configuration.
3. The vast majority of individuals in any society will conform to the
dominant types of that society, since their temperaments will be suffi-
ciently plastic to the moulding force of the society. These will be the
"normal" personality types.
4. A minority of individuals in every society will not "fit" the domi-
nant types, either because their temperament types are too deviant from
the ruling types or because they are "insufficiently endowed." These will
be the "deviants" and "abnormals."
26 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
5. The classification and distribution of "normal" and "abnormal"
personality types is relative to the configurations of particular cultures
which define the criteria of "normality" and "abnormality."
It does not follow from this last proposition, as is sometimes asserted,
that there are no universally valid criteria of "normality" or "abnor-
mality." As on the analogous question of "human nature" and moral
values, Benedict's position is that such criteria probably exist, but we
cannot be sure what they are until we have allowed for cultural relativ-
ity, and, therefore, until we have accumulated more comparative data:
The problem of understanding abnormal human behavior in any absolute
sense independent of cultural factors is still far in the future. The categories
of borderline behavior which we derive from the study of the neuroses and
psychoses of our civilization are categories of prevailing local types of in-
stability. They give much information about the stresses and strains of West-
ern civilization, but no final picture of inevitable human behavior. Any con-
clusions about such behavior must await the collection by trained observers
of psychiatric data from other cultures. Since no adequate work of the kind
has been done at the present time, it is impossible to say what core of defini-
tion of abnormality may be found valid from the comparative material. It is
as it is in ethics: all our local conventions of moral behavior and of immoral
are without absolute validity, and yet it is quite possible that a modicum of
what is considered right and what wrong could be disentangled that is shared
by the whole human race. When data are available in psychiatry, this mini-
mum definition of abnormal human tendencies will be probably quite unlike
our culturally conditioned, highly elaborated psychoses such as those that
are described, for instance, under the terms of schizophrenia and manic-
depressive, (op. cit., p. 79)
Although very few of these propositions have survived without sub-
stantial qualification and additions, the theory which they summarize has
been the starting point for almost all later developments in personality
and culture theory and research. The first of Benedict's propositions is
probably still acceptable with substantial modification, and the second,
third, fourth, and fifth with varying degrees of modification. The collec-
tion of psychiatric data from other cultures is still far from adequate, but
what there is has not yet revealed startling differences in abnormal hu-
man tendencies (e.g., Benedict and Jacks, 1954; Linton, 1956; Eaton
and Weil, 1955; Kaplan and Plaut, 1956; Paul, 1955; A. Leighton et al.,
1957; Goldhamer, 1953; Opler, M. K., 1956).
One major series of amendments has been in the direction of com-
plexityboth in the description of culture patterns and in the kinds and
distribution of personality types. These complications have been applied
even to the "simple" primitive cultures described by Benedict. Helen
Codere (1956), for instance, has recently published an account of the
Kwakiutl which portrays them as far more "amiable" than they are in
Patterns of Culture. She, along with other critics, has also raised the
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 27
question, whether the difference between chiefs and commoners in
Kwakiutl society was understated by Benedict.
Another problem raised by the configurational theory is how the
"psychological type" of the culture gets itself impressed on individuals.
Today the assumption of cultural moulding of plastic temperaments has
been generally replaced by an assumption of the critical importance of
child-rearing experiences in the formation of adult personality (Kardi-
ner, 1939; Eggan, 1943, 1956; Goldfrank, 1945; Erikson, 1945). This
assumption, as is well known, is based on theories of learning and indi-
vidual growth, and on psychoanalysis. In some of her later writings
(1938, 1946a, 1949) Benedict includes some discussions of child-rear-
ing practices without, however, committing herself to any particular psy-
chological theory. She tends rather to stress that it is not the presence or
absence of a specific practice which is important but the ways in which
the practice is integrated with and expresses a particular configuration of
culture. This point, quite consistent with the theory of configurations,
later becomes the basis for a theory of "national character." (See the
section on "National Character as Cultural Character" in this chap-
ter.)
Despite Boas' characterization of Patterns of Culture as an effort to
understand "the individual as living in his culture and the culture as
lived by individuals," and despite the many psychological elements in the
theory, there are practically no psychological data about individuals in
that work. The data are predominantly cultural and social, including
ceremonies, songs and poetry, social and economic organization, war
practices, institutionalized attitudes, and the like. One looks in vain for
the life histories and other personal documents, and the results of psy-
chological tests, which have become the essential appurtenances of con-
temporary personality and cultural study. At most there is an occasional
reference to the anthropologist's having asked some one a question, and
brief portraits of several "abnormals."
There are at least three reasons, I think, for the neglect of psychologi-
cal data in the configurational theory. It was conceived in the first in-
stance as an explanation of cultural organization and differentiation
and was extended only in midstream into a personality and culture the-
ory; personal documents and other psychological data in culture studies
were not very well known at this time (although Margaret Mead had al-
ready made them the basis of her Samoan study) , and if one accepted
the assumption that a vast majority of individuals in every society were
so plastic as to take the mould of that society's culture pattern, it might
appear superfluous to collect individual data about them, for according
to this theory only the deviants would possess individuality.
This analysis is not meant as a criticism of the use of cultural data, for
28 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
these are essential even when psychological data are employed. I want
rather to stress that because the "psychological types" were conceived as
attributes of whole cultures, it was not considered important to present
evidence on the psychology of individuals, although the theory in its later
forms did assert some very definite relations between the "psychological
types" of whole cultures and of individuals.
Benedict and many others have used configurational theory to ex-
plain processes of cultural change. It is not, however, a historical theory
except, as Boas has pointed out, "in so far as the general configuration,
as long as it lasts, limits the directions of change that remain subject to
it" (1934). This, to be sure, is a very important kind of effect on cul-
tural change, but it does not account for the growth of any particular con-
figuration, its change into another type, or the relation of such changes to
changes in personality types of individuals. On these questions Bene-
dict dropped a few tantalizing hints, for example, that a particular con-
figuration takes its cues accidentally from the givens of biology and the
environment and then grows gradually and cumulatively as an individ-
ual personality grows or as the Gothic style of architecture grew. She
did not, however, elaborate these into any theory of historical change or
take any serious account of history in her characterizations. The over-
whelming impression given by works of this period is that configurations
are timeless entities without known antecedents or consequences, but
that, once established in a particular territory, they automatically be-
come all-powerful shapers of events and personalities.
This preference for the static and the synchronic is characteristic of
contemporary social anthropology and is not peculiar to the configura-
tional theory. It may perhaps be justified because it is simpler to begin
with the static, and also because in primitive cultures historical records
are rare. When, however, the theory is applied to nations, the necessity
for historical perspectives becomes urgent, as Kroeber has shown
(1944). Even in the application of the configurational theory to primi-
tive cultures, perhaps more can be done with the data available than has
been attempted. Codere's use of travellers', missionaries', and official
reports to trace changes in the Kwakiutl pattern results in a portrait, or
portraits, of the Kwakiutl somewhat different from Benedict's (Codere,
1950). Hallowell and others have also shown that such materials can be
used with good effect to study the relation of acculturation to persistence
and change in modal personality types (Hallowell, 1942, 1946a, 1949;
Caudill, 1949, 1952; Barnouw, 1950; Spindler, 1958). (See the section
on "Acculturation and Change in Modal Personality Structure" in this
chapter.)
These modifications of the configurational theory have been described
briefly here not in order to criticize Ruth Benedict, but rather to indicate
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 29
the fruitful influence of her original formulations on the further develop-
ment of personality and culture theory.
BASIC PERSONALITY STRUCTURE
The psychoanalyst Abram Kardiner is chiefly responsible for the for-
mulation of the theory of basic personality structure. Several anthro-
pologists participated in Kardiner's seminars, and made important con-
tributions to the theory, but the general formulation is Kardiner's. It was
first presented in his book The Individual and His Society: The Psycho-
dynamics of Primitive Social Organization (1939), and developed fur-
ther in The Psychological Frontiers of Society ( 1 945 ) . Both books con-
tain material of Linton's and the second has material of Cora DuBois'
and James West's as well. Kardiner has also summarized his theories in
a paper (1945). Cora DuBois' The People of A lor (1944), while it is
an important independent monograph, grew out of some of the prob-
lems raised in Kardiner's seminars, and represents field research di-
rectly relevant to the theory. Ralph Linton's The Cultural Background
of Personality (1945) should also be included as a collaborating an-
thropologist's attempt at a general synthesis.
" The theory of basic personality structure marks an important mile-
stone because it was one of the first systematic and explicit attempts to
apply a modified psychoanalytic approach to different cultures. It con-
solidated the previous criticisms and research both of anthropologists
(e.g., Kroeber, Malinowski, Mead, Benedict, Linton) and of psychoana-
lysts (e.g., Fromm, Homey, Rado, Ferenczi, W. Reich, Roheim) into
a new synthesis which has been very influential on subsequent personal-
ity and culture theory and research.
The starting point of the theory is, as in Benedict's configurations, a
desire to derive psychological characterizations of total cultures from
cultural data. The nature of the characterization and the techniques of
derivation, however, go considerably beyond configurational theory.
The characterization is no longer in terms of a few "psychological types"
which are descriptively fitted to the dominant values and motivations of
a culture, but is given in terms of the characteristic unconscious con-
stellations produced in individuals by the child-rearing practices and
other "primary institutions" (e.g., family organization, subsistence
techniques) prevailing in a culture. The aspects of the culture in which
these "constellations" find expression (usually art, folklore, mythology,
religion) Kardiner calls the ''secondary institutions." A "basic personal-
ity structure" is then a diagnostic summary of the psychological con-
stellations presumably generated by a culture's distinctive primary in-
stitutions and generating in turn its secondary institutions. The basic
30 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
personality structure is not as such a descriptive profile of the personal-
ity types of individuals but a set of "nuclear" trends which enter as con-
stituents into the characters of all individual personalities who have been
reared under the same primary institutions.
Since "unconscious constellations" cannot be directly observed, the
"basic personality structure" must be a construct inferred indirectly
from cultural data. Linton describes it as "an abstraction of the same
order as culture itself" (Kardiner, 1939, p. vi). "Basic personality
structure," then, is an explanatory construct which tries to explain two
rather different kinds of things: the integration of different institutions
within a culture, at a given time and historically, and the personality
resemblances among individual members of a society (what Cora Du-
Bois and others later call the "modal personality type"). In effect the
theory assimilates these two problems by asserting that it is the same
"psychological coherence" which explains both the inter-relations of
institutions and the distribution of personality types in a given society.
Kardiner has frequently written that he did not develop a new theory
of basic personality but only presented a specific technique of "psycho-
dynamic analysis" for deriving it in particular cultures. While this claim
is a little misleading in view of the explanatory character of the concept,
it does point to his own most distinctive contribution. To practice his
technique Kardiner required the assistance of anthropologists with
knowledge of the cultures to be analyzed. He insisted, however, on a
strict division of labor between the anthropologists and the psychoana-
lysts in the collaboration. The anthropologists as expert informants
should present the description of a culture's institutions, primary and
secondary, and the psychoanalyst should take this description as data
for his derivation of the basic personality structure. This procedure
seems to have been generally followed in the New York seminars, and
Kardiner makes a point of retaining it in his books. In the 1939 volume,
Linton's description of Marquesan culture and of the Tanala of Mada-
gascar are sharply separated from Kardiner's "psychodynamic analysis"
of these cultures. The format is similar in the 1945 volume. The de-
scriptive chapters on the Comanche, the Alorese, and Plainville are
separated from Kardiner's analysis of these cultures. But there is one
important difference in the later volume: Kardiner himself has written
the descriptive chapters on the Comanche and the Alorese. He indicates
that the Comanche chapter has been "compiled from information sup-
plied by Ralph Linton" and the chapter on the Alorese "from seminar
notes and from the book The People of Alor. . . ." Cora DuBois' de-
scription as it appears in the book, he says, is not a true record of this
technique, since it includes "many inferences and conclusions drawn
from the projective analysis" and, being written from the life cycle out-
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 3 1
ward, gives an impression that personality formation can be predicted
as "one ascends progressively up the life cycle." Kardiner thinks this
neglects the important indicators to be found in religion, folklore, and
the general "institutional set-up" (1945, p. 102).
These strictures on the proper division of labor between the anthro- -
pologist and the psychoanalyst reflect Kardiner's conception of the tech-
nique of psychodynamic analysis. They also assume importance in the
later controversies concerning the mutual independence of the ethno-
graphic and the psychological analyses.
If one could assume that specific kinds of child-rearing disciplines
produced specific forms of personality reaction, and that specific kinds
of (secondary) institutions derived from the unconscious representations
of these reactions, one might be able, in theory at least, to infer, from
descriptions of specific institutions and child-rearing practices, the spe-
cific kinds of personality reactions that intervene. This at any rate is the
assumption underlying Kardiner's technique for deriving the basic per-
sonality structure of a culture. Two questions of general importance may
be raised about this assumption: What are the actual steps in the applica-
tion of the technique to ethnographic data? And what justification is
there for assuming general causal connections between specific child-
rearing practices, specific personality trends, and specific forms of art,
religion and folklore?
Kardiner is quite explicit in his answer to the first question. He de-
scribes the technique as "an exercise in pathology" (1945, p. xvii).
He also writes that "many of the constellations used in the reconstruc-
tion of Marquesan and Tanala culture were based on the pathology of
neuroses" (1939, p. 431). He cites as an example his conclusion that
the scarcity of women among the Marquesans is an important primary
institution in the formation of Marquesan basic personality. He says he
arrived at this conclusion by first noting that Marquesan men's fear of
being eaten by women was a common theme in their folklore; on the
basis of his experience with this theme among neurotics in our culture,
he took it to indicate some dissatisfaction with women. Looking then at
the Marquesan scarcity of women and the peculiarities of their child-
rearing practices, he concluded that women as mothers are an important
source of frustration to the Marquesan child and that they remain a
source of frustration in other roles later on.
Kardiner's "exercise in psycho-pathology" is not a mechanical proce-
dure or an easy one to apply. Sometimes it took Kardiner as long as four
years to hit upon a satisfactory interpretation. It is a procedure-, how-
ever, which involves quite general and definite operations. On the basis
of Kardiner's own practice and description the following seem to be the
most important steps:
32 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
1 ) The standardization of the reactions of adult neurotics in Western
culture to specific institutions (chiefly child-rearing disciplines).
2) The generalization that the institutions assumed to be causes of
neurotic reactions are also probably important loci of frustration for
"normal" individuals in Western culture.
3) The identification of the reactions of whole groups exposed to
similar institutional frustrations in any culture.
Step ( 1 ) represents a shift from individual to social psychiatry. It as-
sumes that the institutional factors disclosed in psychotherapy as im-
portant for a particular individual are also probably of general etiologi-
cal importance, particularly if they impinge on individuals in their early
years. It also assumes that the adult's retrospective version of his child-
hood experiences is not significantly different from the actual experience.
Step (2) assumes that the neurotics' reactions are good indicators
of the institutional source and direction of frustrations because, being
more extreme than "normal" reactions, they describe the institutional
pressures more accurately. It does not assume that neurotic and
normal reactions are the same, but rather assumes that they are dif-
ferent adaptations to similar frustrating situations. The neurotic re-
action is used as a clue to discover the institutional source.
Once steps (1) and (2) are taken, step (3) is not very difficult. For
at this point one has a sizeable inventory of elementary "reaction types"
to different kinds of frustrations induced by a variety of different
institutions and needs only to discover which particular combinations
apply to a given culture. Some assumptions about "human nature" are
also made in this extension, but not many. Freud's theory of "instincts"
and of the parallelism of the ontogenetic and the phylogenetic is
dropped. What is assumed is "the phylogenetic endowment of man at
birth with an ego or total personality of a very rudimentary kind, which
in the process of growth and integration is constantly undergoing con-
tinuous change" (1939, p. 461). Also retained is the recognition of
the basic needs of hunger, sex, and the need for protection (1939, p.
418), the capacity for repression, the existence of certain affects and
attitudes, executive impulses, and attitudinized perceptions (p. 419).
In addition to this trimmed version of Freud, Kardiner also accepts as
"biological traits of man" gregariousness, a long period of maturation,
the upright posture, prehensile hand, predominance of vision in
adaptation, the capacity for speech, and the absence of a breeding
season (1945, pp. 2-5). In agreement with most anthropologists,
sociologists, and psychologists, he believes that "man is least domi-
nated by inborn behavior patterns" that "the adaptive patterns of man
are acquired and that the inborn tendencies can be bent in one di-
rection or another" (1945, p. 4).
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 33
The validity of these operations and the associated assumptions is far
from self-evident. It is especially difficult to maintain that individual
reactions to the same external frustrations are not uniform (1939, p.
419), and yet to reason from individualized reactions to common in-
stitutional causes. It may well be that the basic disciplines of child-
rearing are the most crucial factors in the formation of basic person-
ality structures (1939, p. 484), but this is not a conclusion that follows
smoothly from clinical experience with adult neurotics.
In fairness to Kardiner, it should be said that he does not claim
self-evidence for any of these steps, although he feels most confident
regarding the first and argues for the validity of all. It is also important
to point out that the validity of the derivation of any particular basic
personality structure does not depend entirely on the validity of each of
these steps. They may be regarded as ways to arrive at relevant hy-
potheses rather than at established generalizations of universal validity.
The hypotheses would then have to find their warrant in how well
they explained the "coherence" of particular cultures and in how
accurately they predicted the personality profiles of "average" indi-
viduals. It is my impression that the anthropologists collaborating with
Kardiner, and he himself occasionally, took this view of "psycho-
dynamic analysis" as a technique for deriving hypothetical basic per-
sonality structures. Because they did take this view, they sought means
of verification outside the framework set by the original theory. This
led to new kinds of field research, new concepts of typical personality,
and new tests of validity, as well as to some revisions by Kardiner of
his own earlier formulations.
THE PROBLEM OF VALIDATION: MODAL PERSONALITY
The concept and term "modal personality" first assumes importance
in Cora DuBois' monograph The People of Alor } A Social-Psycho-
logical Study of an East Indian Island (1944). One definition she there
gives of the concept is that it "is the product of the interplay of funda-
mental physiologically and neurologically determined tendencies and
experiences common to all human beings acted upon by the cultural
milieu, which denies, directs, and gratifies these needs very differently
in different societies" (p. 3). A second definition is in terms of the
central tendencies in the variations of individual personalities:
It is quite possible that some societies permit the individual less leeway
and pattern him more highly than do other societies. But in Alor both the re-
sults of test material and my own impressions indicate a wide range of varia-
tions. Ranges, however, are measured on a common base line. On such a
base line data will show central tendencies that constitute the modal person-
ality for any particular culture, (pp. 4-5)
34 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
These two definitions, although closely related, are not equivalent.
The first refers to a genetic, dynamic, explanatory concept; it is "an
abstraction and generalization," with the help of psychoanalytic
theory, from data that are chiefly cultural. The second is a statistical
concept of central tendency a description of the "common and char-
acteristic factors of personality in any culture" as they "might be estab-
lished by a series of psychological tests and observations of cross-
cultural applicability" (p. 5). The first definition approximates
Kardiner's definition of "basic personality structure"; the second does
not appear in the early Kardiner discussions. To avoid confusing them,
let us retain Kardiner's term for the dynamic concept, and use "modal
personality" only for the statistical and descriptive concept. "Modal
personality" is implicit in the concept of "basic personality structure,"
but it emerges as an explicit concept when, as in DuBois' study, there are
psychological data on individuals to summarize.
The psychological data in The People of Alor include eight auto-
biographies (four from men and four from women), thirty-seven
Rorschachs (seventeen male, twenty female), responses to the
Porteus maze test, word associations, and some children's drawings.
DuBois collected the psychological data because, as a participant in
Kardiner's seminars in 1936 and 1937, she felt that the descriptive
material used there for reconstructions of basic personality structure
had been gathered for other purposes and did not give adequate de-
scription of character structure and dynamics. "It was a good exercise,
but there was no opportunity to check our conclusions. Were individuals
predominantly what we might suppose them to be from the institutions
under which they lived, the childhood conditioning they received, the
values they shared, the goals for which they strove?"
"We had talked ourselves out, and only field work could test the pro-
cedure." (p. V)
Kardiner and other participants in the seminar apparently shared
this belief in the need for more data on individuals, and looked to
DuBois' study as a test of the theory of "basic personality structure."
The present study by Dr. DuBois was undertaken with the foreknowledge
that biographical material was essential to prove the contention that institu-
tions affected and molded the growth of the individual in certain prescribed
directions. . . . Unless such conclusions are based upon the study of bi-
ographies, any conclusions drawn from the study of institutions alone must
fall into the category of guesses, more or less approximate. (Kardiner in
DuBois, 1944, p. 8)
Linton thought that, before the Alor study, the concept of basic
personality was only a "working hypothesis" whose "ultimate proof of
validity was still lacking" (Kardiner, 1945, p. XI).
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 35
The procedure of validation, which Linton calls an "experiment,"
followed the earlier pattern in its first stages. When DuBois returned
from her field study, she presented the ethnographic data to Kardiner's
seminar. From these data^Kardijaer deduced, with the assistance of
psychodynamic analysis, the expected basic personality structure of the,
Alorese, At this point two new steps were introduced to deal with the
psychological data. The biographies were analyzed by Kardiner, and
a Rorschach expert, Dr. Emil Oberholzer, was asked "to summarize
those personality characteristics which appeared in a large majority
of individuals tested" on the basis of "blind interpretations" of the
Rorschach protocols, with "no exchange of information until the work
was completed." When it was found that the two pictures of Alorese
personality agreed on "all important points," Kardiner re-analyzed the
life histories as a further check and to explain deviations in terms of
atypical childhood experiences (Kardiner, 1944, p. 8; Kardiner, 1945,
pp. 101-102, Linton, 1945, p. XI).
The participants in the seminar, as well as those who learned of the
experiment later, generally agreed with Linton's judgment that it
"seemed to verify our earlier conclusions with respect to the reality of
basic personality types, the mechanisms by which they are produced
and their relations to the culture as a whole" (1945, p. XI).
The order of steps followed in the seminar is roughly followed in
Kardiner's presentation of the Alorese material in his 1945 volume, but
it is not quite the order followed in DuBois' monograph, which in-
augurates a new style and high standard of presenting the results of
personality and culture research. In that work, the results of the analy-
sis, consisting of a "psychocultural synthesis" in which cultural analyses
are combined with "the better established processes of the psycho-
analytic school," are presented before the descriptive psychological
data. This section, written by DuBois, makes up about a fourth of the
monograph, and is designed to account for the development of Alorese
modal personality. It is accompanied by a brief analysis written b)
Kardiner. The biographies and test results make up almost three-
fourths of the volume. Each autobiography is individually analyzed b]
Kardiner, who also supplies a general conclusion about all of them
The material on the Rorschach was written by Oberholzer.
The procedure of validation in the Alor study consists, then, es
sentially in the claim to having demonstrated that modal personality
types exist in the psychological data (the Rorschachs and the auto
biographies), that these types Coincide with one another and with th
>asic personality structure inferred from the cultural data, and that th
nethods used in the demonstration are mutually independent. Thi
ilaim has been generally accepted and the procedure widely followec
36 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
not only as a method for validating basic personality construction, but
as a general method for confirming inferences of typical personality
and of psychological processes based on cultural data and ethnographic
techniques of observation and interview.
In these extensions of the method, refinements of statistical
manipulation, of sampling, and of devices to assure independence
have been introduced. Many of these were suggested by the Alor study
itself. The individual variability in the Alorese psychological data, for
example, was as striking as the existence of common characteristics.
There were important discrepancies among the results of the dif-
ferent methods: Oberholzer found little evidence for neurotic anxiety,
while Kardiner insists this is a dominant trend. Could the different
methods be strictly independent, moreover, if both cultural and psycho-
logical data were collected by the same person who, in addition,
shared the theoretical framework of the psychoanalyst and was con-
sulted both by him and the Rorschach expert in the process of inter-
pretation? A sample of eight autobiographies and thirty-seven Ror-
schachs may not be sufficiently large, or sufficiently representative of a
village population of 180, a village cluster of 600, and an Alorese
population of 70,000. DuBois herself points out that the subjects of the
autobiographies "do not represent the ideal or 'type' person of the
village but represent the less successful and the 'average' " (1944, p.
191). How is this kind of "average" to be defined? Linton said that if
the hypothesis of basic personality structure was correct, "the bulk of
the individuals within a given society" should have the personality
features ascribed to it (1945, p. xi). Does this mean a majority, a
plurality, an arithmetic mean, or a mode?
These questions, and procedures designed to answer them, loom large
in recent modal personality studies. There are, however, several im-
portant shifts in emphasis which come with the increasing use of psy-
chological tests. The opinion grows that the study of modal personality
by direct psychological data need not be pursued for the purpose of
confirming deductions from cultural data, but is important in its own
right as well as in the study of the psychology of acculturation, values,
and so forth. Some have gone so far as to suggest that, since the psycho-
logical methods are more objective and quantitative, they should re-
place the more qualitative ethnographic method. This proposal is not
workable, for as Kluckhohn and Leighton have pointed out, success in
administering and analyzing the psychological tests in another culture
depends upon a minimum acquaintance with the culture of the people
tested, and an entirely "blind" analysis would have given markedly
skewed results (Children of the People, p. 226-27; but see also
Kluckhohn and Rosenzweig, 1949).
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 37
This conclusion is further borne out in another recent study (Glad-
win and Sarason's Truk: Man in Paradise}, where discrepancies be-
tween the psychologist's and the anthropologist's interpretations
occurred because the psychologist did not know certain essential facts
about the culture. This same study, however, demonstrates the value of
combining psychological and ethnographic methods. Not only did the
psychologist's results add important information about individuals, but
they also gave the anthropologist leads to certain things in the culture
which he might otherwise have overlooked. In this study also, the
psychologist's analysis of the psychological data (twenty-three
Rorschachs and TAT's) agreed in the main with the anthropologist's
analysis of autobiographies of the same individuals and with his analysis
of Trukese personality based on cultural data. There was no psychoana-
lyst in the Truk study; the anthropologist took the responsibility for the
"psychodynamic analysis" of the culture.
Another significant innovation of the Truk study is the reversal of
the direction of validating procedure: the psychologist first derives a
portrait of the typical personality from the psychological data, and this
is checked against the anthropologist's portrait based on observation of
behavior and ethnographic data. The assumption behind this pro-
cedure is just the reverse of that used in the Alor study:
If we assume that the psychologically derived data present a true picture
of Trukese personality (in those aspects with which they deal), we would ex-
pect to find the psychological characteristics there defined also reflected in
the overt behavior of the people as this is delineated through the use of an-
thropological techniques in the preceding chapters. Insofar as we find the
personality characteristics reflected in behavior we may consider the psy-
chological analysis to be valid; contradictions, however, for which there is no
ready explanation must lead us to suspect the adequacy of both the anthro-
pological and psychological data in the area under consideration. (Gladwin
and Sarason, 1953, p. 223)
The authors (one an anthropologist and the other a psychologist)
acknowledge that to begin with a derivation of personality from de-
scriptions of behavior is an equally legitimate procedure. They
prefer to give priority, however, to projective test data because they
believe that this would result in "a better balanced and more com-
plete inventory of significant psychological characteristics" (p. 223).
Their choice does not imply, however, that the psychological analysis
is completely independent of the ethnographic analysis nor that it can
stand by itself, for they conclude, as did Kluckhohn and Leighton,
that "a blind analysis of projective tests, taken alone, does not neces-
sarily provide an adequate or complete picture of the personalities of
persons of a culture other than our own" (p. 246).
38 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
It is perhaps inevitable that the increasing use of psychological data
about individuals in personality and culture studies should shift the
attention to problems of individual variability. This, at any rate, has
been a focus in recent studies. The authors of the Truk study say they
are interested in differences more than in similarities (p. 291). While
they describe u typical" Trukese personality and believe that their
sample, which contains 13.3% of the adult males and 14.1% of adult
females on Truk, is significant, they are not interested in the sampling
problem or in a precise statistical definition of the central tendencies.
They concentrate instead on the variations in personality development
as a function of variations in life experiences, e.g., having a parent of
the same sex with whom to identify, size of household, the "times"
during which one grows up, and the like.
The statistical problems raised by the "modal personality" concept
have received attention in other recent studies. The results of two of
these are of fundamental significance and I shall discuss them briefly.
In The Modal Personality Structure of the Tuscarora Indians as
Revealed by the Rorschach Test (1952a), Anthony Wallace, an anthro-
pologist, used Rorschach tests collected on the reservation near Niagara
Falls, and ethnographic analysis, for a study of modal personality types.
The author says that the results of the study surprised him, since, even
in this small homogeneous community of six hundred, the individual
variability was great. Finding common personality characteristics be-
came a difficult problem. Wallace starts with DuBois' notion of
"modal personality" as a central tendency in psychological data and
develops it in rigorous statistical fashion. In order to avoid confusion
with "basic personality structure" and other concepts of typical per-
sonality which include cultural variables, he goes to the other extreme
of operational specificity, and defines "modal personality structure"
exclusively in terms of Rorschach data and special statistical pro-
cedures:
. . . modal personality structure is defined as that type of personality
structure, formulated in terms of the Rorschach test, from which the ob-
tained Rorschach records of more individuals are indistinguishable in certain
chosen dimensions than are indistinguishable in these dimensions from any
other definable type. (p. 55)
While this kind of definition calls our attention to the dependence of
"modal personality" on the specific psychological tests and statistical
techniques used, it has the disadvantage of being so restricted that a new
concept of modal personality would have to be introduced each time a
new psychological test or statistical technique was adopted. The defi-
nition is not, however, essential to the methods and results of Wallace's
study, or to the two questions it was designed to answer, namely: "What
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 39
is the typical Tuscarora Indian like psychologically?" "What is the type
of psychological structure most characteristic of the adult Tuscarora
Indians of this community, in so far as it can be inferred from the
obtained Rorschach sample?"
Wallace's statistical procedure, suggested to him by a psychologist,
introduces a method for deriving a group profile of psychological traits
as they are actually associated in individuals, in contrast to the older
method of combining mean scores into a profile of means, which may
have no individual counterpart. Wallace plots a frequency distribution
for each of twenty-one Rorschach personality indicators, calculates a
mode for each of the twenty-one factors, and adds a standard devi-
ation on either side of the mode to define a "modal range" for each
factor. The "modal class" is then defined as consisting of those individual
Rorschach records which fall within the modal range in every one of
the twenty-one categories. When he analyzed the individual Rorschach
records in this way, Wallace found that twenty-six out of seventy, or
37% of the sample, fell into the modal class. He also found that sixteen
records (23%) "clustered about the modal type," i.e. fell into the modal
range in some categories but not in all. There were twenty-eight
cases (40%) which were neither modal nor submodal. Four different
groups are distinguishable in this non-modal class, the largest of which
accounts for 18% of the total sample.
The twenty-six modal records were then interpreted as if they were
the Rorschach of a single individual (by using the mean values for the
twenty-one categories, as well as qualitative clues) to produce a por-
trait of the modal personality structure. Wallace himself did all the
calculations and interpretations, with some assistance from the Hallo-
wells, who also knew the culture. A clinical psychologist did "blind"
interpretations of some of the data.
While technically it might be argued that the 37% belonging to the
"modal class" represent the largest single type, it would be difficult on
the basis of the distribution of the other groups to argue that this group
alone stands out as the "typical Tuscarora personality," particularly if
we have to call 40% of the population non-typical and deviant.
Moreover the case is not helped by a consideration of the cultural
and social relevance of the "modal type." Wallace could find no sig-
nificant correlation between the presence of individuals in the modal
class and their sociological roles. The closest he found to a correlation
was that one small group of deviants shared the common characteristic
of having highly individualized roles.
One kind of correlation between the psychological data and the
cultural data does emerge: the most frequent personality traits, taken as
discrete traits and not as associated in individual personalities, are also
40 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
most frequently reflected in the culture. This conclusion is based on
impressions and not on statistical data. Although Wallace introduces a
statistical conception of "modal" culture, he does not quantify the cul-
tural data he presents.
Using the same statistical techniques, Wallace analyzed 102 Ojibwa
records collected by Hallowell east of Lake Winnipeg and found that
28.4% of the sample fell into the modal class. He interpreted these
records and compared the Ojibwa profiles with the Tuscarora. While
there were certain points of marked resemblance, the differences were
significant. Only 4.9% of the Ojibwa fell into the Tuscarora modal
class. Wallace concludes from this comparison that the two groups have
psychologically different modal personalities and that these differences
are a function of the cultural differences.
Another study dealing with similar problems is Bert Kaplan's A
Study of Rorschach Responses in Four Cultures (1954). Kaplan, a
psychologist, analyzed the Rorschachs of 157 adults (ages 17 to 40),
half war veterans and half not, who came from four different but
geographically adjacent cultural groups in northwestern New Mexico
Zuni Indian, Navaho Indian, Mormon, and Spanish American. He
found the personality differences among individuals in each group
greater than the differences among groups. He concluded that while
"something like modal personality characteristics do indeed exist," in
the sense that "there are trends closely related to cultural patterns that
characterize a number of people within each group," this number "is
ordinarily less than the majority," and that "large areas of personality
vary without respect to cultural influence" (pp. 31-32).
Kaplan's interpretation of these results raises a provocative question
about the entire notion of "modal personality" and its relation to cul-
tural influence.
That great variability exists does not argue against the influence of cul-
ture on personality; it means merely that cultural influences do not neces-
sarily create uniformity in a group. All individuals interact with their cultures.
However human beings are not passive recipients of their culture. They ac-
cept, reject, or rebel against the cultural forces to which they are oriented.
In many cultures, including our own, there exists a pattern of outward con-
formity and inner rebellion and deviation. It is probably correct to say that
individuals seem a good deal more similar than they really are. (p. 32)
Generally speaking, the program for validating "basic personality
structure," "configurational personality," and other derivations of
typical personality from cultural data and social institutions has dis-
appointed early expectations. The introduction of psychological data
about individual personalities has not led to demonstrations that "a
vast majority" or "the bulk" of individuals in a culture conform to a
dominant personality type. Some central tendencies have been revealed
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 41
in the psychological data, but the "modal types" are usually far fewer
than a majority of individuals and the individual variability in types is
as striking as are the similarities. While the various studies do show
some agreement among results obtained by different methods, this
agreement is never complete. Significant discrepancies have been found
among the results of different psychological techniques, as well as
between psychological and ethnographic methods. It has not proved
possible, or desirable, moreover, to achieve strict independence of data
and methods: "blind" interpretations of psychological data have had to
be helped out with some knowledge of the culture interpreted, in order
to establish applicability of tests, to administer them, and to keep inter-
pretations from going astray. A working division of labor among an-
thropologist, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist has not prevented
these different kinds of specialists from learning from one another or
from pooling different theories, methods, and data in order to deal
with problems which are inherently interdisciplinary. The idea that
there is a unique procedure of validation, which begins with a presen-
tation of descriptive ethnographic data and goes on to "psychodynamic
analysis," then to verification by psychological data, has been aban-
doned in favor of multiple procedures involving alternative sequences
and combinations of steps. It is now more usual to analyze the psy-
chological data first and then to check this analysis against cultural
data, than to do the reverse.
One of the most interesting questions raised by these modal person-
ality studies concerns the significance of the discrepancies found
between the psychological and the cultural results, respectively. The
absence of one-to-one correlations between the two sets of results is
usually taken as a failure of verification and as an indication that one
or the other is "incorrect." Perhaps some of these incongruencies are
objective facts, and those theories which have led us to expect iso-
morphic congruencies of culture and personality types are incorrect. It
may well turn out that the not-quite-independent methods and data of
anthropologist, psychologist, and psychoanalyst combine to yield results
which are genuinely independent. In that case, what would be needed
is a theory which will account for noncongruence of modal personality
and culture as an objective fact and not merely as a result of failures in
method. Explorations in this direction will be found in Inkeles and
Levinson (1954), in Inkeles et al (1958), and in Bendix (1952).
ACCULTURATION AND CHANGE IN MODAL
PERSONALITY STRUCTURE
With few exceptions (Thomas and Znaniecki, 1917-18; Redfield,
1930, pp. 222-23; Thurnwald, 1932), the earlier approach to ac-
42 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
culturation neglected the psychological dimension of the process and
concentrated on the enumeration of discrete culture traits which did
or did not change. The development of an interest in characterizing
cultures in terms of "configurational personality" and of "modal per-
sonality" naturally turned attention to the problem of the relation of
culture change to personality change. While the Rorschach and other
projective tests were being applied to establish the "modal personality"
of non-western cultures, another series of studies applied these tests to
determine the psychological consequences of the cultural changes peo-
ple in these cultures experienced as a result of contact with Western
civilization. It is not essential in such studies to presuppose a concept of
"typical personality" that is jointly validated by ethnological and psy-
chometric data. Many of the studies bypass this assumption by seeking
direct correlation between degrees or levels of acculturation as ex-
pressed in cultural terms and personality change or persistence as
measured by projective tests. To the extent, however, that ethno-
logical and psychological methods seemed to agree in validating a
"modal personality type," confidence in the use of psychological tests in
acculturation studies increased.
One of the first to apply projective tests to study the psychological
dimension of acculturation was Hallowell. He has also made other
contributions to culture and personality theory and research, including
several important papers on the cultural patterning of fear, anxiety, and
aggression among tribal groups (1938, 1940, 1941), as well as papers
on cultural factors in the perception of space, time, and the self (1937,
1951a, 1954).
Hallowell's method for studying the effects of acculturation on modal
personality is based on the systematic comparison of the Rorschach
protocols of three different groups of Ojibwa Indians representing
three different levels of acculturation. He first compared two of these
groups living on the Berens River in Canada the Inland group (44
subjects) and the Lakeside group (58 subjects) and found that al-
though there were some psychological differences between the two
groups, the essential continuity of personality was unmistakable ( 1942) .
This indicated that acculturation could take place without radical
change in modal personality structure. This conclusion was reinforced
for Hallowell when he compared the psychological profile derived from
the Rorschachs with what he pieced together from seventeenth and
eighteenth century observations made by missionaries, explorers, and
traders (1946b). The Berens River Ojibwa, particularly the less ac-
culturated Inland group, seemed to match the modal personality of the
aboriginal Indians. When, however, he brought into the comparison a
third highly acculturated group of 115 subjects, at Lac du Flam-
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 43
beau, Wisconsin, some striking contrasts emerged. A core of generic
traits was still recognizable as the Ojibwa modal personality among
the Flambeau protocols. But the degree of psychological contrast with
the Berens River groups overshadowed the differences between the
Inland and Lakeside groups. Hallowell interprets the Flambeau profile
as that of an "introversive personality structure pushed to the limits of its
functional adequacy" and as being "thrown back on its psychological
heels" (195 la). Because the records of the Flambeau children re-
semble those of the adults, he believes there is a kind of "frustration of
maturity" among them. Using a quantitative measure of adjustment, he
finds the Berens River groups show a better adjustment than the Flam-
beau group.
Why there is so much strain in the Flambeau group and why there is
the beginning of a change in the Ojibwa modal personality, Hallowell is
not sure. He does not believe the explanation lies in "acculturation"
considered as an abstract and inevitable force but rather in a set of
complex factors difficult to analyze and not yet very well understood.
One of these may be the more rapid rates of acculturation at Flambeau
which have not permitted individuals to readapt to the changing situ-
ation. Another crucial factor may be the weakening of the aboriginal
value and belief systems and the lack of any positive substitute. The
Flambeau Ojibwa "are attempting as best they may, to survive under
conditions which, as yet, offer no culturally defined values and goals
that have become vitally significant for them and which might serve as
the psychological means that would lead to a more positive adjust-
ment" (195 la).
The method of studying the modal personality changes in relation to
acculturation pioneered by Hallowell on the Ojibwa has also been used
by MacGregor on the Sioux (1946), by Billig, Gillin, and Davidson in
Guatemala (1947-48), by Abel and Hsu with Chinese (1949), by
Barnouw on the Wisconsin Chippewa (1950), by Vogt on Navaho vet-
erans (1951), by Wallace on the Tuscarora (1952), by Caudill with
Japanese (1952, 1956), and by Spindler on the Menomini (1955).
NATIONAL CHARACTER
"Our understanding of international affairs is about where our under-
standing of primitive peoples was before the anthropologists attempted
the serious study of how primitive people learned their cultural be-
havior." (Benedict, 1946b)
The pressures of the second world war, led to efforts, to apply per-
sonality and culture theory and methods to the delineation of personality
44 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
characteristics and processes "typical" of modern nations. Ruth Benedict
and Margaret Mead were leaders in the organization of these efforts;
Kluckhohn, Leighton, Gorer, and Bateson also were important con-
tributors from the side of anthropology. Anthropologists, however, did
not go it alone; they joined with historians, political scientists, soci-
ologists, economists, and other students of national states, as well as
with psychologists and psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. Studies have
been published on American character (Mead, 1942; Gorer, 1948;
Fromm, 1941; Riesman, 1950; Erikson, 1950; Potter, 1954), Russian
character (Gorer and Rickman, 1949; Leites, 1954; Mead, 1951a;
Dicks, 1952; Inkeles et al, 1958), Japanese character (Gorer, 1943;
Benedict, 1946a; Haring, 1946), German character (Fromm, 1936;
Erikson, 1950; Dicks, 1950; Rodnick, 1948;Lowie, 1945, 1954), Eng-
lish character (Gorer, 1955), Hindu character (Carstairs, 1957; Narain,
1957), Balinese character (Belo, 1935; Bateson and Mead, 1942), and
others.
These national character studies are an applied field insofar as they
were motivated by the practical desire to know more about one's national
enemies, allies, and self in war time; they nevertheless represent a
natural extension of personality and culture theory, and have in turn
made basic contributions to it.
Obvious obstacles were posed by the differences between modern
nations and primitive tribes. Some anthropologists, who had worked
on personality and culture studies in primitive cultures, were under-
standably reluctant to apply their methods to the enormous and hetero-
geneous populations of modern nations with their complex histories of
social and cultural change (Linton, 1951 ). The sampling problem alone
became formidable. Yet, as Ruth Benedict, arguing for the feasi-
bility of "national character" studies (1946b), has pointed out, the
anthropologist working on civilized nations has a head start because of
the greater availability of data statistical, political, economic, his-
torical, and literary and the presence of experts who have specialized
on national studies.
One kind of anthropological data, that provided by direct field
study, has not always been available. This practical limitation has
necessitated an indirect approach, making use of previous field studies,
interviews with special informants, and the study of "culture at a dis-
tance" through the analysis of folklore, literature, films, drama, po-
litical speeches and propaganda, and other cultural products (Benedict
1946b, Mead and Metraux, 1953). Even this procedure, however,
does not represent so much an innovation in method as an extension
of older methods. Benedict's analysis of Japanese mythology is not very
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 45
different from her analysis of Zuni mythology, as Katherine Spencer has
observed (1956).
The applications of personality and culture theory to the study of
national character have been undertaken from several different starting
points and have resulted in several different theories of national
character. I shall discuss three of these: national character conceived as
"cultural character," as "social character," and as "modal personality."
NATIONAL CHARACTER AS CULTURAL CHARACTER
The concept of "cultural character" has been defined by Margaret
Mead as "the regularities in the intrapsychic organization of the indi-
vidual members of a given society that are to be attributed to these
individuals' having been reared within that culture" (Mead and
Metraux, 1953, p. 33). From the extended explanation which Mead
gives of the concept and from the way in which it has been used in
studies with which she has been associated, one may conclude that
"cultural character" is a novel synthesis of Benedict's "configurational
personality" and Kardiner's "basic personality structure." The synthesis
was not made in one jump or by a single individual but developed
gradually and indirectly. Benedict herself applied the configurational
theory to a modern nation in her study of Japan, The Chrysanthemum
and the Sword (1946). Some of the Japanese criticism of this book
which accepts the general accuracy of the characterization but finds it
a bit static and reminiscent of Sunday school sermons (Bennett and
Nagai, Japanese Journal of Ethnology, 1949, Appraisal, pp. 139-
40) simply underlines the fact that Benedict did achieve her purpose
of grasping the underlying values of the Japanese ethos. The analysis in
this work adds an important ingredient to Benedict's earlier use of con-
figurational theory, by attaching great significance to certain aspects of
Japanese child rearing. Many adult personality traits and the apparent
contradictions in Japanese character are traced to the peculiarities of
Japanese teasing, and to toilet training and discontinuities in con-
ditioning (1946a, pp. 259, 263, 266, 271-2, 273, 286, 290-91). Even
greater emphasis was placed on these child-rearing practices by Gorer,
one of Benedict's co-workers, in his studies of Japanese character
(1943). It is this aspect of the analysis which brings "cultural char-
acter" so close to "basic personality structure."
Yet Mead (1954b, 1955), Benedict (1949), and Gorer (1951) are
essentially justified when they reply to their critics by denying that they
have attributed specific causality to child-rearing practices. For when
a theory of socialization is combined with configurational analysis,
46 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
particular modes of child-rearing become part patterns in the total
configuration of patterns. They are indeed crucial parts, from the stand-
point of transmitting the configuration to the next generation, as they
are then the media of communication between parents and children,
the forums within which the children "learn" the character of the adults.
For these reasons, child-rearing practices may give the outside ob-
servers "clues" to the adult character without being considered "causes"
of that character.
Another significant ingredient in the theory of "cultural character" is
the notion of thematic patterns in the interpersonal relations character-
istic of a national group. This idea seems to have been originally
suggested by Gregory Bateson in an early paper on national character
(Bateson, 1942a). Bateson was specifically concerned with the problem
of finding the "common character" in communities that have stable
differentiations of social roles among their members. His solution was to
look for the common character in specifically patterned relationships
among the differentiated groups or individuals. These relationships
are generally, but not invariably, bipolar, for example, dominance-
submission, succoring-dependence, exhibitionism-spectatorship. These
three happen to be examples of complementary relationship: if a
member of one group is dominant, a member of another group will be
submissive. There are also symmetrical relations in which the behavior
of one individual will call forth similar behavior of the same kind in an-
other. Bateson assumes that these bipolar patterns are "unitary within
the individual."
If we know that an individual is trained in overt expression of one half of
one of these patterns, e.g., in dominance behavior, we can predict with cer-
tainty (though not in precise language) that the seeds of the other half sub-
mission are simultaneously sown in his personality. We have to think of
the individual, in fact, as trained in -dominance-submission, not in either
dominance or submission. (1942a, pp. 76-77)
Bateson's theory is that different national characters differ, not in the
specific themes of the relationship, since these recur, but in the pro-
portions and combinations of themes. The Balinese, he suggests, feel
that dependence and exhibitionism and high status go naturally to-
gether, whereas Europeans associate high status with succoring. He
also suggested that an important qualitative difference between English
and American parent-child relations could be delineated in terms of a
reversed spectator-exhibitionism relationship.
In a later paper (1949), Bateson applied these ideas to an analysis
of the value system of Balinese culture. The same concepts were also
applied in national character studies by Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict,
Rhoda Metraux, and others (Mead and Metraux, 1953, pp. 365-397).
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 47
Gorer's study of the American character (1948) used a similar scheme
for the organization and interpretation of the materials.
The chief difference between Bateson's idea and the concept of
"basic personality structure" or of "modal personality type" is that he
locates the common and distinctive characteristics in culturally stand-
ardized patterns of interpersonal relations among social groups, whereas
the other two concepts locate them in a single pattern of traits fre-
quently to be found associated in individuals. The particular kinds of
interpersonal relations emphasized, e.g., dependence-succoring, were
undoubtedly suggested by psychoanalytic theory. An analogous theory
was developed by the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan (1940-45,
1948). The germs of the idea, however, were already present in Bate-
son's study of latmul ethos (1935, 1936) and in Mead's study of sex
and temperament among the Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli
(1935). What Bateson added is a more comprehensive idea of how
several different kinds of interpersonal relations can assume functional
patterns in relating culturally differentiated groups, and how these
patterns may vary in different cultures.
Bateson's concept of national character as the set of culturally
patterned themes recurring in interpersonal relations also adds, to his
Naven theory of "schisniogenesis" or cumulative interactions, the
parent-child relationship. This relationship figures in a dual capacity:
first, it is one of several kinds of interpersonal relationships manifesting
the characteristic themes of the culture. From the standpoint of the
growing child, however, it is also a crucial relationship, since in it he is
trained in the total pattern of relationships characteristic of his society.
The Balinese pattern of non-cumulative interaction, for example,
Bateson finds in the relationship of parents and children, but he also
notes that "childhood experience trains the child away from seeking
climax in interpersonal relations" (1949, p. 53), and that the positive
values supporting this pattern "are incorporated into the character
structure during childhood" (ibid). In the 1958 Epilogue to the reissue
of Naven, Bateson asserts that "the patterns of a society as a major
entity can by learning be introjected or conceptualized by the par-
ticipant individuals" (Bateson, 1958, p. 292). The patterns referred to
in this passage include not only specific patterns of symmetrical or
complementary interactions, but also the patterns of sequential change
from the symmetrical to the complementary (ibid, p. 291).
The individual learns, according to this theory, both the particular
action patterns in which he participates and the pattern of patterns
which characterizes the society as a whole. This is not the place to dis-
cuss the details of the theory. Bateson's acknowledged model is the self-
correcting causal circuit of communications theory, although other
48 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
antecedents for this kind of theory can be found in George Herbert
Mead's theory of "taking the role of a generalized other" and in Sapir's
and Benedict's ideas about the unconscious patterning of behavior
(G. H. Mead, 1934, 1956; Benedict, 1934b; Sapir, 1927).
The inclusion of the parent-child relationship, and of a theory of
patterns in interpersonal relations, paves the way for the conception of
"cultural character" as part of a circular system. If the child's relation to
its parents is conceived as a mutually interactive system within which
the parent reacts to the child's stimuli as well as stimulates the child to
respond, then the theory of linear, one-way causal sequences from
specific child-rearing practices to adult personality traits, postulated, for
example, in the theory of basic personality structure, has to be dropped
(Mead and Metraux, 1953, pp. 39-40). And when the negative feed-
back idea from cybernetics came along, it was assimilated to a theory of
personality and culture as a circular causal system (Bateson, 1958,
Epilogue). Within such a circular system "the method of child rearing,
the presence of a particular literary tradition, the nature of the domestic
and public architecture, the religious beliefs, the political system, are
all conditions within which a given kind of personality develops"
(Mead, 1951b).
Despite this assumption of circularity, many of the national char-
acter studies have concentrated on the peculiarities of child-rearing.
These studies, it is true, usually deny that they impute specific causality
to a specific form of swaddling or toilet training. They say that they find
in a specific child-rearing practice the "clues" to the adult practice or a
critical point in the communication of the cultural character to the
child. These explanations are consistent with the theory of circular
causality, but they reveal, as well, a certain lingering preference for
psychoanalytic theories of personality formation (however modified),
and a reluctance to follow through the implications of a theory of
circular causality and to develop a theory of personality and culture as a
complex interacting system. The reluctance is quite understandable,
considering the complexities of modern nations. Yet a small beginning
might be made by considering how such circular systems are affected
by historical changes.
Studies of national character guided by the "cultural character" con-
cept have been severely criticized for neglecting problems of sampling
and scientific controls (Klineberg, 1944, 1949, 1950; Fafber> 1950,
1955; Inkeles and Levinson, 1954; Mandelbaum, 1953). To these
criticisms Mead has replied that by anthropological methods one can
learn a great deal from single informants, provided that the social and
cultural position of the informant is fully specified. Another reply she
has given states that many of the "cultural character" studies have been
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 49
concerned only with an "exploratory stage in which a set of hypotheses
is developed," and not with the stages of confirmation, quantification,
and experimental verification which would involve sample surveys
(Mead and Metraux, 1953, p. 7; Mead, 1951b, 1953, 1955). I should
like to add to these replies that because "cultural character" derives from
configurational theory, which attributes "personality types" to cultures
as wholes and which derives these "types" from cultural data pre-
dominantly, it does not appear to call for statistical studies of indi-
viduals. (See Benedict, 1946a, p. 16, "The ideal authority for any state-
ment in this book would be the proverbial man in the street. It would be
anybody.") Only when additional assumptions are introduced about the
relation of configurational types to individual members of a culture, does
it become necessary to introduce psychological data on individuals, and
concepts to deal with statistical distributions, such as "modal personality
type."
NATIONAL CHARACTER AS SOCIAL CHARACTER
The theory of "cultural character" assumes that in every culture a
typical personality is transmitted to the young which more or less corre-
sponds to the dominant configuration of that culture. The theory does
not, however, attempt to explain the social functions of such corre-
spondence. Nor does the theory of "basic personality structure" have
much to say about such questions. In these theories, the integration
and coherence of a culture is taken as a kind of ultimate "given,"
assumed to be essential to the well-functioning of a culture and to vary
in different cultures. The relations of these culture patterns to history
and to environmental changes are considered to be accidental and
indirect. Erich Fromm's theory of "social character," while sharing the
assumptions of these other theories about the cultural transmission
of "fitting" "typical" personalities, tries, in addition, to explain the
social-historical functions of the types. The explanation links the
"typical" personality of a culture, or, as Fromm calls it, "the social
character," to the "objective social necessities" confronting the society.
To satisfy these "necessities" effectively, a society needs to translate
them into character traits of the individual members so that they will
want to do what they have to do. Such shared character traits con-
stitute the "social character" of the society, and the process of trans-
lation takes place through the parents' training of the children. The
parents have acquired their character traits either from their parents or
directly, in response to changing social conditions. Fromm has made
applications of this theory to Germany and to the United States (1941) .
This theory has a circular and teleological tone, but it is really an at-
50 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
tempt to combine the old idea of the adaptiveness of social institutions
to environmental conditions with a modified psychoanalytic char-
acterology. One of its starting points seems to have been Weber's theory
that industrial capitalism requires a set of disciplines which may his-
torically have been inculcated by the acceptance of a "protestant ethic"
(Fromm 1931, 1941, 1949).
Modern, industrial society, for instance, could not have attained its ends
had it not harnessed the energy of free men for work in an unprecedented
decree He had to be molded into a person who was eager to spend most ot
his energy for the purpose of work, who acquired discipline, particularly or-
derliness and punctuality, to a degree unknown in most other cultures. It
would not have sufficed if each individual had to make up his mind con-
sciously every day that he wanted to work, to be on time, etc., since any such
conscious deliberation would have led to many more exceptions than the
smooth functioning of society can afford. Threat and force would not have
sufficed either as motive for work since the highly differentiated work in
modern industrial society can only be the work of free men and not of forced
labor. The necessity for work, for punctuality and orderliness had to be
transformed into a drive for these qualities. This means that society had to
produce such a social character in which these strivings were inherent. (1949,
pp. 5-6)
Fromm does not necessarily approve of the particular adaptations and
"social characters" of particular societies. On the contrary, he makes
a point of emphasizing that the formation of any "social character"
kills individual "spontaneity" and severely restricts the opportunities
for self-realization. The process usually results in "socially patterned
defects," a "pathology of normalcy."
It happens that, in most cultures, human relationships are greatly deter-
mined by irrational authority. People function in our society, as in most so-
cieties on the record of history, by becoming adjusted to their social role at
the price of giving up part of their own will, their originality and spontaneity.
While every human being represents the whole of mankind with all its poten-
tialities, any functioning society is and has to be primarily interested in its
self-preservation. The particular ways in which a society functions are deter-
mined by a number of objective economic and political factors, which are
given at any point of historical development. Societies have to operate within
the possibilities and limitations of their particular historical situation. In order
that any society may function well, its members must acquire the kind of
character which makes them want to act in the way they have to act as mem-
bers of the society or of a special class within it. They have to desire what
objectively is necessary for them to do. Outer force is to be replaced by inner
compulsion, and by the particular kind of human energy which is channeled
into character traits. As long as mankind has not attained a state of organi-
zation in which the interest of the individual and that of society are identical,
the aims of society have to be attained at a greater or lesser expense of the
freedom and spontaneity of the individual. This aim is performed by the
process of child training and education. While education aims at the develop-
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 5 1
ment of a child's potentialities, it has also the function of reducing his inde-
pendence and freedom to the level necessary for the existence of that particu-
lar society. Although societies differ with regard to the extent to which the
child must be impressed by irrational authority, it is always part of the func-
tion of child training to have this happen. (1944, p. 381 )
These judgments of Fromm's are based on a "humanistic ethics" and a
social philosophy of how man's potentialities may be better realized in a
"sane society" (1948, 1955).
The theory of "social character" has been further developed and
applied in The Lonely Crowd, A Study of the Changing American
Character by David Riesman in collaboration with Reuel Denney and
Nathan Glazer (1950). This work introduces several important modifi-
cations in the theory and applies it to an interpretation of American
character. Fromm's basic definition of "social character" is used, but a
somewhat different typology, of "tradition-directed," "inner-directed,"
and "other-directed" types, is employed. These types are defined with
reference to different characteristic ways of assuring conformity to social
requirements namely, following tradition, following a set of goals in-
ternalized early in life, and following the expectations of others.
Another innovation is that the "social requirements" are localized in
terms of the phase of population growth characteristic of a country.
Using F. W. Notestein's (1945) population curve of growth, Riesman
and his associates postulate that a society of "high growth potential" will
develop "in its typical members" the tradition-directed social character,
a society of "transitional population growth" will develop inner-directed
social characters, and a society of "incipient decline" will develop
"other-directed" types. An attempt is made to show that the United
States, as it becomes a society of "incipient population decline," is de-
veloping "other-directed" types among the urban middle class. These
changes are accompanied by changes in the "agents of character for-
mation": the influence of parents and teachers, so vital in the formation
of "inner-direction," is being superseded by the influence of "peer-
groups" and the mass media, fostering "other-direction." This enlarge-
ment of the theory of socialization is another significant amendment to
Fromm's theory.
Within a particular society at any given time, different types of social
character coexist because of migration from countries in different
phases of population growth and because of differential rates of internal
change, two factors of great importance in North America. The theory
does not attempt to develop the details of the different statistical dis-
tribution of types that would result from different combinations of
these factors. In this sense it makes no predictions about "modal"
personality types or other typical values. In another volume, Faces in
52 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
the Crowd (1952), Riesman and others sketch individual portraits, but
this is not intended as a confirming sample survey.
One thing the theory does assert is that there is a relative temporal
order among the three types. The typology, in other words, has a
built-in theory of historical change, something which is missing from
practically all the other typologies. In this form the theory of "social
character" becomes a comparative theory of social history. Some of the
possible relevances of such a theory are suggested in the following
picture of the "characterological struggle":
We can picture for ourselves the last few hundred years of western history
in terms of a gradual succession to dominance of each of these three types.
The tradition-directed type gives way to the inner-directed, and the inner-
directed gives way to the other-directed. Shifts in type of society and type of
character do not, of course, occur all at once. Rather, there is an overlapping,
so that within a given culture one may find groups representing all phases of
the population curve and demonstrating, with more or less lag, a variety of
characterological adaptations to their particular phase. This mixture is made
even more various by the migration of peoples, by imperialism, and by forces
that constantly throw together people of different character structures, peo-
ple who "date," metaphorically, from different points on the population
curve.
The struggle of classes and societies may therefore be viewed, to some ex-
tent, as a struggle among different characterological adaptations to the situa-
tion created by the dominance of a given mode of insuring conformity.
These character types, like geological or archaeological strata, pile one on
top of the other. A cross section of society at any given time reveals the ear-
lier as well as the later character types, the earlier changed through the pres-
sure of being submerged by the later. One notices the dominance of tradition-
directed types in Latin America, agricultural southern Europe, in Asia and
Africa. One notices the dominance of inner-directed types in rural and small-
town United States and Canada, in northwestern Europe, and to a degree in
Central Europe. One notices an energetic campaign to introduce the inner-
directed pattern in eastern Europe, in Turkey, and in parts of Asia. And one
notices the beginnings of dominance by other-directed types in the metro-
politan centers of the United States and, more doubtfully, their emergence
in the big cities of north-western Europe. This last and newest type is spread-
ing outward into areas where inner-direction still prevails, just as the latter is
spreading into unconquered areas where tradition-directed types still hang
on. (The Lonely Crowd, pp. 31-32)
The succession of characterological adaptations here described
refers primarily to the spread of western industrialization to other parts
of the world during the last two hundred years. This is undoubtedly the
major focus of interest of Riesman and associates. They have studied
the interaction of recent social changes with changing character types,
primarily in the United States and to a lesser extent in other parts of the
world (Lerner, 1958). In theory, however, the typology of social char-
acters could be applied to other periods of history. The Lonely Crowd
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 53
does, in fact, refer to a possible application to ancient Greece (pp. 27-
29). To the extent that such application is undertaken, the theory of
social character becomes a theory of cyclical and recurrent processes
rather than of linear, historical change.
Applications of the theory to pre-industrial periods have not been
numerous, however. One reason for this may be the absence of a de-
tailed social psychological explanation of how a given population phase,
or objective social condition, calls forth a particular kind of social
character. This is a problem just beginning to receive some attention.
In People of Plenty (1954) David Potter sketches the relation of
economic abundance to the formation of American character within
a historical perspective. A recent cross-cultural study shows how
child training patterns adapt to a subsistence economy (Barry, Child,
and Bacon, 1959).
Another aspect of the theory of social character that is being de-
veloped is the relation of social character to individual personality.
Just as in the theory of basic personality structure, exploration of this
relationship was stimulated by the use of Rorschach and other psycho-
logical tests, so the development of psychological tests for "inner-
directed" and "other-directed" types is adding an individual dimension
to a theory of social character that began with historically con-
ditioned social and cultural dimensions.
NATIONAL CHARACTER, TRIBAL CHARACTER
AND THE PERSONALITY OF SOCIAL GROUPS
Both the sociologically-oriented theory of "social character" and the
anthropologically-oriented theory of "cultural character" are the prod-
ucts of efforts to extend the personality and culture theory developed for
primitive cultures to modern nations. The extensions have transformed
personality and culture theory and have generalized it as a theory of
the "typical" personality of nations, tribes, social classes, or occu-
pational, regional, and other significant social groups (Mead and
Metraux, 1953; Riesman et al, 1950). In considering whether such
generalization is effective and fruitful, we note that there already are
some special discussions and studies of the "typical personality" of
different social groups, e.g., those of peasants (Francis, 1945; Redfield,
1956), of bureaucrats (Merton, 1940; Roe, 1947), of Indian social
classes (Steed, 1955), of a Southwest regional type (Kroeber, 1947;
Kluckhohn, 1954; Devereux, 1951), of rural and urban communities
(Oeser, 1954a,b; Lewis, 1951; Redfield, 1955), and of the "basic
personality of Western man" (Kardiner, 1945).
There are several problems in bringing these and other studies to-
54 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
gether under a single theory of "typical" personality. We can proceed
on the assumption that the theory works in the same manner regardless
of the nature and size of the social group. In that case it would be neces-
sary to show how a general factor like child-rearing pattern combines
with and explains occupational, status, regional, and other differenti-
ations within a single culture or society (as, e.g., in Davis and Havig-
hurst, 1946). Or we might assume that the general factors, child-rearing
or demographic patterns, for example, do not operate directly and in
similar fashion on every kind of social unit, but operate indirectly
through the distinctive structures of social and cultural organization
(Inkeles, 1955). A pattern of "incipient decline," for example, may
not operate directly on every family to produce its alleged charactero-
logical results, but may operate indirectly through status, occupational,
political, and other social groups. Under this assumption it would be
necessary to develop a theory which would take account of different
levels of natural, psychological, social, and cultural integration. Steward
(1956) has made some suggestions in this direction, and Erikson
(1950) in his studies of the Yurok and the Sioux attempted inter-
pretations which intuitively, at least, integrate geography, individual
development, society, and culture.
Lazarsfeld and Barton (1951) have provided an analysis of the
differences in logical types of data that may be usefully applied to this
problem of hierarchies of levels. A notable feature of their analysis
is the recognition that there may be data characteristic of social units
which cannot be analyzed into personal data about the component
individuals, and are therefore primary characteristics of the social unit.
This corresponds to the anthropologists' recognition of holistic char-
acteristics of cultural groups.
NATIONAL CHARACTER AS MODAL PERSONALITY
In a comprehensive and brilliant critical analysis of national char-
acter studies, Inkeles, a sociologist, and Levinson, a psychologist, argue
for a restriction of the "national character" concept to modal per-
sonality structure.
In our opinion, "national character" ought to be equated with modal per-
sonality structure; that is, it should refer to the mode or modes of the dis-
tribution of personality variants within a given society. "Societal required-
ness" or "congeniality with the culture pattern" should not be part of the
definition of national character. The socially required personality, (for ex-
ample, the personalities best suited to a bureaucratic or an assertive-individ-
ualistic social structure) deserves the status of an independent though signifi-
cantly related construct. Given this distinction, the degree of congruence
between the modal personality structures and the psychological requirements
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 55
of the social milieu emerges as an important problem for research. (Inkeles
and Levinson, 1944, pp. 980-81)
If this restriction were accepted, the sample survey would be the most
obvious if not the only method of study of national character.
If national character refers to modes of a distribution of individual per-
sonality variants, then its study would seem to require the psychological in-
vestigation of adequately large and representative samples of persons, stud-
ied individually, (ibid.)
Other methods, which begin with the analysis of collective docu-
ments, cultural plots and themes, standardized child-rearing practices,
and other sociocultural patterns, provide leads to or at best a "hy-
pothetical construction" of national character.
"They can never tell us with any conclusiveness what range and
varieties of modal personality actually exist in a society" or lead to
"adequate demonstration" of the hypothetical constructions. Only a
"large-scale study of individuals" can provide these.
These arguments, it seems to me, are more persuasive on the positive
side in favor of modal personality as one concept among others of
"national character" than they are in their demonstration of the ex-
clusive correctness of this conception. It is true that once the restricted
definition is accepted, the methodological conclusions follow in straight-
forward fashion. But the case for the restriction is a debatable one. In
common usage and in studies not based on personality and culture
theory, "national character" frequently refers to "way of life," "ethos,"
and collective ideals, as well as to modal distributions (Castberg,
1954; Ginsberg, 1942; Barker, 1955; Miroglio, 1955; Smeffie, 1955),
Why should one particular definition be given priority?
The issues here are reminiscent of those raised by Wallace and by
Gladwin and Sarason in their criticism of the earlier "basic personality
structure" theories. Inkeles and Levinson are quite right to insist on a
clear distinction between a descriptive, statistical concept of "modal
personality," and the explanatory culture-deductive concepts of "typical
personality." They are also right in questioning the assumption of simple
congruence between these two orders of concepts. Once the distinction
is made, however, the problem of relating the "modal personality" to the
society and the culture remains, as Inkeles and Levinson clearly rec-
ognize:
Within the context defined by the title of this paper, the problem of "deter-
minants" may be stated as follows: What regularities in the social conditions
of development in the more or less standardized, sociocultural matrix
help determine the observed regularities (or modes) in adult personality?
(pp. 998-999)
56 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
To deal with this problem requires the introduction of such concepts
as "cultural character," "basic personality," and "social character,"
or similar explanatory ideas. What remains of the issue, therefore, once
the distinction between the descriptive psychological concepts and the
explanatory socio-cultural concepts is made, is the order of procedures
for deriving them in particular cases. The decision on that issue, it seems
to me, rests not on the adoption of some highly restricted definition of
"national character" in terms of "modal personality," but rather on the
tactics of research design. Perhaps greater objectivity and mutual inde-
pendence of method and data is achieved by starting at the psychologi-
cal end, as Gladwin and Sarason argued. Strict independence is not
possible, in any case; eventually the socio-cultural data and the psy-
chological data have to be brought together, so perhaps the starting
point does not matter too much.
Under Inkeles' direction, the Russian Research Center at Harvard
has made studies of Great Russian "national character" as a set of
"modal personality patterns." (See Chapter 5, below.)
Obviously, not every Great Russian exhibits all, or even necessarily any,
of these characteristics. They are, however, found frequently and regularly
enough to constitute the more or less typical or modal patterns in the rank
and file of the population. We do not assert that they are also characteristic
for the elite. (Bauer, Inkeles, Kluckhohn, 1956, p. 135)
The psychological data for the studies were obtained from a group of
Soviet refugees who had been displaced by World War II. Three
hundred and thirty were given life-history interviews and sentence
completion tests, and fifty-one of these took a battery of clinical tests,
including the Rorschach, T.A.T., and sentence-completion tests,
and several others. A sample of Americans, matched with the Russian
sample on age, sex, occupation, and education, was used for compari-
son. Each test was analyzed separately and the results of all tests, to-
gether with "supplementary qualitative material," were used to derive
an "evaluative summary" sketch of modal personality characteristics.
The statistical distributions have not yet been published and the pro-
cedure was not in any case "a simple and direct translation of particu-
lar test scores into personality traits" (Inkeles, et al. 9 1958). In fact
"modal" is used in a liberal sense:
The word modal should not be taken too literally in this context. We have
relied on some test scores when only a small proportion of the sample mani-
fested the given response or pattern of responses, if this fits with other evi-
dence in developing a larger picture, (ibid., p. 6)
After the Great Russian "national character" was derived in this fash-
ion, an analysis was made to determine its relation to the Soviet system.
This was done essentially in three different ways:
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 57
(1) by comparing the general character and policies of the Soviet
system with the "modal" personality of the sample,
(2) by comparing the image of the regime entertained by the sample
with the "modal personality" of the sample, and
(3) by correlating the social status (defined in terms of occupa-
tion and education) of the subjects of the sample with selected per-
sonality traits taken as indices of the "modal pattern."
The correlations showed significant class differences in the modal
personality: "it is found in its relatively pure form mainly among
workers and peasants, is attenuated among those upwardly mobile,
and almost disappears at the top of the social hierarchy" (Bauer, et al,
p. 137; Inkeles et al, pp. 17-20). The authors believe that these class
differences are probably the result of status differences in family rearing
experiences (Inkeles, et al., pp. 18-19).
The conclusions of these different kinds of analyses strongly suggest
"that there is a fairly massive degree of incongruence between the cen-
tral personality modes and dispositions of average Russians on the one
hand, and the structure of Soviet society, particularly the behavior of
the regime, on the other" (Bauer, et al, p. 142).
Although "acutely aware of the smallness of [the] sample," the Har-
vard investigators are inclined "to assume that the personality modes
found in it would be found within the Soviet Union in groups compara-
ble in nationality and occupation" (Inkeles, et al., p. 19).
This "modal personality" approach to Great Russian national char-
acter contrasts strongly in method with the "cultural character" ap-
proach used by Gorer (1949, 1950a) and by Mead (1951b). In a
recent searching analysis, Bell (1958) has discussed how it also differs
from Leites' psychoanalytic interpretations of Bolshevik character
based on published documents (Leites, 1954), and from historical and
political approaches which do not use personality and culture theory.
In spite of these differences in method and concepts, the "modal per-
sonality" studies and the "cultural character" studies of the Great Rus-
sians agree in many of their results, according to Kluckhohn.
. . . Different observers and analysts, using different methods and data,
are in excellent agreement among themselves and indeed with the Russians.
(Kluckhohn, 1955, p. 58)
THE PROBLEM OF VALIDATION:
COHERENCE TESTS AND CORRELATION TESTS
"Modal personality" studies are now generally regarded as the most
rigorous available method of validating typical personality constructions
based on cultural and institutional data. This view needs to be quali-
58 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
fied. A "mode" is not always the most appropriate statistical measure for
the variety of distributions that occur. There is also the fundamental
possibility, emphasized by Kroeber (1948, pp. 587-8), that two peoples
can show much the same psychological character or temperament and
yet have different cultures, or that the cultures can be nearly uniform
while national character differs. If this is true, then there may still be
some kind of personality "typical" of each culture but not a one-to-one
correspondence between culture and "modal personality." There are
also special conditions when "modal personality" is simply not availa-
ble as a method of validation: when, for example, the "typical per-
sonality" is attributed to the society or culture as a whole, and not
distributively to individual members; or when it is attributed to individ-
uals but not in any explicit quantitative way (Mead and Metraux,
1953, p. 15); or when there are not enough psychological data about
individuals for statistical treatment.
Because of these limitations of "modal personality" as a method of
validation, reliance is placed in many studies of "typical personality"
on a test of "coherence" or "congruence" or "internal consistency."
The most convincing validation still remains one of pattern, of the testing
of the hypothesis for intra-cultural and intra-psychic fit. Every piece of cul-
tural behavior is so over-determined in its systematic relationship to every
other piece that any discrepancy within the material should immediately de-
mand a revision of the delineation hypothesis established so far. (Mead, 1953,
p. 659)
There is, however, not just one general test of "coherence," as the
above statement seems to imply. Rather, there are almost as many as
there are different kinds of theories of "typical" personality. In another
statement within the same paper, Mead suggests this possibility:
If an attempt is made to delineate national character in addition to the na-
tional culture, then the criterion of internal consistency has to be invoked in
relation to some psychocultural theory of personality. (1953, p. 659)
Each particular kind of psychocultural theory has, I believe, its own
special brand of internal consistency. In Benedict's configurational
theory, for example, internal consistency is defined in terms of con-
gruence of cultural items with a given pattern or type. We might call
this "pattern" or "type coherence." Its recognition rests essentially on
what Kroeber has called "physiognomic" judgment, and Redfield,
"portraiture." Kardiner's "basic personality structure" theory implies a
different kind of coherence a coherence of specific primary and
secondary institutions within a culture, conceived as antecedents and
consequents of a postulated "basic personality structure." Its recogni-
tion requires isolation of specific causes and effects and their linear
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 59
temporal relations. We might call this a "causal coherence." The theory
of "cultural character," on the other hand, combines the requirement of
"pattern coherence" with an added emphasis on the congruence be-
tween child-rearing patterns and the total configuration of the culture.
But this congruence is not conceived of in this theory as implying any
causal relation. The specific child-rearing practices are identified as
transmissive media within the total pattern. The judgments of recogni-
tion are mainly physiognomic and stylistic.
The studies in this volume are all studies of pattern, of the stylistic inter-
relationships of different aspects of childhood, of the way in which in a given
culture, the image of the child, the way the child is rewarded and punished,
children's toys, the literature written for children, the literature written
about children, the selective memories of adults about their childhood, the
games children play, their fears and fantasies, hopes and daydreams, and
behavior on projective tests are all systematically related to one another.
(Mead in Mead and Wolfenstein, 1955, p. 13)
"Pattern coherence" also enters into the theory of "social character,"
particularly in the conception of society as an organized interdepend-
ent system and of the individual as an organized personality. But there
is a distinctive kind of coherence implied by this theory the coherence
of social institutions and of the social character with given "objective
social necessities." We might call this "functional coherence," for it
requires an appraisal of the degree to which a particular society and its
people are adapted to given conditions.
All these different kinds of coherence "pattern," "causal," "func-
tional," are intended to apply to single cultures or societies. It is quite
conceivable that a society or culture may meet one test of coherence
without meeting another. It is also important when applying these tests
of coherence to bear in mind that social, cultural, and psychological
"inconsistencies" are "normal" occurrences. Not every culture is equally
consistent in its own terms, nor is every personality. Characters may
have conflicting and even contradictory traits, societies and cultures may
show class conflict, conflicts among social norms, culturally sanctioned
violation of sacred norms, imaginative projections in art and mythol-
ogy of anti-norms, and the like. Such conflicts and inconsistencies can-
not always be reinterpreted in relation to some kind of coherence but
may be brute facts that need to be recognized. They are incompatible
not with coherence tests but with theories which assume too much co-
herence.
Whiting and Child (1953) find the tests of coherence used in the in-
terpretation of a specific case inadequate as a method of validating the
psychological hypotheses underlying personality and culture studies.
While granting that a coherence test may be useful for understanding
60 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
a concrete case, they feel "it never provides adequate evidence as to
whether [the] hypotheses used are generally valid as general princi-
ples." In order to validate such hypotheses, "some means are needed
for isolating the antecedent condition from other conditions and de-
termining whether in fact this supposed consequent is observed with
some consistency to follow or accompany it" (p. 9). Because the ex-
perimental method is not generally available for this purpose, they
propose that "the correlational method" be applied cross-culturally as a
method of validating general hypotheses. Whiting and Child apply the
correlational method themselves to seventy-five primitive cultures,
using ethnographic data from the Human Relations Area Files (for
sixty-five of the cultures) and from other published sources. The un-
derlying assumption of the study is that "by considering one set of overt
customs as representing the way the typical child is treated, and an-
other set of overt customs as representing certain overt behavior in the
same person when he becomes a typical adult, these hypotheses may
be used to predict that certain customs in the one set should be found to
be associated with certain customs in the other set" (1953, p. 35). The
hypotheses are drawn mainly from psychoanalytic theory, translated
into the language of general behavior theory, and extended to refer "not
just to a particular individual, but to the typical member of a society"
(ibid.).
This correlation test of validation does not represent quite as sharp a
break with the coherence tests as Whiting and Child imply. It is very
similar to the "causal coherence" test of the Kardiner theory of 1939.
And although Kardiner and his associates at first applied their test to in-
dividual cultures, they fully intended to multiply cases in order to get
statistical correlations :
Twenty or thirty cultures studied in the manner here delineated will offer
safe ground for generalizations based on reliable comparisons. The laws
which govern the psychodynamics of social change can then be approxi-
mated, if not precisely stated. (Kardiner, 1939, p. 487)
The correlation test also shares with the "causal coherence" test the
problem of how to transfer individual psychological theories developed
in the clinics of western culture to the customs and institutions of other
cultures.
Yet there are certain respects in which the correlation test, as used
by Whiting and Child, differs from all the coherence tests. The correla-
tion test uses single cultures as units and single "typical" individuals, but
this is done for statistical purposes only; no effort is made to treat cul-
tures or personalities as organized wholes. On the contrary, the treat-
ment is frankly limited and segmental, using only selected fragments of
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 61
culture and of personality processes as variables to be correlated. They
assume that only after these limited hypotheses are validated, can the
more integrative interpretations of individual cultures be properly
done.
Perhaps the most important difference between the coherence tests
and the correlation test is that the latter is designed to validate the psy-
chological hypotheses as general principles of behavior. This is not the
aim of the coherence tests. It is true, as Whiting and Child say, that all
the theories of tribal and national character make use of psychological
hypotheses drawn from psychoanalysis, learning theory, maturation
theory, and other sources. It is also true that all of them attach particular
importance to childrearing experiences in the formation of "typical"
personalities. But they have not assumed that a particular personality
and culture study could validate a general psychological theory; at most
a particular study might present counter-evidence to limit psychological
generalizations, as Malinowskf s Trobriand and Mead's Samoan studies
did. The problem of validating general psychological theories has been
left pretty much to the psychologist, psychoanalyst, and student of indi-
vidual development. It is not surprising that Whiting and Child should
assume the responsibility for this task; what is surprising is that they
should attempt to do so entirely with ethnographic data, making no use
whatever of psychological data on individuals. This is a validating
procedure so indirect that it requires the introduction of numerous hy-
potheses relating the cultural to the psychological levels as problem-
atic as the hypotheses to be validated.
CULTURE AND THE INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY
The true locus of culture is in the interactions of specific individuals
and, on the subjective side, in the world of meanings which each one of
these individuals may unconsciously abstract for himself from his partic-
ipation in these interactions. Every individual is, then, in a very real
sense, a representative of at least one subculture which may be abstracted
from the generalized culture of the group of which he is a member.
(Sapir, 1932a, p. 236)
Personality and culture studies began with an interest in understand-
ing "the individual as living in his culture and the culture as lived by
individuals." This interest, however, has lain almost dormant while pre-
occupation with the problem of the typical personality of tribal, national,
and other social groups has dominated attention. In their earlter phase,
the studies of typical personality included very little data on individ-
uals. Only with the growing accumulation of data on individual per-
62 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
sonalities (life histories, dreams, responses to projective and non-pro-
jective tests, etc.) in different cultures has it proved useful to study the
culture-individual relation cross-culturally. Such psychological data
have often been collected for delineating standardized profiles, but the
existence of great individual variability has stimulated a renewed in-
terest in the data as personal documents. In this concluding section, I
shall discuss some of the theoretical implications of this trend.
The expansion of psychological data and theories in personality and
culture studies has tended to produce some competitiveness between
psychologists and anthropologists, raising the question whether the
field is not simply a branch of psychology. Implicitly there has always
been a contrast between social and culture patterns on the one hand and
individual behavior on the other, the former being considered the prov-
ince of anthropology and sociology, the latter that of psychology. It was
precisely this contrast which was blurred in the development of the
hybrid field of personality and culture. How then is the hybrid related to
its parent stocks, anthropology and psychology?
One basic principle of distinction was first formulated by Edward
Sapir, when he wrote that:
Our natural interest in human behavior seems always to vacillate between
what is imputed to the culture of the group as a whole and what is imputed
to the psychic organization of the individual himself. These two poles of our
interest in behavior do not necessarily make use of different materials; it is
merely that the locus of reference is different in the two cases. (1934a,
p. 408)
This principle has since been restated in slightly different forms by
Radcliffe-Brown (1957) Bateson (1936), Kroeber and Kluckhohn
(1952), Parsons and Shils (1951), and others. Some of these restate-
ments are probably independent of Sapir's, although most of them, in-
cluding Sapir's, were probably influenced by the constructionist tenden-
cies in the thought of James, Russell, Whitehead, and other modern
philosophers. In -his Our Knowledge of the External World (1914),
The Analysis of Mind (1921), and the Analysis of Matter (1927),
Russell, for example, argues that mind and matter do not differ as
raw material, which is made up of "neutral" sense-data or events, but
only as different logical constructions from this material.
Sapir's principle sets up a criterion for distinguishing psychology
from anthropology and sociology. In itself, however, it does not explain
how these different fields may be combined, as they are in personality
and culture studies, into a "cultural psychology" or a "social psychol-
ogy." Radcliffe-Brown, for example, although he accepts essentially
the same principle, applies it to sharpen the contrast between sociology
(and anthropology) and psychology. He admits the possibility of an
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 63
"intermediate science" which might deal with such problems as the
relation of culture to the individual, but this would have to wait upon
the independent development of the laws of psychology and the laws
of sociology (1957).
Here again it was Sapir's original insight which saw how personality
and culture study could develop from a synthesis of psychology and
anthropology into something which would be more than a post-mortem
summation of the component fields:
... A truly rigorous analysis of any arbitrarily selected phase of indi-
vidualized "social behavior" or "culture" would show two things: First, that
no matter how flexible, how individually variable, it may in the first instance
be thought to be, it is as a matter of fact the complex resultant of an incred-
ibly elaborate culture history, in which many diverse strands intercross at that
point in place and time at which the individual judgment of preference is
expressed [this terminology is cultural]; second, that, conversely, no matter
how rigorously necessary in practice the analyzed pattern may seem to be, it
is always possible in principle, if not in experiential fact, for the lone individ-
ual to effect a transformation of form or meaning which is capable of com-
munication to other individuals [this terminology is psychiatric or personalis-
tic]. (Edward Sapir, 193 8, pp. 9-10)
His solution, in other words, is to suggest a systematic employment
of the cultural and the individual perspectives successively or almost
simultaneously upon the same body of data. Personality and culture
differs from individual psychology and from the impersonal kind of
anthropology in being bifocal. In practice, Sapir recognizes that some
situations are seen better through the cultural lens and others through
the personalistic.
No one in his senses would wish the alphabet studied from this highly
personalistic point of view. In plain English, it would not be worth the trou-
ble. The total meaning of the alphabet for X is so very nearly the same as
that for any other individual, Y, that one does much better to analyze it and
explain its relation to other cultural patterns in terms of an impersonal or
cultural or anthropological, mode of description, (ibid.)
Breathing is an example on the other side (1929, pp. 17-18) . Even with
respect to situations of this kind, however, Sapir insists on a theoretical
reversibility of perspectives in order to reveal the psychological signifi-
cance of cultural patterns and the cultural significance of individual be-
havior. The alphabet has a personal significance and breathing is to some
extent culturally patterned.
The fact . . . that X has had more difficulty in learning the alphabet
than Y, or that in old age X may forget the alphabet or some part of it more
readily than Y, shows clearly enough that there is a psychiatric side to even
the coldest and most indifferent of cultural patterns. Even such cold and
indifferent cultural patterns have locked in them psychiatric meanings which
64 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
are ordinarily of no moment to the student of society but which may under
peculiar circumstances come to the foreground of attention. When this hap-
pens, anthropological data need to be translated into psychiatric terms.
(1938)
Sapir's approach to the "intermediate science" is very different
from Radcliffe-Brown's:
We are not ... to begin with a simple contrast between social patterns
and individual behavior, whether normal or abnormal, but we are, rather,
to ask what is the meaning of culture in terms of individual behavior and
whether the individual can, in a sense, be looked upon as the effective carrier
of the culture of his group. (Sapir, 1932a)
An extension of Sapir's point of view to current developments in per-
sonality and culture research would further the process of theoretical
clarification and yield many leads for research problems. It would sug-
gest, for example, that the increasing use of psychological data does
not necessarily convert personality and culture into a science of indi-
vidual psychology, for these data must still be related to the cultural
perspective. In fact the difference between psychological data and eth-
nographic data consists not in their status as primary data, but in the
different systems of grouping and interpretation to which they are re-
ferred. In principle, all personal documents can be related to social and
cultural systems, and so be transformed into data for cultural problems
(Mead and Metraux, 1953, p. 34; Kroeber, 1947; Redfield, 1958a).
This is not infrequent in practice: various kinds of psychological data
have been used in studies of acculturation and value change (Vogt,
1951, 1955; Hallowell, 1951b; Thomas and Znaniecki), of culturally
characteristic motivations (DuBois, 1944; Aberle, 1951), and for the
study of cultural transmission (Bruner, 1956a, b; Eggan, 1956), witch-
craft (Kluckhohn, 1944a), and other cultural topics.
"Cultural data," in analogous fashion, can be brought into a per-
sonalistic perspective of individual psychology. The growth and
change of a culture pattern, can, for example, be illuminated by study-
ing the problem in relation to the roles of individual personalities, as
Mandelbaum (1941) has done. A culture pattern like handtrembling
can be related to the psychic economy of individuals (Leighton and
Leighton, 1949). How an individual uses and transforms elements of a
common culture may be studied in the personal use of myth in dreams
(Eggan, 1955).
A striking example of the alternating use of cultural and personality
perspectives is Kroeber's account of the invention of the steamboat
(Kroeber, 1948). First (section 185) Kroeber tells the story in terms of
the principal technological, scientific, economic, legal, and political
conditions: good roads in France, canals in England, engine-builders in
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 65
England, etc. This is the impersonal cultural view of the invention. Then
(section 186), he deliberately rearranges the facts in order to view them
"as they relate to the individual persons involved" and the qualities
that made them succeed or fail. Kroeber looks on these two accounts as
"two different sets of interpretations: both significant, but neither ex-
cluding the other from being 'true'" (1948, p. 464).
It is important to remember that both sets of data always exist in the phe-
nomena. They are necessarily intertwined, because no culture is ever opera-
tive except through and in human beings. But human beings also operate or
behave only under the influence of some one culture; and their behavior has
cultural effect. This double-faceting of all social or historical phenomena
should never be forgotten, (ibid.)
In another example (section 201), Kroeber, using a study of Mandel-
baum's on the Kotas (Mandelbaum, 1941), weaves the cultural and the
personality perspectives into a single narrative in a series of quick jumps
from one to the other. Again he feels that there is no clash or conflict
between the two approaches. "Each gives a clear picture, a coherent
understanding, consistent in terms of itself, or its own plane. The one
level is oriented toward psychology and biography and social relations,
the other toward anthropology and cultural history or philosophy of
history, if one will" (1948, p. 507). He also believes the two planes will
become intrinsically relatable as our understanding of personality and
its mechanisms and of culture and its mechanisms advances.
The culture and personality approach thus requires an alternating
and almost simultaneous use of two different perspectives that of
culture and that of the individual person. The approach necessarily
requires either a close collaboration between an anthropologist and a
psychologist or, as in Sapir's case, the capacity for bifocal vision.
If Sapir's conception of the relation of culture to the individual
personality is accepted, then the tests of validation which strive for
strict independence of cultural and psychological data will have to be
taken less seriously. For if both sets of data derive ultimately from
the same order of primary data, and, if in principle at least, it is pos-
sible to place cultural data into a psychological frame of reference and
psychological data into a cultural one, then the degree of actual inde-
pendence between them is only of limited practical significance. When
an ethnographer's description refers to "dilapidated houses," this is
not only a statement of ethnographic fact; it may also become an im-
portant clue to the psychiatric interpreter for the construction of a psy-
chological profile. Conversely, life histories, dreams, and responses to
psychological tests contain in them a good deal of cultural information
upon which the knowledgeable ethnographer can draw for his construc-
tion of a culture pattern. There are "culture pattern dreams" (Lincoln,
66 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
1935), and there may be "culture pattern Rorschach responses" as
well. When Dollard said of Radin's pioneer Winnebago autobiography,
Crashing Thunder (1926) that "it should be taken as an inside view of
the Winnebago culture rather than as a careful analysis of a human
life . . . [because] there is very little attempt at analysis and synthesis
of the material or at systematic formulation of the growth of a life"
(Dollard, 1945, pp. 260-63; Kluckhohn, 1945), he was not really
criticizing the quality of the autobiographical data but only pointing out
that the selection and organization of data were not the kind which
would be required for a psychological construction of an individual's
life experience.
The emphasis on "constructions," "forms of thought," and "models"
is another important consequence of the Sapir approach to personality
and culture theory. If the data do not carry their own labels, then con-
structions based on them must assume a prominent position in the de-
velopment of the field. And so they have: "human nature," "configura-
tional personality," "basic personality structure," "cultural character,"
"social character," even "modal personality type," are so many different
constructions from similar data. The concrete individual person stands
in a twofold relation to these constructions. He may on the one hand
enter as a constituent of a construction and become an object of the
investigation, as when the psychologist's construction of "personality"
organizes selected data in terms of a constructed individual career; par-
ticular individuals may, on the other hand, enter as collaborators to
the investigation, as "informants" giving testimony about the object
of investigation, whether the object be individual personalities or culture
patterns. Although individuals enter as informants into all personality
and culture constructions (and into purely cultural constructions as
well), they enter as objects only into a few constructions. "Cultural
character," "social character," and "basic personality structure," for
example, do not explicitly specify individuals as objects. The type state-
ments of these constructions predicate attributes of societies and cultures
as wholes, or of groups taken collectively as a class, not of individuals
singly or in specific distribution.
Examples of such statements are:
Demonstrating that one is really ill and needs help is a value in Eastern
European Jewish culture. (Mead and Wolf enstein, 1955, p. 15)
TheDobu are paranoid, (after Benedict, 1934)
"Modal personality" statements, on the other hand, do specify distribu-
tions of attributes among individuals within a given population, with-
out necessarily naming them:
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 67
Thirty-seven percent of the Tuscarora Indians interviewed at Niagara
Falls show personality traits that fall within the modal class, (after Wallace,
1952a)
Many of the methodological problems in personality and culture
theory arise from the desire to pass too quickly from the holistic and col-
lective type of statements to the distributive and individualistic state-
ments, and vice versa. While a holistic or collective attribution of
traits may imply that some individuals in the given culture or society
have the attributed traits, it does not explicitly assert who or how many
they are. The addition of words like "some" or "many" to the state-
ments does not really give any additional information about individ-
uals, as Mead recognizes (Mead and Wolfenstein, 1955, p. 15). To do
that, it is necessary to add explicit assumptions relating the collective at-
tributes to individual distributions, as Benedict did, for example, in
her theory that a vast majority of individual temperaments in any so-
ciety would conform to the dominant cultural configuration. It is of
course possible to develop a construction entirely at the level of holistic
and collective statements, without making statements about individ-
uals at all. This was certainly the dominant trend of Benedict's and
Kardiner's early work. Kardiner's criticism of such a statement as "the
Dobu are paranoid" was not that it attributed paranoia to the Dobu
as a class but rather that it was physiognomic and non-causal.
". . . If a group is paranoid, one ought to be able to track down those
institutional forces with which all constituents make contact and which
terminate in this common trait" (1939, pp. 84-85).
So long as it seemed possible to establish causal connections between
"institutional forces" and the "common traits" of classes of individuals,
it was not felt necessary to refer to individual biographies. Only when
"basic personality structure," "configurational personality," and the
other constructions added statements about individuals, did it become
necessary to enlarge the theories accordingly.
Analogously, if one begins with distributional statements about indi-
viduals or with statements about specific individuals and their relations,
it is not possible to pass from such statements to collective or holistic
statements about the society and the culture without the introduction of
special theories postulating some special relationship among the differ-
ent levels of statement. In Wallace (1952a) one such special assump-
tion is that the most frequently occurring individual traits will also mani-
fest themselves in the culture as "master traits."
If personality and culture theory does not depend for its derivation on
a unique source of data, but consists of a variety of constructions from
similar bodies of data, then it is equally true that the validation of the
68 Culture and Personality Theory and Research
theory does not depend on establishing correspondence with a single
body of data. There is no single method of validation appropriate for
aH constructions; rather, the method wiU vary with the kind of con-
struction, the special assumptions that go with it, and the special
research procedure employed. A test of "coherence," for example, re-
quiring physiognomic judgments of conformity to a given culture pat-
tern is an appropriate test for validating statements attributing holistic
properties to a single culture. It is not at all an appropriate test for vah-
datirie hypotheses which assert causal relations between isolable pairs
of events in different cultures. Correlation tests, on the other hand, are
an appropriate validating method for the latter kind of statements, but
not for the former. .
A sample survey yielding precise statistical distributions of traits
within a specified population may be a relevant procedure for validatmg
statements about "modal personality." It is not a relevant procedure for
testing statements about "basic personality" or "cultural character" if
these statements attribute personality traits to whole cultures or col-
lective classes without specifying individual distributions. What is to be
sampled will also vary with the kind of theoretical construction. A the-
ory which assumes that small communities are microcosmic mirrors of
larger communities will lead to the sampling of the internal struc-
tures, social and psychological, of the small communities conceived
as isolable units. A theory which emphasizes the networks of ex-
ternal relations which bind different communities together into a larger
whole will require for its testing a sampling of the structure of relations
between communities (Singer, 1955). Last, a theory which concerns
itself with the relation of a small number of specified individuals to
one another and to their culture will accumulate a sample of many
observations about just those specified individuals rather than a survey
sample of observations about a large number of individuals (Mead,
1953, p. 643; Mead and Metraux, pp. 33-34; Williams, 1958).
In 'this sense, Mead's insistence that anthropological sampling is "a
different kind of sampling in which the validity of the sample depends
not so much upon the number of cases as upon the proper ^specifica-
tion of the informant so that he can be accurately placed" (1953;
Mead and Metraux, 1953, pp. 41-49) has a certain cogency in calling
attention to the dependence of the sampling problem on the kind of
construction. In personality and culture theory, however, it is not only
the individual as informant that needs to be specified such specifica-
tion helps to establish his credibility as a witness but also the individ-
ual as an object of the investigation, as a term in the personality and
culture relationship. In this latter context, the specifications cannot be
very complete or accurate at the outset of an inquiry, since all the
SINGER: Culture and Personality Theory and Research 69
relevant variables are not known. The specified individual cannot,
either in his capacity as an informant or as an object of personality
and culture study, be taken as "a perfect example, an organic represen-
tation of his complete cultural experience"; for as an informant he is
fallible and as a "representative" of his culture he is a trans-
former as well as a mirror.
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II
SOCIAL THEORY AND
PERSONALITY
About the Chapter
This chapter by Dr. Spiro, and subsequent chapters by Drs. Wallace,
Devereux, and Parsons, attempt to define the primary theoretical issue of
culture and personality study. Dr. Spiro's chapter places the field directly in
relationship to the central issue in social science, the explanation of social
cohesion and functioning. He sees personality as the organized system of
motivational tendencies of the person. The motivations are deemed to be
crucial variables in the functioning of social systems. Dr. Spiro further
analyzes the nature of the social scientist's interest in personality processes
and provides a framework for a specification of those aspects of personality
with which the social scientist is directly concerned.
About the Author
MELFORD E. SPIRO is Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Washington. He is on the Board of Directors of the Social Science Research
Council. In 1958-59 he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences. He has done field work in Ifaluk (Micronesia) in
1947-48 and in Kiryat Yedidim (Israel) in 1951-52. His current research un-
der a fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health is in cross-
cultural study of religion. His major interests are in comparative religion,
culture and personality, theory of social systems, and cultures of Southeast
Asia. Children of the Kibbutz is his most recent publication.
A cknowledgments
The following individuals who, of course, are not responsible for the
content of this chapter, gave the author the benefit of their generous criti-
cisms: Cora DuBois, Dorothy Eggan, Clifford Geertz, John Honigmann,
Thomas Kuhn, Kaspar Naegele, George P. Murdock, Richard Rudner,
George Spindler, and Jan Waterhouse. The Center for Advanced Study in
the Behavioral Sciences provided the leisure and stimulation which made
this chapter possible.
Social Systems, Personality, and
Functional Analysis
MELFORD K SPIRO
University of Washington
INTRODUCTION
When anthropology was primarily interested in culture history, the
question of how societies get their members to behave in conformity with
cultural norms was of small concern. But when anthropology became in-
terested in the problem of how societies operate, this question became
and has remained salient, not only for culture-and-personality theorists
but for other anthropologists as well. "Our great problem as anthropolo-
gists," says Firth, is ". . .to translate the acts of individuals into the
regularities of social process" (1954, p. 11).
Since social systems are attributes of society and personality systems
are attributes of individuals, it was formerly assumed, both by anthropol-
ogists and by psychologists, that there was little relationship between "the
acts of individuals" and the "regularities of social process." Before the
development of culture-and-personality studies, this assumption seemed
reasonable. First, although there is but one social system for a society,
there are as many personalities as there are members of society. Secondly,
since social systems are normative, their constituent activities are pre-
scribed; but since personality systems are conative, their activities are
93
94 Social Theory and Personality
motivated. Finally, social systems serve social functions, while personali-
ties serve individual functions. In short, although the functions of social
systems are served by the activities of individuals, these activities were
not seen as serving personal functions. Hence, older theories of cultural
conformity * and social control ignored personality as an irrelevant vari-
able.
Classical cultural determinism, for example, attributed efficient causa-
tion to the cultural heritage people perform this or that activity of the
social system "because it's part of their culture." Although this theory
represents an advance over still older biologistic theories, it begs the very
question which is to be answered. As Nadel has put it: ". . . little is
gained [in the study of social control] by adducing the force of custom and
tradition, that is, the sheer inertia of habitual behavior and inherited prac-
tice" (1953, p. 266). The mere existence of a cultural heritage does not
imply that it will be inherited; or, if inherited, that behavior will be in
conformity with its requirements. The notion that cultural behavior is
inherited automatically from the cultural heritage is probably based on a
confusion ultimately derived from Tyler's omnibus definition of culture
(1874, p. 1). For it would seem that the model upon which the inherit-
ance of cultural behavior is based, is the inheritance of, for example,
tools, paintings, and houses all of which are, of course, inherited auto-
matically, without either effort or motivation. Culture behavior, too, is
transmitted from a previous generation; but it is inherited by learning,
and not merely by being handed down.
Another answer to the problem of cultural conformity is provided by
the social sanctions theory. According to this theory, compliance with
cultural norms is achieved through positive and negative sanctions re-
wards and punishments which function as techniques of social control.
Although the use of 'sanctions is probably universal, the thesis that cul-
tural conformity is achieved primarily or exclusively through the use of
social sanctions rests, at least implicitly, on two demonstrably false as-
sumptions. These are the Rousseauist assumption that culture is neces-
sarily frustrating, and the super-organistic assumption that cultural norms
"exist" in the cultural heritage, but are not internalized by the members
of society.
Agreeing with the first, but disagreeing with the second of the above
two assumptions, a third theory of cultural conformity views compliance
with cultural norms as a function, primarily, of their internalization within
personality. Although cultural norms are, indeed, internalized, and al-
though conscience does play an important part in achieving cultural con-
formity, this theory too is but a partial theory for, as we shall attempt to
show, social control is frequently achieved without the necessity for norm
internalization.
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 95
Culture-and-personality studies suggest that though there is a large
measure of truth in these theories, cultural conformity is most frequently
achieved because social systems satisfy personality needs. This chapter,
then, will attempt to show that there is an intimate relationship between
social systems and personality; social systems operate by means of per-
sonality, and personality functions by means of social systems. Many of
the social functions of social systems can be served only when this inti-
mate relationship obtains.
HUMAN SOCIAL SYSTEMS: THE PROBLEM
Unlike other social animals, the social system of any particular human
society cannot be predicted from a knowledge of the species (Homo sa-
piens) of which the society is a member. Nevertheless, since human social
systems are rooted in man's biological nature, any discussion of the ge-
neric attributes of these systems must take its departure from certain
biological dimensions of human existence. From a comparative biologi-
cal perspective a human social system may be viewed as a functional re-
quirement of human life. Ultimately it stems from the psychobiological
needs of, what the biologist terms, a generalized, fetalized (Bolk, 1929),
and highly plastic (Montagu, 1951, pp. 368-375) primate. Here we can
only point to the consequences of these biological attributes for human
social systems. (But cf. LaBarre, 1954; Roheim, 1943.)
The combination of man's mammalian drives (hunger, sex, etc.) and
his plastic hominoid constitution (paucity of instincts) requires that
means of drive-reduction be learned. Again, the combination of man's
organic needs (protection against weather, predatory beasts, etc.) and
his hominoid constitution (generalized and fetalized) requires learned
methods of protection and adaptation. Moreover, man's prolonged pri-
mate dependency and his primate sexual behavior (lack of a breeding
season) combine to produce the relatively permanent bi-parental family,
and by extension larger collectivities (societies) consisting of two or
more families. In the absence, however, of an instinctual base shop-
worn comparisons of human with insect societies (Wheeler, 1928) are
still much to the point human social life demands that forms of social
interaction, methods of social cooperation, techniques of conflict resolu-
tion, and the like be learned. But this is not enough. Social existence is
necessarily an orderly and regulated existence. Unless the members of a
group are able to predict with some probability far greater than chance
the behavior of other members of the group with whom they interact,
social action, let alone interaction, would be all but precluded. Hence,
man must not only learn the various kinds of behavior patterns men-
tioned above, but these learned behavior patterns must be prescribed by
96 Social Theory and Personality
society and shared with others. The configuration of these socially pre-
scribed, learned, shared and transmitted behavior patterns which medi-
ate and facilitate social relationships constitutes the social system of a hu-
man society. We are here only concerned with those characteristics which
make social systems necessary for human survival. We are not concerned
with those characteristics a complex brain and central nervous system
and the symbolic behavior to which they give rise (White, 1940; Mead,
1934; Langer, 1942; Cassirer, 1944; Hallowell, 1950) which make
their invention and transmission possible.
To conclude: since man is a generalized, fetalized, and plastic animal
and since everywhere he is necessarily social, a typically human existence
depends on the existence of socially shared behavior patterns which sat-
isfy his (1) biological needs, (2) those group needs that are an invariant
concomitant of social life (Aberle, 1950) and (3) those emotional
needs that develop in the interaction between biology and society. In
this evolutionary perspective a social system may be viewed as an "in-
strumental apparatus" (Malinowski, 1944) for the satisfaction of these
needs. Social systems, then, have three types of functions. They promote
the physical survival of society and of its constituent members (adaptive
functions) ; they contribute to the persistence of the social structure of a
society and, hence, to orderly social interaction (adjustive functions);
they promote social solidarity by the reduction of inter- and intra-per-
sonal tension (integrative functions).
This is not to say, of course, that all aspects of every social system
are functional, or that all social systems are equally functional, or that
any social system is functional to the same degree for all the members
of, or groups within, a society. The collapse of some social systems, the
oppressive means used by powerful groups within a society to preserve
others, the repeated history of successful and of unsuccessful rebellions
against still others all these testify to the powerful dysfunctional forces
operative in some, and potential in all, social systems. But these obser-
vations serve to confirm, rather than to confute, the major thesis. Social
systems have vital functions; that these functions be served is their
raison d'etre. If they are not served, to a greater or lesser degree, the
social system will, in the long-run, be modified, or the society will not
survive.
Before proceeding with this discussion, it is necessary to emphasize
an obvious characteristic of human social systems that is frequently ob-
scured by the ambiguity of the word "learned," an ambiguity that some-
times leads to hasty generalizations from small-group experiments to so-
cial behavior in society. When it is observed that human social systems,
as well as all other aspects of culture, are learned, the word "learned"
has one meaning in a phylogenetic, and another in an ontogenetic con-
SP1RO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 97
text. "Learned" in a phylogenetic context means invented or discovered;
"learned" in an ontogenetic context means acquired. Thus, the hypo-
thetical Ur-mensch of the Paleolithic was, culturally viewed, a tabula rasa.
The adaptive, adjustive, and integrative requirements of his society had
to be satisfied by behavior patterns of his own invention and discovery.
Succeeding generations of human societies have also, to be sure, invented
and discovered behavior patterns, and their incorporation into the con-
figuration of existing behavior patterns (which comprise their social sys-
tems) is one of the unique dimensions of culture its cumulativeness.
For the most part, however, all generations subsequent to the hypotheti-
cal Ur-generation of a society have acquired their social systems from a
previous generation, rather than inventing or discovering them them-
selves. In short, the social system of any generation represents, in part,
the cultural heritage of the succeeding generation; the social system of
the latter, is acquired from the social system of the former.
Social systems, like any other large configuration, can be and for
certain purposes must be broken down into smaller components. These
units, proceeding from the largest to the smallest, are generally termed
sub-systems, institutions, roles. Thus, every social system includes an eco-
nomic system an organized means for the production, consumption,
and distribution of goods and services; a kinship system an organization
of behavior within the family and among kinsmen; a political system a
sanctioned means for the acquisition and use of legitimate power, and so
forth. The universality of these sub-systems is sometimes referred to as
"the universal culture pattern" (Wissler, 1923, Ch. 5).
Each of these broad categories can usually be classified, in turn, into
smaller units. It is rare for any one type of social group within society to
perform all the activities which comprise any of these broad sub-systems.
Thus the kinship system may embrace the activities of nuclear families,
lineages and clans; or the economic system may include the activities of
trade unions, banks, factories, and accounting firms. In short, since any
society is differentiated and, therefore, consists of many types of social
groups, and since each type serves different functions, either for its own
members or for those of other social groups, each type of group per-
forms different activities. The configuration of activities which charac-
terizes these different types of groups may be termed an "institution."
Thus the activities of the members of the family, qua family members,
may be termed the "family institution"; the activities of the members of
the lineage, qua lineage members, may be termed the "lineage institu-
tion." Since, collectively, these institutions comprise the kinship system
of a society, each may be termed a kinship institution.
Although each type of social group within a society is characterized
by a different institution, its constituent members do not, qua members,
98 Social Theory and Personality
perform the same activities. Each type of group, like the entire society
of which it is a part, is structurally differentiated so that various members
of the group occupy different positions within the group. Within the fam-
ily, for example, different members may occupy such positions as father,
mother, son, or daughter. Since each position ("status") within the
group is associated with one (Linton, 1936) or more (Merton, 1957)
sets of activities ("roles"), each institution may be broken down into its
constituent roles. Thus the set of activities which comprises the role of fa-
ther varies from that which comprises the role of mother. Each is a fam-
ily role; collectively they comprise the family institution. The role, then,
is the smallest unit of the social system; the operation of the social sys-
tem, ultimately and most directly, depends on the proper performance of
roles.
To sum up: the survival of a society depends on the operation of its
social system; a social system is comprised of sub-systems which, in turn,
are comprised of institutions; the functions of these institutions are served
only if their constituent roles are performed. In turn, this requires the
recruitment of individuals for the various statuses which comprise the
social structure. If these propositions are valid, we are brought back to
the central issue of this chapter the problem of cultural conformity.
How does society induce its members to perform roles those that are
instrumental to the attainment of a status, as well as those that are en-
tailed by the occupancy of a status? (Nadel, 1957, Ch. 2, has suggested
the terms "recruitment roles" and "achievement roles" to refer to these
different types of roles.) This problem is best understood against the
background of infra-human societies.
Among lower social animals there is a remarkably high correlation be-
tween species and social systems. If the environment is held constant, the
description of the social system of one society within a species is more or
less descriptive of all other societies within the species. Thus, if one knows
the species to which a particular subhuman organism belongs, one can
predict with high accuracy and with great detail the social system (assum-
ing that it is social) in which it participates (Hine and Tinbergen, 1958;
Thompson, 1958; Mayr, 1958). It is quite meaningful, therefore, to
speak of species-specific social systems among lower animals.
But though it is meaningful to speak of the red deer social system
(Darling, 1937) or the howling monkey social system (Carpenter,
1934) it is not at all meaningful, except on the highest level of generality,
to speak of the human social system. Man differs dramatically from all
other social mammals in the great variety of his intra-species social sys-
tem differences. Indeed, the magnitude of social system differences
within the human species may be as great as the magnitude of difference
among animal species. Thus, for example, while the mating pattern of an
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 99
entire mammalian species may be characterized, and thus distinguished
from other species, by monogamy (e.g., gibbons Carpenter, 1940) or
polygyny (e.g., baboons Zuckerman, 1932) or group marriage (e.g.,
howling monkeys Carpenter, 1934), such generalizations apply in the
case of humans only to societies within the species and not to the species
as a whole. Hence, the fact that one human society practices monogamy,
or has patrilineal descent, or is governed by hereditary chiefs, or is strati-
fied by caste, does not enable us to predict that other societies within the
species will have the same marriage, descent, political or stratification
systems. In short, if one knows that a particular organism belongs to the
human species, one cannot predict in any detail the social system in which
he participates even if the physical environment is specified. Thus, though
paired groups such as California Indians and modern California Ameri-
cans, pre-contact Hawaiians and the contemporary inhabitants of Ha-
waii, Alaskan Eskimos and contemporary modern Alaskans have oe-
cupied the same physical environment, their respective social systems are
radically different.
It is a reasonable inference, then, that though much of the social be-
havior of animals is not instinctive (Beach, 1955; Lehrman, 1953) as
was formerly believed to be the case so that each generation of social
animals may learn a large percentage of its behavior patterns and social
roles from a preceding generation, the range of species plasticity is so
narrow that any animal has little alternative, if he is to learn at all, but
to learn the behavior patterns which he is taught. What he must learn in
order to participate in his society's social system and what he can learn
are for the most part identical. Since humans, on the other hand, are
highly plastic, what an individual jnust learn in order to participate in the
social system of his society is not at all identical with what he can learn;
for what he is taught represents, as the cross-cultural record clearly re-
veals, but one alternative among a large number of behavior patterns
and roles which he is potentially capable of learning or, at least, of think-
ing of learning.
Since humans are so enormously plastic it is not enough, if human
social systems are to function properly, that social roles and the behavior
patterns of which they are comprised be socially learned, shared, and
transmitted; it is also necessary that these roles be prescribed (Newcomb,
1 950, Ch. 3 ) . For, since what a person must do in order to participate in
a given social system is not identical with what he can do, it may be in-
consistent with what he would like to do. Hence in the process of sociali-
zation children are not only taught how to behave, but they are taught that
the ways in which they are taught to behave are the ways in which they
ought to behave. In short, "every human social order," as Hallowell has
put it, "operates as a moral order" (1950, p. 169). This normative, or
100 Social Theory and Personality
cultural dimension (Spiro, 1951, pp. 31-36) of the human social system
is for humans the functional equivalent of restricted plasticity for lower
animals. It is the basis for relatively uniform and, therefore, predictable
role behavior. (The psychological basis for the emergence of a moral
dimension in experience the self is discussed in Hallowell, 1954.)
But this analogy cannot be pressed too far, and it is precisely at the
point where it breaks down that human societies are uniquely different
from animal societies. Since there is always a potential conflict between
duty and desire, between cultural heritage and personality, this potential-
ity which gives special poignancy to the human situation sets the
problem of our present inquiry: how do human societies get their mem-
bers to behave in conformity with cultural norms? Or, alternatively, how
do they induce their members to perform culturally prescribed roles?
It is at this juncture in the analysis that the concept of personality be-
comes salient for the understanding of human social systems, for it is in
the concept of role that personality and social systems intersect. If per-
sonality is viewed as an organized system of motivational tendencies,
then it may be said to consist, among other things, of needs and drives.
Since modes of drive-reduction and need-satisfaction in man must be
learned, one of the functions of personality is the promotion of physical
survival, interpersonal adjustment, and intrapersonal integration by or-
ganizing behavior for the reduction of its drives and the satisfaction of
its needs. If some of these needs can then be satisfied by means of cul-
turally prescribed behavior if, that is, social roles are capable of satis-
fying personality needs these needs may serve to motivate the per-
formance of the roles. But if social systems can function only if their
constituent roles are performed, then, in motivating the performance of
roles, personality not only serves its own functions but it becomes a
crucial variable in the functioning of social systems as well. This is the
thesis which will be explored in this chapter.
EXTRINSIC CULTURAL MOTIVATION
Since role behavior is a sub-class of learned behavior, we may begin
our discussion by asking under what conditions any learned behavior pat-
tern is emitted. Many but not all behavioral scientists 2 seem to agree
that behavior occurs when the contemplated action is believed by the ac-
tor to be rewarding. An act is performed when a person wants something
and when he has reason to expect that the performance of the act will
supply his want. A simple ontogenetic model can illustrate how this ex-
pectation is established.
The ontogenetic model begins with a "drive" that is, with some felt
tension or discomfort. "Drive" is used here in a psychological, not a
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 101
physiological, sense, for even the biological drives are significant for be-
havior only if they function as psychological stimuli; hence, "felt tension
or discomfort." Behavior in an infant or in a naive experimental animal
is instigated by the desire to "reduce" the drive. But since the drive is
still uncanalized (Murphy, 1947, Ch. 8) it has no goal, no cathected
object behavior approaches randomness. By trial-and-error some ob-
ject or event, which has the property of reducing the drive, is chanced
upon; the drive is gratified; homeostasis is restored. If this sequence is
repeated a sufficient number of times, the drive-reducing object or event
becomes a "goal" and the act which is instrumental to the attainment of
the goal becomes a behavior pattern. An expectation of gratifying a drive
by means of the goal attained by the behavior pattern has been estab-
lished.
Using this psychological model two simple questions concerning be-
havior may be answered. Why does a naive organism behave at all? Be-
cause it has a drive. Why, after experience or training, does it behave in
this, rather than in some other, way? Because it has learned that this way
attains goals which are rewarding, i.e., drive-reducing. It should be em-
phasized, of course, that "drive" refers to both innate and acquired drives,
and that rewards need not be "physical" nor need they be administered
by others. The rewards for exploratory and cognitive activity are fre-
quently even in the case of lower primates (Harlow, 1953) inherent
in the very act of exploration or intrinsic to the solution of a problem. It
should also be emphasized that no assumption is made concerning fixed
homeostatic states such that the achievement of drive-reduction leads to
relative quiescence until the drive is reactivated. It is assumed, on the
contrary, that there is always some discrepancy between achievement
and aspiration levels (Lewin, et al. f 1944) so that present goal achieve-
ment may become but a temporary way-station for contemplated further
and different goal achievement. It is assumed, however, that drives are
motivational variables and, although not every act is instigated by the
anticipation of drive-reduction, that every drive must eventually be re-
duced, either directly or indirectly.
Can this psychological model help us to understand cultural behavior,
in general, or the performance of the constituent roles of a social system,
in particular? At first, the answer might appear to be negative. For social
roles, it will be remembered, are not discovered at random by each in-
dividual, and social systems are not invented de nova by each generation.
On the contrary, since the social system of any generation is in the main
acquired from its cultural heritage, from a previous generation, the goals
which are attained by the performance of roles are either sanctioned or
prescribed. 3 The roles which are instrumental for the attainment of these
goals are prescribed. In short, since social systems are normative systems,
102 Social Theory and Personality
social roles unlike other learned behavior patterns very likely are per-
formed not because they are rewarding but because they are mandatory.
It is this imperative dimension of human social systems that has led
many social theorists to interpret cultural conformity as a function, pri-
marily, of special techniques of social control. Since social systems have
vital social functions, which are served only if their constituent roles are
performed, their operation requires that individuals behave in culturally
desirable, rather than in personally desired, ways. The proponents of this
theory see little relationship between personal motivation and cultural
behavior. Conformity to cultural norms, they believe, is not a matter of
personality drives primarily, but of social sanctions.
All societies, of course, employ social sanctions as a means of achiev-
ing social control, though the specific techniques and agents of control
may differ from society to society. Thus, the sanctions may consist in
quite different kinds of rewards or punishments. Similarly the agents
who administer these sanctions (agents of control) may be one's peers
who exercise control through the ubiquitious (informal) techniques of
public opinion shame and praise. This may be termed "alter-ego" con-
trol. Alternatively, the agents may be one's superiors, who exercise con-
trol through numerous (formal) techniques of public recognition and
punitive sanctions available to constituted authority. This may be termed
"super-alter" control. These superiors, it might be added, may be natural
or supernatural beings, and they may possess natural or supernatural au-
thority.
It should be obvious, however, that even a social sanctions theory of
social control, despite the anti-psychological bias of many of its propo-
nents (Radcliffe-Brown, 1957, pp. 45-52), is essentially a motivational
theory. No social sanction can compel a person to conform; it can only
motivate him to do so. As Radcliffe-Brown himself observes (1933, p.
531), "The sanctions existing in a community constitute motives in the
individual for the regulation of his conduct in conformity with usage."
Thus the positive sanction of material reward does not compel a person
to perform an economic role; rather, it motivates him to perform it be-
cause the material reward serves as a goal to reduce some drive such as
hunger or prestige. Similarly malicious gossip or a jail sentence can in-
duce a person not to steal only if either of these negative sanctions are
painful to him; if incarceration or gossip were not painful, they could not
compel him to conform to the injunction. Unless the members of society
have certain personality drives which can be reduced by acquiring posi-
tive, and avoiding negative, sanctions, it is unlikely that these sanctions
would serve as techniques of social control. In short, social sanctions
serve as techniques of social control because they function as motivational
variables.
If social sanctions become incentives for action because of their ca-
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional A nalysis 103
thexes as personal (positive or negative) goals, their efficacy may be ex-
plained in terms of our psychological model. They function as anticipated
rewards or punishments. Since these rewards and punishments are ex-
trinsic to the performance of a role, and since they are administered by
persons other than the actor, this type of cultural motivation 4 may be
termed "extrinsic cultural motivation," and this type of social control may
be termed "extrinsic social control."
To the extent that all societies employ extrinsic social control in some
degree as a means of achieving cultural conformity, personality motiva-
tion enables the social system to serve its vital social functions. Though
the performance of roles may be motivated by the fear of punishment or
the desire for rewards, their social functions are served regardless of the
personal motives for their performance. Even if social sanctions were the
primary technique of social control, analysis of cultural conformity could
not avoid the concept of personality.
Although extrinsic social control is universal, it does not follow that
its importance in achieving cultural conformity is paramount. Social sanc-
tions may be necessary in order to achieve the conformity of some indi-
viduals in some societies almost all of the time, and of most individuals
in any society some of the time. Moreover, they are necessary to resolve
those conflicts that frequently arise between two persons or groups, both
of whom are behaving in conformity with the cultural norms. It is prob-
ably safe to assume, however, that this type of control is only rarely the
primary type in any society; it is most prevalent in those historical pe-
riods of a society which are characterized by anomie. Thus, it is typically
found as a primary type of control in transitional periods in which
changes, either in tension-producing or tension-reducing social institu-
tions seriously restrict the possibility of satisfying personality needs by
culturally stipulated techniques (Sapir's, 1924, "Spurious culture"). In
the long run, however, further changes in the social system will restore its
tension production-reduction balance (Henry, 1953, p. 154), so that
extrinsic control is no longer primary; or the psycho- and sociopathology
that result from this cultural pathology will become so extensive that so-
cial life is no longer viable.
INTRINSIC CULTURAL MOTIVATION
Personal Motives and Manifest Social Functions
If social sanctions are not the primary means of achieving cultural con-
formity, it is because social roles, though prescribed, satisfy personality
needs. Fromm is undoubtedly correct when he writes:
In order that any society may function well, its members must acquire the
kind of character which makes them want to act in the way they have to act
1 04 Social Theory and Personality
as members of the society . . . They have to desire what objectively is
necessary for them to do. (1944, p. 381)
In order to understand this transformation of duty into desire we must
first understand how the normative dimension of human social systems
serves to qualify our psychological model. In this model, it will be re-
called, behavior is instigated initially by the desire to reduce a drive, and
any object or event which serves this end will do. Subsequently those ob-
jects or events which gratify the drive may become cathected so that they
function as goals. When this happens behavior is motivated by the desire
not merely to gratify a drive, but to gratify it by attaining a particular
goal. Canalization, as Murphy (1947, Ch. 8) has termed this process of
drive-goal connection, is characteristic of much motivation. But cultural
motivation is unique in that these canalizations are ordained by the cul-
tural heritage prior to individual experience instead of arising in the con-
text of individual experience. By stipulating that only a limited, out of a
potentially large, number of objects or events may serve as goals for
drives, and by prohibiting all others, the cultural heritage insists that if a
drive is to be gratified at all, it must be gratified by means of these stipu-
lated prescribed or sanctioned goals. Thus, though a New Guinea head-
hunter must bring home a head if he is to gratify his prestige drive, an
Ifaluk must not; and though an American is permitted to gratify his hun-
ger drive by eating roast beef, a Hindu is not.
If the goal of a behavior pattern is distinguished from its drive, much
of the dramatic diversity found in the cross-cultural record reflects the
diversity, not of man's "nature," but of his history and of his cognitive in-
genuity. Since man is enormously plastic, a large variety of goals may,
potentially, reduce the same drive. In the absence of biologically rigid
drive-goal connections, different societies, as a function of their unique
histories and ecologies, have "chosen" different goals for the same drives
as well as different roles for the attainment of these goals. The resultant
diversity in goals has led some anthropologists to insist that each culture
is not only sui generis but that cross-cultural generalizations are impossi-
ble to achieve. Such a position is, functionally viewed, wide off the mark.
Although cultural goals are parochial, most human drives because of
their rootedness in a common biology and in common conditions of social
life are probably universal. Hence, it is generally not too difficult to
demonstrate (on a fairly high level of generality, of course) that the
quite diverse goals of different societies, as well as the roles which are in-
strumental for their attainment, are functionally equivalent; they serve
to gratify the same drives (Murphy, 1954, pp. 628-631).
But the fact that goals are prescribed does not imply as some theorists
take it to imply that they do not or cannot gratify drives. On the con-
trary, culturally prescribed goals may be as rewarding as non-prescribed
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 105
goals. By prescribing goals the cultural heritage does not frustrate drives,
it merely limits the number of ways in which they may be gratified. To
be sure, since man has few instincts, he must learn to perceive the pre-
scribed goals as rewarding. But this is the function of child-training. In
the process of socialization, children acquire not only drives, but they ac-
quire goals as well; they learn which objects or events the culturally
prescribed goals are drive-reducing. In short, socialization systems
by techniques which cannot be described here are institutionalized
means for transforming culturally-stipulated goals into personally-
cathected goals (Erikson, 1950; Whiting and Child, 1953). If the per-
sonal cathexis of a stipulated goal is termed a "need/' it is apparent that a
need-satisfaction model is more appropriate than a drive-reduction model
as a description of cultural motivation. For in general once a prescribed
goal is sufficiently cathected, that goal which is culturally viewed as the
only desirable, if not the only possible, goal for the gratification of a drive,
becomes personally viewed as the most desired goal. Indeed, in some in-
stances it, and no other, is perceived as drive-reducing, so that drive-
frustration may be preferred to drive-reduction by non-cathected goals.
An Orthodox Hindu, for example, refuses to eat beef, not only because
it is prohibited, but because it is not desired; the very notion of eating
beef may be disgusting to him. Hence the paradox: although evolution
has produced a species characterized by the absence of drive-goal in-
variants, culture produces personalities who behave as if there were. For
after cultural goals are cathected, human beings sometimes behave as if
their drive-goal connections were the only ones possible.
To conclude: social roles, like other types of learned behavior, are per-
formed if they are rewarding. But if the culturally stipulated goals, which
are attained by their performance, are cathected, behavior is motivated
by the expectation of attaining a goal not by the desire to reduce a drive.
To be sure, the goal is desked because its attainment produces drive-
reduction; if it did not, it would not, in the long run, continue to be de-
sired. But this is precisely the point of the "need" concept: it looks, so to
speak, in two directions. On the one hand it affirms that drive-reduction
is rewarding, so that acts that do not reduce drives are not performed. On
the other hand, it denies that the desire to reduce a drive is a sufficient
explanation of cultural motivation; for when culturally stipulated goals
are sufficiently cathected, action is motivated (with the possible exception
of extreme deprivation) by the expectation of attaining these cathected
goals. 5
It is now perhaps clear how cultural imperatives can become personal
desires how, in short, people can want to perform social roles. If the
performance of social roles does in fact attain those culturally stipulated
goals for whose attainment they are intended by the cultural heritage,
106 Social Theory and Personality
and if these goals have been cathected by the members of society, these
roles are performed because of the desire to attain these goals. In short,
although social roles are prescribed by the cultural heritage, their per-
formance is motivated by the expectation of satisfying personality needs.
Though these roles must be performed so that their functions for society
can be served, individuals desire to perform them because personal func-
tions are thereby served. 6 Thus, for example, the American army serves
an important adaptive function for American society by defending its
people against foreign enemies. Should an individual American become
identified (in the psychoanalytic sense) with his society, he will inter-
nalize this function as a personal drive and, therefore, he might cathect
this stipulated goal as a personal goal. Should this happen he may be
motivated to become a soldier and to perform its prescribed role because
its performance satisfies a personality need. In short, if the social function
of a role is internalized as a personal drive, its performance, which is in-
tended to serve a social function, serves a personal function albeit unin-
tentionally as well. Diagrammatically, this can be represented thus:
, - , __- ^personal function (unintended)
need ^performance of role. JJ^ function (intended)
But if cultural goals are cathected as personal goals only when social
functions are internalized as personal drives, the number of roles whose
performance can serve personal functions would be small indeed. Indeed,
it is precisely because the social functions of roles only rarely become per-
sonal drives that some theorists have stressed the importance of social
sanctions as a means, par excellence, of assuring cultural conformity. And
surely the argument is plausible. For if a role has a social function, and
if the serving of its function is not a personality need, how can its per-
formance be motivated by the expectation of satisfying a personality
need?
This argument, however plausible, neglects to consider still another
possibility. Stipulated goals may be cathected, and therefore social roles
performed, although social functions are not internalized; and social func-
tions may be served, although they are unintended. As Kroeber, general-
izing from his analysis of religious change among the Kota, has put it: "In
manipulating their culture for their personal ends, the participants often
produce a cultural effect that may be enduring, as well as attaining their
individual goal or tension reliefs'* (1948, p. 507).
This can happen in two ways: when personal and social functions are
members of the same functional class, and when they are members of dif-
ferent functional classes. Both of these ways, beginning with the first, can
be illustrated by returning to the soldier role and the motives for its per-
formance. Since individuals exist qua members of society as well as qua
SPIRO; Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 107
individuals, their welfare is frequently dependent upon the welfare of so-
ciety. Thus, though an individual may not internalize the adaptive (so-
cial) function of the soldier role as a personal drive, he may nonetheless,
if he believes that his personal survival depends on the survival of his so-
ciety, cathect its goal of national defense; and he may then be motivated
to perform the role in order to satisfy this personality need. But since the
social (adaptive) function of the soldier role consists in the summation
of its personal (adaptive) functions for individuals, the performance of
the role not only serves a personal function, but it serves its social func-
tion as well albeit unintentionally.
There is still another way in which culturally stipulated goals can be-
come personality needs. Not everyone who becomes a professional sol-
dier, for example, is motivated to achieve or to perform this role in order
to defend either himself or his society from enemy attack. Since the pro-
motion of national defense is, at least in our society, one means for the
attainment of prestige and power, this culturally stipulated goal may be-
come the cathected goal for the reduction of these drives. The perform-
ance of the soldier's role may then be motivated by the expectation of
satisfying power and prestige needs. Nevertheless though the personal
functions (integrative and adjustive) and social function (adaptive) of the
role are members of different functional classes, and though its perform-
ance is intended to serve personal functions, its social function although
unintended is served as well. Diagrammatically, these last two cases can
be represented thus:
j f f T _^->personal function (intended)
need > performance of role =CTL i * * / * jj\
r asocial function (unintended)
To sum up, any act may be viewed from at least two perspectives:
motive and function. The motive of an act is the consequence, either for
the actor or for society, which is intended by its performance; its function
is the actual consequence of its performance, either for the actor or for
society. Functions may be positive or negative; that is, the consequence of
an act may contribute to the welfare of the actor or of society or it may
detract from their welfare. (We are here concerned with positive functions
only, and the generic term, "function," refers to positive function ex-
clusively.) Finally acts have intended and unintended functions. That is,
the consequence of an act may be the consequence which was intended
by its performance, or it may be one which was not intefjded by its per-
formance. Since social roles have social functions, and since acts are per-
formed only if they have personal functions, it has often been assumed
that there is little intrinsic relationship between personality needs and
the performance of roles except in those few instances in which an act is
intended to serve both personal and social functions. A soldier, for ex-
108 Social Theory and Personality
ample, might be motivated to play his role because he intended to serve
both himself and his country.
But if acts can have unintended as well as intended consequences, it is
possible for personal and social functions to be served in the performance
of the same acts or roles. And this can happen in two ways: when their
personal functions are intended and their social functions are unintended,
and when their personal functions are unintended and their social func-
tions intended. In either event since the performance of the roles serves
personal as well as social functions, their performance is motivated
without the operation of social sanctions because they satisfy personality
needs. Since these needs consist in the personal cathexes of culturally
stipulated goals, the performance of social roles is effected by, what may
be termed, "intrinsic cultural motivation." Alternatively, the cultural
conformity which results from this type of motivation is achieved by "in-
trinsic social control," for the control function is, as it were, built into the
very fabric of the role. By satisfying personality needs, its performance is
assured, and its social functions performed, without the necessity for
sanctions extrinsic to the role or for agents external to the actor.
Personal Motives and Latent Social Functions
Thus far it has been contended that personality plays an important
part in the operation of social systems because, by motivating the per-
formance of social roles, it enables the social system to serve its social
functions. The discussion, however, has dealt with the manifest functions
of roles exclusively, that is, with those social functions which, whether
intended or unintended by the members of society, are recognized by
them. But social systems, have latent functions as well, and sometimes
their latent functions are more important for society than their manifest
functions. It is here, moreover, that personality is uniquely important for
the functioning of society.
If manifest functions are those consequences of role performance
which are recognized by the members of society, latent functions are those
consequences which whether intended or unintended are not recog-
nized by them. 7 That the paradox of an intended but unrecognized func-
tion is apparent rather than real, becomes clear when one considers that
motives may be unconscious, as well as conscious. In short, manifest
(recognized) functions are served by the performance of roles when at
least one of the motives for their performance is conscious; latent (un-
recognized) functions are served when at least one of the motives for their
performance is unconscious. Hence, before analyzing latent functions, it
is necessary to examine the concept of unconscious motive.
If the motive for behavior consists in an intention to satisfy a need by
performing a particular act (and if a need consists in a drive and a goal) ,
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 109
a motive may be unconscious, i.e., unrecognized, In any one or all of
these three dimensions. Thus a drive, its goal, and the desired means for
the attainment of the goal may all be unconscious. With the exception of
neurotic, i.e., idiosyncratic, repression, if any or all of these dimensions
of a motive are unconscious in a typical member of a society, the
motive has generally been rendered unconscious because of a cultural
prohibition or because of its systematic frustration. In the latter case,
since need-frustration as well as the memory of need-frustration are
painful, repression of the frustrating experience as well as of the need is
one possible defense against pain. We shall confine the discussion to the
former basis for repression. Thus, for example, the cultural heritage may
prohibit any reduction of the sex drive, as in sacerdotal celibacy; or it
may prohibit a desired goal for its reduction, such as intercourse with
kinsmen who fall within the boundaries of the incest taboo; or it may
prohibit a desired means for the attainment of the goal, such as some
"perverted" technique of sexual relations. In short the cultural heritage
not only provides means of need-satisfaction for an animal without in-
stinctive means for drive-reduction, but by prescribing these means
it prohibits other means which this relatively plastic and imaginative
animal may come to prefer. Moreover it may completely prohibit any
conceivable (manifest) expression or reduction of certain drives.
But motives do not disappear simply because they are prohibited. Even
if the cultural prohibition is internalized as a personal norm, the culturally
prohibited canalization may continue to persist as a personally preferred
canalization, and the culturally prohibited drive may continue to seek ex-
pression. The resultant incompatibility between internalized norm and
personal desire leads to inner conflict which must be "handled" in some
way. If these personally preferred, but culturally prohibited, canalizations
are stronger than the internalized cultural prohibition, they may be ex-
pressed directly. If, then, the resultant behavior is categorically pro-
hibited, it is deemed criminal or psychologically aberrant (depending on
the culture) by the members of society. Alternatively, if the behavior is
culturally aberrant, but not clearly prohibited, it may be viewed as a
cultural innovation that is, as a new, but culturally acceptable, behavior
pattern.
On the other hand, should the internalized cultural prohibition be
stronger than the personal desire, the inner conflict may be resolved by
repressing the desire. The prohibited motive, in short, becomes un-
conscious. But unconscious as well as conscious motives seek expression
and satisfaction. They may be expressed (and satisfied) in neurosis and
psychosis; in private fantasy (day-dreams and night dreams) ; in sym-
bolic, but culturally creative, ways (artistic and scientific work) ; or, and
more germane to this chapter, in the performance of culturally prescribed
110 Social Theory and Personality
roles. Since unconscious motives cannot be satisfied directly if they
could they would not be unconscious they may thus seek indirect satis-
faction in the performance of culturally sanctioned behavior. In short, in
addition to its conscious motivation, culturally sanctioned behavior, in-
cluding role behavior, may be unconsciously motivated as well. Since, in
the latter case, the performance of a role is motivated by an unconscious
as well as by a conscious intention of satisfying a need, the role may have
unrecognized though intended personal functions; and these, in turn, may
produce unrecognized and unintended social functions. This thesis may be
illustrated by examples from two societies: warfare among the Sioux
Indians of the American Plains, and religion among the Ifaluk of
Micronesia.
Diagrammatically, the relationship between the motives for the per-
formance of the Sioux warrior role and its various personal and social
functions can be represented thus:
intended and recognized person
f function (prestige)
/ intended and recognized person
conscious needs (manifest // function (protection)
(prestige, \ functions) - * //intended and recognized social
protection) \ /// function (protection)
x /// unintended and recognized social
l/f function (solidarity)
performance of role/
\\ intended an( * unrecognized person
function (reduction of hostility)
unintended and unrecognized person
function (deflection of aggression
from self)
unconscious need (latent \ unintended and unrecognized social
(in-group aggression) functions) > \ function (deflection of aggression
V from society)
unintended and unrecognized social
function (solidarity)
Sioux warfare was motivated by two conscious needs: prestige and
protection from enemies. In satisfying these needs for prestige and pro-
tection, warfare served manifest personal (integrative) and social (adap-
tive) functions. It may be assumed, it served an unintended (integra-
tive), but manifest social function, as well the promotion of social
solidarity by the creation of esprit de corps among the warriors.
But the "choice" of warfare as a preeminent institutionalized means of
obtaining prestige leads us to suspect that the conscious motives for the
performance of the warrior role, though genuine, were not its only
motives. Warfare is an aggressive activity. Why did the Sioux act ag-
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 111
gressively when the objective threat from the enemy was slight? Sioux
war parties, it will be recalled, attacked rather than defended; they pre-
ferred to attack when their "enemies" were least prepared, that is, when
they constituted no threat; young bucks had to be restrained from going
on the warpath, rather than having to be encouraged to do so. And why
did they seek prestige through aggression when, as the cross-cultural
record reveals, there are many non-aggressive roles through which pres-
tige can be obtained? Sioux warfare apparently was motivated not only
by the conscious needs of prestige and protection, but by yet another,
unconscious, motive hostility against their fellows.
As is the case in most societies, Sioux socialization, as well as the con-
ditions of adult Sioux social life, created in each new generation a motive
for aggression against their fellows (Erikson, 1939, 1945). Like most
societies, moreover, the cultural heritage of the Sioux prohibited physical
aggression against the in-group. However, only one of the three dimen-
sions of this motive was prohibited. Neither the drive itself (hostility)
nor the means of its reduction (physical aggression), but only its object
(the in-group), was prohibited. It was assumed, then, that the specific
dimension of physical aggression against fellows was repressed, i.e.,
rendered unconscious. But by displacing hostility from the in- to the out-
groups, this motive could now be expressed. This motive, one may sug-
gest, sought satisfaction in, and was therefore important in the moti-
vation of, Sioux warfare. In addition to their motives of prestige and
protection, Sioux war parties were also motivated by aggression. In satis-
fying this motive, the warrior role served a latent personal function
(integration), as well as its manifest personal and social functions.
When the performance of roles is motivated by unconscious needs, it
serves unintended and unrecognized social functions as well as intended
but unrecognized personal functions. What possible unintended and un-
recognized function for society was served by the Sioux institution of
warfare? By displacing hostility, and its subsequent aggression, in war-
fare against the outgroup, the warrior role protected Sioux society from
the aggression of its own members (adaptive function). Had the original
hostility not been displaced and subsequently gratified in socially sanc-
tioned aggression, it might have sought undisguised and, therefore, so-
cially disruptive expression. It might have sought expression in other ways
as well. Indeed, Erikson interprets the sun dance, and its painful conse-
quences for its participants staring into the sun and tearing of skewers
from their flesh as the turning of aggression inward. It might be
suggested, then, that in the absence of war, even more aggression would
have been turned against the self. Hence, the performance of the warrior
role served a latent, unintended personal function, as well as its latent un-
intended social function.
112 Social Theory and Personality
But to return to the social functions of Sioux warfare: by deflecting
hostility from in- to out-group, the preponderance of positive over
negative sentiments concerning the members of the group was increased,
thereby promoting in-group solidarity (integrative function). Neither of
these unintended and unrecognized social functions would have been
served had the performance of the warrior role been motivated exclu-
sively by the motives of prestige and protection. Moreover, those anthro-
pologists who are unaware of, or uninterested in, the latent personal func-
tions of roles because unaware of, or uninterested in, unconscious
motives would remain ignorant of the important latent social functions
which are served by this role, and of the general functional significance of
Sioux warfare within the total social system.
The second example of the relationship between unconscious motives
and social functions not only illustrates the importance of unconscious
motivation in the functioning of social systems, but it also illustrates how a
society and its social system may be affected by the intrinsic motivation of
another cultural system religion. Most public religious rituals in the
Micronesian atoll of Ifaluk are either therapeutic or prophylactic in na-
ture; they are designed to maintain or restore health by exorcising
malevolent ghosts (who cause illness by possessing their victims), or by
preventing these ghosts from executing their intentions in the first place.
It is not within the province of social science to decide whether one of the
manifest, intended, functions of these rituals defeat of the ghosts is
served; the Ifaluk, of course, believe that it is. But these rituals serve
other manifest functions to which the behavioral scientist can testify. By
their performance the twin fears of illness and of attack by ghosts are re-
duced (manifest intended personal function), and by assembling and
acting in concert for the achievement of a common end, good fellowship
is strengthened (manifest unintended social function).
But the performance of these rituals requires another motive in ad-
dition to its therapeutic motive. These are aggressive rituals in which
malevolent ghosls -are attacked and, it is hoped, routed. It requires little
insight to infer that hostility, as well as fear, motivates the performance.
Indeed, the Ifaluk are quite consciously hostile toward the ghosts. But
though consciously hostile to ghosts, the Ifaluk, like all people, have oc-
casion to be hostile to their fellows, particularly to their close kinsmen.
By displacing hostility from fellows to ghosts, their hostility is acceptable,
and their subsequent aggressive motive can be gratified in a socially
sanctioned manner in the performance of these rituals (Spiro, 1953a).
A latent personal function (integrative) of these rituals, then, consists
in the opportunity which their performance affords for the satisfaction
of this aggressive need.
As in the Sioux example, however, the performance of these rituals
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 113
also serves a latent unintended social function, one which is vital for this
society. The Ifaluk social system, based on the strongly held values of
sharing, mutual aid, and kindliness, is highly cooperative. If the Ifaluk
were unable to express aggression symbolically in ritual, it is not im-
probable that their hostility would eventually seek direct expression. If
this were to happen, the probability of physical survival on an atoll, six-
tenths of a mile square, would be effectively reduced. By serving to de-
flect aggression onto malevolent ghosts, the performance of these rituals
effectively increases the chances for survival. Moreover, as in the case of
the Sioux, the belief in malevolent ghosts, which permits the displace-
ment of hostility from the in-group to the wicked out-group, assures the
persistence of the warm sentiments which the Ifaluk harbor towards each
other. Hence the psychological basis for their cooperative social system
probably the only kind of system which is viable in this demographic-
ecological balance is preserved. In short, by serving its latent personal
function, this ritual is also able to serve the latent social functions of pro-
moting the group's survival and of preserving the viability of its social
system (Spiro, 1952).
Diagrammatically, the relationship between the motives for the per-
formance of Ifaluk rituals, which attack and exorcise malevolent ghosts,
and their personal and social functions can be represented in the following
way:
(?) intended and recognized person
/ function (defeat of ghosts)
conscious need (manifest / intended and recognized person
(health) \ functions) > // function (emotional security)
//^unintended and recognized social
// function (solidarity)
performance of ritual \
\\Nk
\\ intended and unrecognized person
\ \ function (reduction of hostility)
\ unintended and unrecognized social
unconscious nee'd (latent \ function (deflection of aggression
(in-group functions )---> ^ from society)
aggression) unintended and unrecognized social
function (solidarity)
This discussion of unconscious motives, and of the latent social func-
tions served by social roles (and other types of cultural behavior) whose
performance is motivated by them, has been somewhat extended because,
with the exception of culture-and-personality research, they are ignored
in most analyses of social systems. Unconscious motives are frequently
dismissed by social scientists as irrelevant to an understanding of so-
ciety. "Oh," it is often said, "these unconscious motives may be im-
portant for personality, but we're interested in the study of society." This
114 Social Theory and Personality
analysis has attempted to demonstrate that anyone interested in society
should also be interested in unconscious motives. They are as important
for the student of society as for the student of personality, not only be-
cause they motivate the performance of social roles but because the latent
social functions which they enable these roles to serve are often more im-
portant than those which are served under conscious motivation. It
should be emphasized, however, that unconscious motives, however im-
portant, are not the only motives of behavior, that conscious motives are
not merely rationalizations. Though this may sometimes be the case, the
assumption that only unconscious motives are genuine is as fallacious as
the contrary assumption. If the conscious motives of Sioux warfare and
Ifaluk ritual are not sufficient explanations for their performance, neither
are the unconscious motives: both are necessary, both are genuine,
neither is sufficient. To assume that only unconscious motives are genuine
is to perpetuate that vulgar interpretation of psychoanalytic theory in
which schoolteaching, for example, is "nothing but" the sublimation of an
unconscious sexual motive, or surgery is "nothing but" the displacement
of unconscious aggression.
Theories of social systems that ignore unconscious motives are not only
truncated, but when social analyses which are based on such theories are
applied by administrators, they often lead to unfortunate results. If we
were to assume, for example, that Sioux warfare or Ifaluk religious rituals
are means merely for obtaining prestige or reducing anxiety concerning
illness respectively, and that by achieving these ends they also promote
social solidarity the typical social anthropological functionalist analysis
then it is a fair administrative conclusion that these "savage" and
"superstitious" practices can be abolished without harm to society as long
as the "civilized" practices with which they are replaced are their func-
tional equivalents, as long, that is, as the new practices are also means
for obtaining prestige, for reducing anxiety concerning illness, and for
promoting social solidarity. But despite these good intentions, the new
practices are not the functional equivalents of the old if they do not serve,
as well, the latent personal function of displacing unconscious hostility.
Unless this function is achieved, substitutes cannot serve the latent social
function of deflecting aggression from the in-group. Hence, this uncon-
scious motive may seek expression in numerous dysfunctional ways
dysfunctional both for individuals and society. It may be expressed di-
rectly, leading to crime, or indirectly, leading to drunkenness, etc.; it
may be inverted, leading to anxiety and depression ("race suicide") , and
so forth. By ignoring the importance of unconscious motivation in social
behavior, the attempt of well-intentioned administrators (acting upon
the findings of psychologically uninformed researchers) to substitute
"unobjectionable" for "objectionable" native practices has often been a
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 115
history of grave disappointments to the administrator and sordid results
for the natives.
It should be strongly emphasized that although personality needs are
satisfied in and therefore motivate the performance of social roles, a per-
son's personality cannot necessarily be inferred from a knowledge of the
roles he performs. In the first place, although this chapter is concerned
with the relationship between personality and the social system, it is ob-
vious that only part of the personality is relevant to and is expressed
through the social system. The relationship between personality and other
cultural systems (religion, art, science, etc.), as weU as those private as-
pects of personality that are not caught up in the sociocultural net
(Murphy, 1958, part 3), are deliberately ignored. In short, a descrip-
tion of a person's various social roles would not lead to an exhaustive
description of his personality.
More important, however, for our purposes, a knowledge of a per-
son's social roles would not even lead to an accurate prediction of those
aspects of his personality that are caught up in their performance. For,
as this section has attempted to show, since different goals may be ca-
thected by the same drive and since different roles may be instrumental
for the attainment of the same goal, "a high degree of role differenti-
ation," as Kaplan has put it, does not necessarily require "a similar de-
gree of differentiation at the personality level" (1957, p. 100). At the
same time, since the same goal may be cathected by different drives,
and since the same role may be instrumental for the attainment of dif-
ferent goals, a high degree of personality differentiation does not nec-
essarily requke a similar degree of differentiation at the social system
level. Thus, (1) different drives may be canalized by the same goal,
which is attained by the performance of the same role; (2) the same
drive may be canalized by different goals, which are attained by the per-
formance of different roles; and (3) different drives may be canalized by
the same goal which is attained by the performance of different roles.
These alternatives are shown in the following diagrams.
1. prestige drive
aggression drive
service drive
2. prestige drive
3. prestige drive
aggression drive -
service drive
soldier role-
->national defense goal
scientist role
->soldier role
-^knowledge goal
-^national defense goal
^politician role ^legislation goal
-^politician role-
-> soldier role-
^national defense goal
~>scientist role-
116 Social Theory and Personality
But if this is true within a society, it is equally true among societies.
Since there are fewer drives in man than there are goals in all his so-
cieties, and since there are fewer goals in all human societies than there
are roles in their social systems, it is reasonable to expect fewer modal
personality systems than social systems. On the other hand, since drives,
goals, and roles may vary independently of each other, it is possible for
different modal personality systems to be associated with similar social
systems, and for similar modal personality systems to be associated with
different social systems.
If this is so the student of social systems, who is interested in their
motivational well-springs, must at the same time be a student of person-
ality; and statements about the relationships between personality and so-
cial systems must be based on personality investigations, and not inferred
from a description of social systems (Inkeles and Levinson, 1954). Per-
sonality investigation may entail the use of psychological instruments,
such as projective tests (Hallowell, 1955), the analysis of dreams (Eg-
gan, 1952), the collection of life histories (Kluckhohn, 1945), and depth
interviewing. It may also be based, however, on the observation of be-
havior when viewed from the perspective of, and interpreted in terms of,
psychodynamic personality theory. For if the same set of activities can
serve both personal and social functions, the same set of activities may be
viewed from a personality perspective (as a means for serving personal
functions) or from a social system perspective (as a means for serving
social functions). If one's focus is on society and on those adaptive, ad-
justive, and integrative prerequisites of a viable social life, a given set of
activities is analyzed as a role within the social system. If, on the other
hand, one's focus is on an individual and on the adaptive, adjustive, and
integrative prerequisites of a viable individual life, the same set of activi-
ties is analyzed as a means for satisfying the needs of the personality sys-
tem. This last technique uses a powerful, but rare instrument a sensi-
tive observer.
INTERNALIZED CULTURAL MOTIVATION
Since intrinsic cultural motivation is based on the personal cathexis of
culturally stipulated goals, it obviously cannot serve as a technique of so-
cial control when these goals are not cathected. There are various con-
ditions which reduce the probability of goal cathexis. The following are
probably most important: (a) the goals of many taboos and prohibitions,
since they lead to frustration, may increase rather than reduce the in-
tensity of drives (Freud, 1930); (b) in societies undergoing rapid cul-
ture change, many new goals will not reduce extant drives (Hallowell,
1945); (c) a similar situation will obtain in the case of subordinate
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional A nalysis 111
groups, whose culture has largely been imposed by a dominant group;
(d) cathexis may be withdrawn from previously cathected goals because
of the realization that they cannot be achieved (Merton, 1938).
Even when goals are cathected it does not necessarily follow that the
culture patterns or roles that attain them will be performed. There are
other possibilities. Though the goal is desired, the role which is prescribed
for its attainment may be odious. Thus, though everyone may desire clean
public latrines, no one may desire to perform the role of latrine attend-
ant. Again, a non-sanctioned means for the attainment of a desired goal
may be perceived as more efficient or as less burdensome than the sanc-
tioned role. Similarly, the cultural goal may be scarce, so that not all who
strive for its attainment can be successful. Hence, competitive anxiety
may motivate the performance of proscribed, but more efficient, tech-
niques. Finally, the social structure, particularly in a stratified society,
may effectively preclude certain categories of persons from performing
the roles which attain the goals (Merton, 1938).
In all of these situations social conformity will be achieved only by
some technique of social control other than or in addition to intrinsic
cultural motivation. Extrinsic social control is one such technique; but it
is not the only one. For the importance of personality needs in the
motivation of social roles is not restricted to intrinsic cultural motivation.
The latter type of motivation is ultimately based on two kinds of person-
ality needs id and ego needs, in psychoanalytic vocabulary. But person-
ality has superego needs as well; and many roles may be performed
(though id and ego are not satisfied, and may even be frustrated) be-
cause their performance satisfies superego needs.
If roles are motivated by the expectation of satisfying superego needs,
social control is achieved by, what we may term, "internalized cultural
motivation." For cultural conformity in this instance is achieved, not
through external sanctions (extrinsic control), nor by intrinsic goals
(intrinsic control), but by internalized norms. To put it in terms we
have been employing, if extrinsic control is achieved (in the case of posi-
tive sanctions) by the cathexis of the social sanction, and if intrinsic con-
trol is achieved by the cathexis of the cultural goal, internalized control is
achieved by the cathexis of the cultural norm.
There has been a great deal of discussion concerning the internalization
of norms. Some writers, following Ruth Benedict (1946, pp. 222-227,
288-289), have suggested that norm-internalization is a phenomenon re-
stricted to certain types of societies and absent from others. Cultures
which give rise to norm-internalization are termed "guilt-cultures," for
cultural conformity is motivated by guilt. Those which do not produce
norm-internalization are termed "shame-cultures," for the members of
society conform to cultural norms only when their fellows are present to
118 Social Theory and Personality
shame them. Hence, in societies with shame cultures extrinsic control is
necessary to ensure cultural conformity assuming that the performance
of roles is not intrinsically motivated.
Although shame obviously operates as a control technique in any so-
ciety, the validity of this shame culture guilt culture dichotomy is open
to question (Piers and Singer, 1953). Since social systems are, to a great
extent, normative many of their constituent roles and goals are pre-
scribed by the cultural heritage it is improbable for the members of any
society not to have internalized these norms. If norms were not internal-
ized, parents would have none to transmit to their children because, ex
hypothesi, they would not have internalized any in the course of their
own socialization. Further, if no one has internalized the norms, who, in
societies with shame cultures, would do the shaming? The existence of
agents of shame implies that at least some members of society have in-
ternalized at least some norms.
In short, one may argue that although in any society there may hypo-
thetically be some individuals who have internalized very few norms
(the so-called psychopaths), and many individuals who have not inter-
nalized some of the norms, in all societies most individuals not only
(a) learn about their cultural norms, but they also (b) accept them,
(c) evaluate their own acts in accordance with them, and (d) experience
anxiety ("moral anxiety") should they desire to violate them. This
anxiety serves as an important deterrent to norm violation. Indeed, even
in societies whose cultures correspond most closely to the description of
the ideal shame culture, ". . . blame, ridicule, or holding up to shame
are controls only if they express commonly accepted values and corre-
spond to the promptings of the superego" (Nadel, 1953, p. 272).
How does this moral anxiety develop? And what does it represent? To
answer the second question first, this anxiety presumably represents the
largely unconscious expectation of punishment, as distinguished from the
rational, conscious fear of being punished. This distinction must be ex-
plained.
The individual who has internalized a norm, and not merely learned
about it, perceives his anticipated violation of it as a transgression and
hence as deserving of punishment. This perception induces anxiety (the
anticipation of punishment) . The mere intention of committing an act
which he himself labels as a "transgression," or of not performing an act
which he deems compulsory, leads him to expect that his behavior (which
in his eyes is deserving of punishment) will in some way be punished.
Where the individual believes that punishment is his due, "expectation of
punishment" is but another term for "moral anxiety."
On the other hand, the individual who has merely learned about the
norm, but has not internalized it, suffers no moral anxiety as a conse-
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 119
quence of his anticipated violation of it. Because he himself has not
internalized the norm, he does not (though others may) consider his
anticipated violation to be deserving of punishment, since he does not
consider his act to be "wrong." In short, he experiences no moral anxiety.
He may, of course, experience considerable anxiety about the punish-
ment which would be meted out to him were he caught. In moral anxiety,
however, it is not the fear that one might be punished if caught, but the
belief that one merits punishment that evokes anxiety.
Moral anxiety, therefore, has both drive and cue properties. It informs
the individual that his anticipated behavior is wrong (worthy of punish-
ment) , and that its performance will lead to punishment; and it motivates
him to reduce the anxiety by refraining from transgression. Hence, the
anxiety serves as a motive for conformity.
Since moral anxiety is not innate, how is it acquired? So far as our
present knowledge permits, we may suggest that it arises out of certain
universal features of human socialization systems. In all societies, agents
of socialization are not only trainers, but they are also nurturers, satis-
fying the child's most important need the need for love. To the extent
that these agents employ rewards and punishments as part of their train-
ing methods, and to the extent that such rewards and punishments are,
for the child, symbolic of their love, the child is motivated to comply with
the demands of these "significant others" (Mead, 1934) in order to ob-
tain their love or, conversely, to preclude its withdrawal. Through their
ability to give and withhold love, the child not only learns what the agents
of socialization judge to be good and bad behavior, but he also learns to
concur in their judgment; in short, he models his behavior in accordance
with their norms. He learns to accept their judgment as his own because
behavior which these significant others judge to be bad is indeed "bad"
for him it leads to the withdrawal of love (punishment) by those whose
love he so strongly desires. Since he agrees that certain acts are "bad,"
and therefore deserving of punishment, his mere intention to transgress
leads to the anticipation of punishment (moral anxiety). He has de-
veloped a superego, or a conscience.
But having questioned the validity of one distinction that between
shame and guilt cultures it is necessary to introduce another. The super-
ego has been implicitly defined operationally as the configuration of those
expectations of punishment, experienced as anxiety (either conscious or
unconscious) that are evoked by the anticipated violation of an inter-
nalized cultural norm. But we have not yet specified the agent of punish-
ment, the "significant other" from whom punishment (withdrawal of
love) was originally expected. Two types of superego, based on the agent
of anticipated punishment, can be distinguished. This agent may be out-
side the individual or "within" him. It is our hypothesis that societies in
120 Social Theory and Personality
which the child is trained by only a few agents of socialization, who
themselves administer punishments, produce individuals who not only
internalize the norms of the socializing agent but who "introject" the
agent as well. This introjected figure, then, is the significant other for such
individuals and it is withdrawal of its "love" that constitutes the an-
ticipated punishment. Since this punishment, when it comes and it
comes after the transgression is committed is experienced as guilt
("pangs of conscience"), this type of superego may be termed "guilt-
oriented."
Other societies, we believe, in which the child is trained by a number
of socializing agents, or in which the trainers discipline the child by
claiming that other agents will punish him, do not produce individuals
with "guilt oriented" superegos. For, though these individuals internalize
the norms of the socializing agents, they do not introject the agents
themselves. Since the significant others continue to remain external, it is
withdrawal of the love of others that constitutes the anticipated punish-
ment. Because this punishment, when it comes, is experienced as shame,
this type of superego may be termed "shame-oriented." Of course, these
two types of superego represent the polar extremes, conceived as ideal
types, of a superego continuum. Most superegos would represent ad-
mixtures of the two, weighted toward one or the other end of the con-
tinuum.
A shame- no less than a guilt-oriented superego constitutes a con-
science. By producing anxiety concerning anticipated punishment, both
types inform the individual that his anticipated behavior is wrong, and
both motivate him to refrain from transgressing a norm, whether others
are present or not. Nevertheless, they function differently after a trans-
gression has occurred. A person with a guilt-oriented superego suffers
guilt when he transgresses, even if no one perceives his transgression, be-
cause the agent of punishment (the introjected figure) is always with
him. However, a person with a shame-oriented superego does not suffer
shame when he transgresses unless others witness his transgression, for
no agent of punishment (the external others) is present. Instead of ex-
periencing actual punishment (shame) , he continues to anticipate punish-
ment; he suffers from anxiety. 8 This anxiety may be so painful that it
may lead some persons who live in societies with so-called shame-cultures
to commit suicide. Incidentally, this fact is sufficient to cast doubt on the
validity of the shame-culture guilt-culture dichotomy. The Japanese,
who allegedly have a shame-culture, may be driven to suicide when they
perceive themselves to have lost face, even in the absence of any other
perceiver. In the terms we have been employing, the Japanese would be
said to have shame-oriented superegos; they experience anxiety when
they anticipate performing a forbidden act or not performing a prescribed
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 121
act. After committing the transgression, they continue to anticipate pun-
ishment, anxiety mounts, and suicide represents the last desperate at-
tempt to remove the anxiety.
To conclude, then, regardless of the type of superego that is pre-
ponderant in the personalities of the members of any society, cultural
conformity is frequently achieved by means of internalized cultural moti-
vation. Though the goal attained by the performance of a role may not
be cathected, and though a means other than the prescribed role may be
preferred, the role may nevertheless be performed (and its social func-
tions thereby served) without the necessity for extrinsic control. If the
members of society have cathected and internalized their cultural norms,
conformity with these norms serves to reduce the drive of moral anxiety.
In short, in internalized, as well as in intrinsic, cultural motivation the
members of society have acquired "the kind of character which makes
them want to act in the way they have to act . . ."
CONCLUSIONS
In the past, when the behavioral sciences were still reacting against
instinctivist theories of social behavior, the relationship between social
system and personality was viewed as primarily asymmetrical. Person-
ality was viewed as a relatively passive agent affected by, but not af-
fecting, the social system. Paris (1937, ch. 3), for example, refers to
personality as the "subjective aspect of culture." Recent work in culture-
and-personality, however, has tended to conceive of the social system
personality relationship as more nearly symmetrical. These studies have
suggested that although personality is, indeed, affected by the social sys-
tem, the social system, in turn, is affected by personality.
This changing conception of the relationship between personality and
social system has had its influence on the study and analysis of social
systems by culture-and-personality theorists. Instead of merely asking
how the social system influences the development and structuring of
personality, we are now equally interested in how personality affects the
functioning of social systems. And, in general, it seems to be agreed that
there is feed-back between social system and personality such that the
social system creates those personality needs which, in turn, are satisfied
by and motivate the operation of the social system (Kardiner, 1939).
Since society has but one social system, while the component members
of society have different personalities, this feed-back is effected be-
cause the component roles of the social system can satisfy different needs,
and its socialization system produces common needs, or a modal per-
sonality (DuBois, 1944).
This chapter has been exclusively concerned with the impact of per-
1 22 Social Theory and Personality
sonality on the social system, and specifically on the importance of
personality for the motivation of role performance. Since the social sys-
tem can serve its functions for society only if its component roles are
performed, every society is confronted with the problem of social
control the problem of getting people to behave in conformity with
cultural norms, By supplying the psychological basis for cultural moti-
vation, personality is a vital instrument in society's attempt to achieve
social control. It serves as such an instrument in three ways.
In the first place, although society provides sanctions as a means for
achieving social control, these sanctions are effective only if the members
of society have drives which can be reduced by the attainment of these
goals. If this is the case these sanctions are cathected, and thereby be-
come personality needs which motivate role performance, Second, if the
cultural norms, which prescribe the performance of the role, are in-
ternalized by the members of society, non-conformity induces anxiety.
Since this anxiety can be reduced by the performance of the role, con-
formity with these norms becomes a need which motivates role per-
formance. Finally, the prescribed goals which are attained by role per-
formance are, themselves, cathected and, hence, serve as personality
needs to motivate the performance of roles.
These three types of control have been termed, extrinsic, internalized,
and intrinsic, respectively. We may summarize their differences and
similarities, as follows: (a) In extrinsic control which is based on positive
social sanctions, and (b) in intrinsic control which is based on manifest
personal functions, the performance of roles is motivated by the desire to
obtain a rewarding goal either the cathected social sanction or the ca-
thected goal of the role, (c) In extrinsic control which is based on nega-
tive social sanctions, (d) in internalized control, and (e) in intrinsic
control which is based on latent personal functions, the performance of
roles is motivated by the desire to avoid pain in the forms of physical or
social punishment, moral anxiety, or unrelieved needs, respectively.
NOTES
1. The concept, "cultural conformity," is here taken to mean, behavior
which is in conformity with cultural norms. Hence, "cultural conformity,"
as used in this chapter, is to be distinguished from "social conformity," which
refers to behavior which is in conformity with the behavior of others. In a
fully integrated and relatively unchanging society it would be difficult to
distinguish between these two types of conformity: the behavior of others
would be more or less identical with the requirements of the cultural heritage.
In a somewhat less integrated and rapidly changing society (such as our
own) the distinction between these two types of conformity is clearer; Ries-
man's (1950) other-directed individuals, for example, represent social con-
formity rather than (or more than) cultural conformity. In either case,
though it might be difficult to distinguish between these types of conformity
SPIRO: Social Systems, Personality, Functional Analysis 123
in overt behavioral terms, it is not at all difficult to distinguish between them
in motivational terms. Social conformity is motivated by the desire to con-
form to the behavior of others; cultural conformity, by the desire to conform
to cultural norms. Cultural conformity, as we shall attempt to show, is a
requisite for the functioning of human social systems, whereas social con-
formity is not.
2. This discussion is based primarily on psychoanalytic (Rapaport, 1951)
and behavior theory (Miller and Dollard, 1941; Tolman, 1951). Despite the
differences among contemporary psychological theorists, almost all agree
that reward different terms are used to refer to the same concept is a
crucial motivational variable (Nebraska Symposia on Motivation, 1953,
V. 1, ff.). They differ primarily in their analysis of its referents and its prop-
erties. It is with respect to performance, not to learning, that the notion of
reward is here held to be crucial.
3. "Sanctioned" goals are goals which are culturally approved; "pre-
scribed" goals are goals which are culturally mandatory. Thus, though all
prescribed goals are sanctioned, not all sanctioned goals are prescribed. The
goal of achieving the status of physician, for example, is a sanctioned, not a
prescribed, goal in our culture. That is, we approve of those who aspire to
achieve the goal, but we do not expect everyone to aspire to It. On the other
hand the goal of curing patients is not only a sanctioned, but a prescribed
goal for physicians. From now on the expression, "culturally stipulated"
will be used to embrace both "sanctioned" and "prescribed."
4. The motivation for the performance of social roles is termed "cultural
motivation" because these roles are culturally sanctioned and prescribed.
5. This notion of "need" is almost identical with the notion of "need-
disposition" in Parsons' action theory (Parsons and Shils, 1951, pp. 114-
120). There are other points of convergence, as well, between the limited
formulations of this chapter and those of Parsons (Parsons and Shils, 1951,
parts 1 and 2; Parsons, 1951, chs. 1-3, 6-7). The serious student of the
relationship between social system and personality is urged to read these two
important volumes.
6. For a preliminary typology of functionalism, see Spiro, 1953. For a
detailed analysis of functionalism as "functional consequence," see Merton,
1949. For illuminating discussions of functionalism, based on Merton's
analysis, seeNagel, 1957, ch. 10, and Hempel, 1959. For a general review of
recent functionalist theory and research, see Firth, 1955.
7. Merton (1949), whose now-classic analysis of functionalism remains
the incisive treatment of this subject, and who first introduced the terms
"manifest" and "latent" into functional analysis, ignored a potentially power-
ful mode of analysis by merging "intention" and "recognition." As he defines
them, manifest functions are those which are both intended and recognized,
while latent functions are those which are neither intended nor recognized.
Since manifest functions as we have seen may be unintended, and since
latent functions as we shall see may be intended, intention and recogni-
tion may vary independently.
8. For an empirical demonstration of this process, see Spiro, 1958, ch. 15,
from which part of this discussion, with permission of the publisher, is taken.
124 Social Theory and Personality
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About the Chapter
Dr. Wallace's chapter considers the psychological characteristics upon
which the unity of human social groups is based. He asks what makes com-
munication and orderly behavior possible and advances a theory which, in its
emphasis on common cognitive processes, has important implications for
personality study and for a theory of cross-cultural communication. He ac-
cepts the existence of a high degree of motivational diversity even within the
same groups and explains group unity in terms of the possibilities of organi-
zation and coordination inherent in human nature.
About the Author
ANTHONY F. C. WALLACE is currently Director of Clinical Research at the
Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, and Visiting Research Associate
Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.
In 1956-1957, he was a member of the Committee on Disaster Studies of
the National Research Council. His major fields of interest are culture and
personality, culture and religion and ethnohistory of the northeastern In-
dians. He is author of King of the Delaware: Teedyuscung, 1700-1763; Tor-
nado in Worcester; and numerous contributions covering a wide area from
visionary experience to mathematical logic.
A cknowledgments
This chapter is based in part on research conducted under Grants M-883
and M-1106 from the National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Public
Health Service, and Grant 1769 (Penrose Fund) from the American Philo-
sophical Society. Personal acknowledgment is due to the author's colleagues,
John Atkins, James Casby, and Dr. Nathan Fine, who gave valuable assist-
ance in the development of the logical and mathematical schemata; to Dr.
Harold A. Rashkis, for insightful discussion of organizational functions in
cognitive processes; and to the author's assistants, Mrs. Josephine H. Dixon
and Mrs. Arlene Fonaroff, who read and abstracted certain source materials
and typed the manuscript.
3
The Psychic Unity of Human Groups
ANTHONY F. C. WALLACE
Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute
and
University of Pennsylvania
t must people have in common, psychologically, in order to live
together in culturally organized social groups?
On the answer to this question will depend, in part, our expectations,
not only for communicating more adequately with our own close kin
and neighbors, but also for a reasonably orderly and humane world
society. For the kind of psychological nature that is necessary and suf-
ficient to a cultural way of life may set limits, broad or narrow, on the
kind of life that culture can provide. The question is, of course, not cer-
tainly answerable. (To know that a question is completely answer-
able would make it trivial to ask.) A number of generations of poets,
philosophers, politicians, religious reformers, and, finally, humane scien-
tists have searched for the answer with but indifferent results.
We scientists have come latest upon the scene; our tools are sharp and
our hopes are bright, but we are sometimes a little provincial in the ways
in which we formulate problems. The scientist starts with the knowl-
edge that everywhere men satisfy their needs in culturally organized
social groups. He tends to work back from this datum to propositions
129
130 Social Theory and Personality
about what these needs are, and what the motives are that give these
needs cognitive form. Then he may assume, rather blithely, that if on
some level of abstraction the needs are the same and the culture is the
same, then the motives must be the same. The enthusiastic religious
leader and the fanatical political reformer think along the same lines:
they take the group as given, and declaim that its continued existence re-
quires the sharing of motives.
The humanist the poet, the novelist, the dramatist, the historian
has tended to approach the question with a sense of tragedy (or
humor) at the paradox, so apparent to him, that despite the continuing
existence of the culture and the group, the individual is always partly
alone in his motivation, moving in a charmed circle of feelings and per-
ceptions which he cannot completely share with any other human being.
This awareness of the limits of human communication, of the impossi-
bility, despite all the labor of God, Freud, and the Devil, of one man fully
understanding another, of the loneliness of existence, is not confined to
any cult of writers; it is a pan-human theme. Shylock can declare:
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimen-
sions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same
weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed
and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick
Us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do
we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
But in the play at last, his common humanity avails Shylock nothing; his
motives the form in which his common humanity expresses itself are
portrayed (for Christians) -as being so incomprehensibly perverse in
greed and bitterness as to justify his being stripped of his daughter, his
wealth, and even his religion. And yet, it is not his punishment but the
gulf in understanding between Shylock and his persecutors, and the im-
possibility of a mutual knowledge, which excite sympathy. This theme of
motivational loneliness, it need hardly be added, has been found to be
as poignantly relevant to the relations of mothers and daughters, fa-
thers and sons, husbands and wives, within the group, as to dealings
among strangers.
From the standpoint of the humanist and, for that matter, of any in-
dividual in solitude, the narrow scientists' ponderous deductions of
panels of common human drives, instincts, emotions, needs, tensions,
affects, and whatnot, appear to be merely a sterile cataloguing of the
obvious. To be sure, all men Jews and Christians, males and. females,
young and old experience substantially the same feelings. But this
merely recognizes the mammalian nature of man. To say that human
culture depends on love, lust, fear, and hate would be no more significant
than to say that it depends on hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys. But when
WALLACE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 131
the scientist claims that all men, or at least all members of the same
culturally organized group, must share a common panel of interests and
motives (ideal states-of-affairs to which strong affects are attached),
the humanist can only raise his eyebrows and smile a wry smile at the
naivety of scientism.
Thus, for the humanistic scientist, the intriguing aspect of the problem
of the psychic unities must rest precisely in the paradox that cultures do
exist, and societies do survive, despite the diversity of the interests and
motivations of their members, the practical impossibility of complete
interpersonal understanding and communication, and the unavoidable
residuum of loneliness that dwells in every man. The technique for the
unraveling of the paradox would seem to lie in abandoning the assump-
tion that motivational unity is necessary for social coordination. Instead,
those rational functions must be defined which make it possible for per-
sons of diverse motivations to perform the cognitive tasks necessary to
the maintenance and expansion of culture. Only when this is done, shall
we be in a position to investigate the manner in which individuals
organize their own motivations, and their perceptions of the motivations
of others and of others' perceptions of them, in such a fashion as to maxi-
mize both the meaningfulness of individual experience and the organi-
zation of the social group.
This chapter will present some considerations for a general theory
relating the cognitive processes of individuals to the cultural organization
of groups. For the purpose of anthropological analysis of culture-and-
cognition relationships, the most convenient psychological model is one
in which the individual organism is conceived to maintain an extensive
set of learned meanings. A mazeway the organized totality of
learned meanings maintained by an individual organism at a given time
is the cognitive map of the individual's private world regularly evoked
by perceived or remembered stimuli. Mazeway includes motivation but
also includes much cognitive content that is not motivationally weighted.
Meaning, degree of meaningfulness, and quantity of organization will be
defined in this chapter by formal schemata based respectively on a logico-
mathematical development of componential analysis, and on the mathe-
matical theory of information. These schemata are intended to replace
extended and ambiguous essays on the meaning of words like "meaning"
and "organization." The full "meaning" of a stimulus includes the en-
tire train of associated semantic matrices (which are parts of the maze-
way) evoked by that stimulus, including the cognitive representation of
discriminable features of the stimulus and of related motivations, pos-
sible responses, and chosen response. Such "meaning" may be
conscious but is not necessarily so, either in whole or in part. Societies of
organisms will be, to a greater or lesser degree, culturally organized if
132 Social Theory and Personality
the organisms are sufficiently proximate and sufficiently capable of learn-
ing so that their mazeways will contain either identical or merely equiva-
lent 1 meanings for standard stimuli. Culture, personality, modal per-
sonality structure, and national character are treated as abstractions from
mazeway. It is suggested that a tendency toward maximizing the quan-
tity of meaning, and organization of meaning, in cognitive structure is
exhibited in organic behavior. 2
CULTURAL NATURE: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL
PREREQUISITES OF CULTURE
The anthropologist can, from his knowledge of culturally organized
systems of behavior, contribute possibly unique insights into psycho-
logical function by writing certain functional specifications for a human
brain based on a knowledge of the tasks which a cultural mode of
existence requires that brain to perform. From this standpoint let us dis-
cuss the general concept of "cultural nature:" those psychological prop-
erties, determined by physical constitution, but not necessarily specific
to a human or even hominid constitution, which seem to be necessary
and sufficient conditions for a society to be culturally organized. By
"psychological properties" I mean properties (including learned proper-
ties) of the behavior of the central nervous system, such as cognitive
processes or content, knowledge of which will enable the observer to
predict the individual organism's response to specified internally or
externally originated stimuli. By culture I mean those sets of equivalent
or identical learned meanings by which the members of a society do in
fact define stimuli. Culture, in this usage, thus is not behavior nor prod-
ucts of behavior but inferences from observation of stimulus and re-
sponse sequences concerning cognitive content (mazeway) maintained
by one or more of a group of interdependent organisms. A culturally
organized society is accordingly one whose organization (or "inte-
gration," to use Schneirla's term) depends heavily upon the patterned
relationship of the meanings of stimuli learned by members of the so-
ciety.
Not all societies are culturally organized. Some species do not main-
tain any recognizable cultural organizations at all; "society," in fact, does
not require "culture." But culture is not therefore species-bound and con-
fined to man. A culturally organized society may be participated in by
any organism which learns a set of meanings sufficiently extensive for his
participation to be rewarding both to himself and to his associates. A
non-culturally organized society requires only "instinctive" appropriate-
ness of behavior. By implication, then, culturally-organized societies are
no more apt to be species-limited than societies (such as those of non-
WALLA CE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 133
mammalian vertebrates, invertebrates and plants) whose integration is
more largely dependent on genetically acquired "instincts" or "tropisms."
The suggestion of the irrelevance of culture to species per se has
several justifications. Let us consider the fact that a number of non-
human species do participate in human society. The extent of their
participation is, of course, so limited and specialized that human beings
do not concede them "membership in human society" nor, convention-
ally, a capacity for culture. This official refusal to allow the participation
of other species in human society to be dignified by the extension to them
of the terms "human" and "culture" is, however, conventionally dis-
regarded in such contexts as the relation between a pet, such as a cat,
and its owner, or between a work-animal, such as a horse, and its master.
Also, many groups of non-human creatures possess what seem to be rudi-
mentary cultures. For instance, birds, cats, dogs, apes, and monkeys
learn and transmit over generations local social arrangements (cf.
Hallowell, 1956). Efforts to state the essence of the difference between
man and animal by invoking "culture" have not been convincing; Hallo-
well has even proposed a term, "proto-culture," to denote the cultures of
pze-sapiens hominids. I would suggest that the term "proto-culture" be
extended, in order to liberate the concept from an anatomically based
taxonomy, to include any species in which the structure of social groups
depends upon inter-generational learning. All of this emphasizes the
proposition that the identification of "cultural nature" with "human
nature" is not desirable and that "human nature" should be considered
as just one kind of "cultural nature."
As an entree to the problem of defining the psychological properties
prerequisite to and sufficient for participation in a culturally organized
society, let us examine a fictitious species which commonly goes under
the label of "intelligent life on other planets" and which, both in science
fiction and in sober speculation (Mead et al, 1958), is regarded as emi-
nently capable of sharing in a super-culture with Homo sapiens. What
psychological properties must this species possess in order that we hu-
mans consider it to be "intelligent" and capable of participation in some
sort of culturally organized meta-society with ourselves?
Let us suppose that human space explorers briefly visit a planet
which is inhabited by a variety of living things. Some specimens are col-
lected. Anatomically they are bizarre to human eyes; even their bio-
chemistry is grossly alien. Nevertheless, they are observed to ingest and
to excrete matter, and in vitro studies indicate that their tissues conduct
metabolic processes. Anatomical examination reveals the existence of
tissues which suggest a central nervous system including receptors, a
"brain," and effectors, and of tissues which resemble a muscular struc-
ture. If, on psychological examination, it is found that these creatures
134 Social Theory and Personality
can learn, we may Infer their ability to perform several psychological
functions: (1) perception; (2) memory (including fantasy, here con-
ceived as reorganized memory data); (3) discrimination between per-
ceptual and remembered stimuli; (4) continuous selective attention to
sets of perceptual and/or remembered stimuli; (5) discrimination
among sets of perceptual and/or remembered stimuli with respect to
their "meaning" (including their value on some affective dimension);
(6) a capacity for matching meanings of perceptual and/or remem-
bered stimuli to overt responses. If the creatures can perform these func-
tions sufficiently well to learn tasks of the complexity mastered by do-
mestic animals, or by animals with proto-culture, we may say by rule
of thumb that they are capable of participating with human beings in a
meta-culture,
Because no particular set of instincts is necessary to cultural nature,
we have not alluded to particular "instincts" (or "drives," "needs," "or-
ganic demands," etc.) although particular instincts have often been re-
garded as essential aspects of human nature (see,Goldenweiser, 1933;
Murdock, 1945; Bartlett, 1923). Even casual reflection will reveal that
"the human instincts" are certainly not shared by all organisms which
participate in '"human" culture. Let us take the "instincts proper" at-
tributed to man in a recent work based on comparative ethology
(Fletcher, 1957). They are: breathing, eating and drinking, tempera-
ture control, sleep, rest, care for comfort of body surfaces, fear, excre-
tion, play, curiosity, hunting, eroticism, sexual fighting and jealousy,
parental activity, home-maintenance. None are peculiar to man; they
are generalized mammalian behavior categories, and are consequently
no more determinate of human culture than the backbone or the ma-
ternal placenta. While any human society may depend on most of its
individual members possessing all of these instincts (assuming, for the
sake of argument, that the behaviors are indeed all instinctive), an indi-
vidual organism can not only survive but make valued social contribu-
tions in the context of a cultural organization without experiencing a
number of them. Victims of disease and injury, persons with congenital
anomalies of bodily structure or chemistry, persons with sex or age-spe-
cific limitations of instinctual motives, and various animals with muti-
lated genital and other organs can and do participate effectively in human
culture. One cannot, then, say that any particular set of instinc-
tively governed behaviors, any more than a special type of anatomy, is
necessary to culture per se, even though it may be an empirical fact that
all, or most, of the members of some particular society do share certain
anatomical features and certain instincts (which then, as anthropology
and other disciplines commonly observe, are modulated and satisfied
by culturally restricted patterns of behavior) . Culture is rarely defined
WALLA CE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 135
with respect to instinct, although it is very often defined with respect
to learning (Wissler, 1923; Murdock, 1945; Kroeber and Kluckhohn,
1952).
The "degree" to which organisms must be able to perform the func-
tions listed above before a culture of human proportions emerges, in-
cluding an extensive body of tools and an elaborate language, is a diffi-
cult question to answer in the present state of knowledge. Ultimately,
we shall be able to state this parameter in terms of the complexity of
the cognitive tasks which an organism can learn and reliably perform.
Some initial insight may be gained from considering the phenomenology
of psychosis among human beings. The participation of a psychotic in-
dividual in his culture is defective. We may define a psychotic person
as one who so frequently commits culturally defective acts as to lead
his fellows or himself to limit his participation in culturally organized so-
ciety. An act may be defined as socially psychotic whenever, but only
when, three conditions are satisfied: (1) the response of the actor is not
included in the range of responses culturally defined as appropriate to
the stimulus; (2) the situation to which the act is a response has been
given a meaning by the actor which does not include culturally essential
criteria because the actor is unable to entertain a meaning sufficiently
complex; and (3) the actor has in the past regularly given "correct"
cultural meanings and responses. Both the cultural meaning of, and the
cultural response to, the situation, may be relatively simple in com-
parison with the richness of the individually experienced meaning of
the individually expressed normal response; the non-psychotic indi-
vidual meaning and response are thus sub-types of the cultural mean-
ing and cultural response. The psychotic meaning and response are too
limited to be sub-types at all. This definition excludes the mentally
deficient who has never learned the correct cultural meaning or re-
sponse; the newly arrived alien whose meanings and responses, despite
apparent inappropriateness, are complex and appropriate to his own
culture; the criminal, who is sharply aware of the cultural meaning but
deliberately makes an unsanctioned response in order to obtain private
advantage; and the neurotic, whose meaning is included in the cultural
meaning of the situation but whose response either is not included in the
appropriate cultural response, or who responds culturally but experi-
ences severe, anxiety and discomfort.
With respect to the six functions mentioned above, it is likely that seri-
ous chronic interference with the performance of any one function
amounts to a mental disorder. For human beings, it would appear super-
ficially that the most vulnerable of the functions are the perception-vs.-
memory discrimination function and the capacity for construing seman-
tic relationships. When the former function fails, the organism may be
136 Social Theory and Personality
lescribed as "hallucinating." In regard to the second function, psychia-
.rists and psychologists have for years explained certain deficiencies of
anguage and thought in schizophrenia as being the result of a relative in-
ibility of the schizophrenic to perform complex operations with abstrac-
ions or "concepts." Von Domarus (1954) and his disciple Arieti (1955,
1956) have gone so far as to postulate a "paleologic," supposedly com-
non to schizophrenics, children, and primitive people, which differs in
quality from the classical Aristotelian logic in that "identity" in paleologic
is given by the identity of the predicates rather than of the subjects (or
arguments). In the "correct" form, if the argument is that x is a p,
and that y is also a p, one cannot say that x is identical with y. In
Von Domarus' paleologic, however, one can say that x is identical with
y if x is a p and y is a p. The force of Von Domarus' distinction depends
entirely upon the analyst's ability to consider that there is at least one
other predicate q such that x is a q and y is not a q. In this event, of
course, x is not identical to y. But, if in fact the only statements that
san be made about x and y are p(x) and p(y) (if no statement, in
other words, is possible about spatial and temporal separation, or any
other conceivably distinguishing feature), then x does indeed have to
be regarded as being identical with y, since no distinguishing predicate
can be introduced. Thus the "paleologic" of Von Domarus would ap-
pear to be the same old formal logic, operating, in psychotic thinking,
with a drastically limited range of predicates. The attribution of
paleologic to children and primitives appears to be even less justified
than its attribution to schizophrenics.
The principle of limited predicates leads to an interesting specula-
tion, however. The number of predicates which can enter effectively
into a consideration of x and y during a given period of time may be a
function of either the temporal span or the complexity span of attention.
Anything which restricts the span of attention must restrict the individ-
ual's ability to perform continuous semantic or other logical operations
involving a large number of predicates. Evidently, in order for an in-
dividual to participate satisfactorily in a culturally sanctioned transac-
tion, he must be able to attend, during the duration of the transaction,
to the entire relevant repertoire of cultural meanings and cultural re-
sponses: i.e., he must be able to maintain cognitive representations of
a number of predicates simultaneously and continuously (whether
consciously or not) . If, for example, the individual is discussing a serious
pending business transaction with his partner, and the discussion re-
quires several hours, he must have under attention during the whole of
that time (with only fleeting lapses) the cultural meaning of the whole
situation and the boundaries of culturally permissible responses. Other-
wise his behavior will appear bizarre, "crazy," to his partner. In humans,
WALLACE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 137
it seem to be particularly scope and continuity of attention, rather
than memory, sensory perception, logical form, or affective sensitivity,
which fail in varying degrees in psychosis. (Hallucination is a poor in-
dex of psychosis: not all psychotics hallucinate, and many non-psy-
chotics do so under a variety of conditions.) In extreme cases, attention
span is apparently so brief that sensation becomes virtually divorced
from meaning; the victim is unable to assign meaning to experience
beyond distinguishing between small and large objects, and is unable to
make more complex responses than an almost automatic placing of
small objects in the mouth (Arieti, 1955). Full participation in a cul-
turally organized society of human proportions becomes impossible
long before this level of de-semantication is reached, however.
In summary, then, I have suggested that "cultural nature" has noth-
ing in particular to do with anatomy, instincts, motivations, or even a
uniquely human set of cognitive capacities. Culture as such is not
a species-associated phenomenon, and all organisms capable of cul-
ture can participate in some common meta-culture. Capacity for learn-
ing is capacity for culture. And the degree of learned capacity depends
upon the fineness of sensory perception and the flexibility of motor exe-
cution, the amplitude and reliability of memory, the scope and the sta-
bility of attention, and the semi-automatic processing of sensory inputs
by a semantic process which gives meaning to experience and
matches that meaning to response. A group of social organisms possess-
ing this basic mechanism will produce a culture whatever their species.
This view stands in sharp opposition to theories which make the shar-
ing of interests and motivations a central requirement for common cul-
tural participation. In our conception, while motivational content may,
as a matter of fact, be more or less fully shared, this sharing is neither a
necessary nor a sufficient condition for the existence of a cultural or-
ganization. The extent of sharing of motivational content, and the ex-
tent to which specific acts are dependent upon specific motivations,
thus becomes a matter for empirical investigation rather than an article
of faith. The attitudes of individuals and groups toward motivational
unity also provide an interesting subject for study. In some groups,
particularly those involved in new religious and political movements
in fact, in revitalization movements in general there probably will be
a strong insistence on the virtue, even the necessity, of motivational
unity. In other groups, particularly in old, stable, and sophisticated in-
stitutions this does not necessarily imply high technological develop-
ment motivational unity will be less important than reliability of per-
formance, however motivated, of those minimal tasks necessary to
cultural and group continuity. Whatever else the individual does with his
spare time, for whatever reasons, is his own business, and is justifiable
138 Social Theory and Personality
by its cathartic or recreative value, and its potentiality for useful in-
novation. A useful index of the cultural sophistication of a person
might be a function of the number of different motivations conceivable
to him as co-existing in some single social system or institution.
CULTURE AND MAZEWAY
When in the 1930's anthropologists first began seriously to investi-
gate the relationship between cultural and personality processes, they
encountered a curious semantic dilemma. The concept personality re-
ferred to psychological structures which were motivational i.e., they
were both affective and cognitive. But the term was in itself ambigu-
ous about the relationship between affect and cognition. In fact, a prob-
lem of basic research in personality has been to define the rules govern-
ing that relationship. Personality, furthermore, was an individual concept,
Culture, on the other hand, insofar as it referred to psychological
structures, was primarily a cognitive and not an affective or motiva-
tional concept. It described sequences of action, criteria of choice, pat-
terns of coordination, and so forth, which had cognitive status for the
members of a group whose affective status was a "personality" ques-
tion. Furthermore, culture was a group concept. In sum, personality was
an affective-cognitive and individual concept; culture was a cognitive
and group concept. Relationships between culture and personality were
therefore awkward to discuss: the two concepts, like the gingerbread
dog and the calico cat in the children's jingle who ate one another up,
were mutually incorporating on different dimensions.
The anthropologist responded intuitively to this dilemma. First, he be-
lieved that affective processes were dynamically related to the cogni-
tive tasks he described under the rubric culture. Second, one or both of
the concepts had to be redefined if the semantic tangle was to be elimi-
nated. Sometimes he redefined the concept of culture so that it, too, in
one of its senses, was a motivational (affective-cognitive) and an indi-
vidual concept. And sometimes he redefined both culture and personal-
ity so that, in one sense of each, both were affective-cognitive and
group, and in another sense of each, both were affective-cognitive and
individual. Both redefinitions were rationalized by the argument that
culture and personality were "really" the same in substance, that
there was no ontological difference between them, that they formed,
not a dichotomy, but a tautological equivalence (Spiro, 1951).
The desirability of these tautological redefinitions is open to grave
doubt, however, despite their convenience in theoretical discussion.
Operationally, culture and personality have been and stiE are two dis-
tinct bodies of phenomena; their description depends on different ob-
WALLACE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 139
servations, and must in fact do so unless studies of their inter-relation-
ships are to be entirely circular, via the "cultural-deductive" method
whereby personality is merely a re-description of culture and vice
versa (Wallace, 1952). Furthermore, cultural and personality data are
relatable only by means of correlations and associations far smaller
than unity. They display no one-to-one correspondence such that,
given a cultural description, one can infallibly predict what the per-
sonality data will show. In other words, except in the use of the cul-
tural-deductive method, cultural and personality data are not only not
tautologically equivalent, they are not even materially equivalent.
A second solution of the semantic dilemma, which avoids the risks
inherent in manufacturing new tautologies out of old concepts, is to
introduce a new concept. In several publications (Wallace, 1956a,
1956b, 1957) I have suggested that the conceptual armamentarium of
the anthropologist requires such a new concept. It should be some-
what different from, but related to, the concept of personality, in order
to deal adequately with those cognitions of individuals the abstrac-
tions of which are culture. The meaningfully organized totality of
learned cognitive representations of people, things, processes, and values
held at a given time by an individual I have termed "mazeway." This
totality includes precisely the kind of category which the anthropologist
employs when he is dealing with the organized totality of statuses, arti-
facts, customs, laws, language, moral values, and so forth which he at-
tributes to a society as its "culture" (see Sapir, 1949, p. 515). Thus,
the description of how Iroquois Indian men make wooden masks has as
its counterpart the description of how an individual Iroquois Indian man
makes wooden masks. The complex of meanings which determine the
sculpturing and painting activity of the mask-maker involves such
things as knowing ways to discriminate kinds of wood, selection of
tools to use for various parts of the work, the techniques for sharpen-
ing drills, an adequate manner of mixing paint, the boundaries of de-
sign variation among acceptable masks, and so forth. This cognitive
equipment of the individual mask-maker is not, in any useful sense
of that word, an attribute of his "personality." Personality is a valuable
concept, on a higher level of abstraction, for certain broad and stable
attributes of a mazeway, organized around major motives, such as (to
use the same example) a tendency to prefer making masks to plowing
fields, because mask-making is associated with a deeply felt commit-
ment to an Indian identity. Similarly, the simple notion that to light a
cigarette one must touch its end to a flame or a red-hot surface while
drawing air through the cylinder is not a personality attribute. It is an
element of mazeway and also an element of culture. Whether or not I
like to smoke may well be termed a personality characteristic, however,
140 Social Theory and Personality
just as an emphasis on the providing of many tension-reducing oral play
activities, like tobacco, mid-morning coffee, candy, pop-corn, and chew-
ing gum may be described as a (perhaps minor) theme in my culture.
Personality, an abstraction from mazeway, thus is parallel to such ab-
stractions from culture as "themes," "national character," and "ethos."
Modal personality, correspondingly, is an abstraction from personality,
parallel to culture as an abstraction from mazeway. The relationships
are exemplified in the following diagram (Fig. 1):
FIG. 1: RELATIONSHIP OF CONCEPTS IN CULTURE
AND PERSONALITY
ABSTRACTION OVER CATEGORIES
Level 1 Level 2
Concrete, detailed, map of Complex patterns ab-
cognitive "world" includ- stracted and generalized,
ing motives as cognitive
data.
CO
1
w Level I
^ Individual
Mazeway
^ Personality
o
CQ
S
p
1
1
1
N 1
as
w
x x Modal Per-
w
N \ sonality
o
Ethos> x Struc-
Level II
theme, \ ture
H Group
Culture
^ pattern, \
values, N \
to
national x N
character \
<
N
The elements of mazeway are the totality of what has been learned
and is now known. But it is a totality which possesses an organization, a
structure, that is not wholly inherent in the separate learnings them-
selves, but has been formed by such processes as generalization, logical
analysis, and imagination reconstructing learned materials in memory.
Whatever the relationship between the individual learnings and maze-
way Gestalt, however, by vktue of the learning process the individual
members of a society will learn to predict one another's behavior.
They will maintain a set of mutually equivalent (not necessarily identi-
WALLA CE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 141
cal) learned meanings for stimuli which are continuously available,
during all of their transactions, as statements of the boundaries and
conditions of their mutual behavior. Thus the statement that given
learning capacity, the members of a society will produce a culture, has
as its corollary the statement that the members of that society will
individually possess mazeways whose contents, including mutually pre-
dictive cognitions, are equivalent. In other words, the culture con-
cept implies a Principle of Mazeway Equivalence for members of a cul-
turally organized social group.
This view does not require that motivational content be shared in or-
der that cultural organization exist, but only that cognitive content be
equivalent, and thus mutually predictable. Motivation, of course, is
experienced subjectively as one kind of data which has been given mean-
ing by incorporation into mazeway, and motivation may be attributed to
others (often very inaccurately).
One further psychological component of cultural nature must be
postulated at this point to account for certain aspects of both psychologi-
cal and cultural dynamics. This component is a primary association of
pleasure with maximal complexity and orderliness of the mazeway, and
of discomfort with minimal complexity and order (see Wallace,
1956a and 1957; Hebb, 1944). This association makes it possible to
learn, and to be motivated, to increase mazeway organization. In sim-
pler language, organisms possessing cultural natures (and perhaps all
organisms) act in such ways as to maximize the meaningfulness of ex-
perience: they follow a Principle of Maximal Meaning. This princi-
ple has, as its consequence, such dynamic phenomena as growth and
revitalization in both psychological and cultural systems. It may in-
deed be a function in mental economy whose affective intensity in man
is in large measure responsible for those extraordinary reciprocating
evolutions of culture and brain which the newer paleontology finds it
difficult to explain by a principle of Darwinian natural selection alone
(Eiseley, 1958). It suggests, indeed, that in an operational sense, as
biological and cultural evolution has proceeded, the universe has be-
come more meaningful. And it leads us to a consideration of the formal
structure of "meaningfulness" as a property of experience essential to
an understanding of individual participation in culturally organized so-
ciety.
TOWARD AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY
OF MEANING
Anthropologists have always been interested in the phenomenon of
meaning. On its simplest level this interest is evoked by the necessity of
translating unfamiliar linguistic and other behavior into a scientific Ian-
1 42 Social Theory and Personality
guage. The anthropologist must always ask: What does this event
"mean" in my language? The problem of making adequate translation
leads directly to inquiry into the nature of meaning itself. On a more
advanced level, the anthropologist must constantly keep in mind that
meaning is culturally relative. Hallowell in particular has repeatedly
pointed out, and emphasized, that the meanings of standard stimuli
vary from group to group, depending on the nature and degree of cul-
tural definition. The semantic structure of experience, in effect, de-
pends on culture, whether the experience be that of seeing a Rorschach
ink-blot, or of hearing a sound in the woods at night (Hallowell,
1955). Nevertheless, in spite of the cultural relativity of the content and
perhaps degree of meaning of standard stimuli, it is possible that the
cognitive process of perceiving and learning the meanings of stimuli,
and of relating these meanings in thought, follows constant laws irrespec-
tive of culture, and, indeed, of species. The Whorfian and other hy-
potheses of extreme cultural relativism (Whorf, 1956; Hoijer, 1954;
Levi-Strauss et al, 1953) assert a radical dependence of the very form
of rationality upon the local structure of language. But it seems more
likely that the elemental notions which are the common base of the vari-
ous logical and semantic calculi notions of "not," of "and," of
"and/or," of "identically equal," of "equivalent," of "order," and the
like are symbolic representations of processes intrinsic to such evi-
dently universal psychic functions as discrimination, conditioning, and
the generalization of learning. Indeed, a radical linguistic relativism
would probably be, by its own axioms, not only incapable of proof but
incapable of being described. Logical processes, and a few axioms
based upon their combinations, have been regarded by mathematicians
and philosophers like George Boole (1854) as "laws of thought" which
are universal, certainly for. mankind, and possibly for any organism
which can learn.
In a recent development of major importance to anthropology, efforts
have been made by anthropologists and linguists (Goodenough, 1956;
Lounsbury, 1956; Wallace and Atkins, 1960) to adapt the technique
of componential analysis from phonemics to serve as a semantic
calculus for the explication of the meanings of kinship terms and other
culturally patterned behavior. These efforts are justifiable only under
the premise that the meaning of behavior (whatever the language and
culture of the speaker) is contained in a particular and universal type
of logicosemantic cognitive structure. Under such a premise, the mean-
ing of any culture's terms can be analyzed with the same type of- struc-
ture as a model, without doing violence to the principle of cultural rela-
tivity of content. Since the matrices of definitive and connotative learned
meaning which constitute the elements of mazeway, and therefore of
culture and personality, can be considered as being formed according to
WALLACE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 143
this model, a brief and general description of its structure will be given
here.
The fundamental and intuitive idea on which the semantic calculus
is based is a simple one: that the signification of a "term" (which
may be an extrinsic linguistic symbol, such as a word, or any other overt
behavior) is given by a particular pattern of predicates which evoke, or
are evoked by, that term. A predicate is a symbol for the common prop-
erty of the members of a class. In the technique of componential analy-
sis, the various criteria (predicates) relevant to the definition of the
terms in a lexicon are conceived as values on dimensions, and a seman-
tic space is defined as the product of the several dimensions, such that
each cell in the space represents a unique combination of values, one
from each dimension. Each term can then be mapped onto the space
by stating to which combination or combinations of the criteria it cor-
responds. When all the terms have been so mapped, their logico-
semantic relationships can be explicitly stated. 3 Thus one of several
possible analyses of the definitional meanings of several Trukese kin-
ship terms may be graphically represented on a semantic space as fol-
lows (Fig. 2):
FIG. 2: COMPONENTIAL MATRIX OF TRUKESE
KINSHIP TERMS
(MODIFIED FROM GOODENOUGH, 1956)
BI Bo -E*3
E 2 C-1
Co
E 2 EI
Ll
semej
jinej
pwiij
mwegejej
neji
pwynywej
jeesej
DIMENSIONS
B (seniority of generation)
BX (senior), B 2 (same)
C (sex of relative)
Ci (male), C 2 (female)
E (sex relative to ego's sex)
EI (same), E 2 (opposite)
L (degree of affinal removal)
LI (consanguineal), L 2 (one), L 3
(two)
34 cells are occupied by 7
terms shown.
2 cells (B 2 E 2 L 3 ) are not
occupied by any of the
7 terms shown.
All 36 cells are occupied by
an 8th term tefej ("kins-
man"), not shown.
144 Social Theory and Personality
Now, inspection of the paradigm of Trukese terms displayed in Fig. 2
reveals an interesting feature: when each cell is plotted to contain the
same area, the areas occupied by the several terms are not equal be-
cause the number of cells occupied by the terms are not equal. This in-
equality is determined by the variation in the levels of specificity of the
terms themselves: terms which are highly specific, which "answer" many
questions, occupy the minimal areas, while more general terms, which
"answer" only one or two questions, occupy larger areas. All this sug-
gests that the quantity of semantic information given by a term, or a
set of terms, may be measured by a function of the number of cells in
its semantic space and of the number of cells in the sub-space corre-
sponding to the term or terms (see Shannon and Weaver, 1949, and
Bar-Hillel and Carnap, 1954). 4
This leads us, at last, to precisely the point to which I intended to
come: a concept of degree of meaningfulness of experience. We con-
ceive of the meaningfulness of experience as being limited by the quan-
tity of semantic information contained in the semantic spaces availa-
ble for defining sensory stimuli (including affects), and as varying
with the complexity of the patterns of stimulation. If an individual is un-
able to maintain a varied and extensive set of semantic spaces con-
tinuously available for the definition of sensory situations, not only will
his experiences be introspectively barren, but (if the poverty of predi-
cates is severe) he will be unable to maintain matrices complex enough
even to include all the relevant dimensions of cultural meaning de-
manded by his society. For cultural participation requires that the indi-
vidual be capable of maintaining mazeway sets complex enough to
accommodate the minimal cultural definitions of stimuli necessary to per-
formance of the cognitive tasks required by the culture.
HUMAN NATURE
The question was raised, in the preceding section, of how much
semantic capacity is necessary for full participation in a given culturally
organized human society. The question thus returned us to the problem
of defining the human variety of cultural nature. Before continuing with
the discussion of meaning and experience in human nature let us pause
briefly to consider the existing literature which approaches the matter
from a different point of view.
There exists an extensive but curiously unsatisfying special litera-
ture on the nature of human nature. Until recent years, much of it was
singularly barren of description. Bastian, Morgan, Tylor and others con-
cerned with explaining the psychological basis both of a unilinear cul-
tural evolution, and of extensive diffusion, found it necessary to postu-
WALLA CE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 1 45
late a psychic unity for man. But they rarely descended to describing
in any detail what it was that was uniform (see Lowie, 1937). Later
theorists emphasized the universality and importance of learning in
the mediation of instinctual drives (Wissler, 1923; Murdock, 1945)
as the psychological sine qua non of culture. Other writers have
been less concerned with the uniformity of the human mind than with
its uniqueness. Man has been described as the only symbol-using, tool-
making, culture-building animal; "symboling" in particular (to use
White's expression) has appealed to the searcher for the essence of
man's uniqueness (Cassirer, 1944; White, 1949; Sidney, 1953; Spiro,
1951, 1954). The concern with uniqueness has posed something of a
dilemma for anthropology. On the one hand the facts of comparative
anatomy and the fossil record demonstrate man's physical affinities
with the rest of the animal kingdom. On the other hand, man's behavior
particularly his culture-producing behavior, of which he is so ex-
tremely proud insofar as it is unique, has separated him sharply in
some spiritual or psychological dimension. Such an awkward discon-
tinuity between man and his primate relatives has troubled paleon-
tologists (cf. Eiseley, 1958) and cultural anthropologists alike (Hallo-
well, 1956). Hallowell (1956) has recently stated the problem sharply
in his paper on the "Cultural and Psychological Dimensions of a Human
Existence." As noted earlier, he has suggested the term "proto-cul-
ture" to refer to the cultural achievements of non-sapiens hominids.
Since "proto-culture" is, after all, culture, he has in effect denied to
modern man the exclusive proprietorship of those psychological facul-
ties which are necessary to a cultural mode of life. Correspondingly,
Eiseley (1956) has suggested that many of the distinctively human
features of our cerebral anatomy are of extremely recent origin, more
recent than the cultural remains of the lower and middle Paleolithic.
Dobzhansky and Montague (1947), Tappen (1953), and others have
suggested that the human mentality is itself a product of selection for
educability and intelligence under cultural conditions.
Perhaps the most elaborate effort to describe human nature in an
anthropological context has been undertaken by psychoanalysts and
psychoanalytic anthropologists (Fenichel, 1945; Fromm, 1951;
Roheim, 1943; Devereux, 1945, 1956; LaBarre, 1954, 1958). Based
essentially on considerations of human sexual and aggressive instincts
(in rather special and abstract senses of those terms) and of human
anatomy, physiology, and the universal culture pattern, the psy-
choanalytic tradition utilizes comparative data on psychopathology,
dreams, and religious myths and ritual to support universalistic proposi-
tions about human motivational content and process. There are
propositions about a universal symbolic language of dreams, myth,
146 Social Theory and Personality
ritual, and expressive behavior generally; propositions about universal
neurotic structures (Oedipal conflict, sibling rivalry, castration anxi-
ety) ; propositions about universal mental functions (the Ego-Id-Super
Ego and the Conscious-Preconscious-Unconscious trichotomies, and
the various mechanisms of defense); and propositions about univer-
sal fears, delusions, and fantasies concerning fundamental human ex-
periences like eating, excretion, sleep, dreams, birth, death, sexual
function, conception, and so forth. There would hardly seem to be
much room for doubt about the universality of the mechanisms of
defense and of certain processes involved in the psychological dy-
namics of various emotional disorders, such as the very tendency of
insecure persons to insist on the motivational identity of their friends, or
their enemies. The difficulty, as far as psychic unity is concerned, again,
lies in motivational content. The problem here is not so much the un-
reasonableness of supposing that some minimal core of cognitive ex-
perience, of meaning, is universal with regard to basic and nearly uni-
versal physiological needs, but of separating what is universal from
what might be, but in fact is not universal but merely common, or even
rare, although discoverable in a wide range of societies. The criterion
that seems to be involved is level of specificity. Pan-human, psychically
universal meanings should in general be abstract or simple, involving
few dimensions, in comparison with the meanings attributable to indi-
vidual cultures, and, even more emphatically, in comparison with the
meanings entertained by individual persons, which will be much richer,
more detailed, more concrete and idiosyncratic.
The notion of semantic information offers a way of approaching the
problem by defining human nature, as opposed to generalized primate
or mammalian nature, as a level of semantic capacity minimally ade-
quate to the performance of the cognitive tasks required by known
human cultures. Such a level of semantic capacity should function as a
lower boundary on the complexity and degree of organization of the
motivations, as well as of other mazeway content, and thus should de-
termine the boundary between human and non-human levels of per-
sonality organization. As suggested earlier, the determination of
this boundary is highly relevant to the definition of mental disorders.
Preliminary findings in studies being conducted by me and my associ-
ates, for instance, suggest that folk social typologies (i.e., non-scientific
taxonomies, such as kinship terminologies, categories of military
rank, etc.) contain, irrespective of the language, about four bits of
semantic information per most specific level of concept in a lexicon.
That is to say, proper use of the most specific concepts for which there
are conventional terms requires, within the context of the relevant
lexicon, the equivalent of about four binary discriminations. Whether
WALLACE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 147
or not the figure of four will be found to be a constant for folk typologies
in all languages, we feel that we now have a grip on the operational
problem of defining the complexity of the cognitive task. At present we
are extending the theory and procedures in the direction of a formal
calculus which will make possible the analysis of both semantic and
pragmatic sequences in terms of quantity of semantic information.
Such categories of human cognitive content as concept of self, self-
evaluation, morality, and the development of language, may be the in-
evitable precipitates of brains with high levels of semantic capacity
operating in social groups.
EQUIVALENCE, IDENTITY, AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF
PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Let us now turn to a more detailed consideration of the distribution
of mazeway, personality, and motivational content.
Sometimes we regard human societies as populations and not as
groups when we make psychological statements. A population of indi-
viduals may be described without reference to their interrelation-
ships; but a group cannot be considered apart from its organizational
structure. Thus physical, demographic, or personality characteristics
of the members of a population can be stated, explicitly or implicitly,
as a statistical distribution on one or more dimensions. To the extent
that the data permit, some measure or estimate of central tendency can
be calculated which will allow the attribution of some value or range
on one or more dimensions to the entire population, or a specified sub-
population. The logical form of such an operation is simple enough:
the researcher wants to be able to select a sub-set of individuals from
the population to whom, with a known degree of confidence, an identi-
cal predicate can be applied. The sub-set may or may not be the entire
population. The definition of the predicate is usually related to the
distribution by the requirement that its probability value lie within a
standard confidence limit (e.g., .95 or .99). The final product is a state-
ment of the form: for all members x of the population X, any given x is
a p, with a probability greater than k.
Now most modal personality statements are of this kind. The infer-
ence to be drawn is that if the statement is true, then almost all the x's
have in common some mazeway element (motivational or personality
attribute) p. If p represents "introversion," for example, then almost
all x's are asserted to be "introverts" (however loosely p may be de-
fined) and non-p's are "deviants" from the norm. The identification of
predicates which are identical for almost all of a population is in part
the aim of ethnography, of modal personality investigation, and of the
148 Social Theory and Personality
analysis of language. We shall return to the relevant methodologica
problems shortly.
Such predicates, applicable to all or almost all members of a popula-
tion, are too rare to be adequate for the psychological analysis of thai
population as a group. As an elementary consideration will reveal: mosi
culturally organized groups not merely permit but require that then
members perform different roles and address themselves to different in-
terests. By our theory, this implies that the mazeways of participants ir
an interaction situation are in general semantically different. Thus the
relationship among the mazeway definitions (p, q, . . .) by an}
groups of organisms (x, y, . . .) of a given stimulus situation will,
semantically, be one of various combinations of equivalence, con-
trariety, implication (which, in the form of a partial ordering, defines
the property of scaling), and independence (in the logical sense,
which corresponds to the empirical situation of correlation significantly
greater than zero and less than unity).
All of these relations are interesting, but perhaps the most important
relationship, for the purposes of psycho-cultural analysis, is that of ap-
proximate equivalence. Two propositions are equivalent when the truth
of either one implies the truth of the other [if p(x), then q(y), and if
q(y), then p(x)]; the two propositions themselves may contain very
different predicates. Approximate equivalence is recognizable empiri-
cally when the correlation or association between two phenomena under
some constant condition approaches unity. Social structure depends,
not on the identity of predicates, but on the near equivalence of proposi-
tions concerning tasks and motivations. Indeed identity of predicates
representing tasks and motives would be possible only in a social struc-
ture resembling that of a horde of lemmings. It is important to note that
the concept of complementary distribution, which linguists have em-
ployed effectively in descriptive structural linguistics, is a special case of
paired equivalence, having the form: if pi(x), then qi(y) and not q2(y) ;
if ps(x) then q2(y) and not qi(y) ; if qi(y), then pi(x) and not p2(x) ;
if q2(y), then p 2 (x) and not pi(x). The recognition of complementary
distributions is also used as a primary methodological tool in Good-
enough's type of structural analysis of the "rules" of culture (Good-
enough, 1951).
We shall now generalize the Principle of Mazeway Equivalence: the
members of a culturally organized group maintain mazeways whose
content is equivalent, but rarely identical, over wide situational param-
eters. Since contents are equivalent, they are as reliably predictable as
if they were identical. But because they are not identical, statistical
generalizations concerning central tendencies of content may reveal
only very limited congruence. This, I believe, is the major limitation on
WALLACE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 149
statistical efforts to describe the substance of the cognitive and motiva-
tional unity of human cultural groups, on a level of specificity below cul-
tural or human nature. Furthermore, the magnitude of the statistical
task necessary to establish semantic equivalence is altogether formida-
ble. This may also be a reason why the more intuitive students in this
field, like Margaret Mead and her co-workers, find so little use in sta-
tistical generalization. For the essence of culturally relevant psychologi-
cal "pattern," as I understand Mead's sense of that term, lies in the
apprehension of equivalences rather than of identities. It is indeed the
equivalence of mazeways, rather than their identity, which makes possi-
ble culturally organized society. The formulation of "end-linkage" (i.e.,
of complementary patterns) by Bateson and others in The Study of Cul-
ture at a Distance (Mead and Metraux, 1953) represents this approach,
albeit in a language somewhat less formal than the one employed here,
and less exact than the analysis of complementaries performed by
Goodenough (Goodenough, 1956).
We now return to the methodological problems encountered in
the search for identities. It is possible to discover some descriptive predi-
cates in mazeway of personality data which are identical for all or al-
most all of a population, or for all or almost all of a sub-group of a popu-
lation. The statistical problem has been discussed at some length in an
earlier monograph (Wallace, 1952). Very briefly, it is presented by two
empirical observations : first, that few universally appropriate predicates
can be discovered in any body of data concerning the individual mem-
bers of a culturally defined population, and these few may be trivial;
and second, the more complex a compound predicate is, the smaller
the proportion of the population for which that compound predicate will
be true. The statistical difficulty is further increased by whatever un-
reliability is associated with the chosen method of observation and
coding, and by problems of sampling. Sampling problems in modal per-
sonality investigation may be readily enough overcome when the popu-
lation is small (a few hundred persons, perhaps) and the observations
required are simple and brief. But when the population is large (and
populations of up to hundreds of millions of persons have been ap-
proached) and the observations are, let us say, of the psychoanalytic
sort which require tens or hundreds of hours of interviewing under spe-
cial conditions of privacy, with extended time also required for analysis
then the problem of making significant statistical abstractions be-
comes truly formidable. These sampling problems, furthermore, cannot
be shrugged off by arguing that the individuals selected can be ac-
curately characterized in regard to their social position. The impractica-
bility of characterizing all individuals in large populations is pre-
cisely the reason why a sample is selected in the first place.
150 Social Theory and Personality
Granted, however, that problems of observation, coding, and sam-
pling are overcome, the task resolves itself into developing methods of
stating which predicates can be applied to which sub-sets of the popula-
tion with what degree of confidence. The simplest technique is to pro-
ceed dimension by dimension, discovering the frequency distribution,
point of central tendency, and measure of dispersion for each dimension
independently. This will yield conclusions of the following kind: 92 per
cent of the X population are p, 49 per cent of X are q, 71 per cent of X
are r. But unhappily these observations do not indicate how many of the
p's are also q's, how many p's and q's are also r's, and so forth. Indeed,
in the above case, not more than 49 per cent, and not less than 12 per
cent, can be simultaneously p and q and r. Evidently, furthermore, we
can identify eight structural psychological types on this matrix of three
binary dimensions: pqr, pqr, pqr, pqr, pqr, pqr, pqr, pqr. If we are in-
terested in structure, we are then interested in the frequency with which
a given compound predicate (such as pqr) is to be found in a popula-
tion. Since a predicate matrix of, say, twenty binary dimensions (a much
less complex matrix than is actually employed in Rorschach analysis)
will yield up to 1,048,576 structural types, the uniformity of the popula-
tion on each dimension must be impressive, or the types must be very
crudely defined, before any one type is likely to acquire prevalence over
any substantial proportion of the group, and before any conveniently
small sample will be informative. Various methods of statistical analysis
of the multi-dimensional modalities of population characteristics are
available: factor analysis by one technique or another, which depends
on the computation of coefficients of correlation; trial-and-error sorting
of the sample by types; and the modal technique described in the previ-
ously mentioned monograph (Wallace, 1952). Simple, separate calcula-
tions of measures of central tendency on numerous dimensions are un-
satisfactory if the dimensions are considered to be structurally related,
as is often the case with psychological data, or if the question of rela-
tionship is being raised in the investigation.
Turning now to the methodological problems of the analysis of equiv-
alence, we find an equally formidable task. The problem here is to dis-
cover a unity in pattern rather *han a unity in uniformity. In formal
terms, we are now not seeking to say of the X population that each x is a
p, or a q, or a pq, or a pqr, but rather that whenever the stimulus is N,
then whenever Xi is a p, x 2 is a q, . . . , and x n is an s. Let us put the
matter in Rorschach terms, for the sake of example. The standard analy-
sis is of the form: if the response to Card N of Xi is p, of x 2 is q, . . . ,
of x n is s, and Xi, x 2 , . . . , x n give the "same (in whatever coding sys-
tem we employ) response, then p = q = . . . = s, and we say, in
brief, that all the x's are p's. But the equivalence analysis (retaining the
WA LLA CE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 151
same symbols) would be of the form: if xi, x 2 , . . . x n give "different"
responses to Card N, but Xi regularly responds with p, x 2 with q, . . . ,
and x n with s, then p(Xi) <^ q(x 2 ) <B> . . . *-> s(x n ), and we can say
in brief that the x's may be predicated by a system of equivalent mean-
ing-sets p, q, . . . , s.
To give a crude example, if all the males in the sample saw Card 1 as
a flying bat, scored FM, and all the females saw it as a fuzzy skin cut to
look like a bat, scored Fc, then we might say that the male and female
responses were equivalent even though they might contribute to a con-
siderably different psychological interpretation for males and females.
This I suggest is the psychological test analogue to the equivalence of
mazeways in culturally organized societies.
In "real life," however, the standard stimulus will not be an ink-blot
but a situation, and there are various kinds of equivalence-structures
which empirical reality may approximate, in addition to the comple-
mentary distribution model we mentioned earlier, and the psychologi-
cal test model mentioned above. Consider a group of airmen at a de-
fense airbase. At the sound of the claxon, they run to their aircraft,
each taking an assigned seat, and commence the performance of their
various highly specialized roles. There is one stimulus the claxon but
its meaning, and the consequent responses, are different for each man.
Nevertheless, the meanings and the responses can be defined as
equivalent because whenever the claxon sounds, each responds in
the same way that he had before. It is this equivalence of meanings
which makes possible that coordinated specialization of responses to
standard stimuli which is achieved in culturally organized societies.
Equivalence analysis of social behavior, however, will rarely find
so simple a case as that offered by a well-organized system of highly
trained specialists each of whom is able to make extended but socially
coordinated responses to a stimulus without reference to the actions of
his colleagues. More commonly, each overt event in the sequence serves
as a stimulus to all participants (including the actor himself, via "feed-
back"), each of whom defines the new situation differently and produces
a response. A simple example of this kind of system would be an
evenly-matched pair of people playing a game of tennis: the velocities
of the ball and of the players are the common stimulus sequence, and
the responses of the competitors approximate equivalence with respect
to footwork and stroking. To the extent that the meanings are equiva-
lent, the grouped responses will be "organized."
The discovery and description of such semantic and overt behavioral
equivalences is done formally or informally by the anthropologist when-
ever he describes how a group of people carry out some joint activity,
such as a religious ritual, a war-raid, a fishing expedition, and the
152 Social Theory and Personality
like. It is implicit in the analysis of kinship and other types of cul-
tural structures, by both anthropologists and sociologists. It is my impres-
sion, however, that it is but rarely undertaken in psychologically ori-
ented investigations, although exceptions can be adduced: the theory
of complementary needs in mate selection, certain aspects of psy-
choanalytic theory of interpersonal relations, and so forth. Evidently
the statistical problem here is to establish high-order correlations or
associations between different predicates describing the responses of
different persons over a series of temporally successive presentations
of the "same" stimulus sequence or of different categories of persons
independently but approximately simultaneously exposed once to the
"same" stimulus sequence. Such equivalence analysis would go farther,
I suspect, in revealing the psychological structure of groups than the
search for identities which has so largely occupied our efforts until
now. Furthermore, equivalence analysis will reveal differences be-
tween groups which identity analysis may gloss over. Two populations
may be very similar in the uniformities which they display, and yet
differ sharply in the nature and relationship of their equivalence
groups.
Let us now summarize some of the implications of the foregoing
rather complex train of discussion of the relationship between fre-
quency distribution and structure. While a few identities of mazeway
content may be discoverable in any given group, such as a culturally
organized society, or population, such as all human beings, they will
be difficult to observe, both for the scientist and for the individual in
society. Societies in general must depend for their structure on equiva-
lences rather than identities of mazeway content. It is difficult to go.
beyond this, at the present state of knowledge, to a statement of the
actual relationship between frequency distribution and equivalence
structure in a group of particular content categories. But for the sake
of further defining the sort of questions at issue, we may offer some
hunches. Mazeway content might, for instance, be divided analytically
into two dimensions of cognitive data: goal states, and instrumental
cognitive tasks. Social groups can be characterized on a combined di-
mension of group restriction localization and specificity of function
from intra-societal role groups all persons within a given society who
play some common role or roles, determined by age, sex, training, or
whatever through band or community, to intra-societal class, caste,
ethnic group, region, or interest group, to political group, to culture-
area and trans-political social types, and finally, to humanity as a
whole. Within any such grouping, any set of predicates descriptive of
mazeway content can be characterized with respect to both fre-
quency distribution and equivalence structure.
WALLACE; The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 1 53
Culture can be conveniently defined as the complete equivalence
structure of mazeway content characteristic of a group. Other categories,
however, are less global in content than culture and mazeway, and also
may refer either to individuals or to groups or both. Among such cate-
gories let us consider five in particular: goal state; cognitive task;
motivation; values; and personality. A motivation is a combination of a
goal state and a cognitive task; values are classes of goal states, and
personalities are equivalence structures of classes of stimuli and motiva-
tions whose locus is the individual. Although we assume that for most
practical purposes both affects and cognitive processes are nearly identi-
cal for all members of all the groups named, this is not the case with the
five special concepts. On the localization-specificity dimension, the
more restricted the group, the larger the proportion of identical cognitive
task, goal state, and motivational elements to those which are not iden-
tical but are equivalent or independent, and the larger the proportion
of equivalent to independent. In general, furthermore, the rank order of
proportion of identity to nonidentity and of equivalence to independ-
ence, is constant for cognitive task, goal state, and motivation, in that
order, in all groups. Values and personality, while they also follow the
same role of proportionality with respect to the group restriction di-
mension, are more difficult to place in rank order, because they include
abstractions on a variety of levels.
My intuition, however, would be that it is precisely in personality and
motivation the combinations of ends and means in which men
differ most from one another, and are least predictable, and that it is in
cognitive tasks, goals, and values that they have most in common, and
are most predictable.
ORGANIZATION AND THE STUDY OF PROCESSES OR
TYPES OF EVENTS
In the field of psychological processes relevant to an understanding of
the psychic unity of culturally organized human groups, we find a host
of problems refractory to analysis because of the inconveniences im-
posed by temporal extension. Temporal extension in psychological
process may be observed over ranges from milliseconds (e.g., for an
event of synaptic transmission) to hundreds or even thousands of years
(e.g., for the "life-history" of a concept). Neglecting the extremes and
devoting our attention to processes which occur within the life-span
of an individual, we find such processes as personality development,
enculturation, acculturation, psychotic episode, religious conversion
and inspiration, revitalization movements, the disaster syndrome, and
the like, which in general occupy sufficient time to require analysis in
154 Social Theory and Personality
terms of stages. Major sub-disciplines and special subject areas within
psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, and other behavioral sciences
concern themselves with one or another of these fields, both on pan-
human and particular-culture levels of generalization.
Methodology in these areas is still relatively primitive. Because of
the duration and phenomenological complexity of these types of
events, continuous first-hand observation is difficult to arrange, and the
investigator is often forced to rely on historical and autobiographical
data whose reliability, completeness, and standardization is low. Sam-
pling is awkward because the universe of events is difficult to define.
Typologies are hazardously constructed because of the extreme com-
plexity of the dimensions.
In an effort to simplify the conceptual model, a general tactic in such
research is to formulate as early as possible, an ideal set of stages and
a matrix of dimensions for the description of each stage. Thus Piaget,
working on the intellectual development of children, and Gesell and his
colleagues, concerned with behavior generally, organize their material
by stages; psychoanalysis emphasized stages of psychosexual develop-
ment, of ego function, and so forth; learning theorists arrange the
events of a learning sequence stage-wise, from "drive" to "extinction."
In my own work, stages in the evolution of types of events in disasters
and in revitalization movements, in particular have been a major
methodological tool.
The aim of stage-description in processual analysis is to state that a
particular stage sequence on a given matrix of dimensions is universal,
or at least highly probable, for all organisms of a certain type (e.g., for
all humans, or for all members of some society) under a given limited
set of conditions. But, unless the process is a simple partial ordering
(a unilinear scale), different events are possible at each stage. If the out-
come at each stage is to some degree dependent on the outcome in
the preceding stage or stages, and if this dependence can be expressed
as a set of conditional probabilities, then the sequence has the general
mathematical form of a stochastic process. In an area of interest to
behavioral science, information theory is based on stochastic processes;
the analysis of learning as a stochastic process has been undertaken
by Bush and Mosteller (1955) and others. The importance of these
processes to us, however, lies in the circumstance that such processes
may be analyzed with respect to their quantity of organization.
The concept of a quantity of organization is centrally important in
any consideration of the psychic unity of culture-maintaining groups.
Cultures, like the physical bodies of their executors, are not static: they
evolve, over long periods of time, and they oscillate, during briefer
periods, between states of climax and states of disorganization. While
WALLA CE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 155
for some purposes it is not necessary, or even desirable, to invoke psy-
chological processes in the analysis of culture change, it is necessary to
do so for any general behavior theory which relates levels of abstraction.
One overtly observable process which it is important to explain in such
a theory of behavior is the tendency of living things to maintain and in-
crease the quantity of organization in the field which they and their
environment together constitute. This process is connoted by such
terms as evolution, growth, and adaptation. It is convenient to think of
this process as depending upon a "drive" to increase the quantity of
organization in the mazeway i.e., in the organism's cognitive repre-
sentation of the phenomenological field. Such a "drive" is evident in be-
havioral processes like learning, curiosity, play, fantasy, emotional ma-
turation, the desire for health, and the urge to master and control both
self and environment.
The measure of organization of a system should increase both
with the orderliness of the system and with its complexity. 5 Complexity
should be clearly distinguished from size (e.g., one would not say that
a large pattern is more complex than a perfect replica of smaller size).
Complexity essentially is a function of the number of possible events
within the system. Orderliness, on the other hand, is a function of the
relative probability of these events. This argument agrees with intui-
tion. When we refer to a system as "highly organized" we mean that it
is highly predictable; if we observe A, we can be reasonably certain
that we will find B rather than some alternative. Conversely with a "dis-
organized" system, we are very uncertain whether we will find B or not
if A is observed. In other words, organization is inversely related, in our
intuitive apprehension, to uncertainty (information). Also, when we
compare "large organization" and "small organization," we use com-
plexity (or, more exactly, that complexity that is associated with large
numbers of people) as another, different, and equally intuitive measure
of the organization quantity. One kind of stochastic process, the peri-
odic Markov chain (Feller, 1950), appears to be a suitable elementary
model for the representation of any process or phenomenon whose
stages or aspects may be repeatedly observed in a fixed order.
I shall not undertake here to describe the method (see Miller, 1952)
for obtaining the stable distribution of probabilities of the joint events
(Ei) in a periodic Markov chain; it is sufficient to note that the periodic
Markov chain AiBjCk . . . N m A r . . . generates an aperiodic Mar-
kov chain in (Ej-) and in (E i? Ej). The basic information function as
defined by Shannon (1949) for aperiodic Markov processes is:
1.1
156 Social Theory and Personality
For joint events (E i3 Ej) in aperiodic processes of the type considered
here, the expression takes the form:
1.2 H(Ei, Ej) = -2 P(Ei, Eti Iog 2 P(E i} Ej).
The measure H gives the average entropy (information) of the process
per joint event. The measure of the average entropy per event is
given by:
1.3 H (EJ) = -2 P(Ei) ' P(fy \ Ei) Iog 2 P(E j \ ft).
E.
where
i 4
1.4
The significance of the measure H for this study lies in the fact that
it is a function of the predictability of the process: the more predictable
the process, the lower the value of H. One may take (1.3) as the
fundamental measure for our purposes.
As I have argued, the measure of organization should be a function
of both the orderliness and the complexity of the system. The measure of
the orderliness of the system may be conceived in the following way:
H, the average amount of information produced by the system at event
EJ, can vary from zero (for a completely deterministic system) toward
some finite limit (as the system approaches complete randomness). The
difference between the maximum possible information output, and the
actual information output, is the amount of information which the sys-
tem retains.
H
x
v
~^N
v
1
p
>^
maz^
tr TT
The ratio ma is the measure of the relative orderliness of the system.
rr
The ratio j=- is defined by Shannon as the relative entropy, and
/ H \
M _ J as the redundancy.
\ Umax/
The measure of the complexity of the system may be conceived in the
following way: let the number of possible events Ej in the system be
represented by N, and let the measure of complexity be log 2 N, so that
WALLACE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 157
for each doubling of the number of possible system events, the measure
of complexity increases by one.
If we now define the measure of quantity of organization in a system
as the product of the measure of its relative orderliness by the measure
of its complexity, we have
2.1 O =
But H m ax = log2-W. Therefore,
2.2 O = ffmax H.
Equation (2.2) defines the fundamental measure of quantity of organi-
zation.
The argument of this section may be summarized in a Principle of
Maximal Organization. This principle asserts that an organism acts in
such a way as to maximize, under existing conditions, and to the extent
of its capacity, the amount of organization in the dynamic system rep-
resented in its mazeway; that is to say, it works to increase both the
complexity and the orderliness of its experience. Such a mode of action
should simultaneously maximize intra-psychic and group organization.
CONCLUSIONS
This inquiry began by asking what people must have in common,
psychologically, in order to live together in culturally organized social
groups. After initially questioning whether motivational uniformities
are a necessary condition for a cultural way of life, I proceeded to
outline a theory relating the cognitive structures of individuals to the
cultural organization of groups. This theory emphasizes the importance
of capacity to learn and to maintain a semantic organization (mazeway)
sufficiently complex to permit the performance of the cognitive tasks re-
quired by the culture. Semantic process was defined operationally by the
procedures of componential analysis. It was emphasized that this type
of cognitive process permits cultural participants to act on the basis of
perceived semantic equivalences, without a necessary uniformity of
motivation, and that, in fact, motivational uniformity would make social
structure of a human kind impossible. Next, I examined the methodo-
logical problems involved in the investigation of the distribution of
motivational and other cognitive content of mazeway from the stand-
points of identity and equivalence analysis. Finally, I suggested that a
primary drive to increase the quantities of meaning and organization in
mazeway should be postulated in order to conceptualize as non-prob-
lematical the tendency for behavioral systems, like culture and per-
sonality, to evolve in the direction of increased organization.
158 Social Theory and Personality
The viewpoint expressed throughout the discussion, that motiva-
tional uniformity is neither demonstrable nor necessary to social co-
ordination, has an evident bearing on the problems of cross-cultural
communication and of defining desirable social systems including, ulti-
mately, a world organization. It seems characteristic of reformist,
authoritarian political and religious movements to insist strongly on the
importance of an almost complete motivational uniformity as a con-
dition for the achievement of the ideal society. To the extent that social
scientists also are convinced that this is the case, they are sharing in one
of the illusions characteristic of new movements of thought. Intuitive
humanistic perception, the data available in existing monographs, and
methodological considerations all reveal that motivational uniformity is
not only unnecessary (and is even antithetical) to the development of
highly organized civilizations, but is also not empirically observed or
observable in human behavior, by either scientist or the individual in
culture. This does not mean, of course, that all men do not have in com-
mon a set of basic affective and cognitive processes, but only that the
semantic content which these processes produce must be highly diverse,
and the more diverse the larger the size and complexity of the group.
Thus the most effective base for cross-cultural communication, in the
long run, would seem to be the assumption by all parties concerned
that social coordination is entirely feasible, given the common posses-
sion of a cultural nature, without uniformity of motive or interest.
This is, in fact, precisely the achievement of the cultural mode of or-
ganization. Such an assumption lies at the root of such notions as the
ideas of justice, of law, of convention, and of a minimally necessary be-
havioral conformity without sacrifice of individuality, which have
been associated with the concept of "freedom" in sophisticated civiliza-
tions. Without such an assumption, indeed, motivational diversity is
merely hidden, under mutual illusions of motivational identity (-and
mutual suspicions of "disloyalty"), by the ritualization of all expression,
by the frustration of the drive for maximal meaning and organization
of experience, and by the blocking of the evolution of human personali-
ties and cultures. Neither order nor complexity can be immolated on the
other's altar without violating the laws of cultural nature.
NOTES
1. The concepts of identity and equivalence, which are used extensively
in this paper, are formal logical concepts. They may be applied to predicates,
which are the descriptive elements of propositions (for instance, in the propo-
sition, "The table is round," "is round" is the predicate). Two symbols, 'p'
and *q,' are said to stand for identical predicates only if the predicates are
one and the same. The two symbols 'p' and 'q* are said to stand for strictly
equivalent predicates if, whenever p is true, q is true also, and whenever q
is true, p is true. Evidently identity implies equivalence; but equivalence does
WALLA CE: The Psychic Unity of Human Groups 159
not imply identity. Tautological equivalence is established by definitions.
Empirical data may reveal that under some conditions two variables (two
sets of predicates) approach equivalence, over certain values of each, by
virtue of the fact that whenever a particular value of one variable is true,
some particular corresponding value of the other variable is true. The dis-
covery of this kind of non-tautological or material equivalence, expressible
in statistical associations and mathematical functions like differential equa-
tions, is a main object of scientific research.
2. Some readers may feel discomfort at an attempt to treat cognition
independently of motivation. They may justly point out, with Mannheim
(1936), that human cognition rarely if ever occurs in a complete motiva-
tional vacuum. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between "pure"
cognition and motivational cognition in order to consider their respective
bearings on culture. Scientific analysis frequently requires the conceptual
separation of elements which in experience are inextricable. An obvious
example from physics is the formulation of the laws of motion of two bodies,
gravitationally independent of other bodies, in a perfect physical vacuum:
an experimentally impossible condition.
3. It is not desirable to go farther into the theory of componential analy-
sis here, since that would require an extended technical discussion in the
language of symbolic logic and set theory which would be out of place in
this context. It may however be noted that there are several other logical
systems available for the formal exhibition of semantic relations: for in-
stance, Morris' "semiotic" (Morris, 1955), and Carnap's calculus of state-
descriptions (Caraap, 1955). With the assistance of John Atkins, I have
made some progress in formulating a semantic calculus based on preposi-
tional logic and set theory. Our calculus, we believe, accurately represents
the intuitive operations of linguists, anthropologists, and other behavioral
scientists when they perform componential and other kinds of semantic
analysis, and must, indeed, be postulated in order to justify these operations
rationally. Furthermore, this calculus promises to be useful in designing
more efficient scientific taxonomies. We believe also that this approach is
compatible with the theory of logical nets based on the simple prepositional
calculus which underlies the efforts of certain mathematicians to describe
the data-processing functions of the brain (cf. George, 1958). This calculus
is not related to that of Osgood (1957) whose "semantic differential" deals
with connotative rather than definitive meaning.
4. Semantic information (H s * m ) is distinguished from statistical informa-
tion (H 8 tat) by the property that H sero of a term is a function solely of the
ratio of the number of cells corresponding to the term to the number of cells
in the space on which the term is defined. H s t n t of a term, on the other
hand, is a function solely of the relative conditional probability within the
lexicon of the term's occurrence in a sequence of terms. A lexicon (L)
contains u terms 1, each of which is defined by a subset of w cells in a space
(M) of v cells. The following definitions refer to H S( . m :
Def. 1. Each of the v cells m in semantic space (M) contains a quantity
of semantic information which is equivalent to ( Iog 2 "~~);
J_
v "
160 Social Theory and Personality
Def. 2, The quantity of semantic information H M contained in the space
(M) is equivalent to the sum of the quantities of semantic informa-
tion contained in the v individual cells;
H M = -vlog 2 ~.
Def. 3. The quantity of semantic information Hi conveyed by a term I is
equivalent to the sum of the quantities of semantic information
contained in the w cells which define 1;
Hi = -w log, .
Def. 4. The quantity of semantic information H L conveyed by the lexicon
(L) is equivalent to the sum of the quantities of semantic informa-
tion conveyed by the u individual terms 1;
u
1^ = 2 Hi.
1
5. The multiplicative relation of order and complexity is one criterion,
among others, which distinguishes organization measure from BirkhofFs
"aesthetic measure," which also is a function of order and complexity
(M = O/C) (see Birkhoff, 1933). Coon's concept of "level of complexity,"
which he applies to cultures, concerns complexity alone and implicitly as-
sumes constant order (see Coon, 1948).
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About the Chapter
The problem of personality development or socialization occupies a key
position in culture and personality theory. In this chapter Dr. Parsons defines
a variety of processes in socialization which produce the kind of personality
processes that support the individual's appropriate participation in society.
Unlike the psychologist who is concerned with how personality becomes
what it is, Dr. Parsons* interest centers on how personality becomes shaped
so that it motivates the kind of behavior that society requires. This develop-
ment, which is seen in relationship to Freud's theory of object relations, is
held to involve the organization of the motivational system through three
processes: identification, object-cathexis and internalization.
About the Author
TALCOTT PARSONS is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He
received his A.B. from Amherst College and his Ph.D. from the University
of Heidelberg, Germany. In earlier years he taught economics as well as
sociology. He was formerly Chairman of the Department of Sociology at
Harvard and from 1946-56 was Chairman of the Department of Social Re-
lations there. He was Visiting Professor of Social Theory at the University
of Cambridge in 195354, and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1957-58. He has written Structure of
Social Action; Essays in Sociological Theory; Toward a General Theory of
Action (with collaborators); The Social System, Working Papers in the
Theory of Action (with collaborators); Family, Socialization and Interaction
Process (with R. F. Bales); Economy and Society (with N. J. Smelser); and
Structure and Process in Modern Society.
A cknowledgment
The bulk of this chapter, in substantially the same form, first appeared in
Psychiatry 21, 4, Nov. 1958 (copyright 1958 by the William Alanson White
Psychiatric Foundation, Inc.), and is published here by permission. However,
new material has been added in the first part of the chapter.
Social Structure and the Development
of Personality
TALCOTT PARSONS
Harvard University
In the United States the ideological needs of the intellectual classes
have led to an interpretation of Freud's work which places primary em-
phasis on the power of the individual's instinctual needs and the
deleterious effects of their frustration. On the occasion of the recent
centenary of Freud's birth there were a number of statements to this
effect. 1 They viewed Freud mainly as a psychologist who tended to
bring psychology closer to the biological sciences. Accordingly, the rela-
tion of the individual personality to society and culture is relatively un-
important, except as society and culture constitute agencies of the unde-
sirable frustration of man's instinctual needs.
There is, however, another side to Freud's thinking, which became, I
think, progressively more prominent in the course of the complicated
evolution of his theoretical scheme through time. It culminated in the
works dealing with the structural differentiation of the personality into
id, ego and superego, and in Freud's late treatment of anxiety. This-
trend concerns two main themes: the problem of the organization of the
personality as a system, and the relation of the individual to his social
surroundings especially in the course of his personality development. In
165
166 Social Theory and Personality
psychoanalytic terminology, this is the field of "object relations" the
most important area of articulation between the psychoanalytic theory of
the personality of the individual and the sociological theory of the struc-
ture and functioning of social systems.
This latter aspect of Freud's thought will form the subject-matter of
this chapter. 2 It is my main thesis that there is, in the structure of
Freud's own theoretical scheme, a set of propositions which can, with
relatively little reinterpretation, be very directly integrated with the
sociological analysis of the family as a small scale social system. Further,
these propositions can be applied to the problems of the child's transi-
tion from membership mainly in his own family to participation in wider
circles which are not, in societies like ours, mainly organized in terms
of kinship. Freud's own contribution here centers mainly in the earlier
stages of socialization, through the oedipal resolution. But the same
basic principles of analysis can be extended to the later stages.
The most important of Freud's concepts in this respect are identifica-
tion, object-cathexis, internalization or introjection, and the superego.
Most attention has been given to the concept of the superego. Though
many difficult problems of interpretation cluster about that concept,
it undoubtedly refers to the internalization becoming a constitutive
part of the structure of the personality itself of aspects of the norma-
tive culture of the society in which the individual grows up.
Very important clues are given by the remarkable convergence, in
these respects, between Freud's views on internalization and those de-
veloped, independently and at nearly the same time in sociological
quarters, by Emile Durkheim in France and by C. H. Cooley and G. H.
Mead in the United States. This convergence is one of the few truly
momentous developments of modern social science, comparable per-
haps to the convergence between the studies of experimental breeding
in the tradition of Mendel and the microscopic studies of cell divi-
sion from which the conceptions of the chromosomes as the vehicles of
biological heredity developed. The two together produced the modern
science of genetics.
The fundamental principle on which Freud's idea of the superego was
based, can be extended, not merely across disciplines to the sociologi-
cal treatment of the relations between social structure and personality,
but within the personality, to the constitution of its other sectors and
structural components. Some have tended to treat the superego as a very
special case within the personality, as the only point at which the norms
of the culture enter into it. A major objective of the present chapter,
however, is to show that the whole logic of Freud's later position implies
that the same is true for the structure of the ego also. Indeed it follows
from Freud's whole main treatment of the process of socialization
PARSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 1 67
and, at least at one point, was explicitly stated in his writings (see
passage quoted on p. 193) that the major structure of the ego is a
precipitate of the series of object relations which the individual has ex-
perienced in the course of his life-history. Internalization of the socio-
cultural environment provides the basis, not merely of one specialized
component of the human personality, but of what, in the human sense,
is its central core. In the light of the main traditions of modern psychol-
ogy this is a very radical position, so radical that its import has not yet
been very widely appreciated.
The final question inevitably arises as to whether even the third of
Freud's famous three subsystems of the personality, the id, should be
completely exempted from this central interpretation of the importance
of object relations and internalization. In the final section of the chap-
ter, I shall argue very briefly that the interpretation of the id as a mani-
festation of "pure instinct" is, in Freud's own terms, untenable. Though
it is the primary channel of transmission of instinctual energy and
more particularized impulses into the personality, it also is structured
through internalized object-relations. It involves above all the residues
of the earliest object relations of the life history of the individual, which
have had to be rather drastically reorganized in, the course of later
life-experience.
In order to provide a frame of reference in which to approach the in-
terpretation and to some extent, I hope, the extension of Freud's ideas in
the field of object relations, it should be useful to give a broad outline
of the relations of the basic categories of the phenomena or factors in-
volved in the behavior of human organisms as they appear in the light
of contemporary social science.
The essential point in this framework which I have called the "the-
ory of action" is that one can distinguish four systems; namely (1) the
organism, in that aspect most directly concerned with the energy
and the facilities involved in behavior; (2) the personality, or the psy-
chological systems concerned with the situation-oriented behavior of the
individual organism; (3) the social systems generated by the interac-
tion of a plurality of acting persons; and finally (4) the cultures de-
veloped in and through interaction but also regulating its processes. All
four of these must be regarded as analytically distinguishable systems
which are not mutually reducible in the analytical-theoretical sense
to terms of each other. This is, at the same time, both a theoretical and
a substantive view. It maintains that, in the course of organic evolution,
those aspects of the organism directly involved in the mechanisms of
behavior have come to be differentiated from those involved in the
transmission of inheritance through the genes, and from those involved
in the more "vegetative" functions {see Alexander, 1950) of the or-
168 Social Theory and Personality
ganism which entail interchanges with the environment on bio-
chemical levels such as nutrition-elimination and respiration.
I should like then to refer to the "behavioral organism" as consti-
tuting a system conceived to stand in relations of interdependence with
the other three systems of action, the personality of the individual, the
social system and the cultural system. The personality is conceived as an
analytically independent system, constituted by the behavior of the single
living organism itself; in other words it is always conceived in relation to
objects in the environment other than the organism of reference. 3 The
social system then is generalized by a plurality of living organisms (and
personalities) interacting with each other. A particular social system
may, of course, "engage" only a part of the personality of a living or-
ganism, first because objects other than other persons are important to
personalities, and second because the same personality may be, indeed
on differentiated levels always is, engaged in interaction in a plurality
of different systems of social interaction; a person has, as sociologists
say, a plurality of roles. Finally, cultural systems must also be treated as
independent not only of social systems, but of the other two, in the same
basic analytical sense in which they are independent of each other.
One basis of this analytical independence is that the same system of
cultural components may be involved in, and regulate, action in a plural-
ity of distinct social systems. Furthermore, the basis of their integra-
tion is different in that cultural integration concerns the pattern-com-
ponents in their relations to each other on the level of meaning rather
than the mutual adjustment of the congruence of the actor-units as
such, which is the focus of integration of social systems.
What then can be said about the relations of these four systems to
each other? They must, of course, be considered to be interdepend-
ent; processes in any one will partially determine and, in turn, be de-
termined by processes in each of the others. But even more than that,
they must be considered on some level to be subsystems of a single more
comprehensive system what some of us have been calling a system of
action. What is a system of action?
It is constituted by the behavior of living organisms. For some pur-
poses on all levels, and for all purposes on the lowest level of the dif-
ferentiation and organization of behavior, this behavior can be treated
as a single system. This is essentially what is done on the "stimulus-
response" level of psychological analysis, and in some cases in other
types of study of animal behavior. But particularly on the human socio-
cultural levels it becomes essential to discriminate different types of
subsystems of this more general system. Methodologically this is
necessary because in analyzing more differentiated and complex phe-
nomena we face two alternatives. One is the introduction into our analy-
PARSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 169
sis, ad hoc, of more and more distinct variables. Up to a point this may
add to the empirical realism of an analytical scheme. But as the num-
ber of variables grows, the possibilities of analytical inference with
respect to their interrelations diminish very rapidly. The only logical
alternative to this scientifically self-defeating procedure, is to repeat
essentially the same basic analysis of systems at many different levels in
application to many different systems and subsystems. This, essentially,
was Freud's procedure and it is the one I shall follow in this chapter.
Action, then, is the set of processes by which the relations between
organisms and their situations of action come to be organized and regu-
lated. The focus of this organization and regulation is the building up of
systems of the meanings of objects as signs or symbols so that the "reac-
tion" of the organism to the presence or expected presence of a given
object or class of objects in the situation becomes organized and stabi-
lized.
Since reactions to objects become stabilized in patterned ways, we
can speak of action as being inherently "goal-directed" in the sense that
there are optimum relations to given objects. When such optimum rela-
tions are disturbed, the organism-object system will tend to change its
state in the direction of the optimum. Secondly, action as process is
fundamentally and inherently dependent on learning. Of course, the
major anatomical structures involved in behavior are laid down in the
genetic constitution of the organism. But the most essential property of
the higher organisms is their adaptive capacity. High adaptive capacity
in the individual organism and rigid specification of behavior patterns
on a constitutional basis are inherently incompatible. The distinctive
feature of human organisms is a hereditary constitution which provides
a high capacity for learning. Certainly man has gone a significant step
beyond any other species in this respect. This means, as Freud, far
more than most psychologists even today, says, that the "instinctual"
basis of behavior must be highly nonspecific, and that the primary spe-
cific patterns of behavior are learned by the individual. It is of par-
ticular importance that primary life-goals must be treated as learned.
PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL SYSTEM
Let us now take up the two subsystems of action which are most
critical for our present purposes, personality and social system. Rela-
tive to the organism, the personality may be regarded as a system of
mechanisms of control. It is the set of ways in which organized patterns
of learned response to objects in the situation operate to control the
organism's goal-directed and adaptive activity. The personality thus
mediates between the organism and the environment in which it lives.
1 70 Social Theory and Personality
The facilities utilized by the organism in its life processes come to it to
large extent in forms, in timing sequences, etc. organized through the a<
tion of the personality. For example, human beings must as organisms t
adequately fed, but what they eat, at what times, in what circumstance
and how secured, are mediated through personality controls. Respiratic
is a vital function relatively little subject to personality control on a roi
tine basis, but personality intervention is very prompt when there is a
interference with respiratory function.
Conversely, the organism is, for the personality, the source of tt
energy, or in the most general sense "motivation," and also the primai
immediate source of facilities for the achievement of personality goal
Besides the underlying energy-producing "power house" of the orgar
ism, these facilities may be classified as information processing facilitk
(such as organs of perception), as instrumentalities for securing re
wards (e.g., musculo-skeletal mechanisms), and integrative-stoi
age facilities (such as the central nervous system which serves as mem
ory and paramount control organ).
Later, I shall have something further to say about the relations c
organism and personality. But first let us discuss the most essential re
lations of personality and social systems. The focal point is that, fo
man at any rate, as Freud made clear, the most critically importau
objects in the situation are other human beings. It is the exposure of th
human infant to other human beings, particularly the mother, in a spe
cial kind of social relationship, which lays down the genetic basis of th
development of his personality.
Secondly, the essential feature of the relation of the child to other
lies in his dependence on the relationship to the mother for the basi
rewards involved in the attainment of his goals or the gratification of hi:
wishes. Third, it is inherent in the interactive character of human socia
relationships that there should be a contingent element in the relation
ship. The securing of the essential rewards is made contingent on ttu
child's performance in areas and in respects other than the process o
organic gratification itself. This contingency of reward is the basL
source of leverage for motivating the process of learning.
Two further points are critical in this connection. One is that, as al
ready stated, the goals of the human individual in the human personality
sense, are not primarily given in his biological constitution, bu
must be learned in the process of socialization. The other is that no'
only are other human beings, as discrete objects, individually anc
severally the most significant objects in the child's, and indeed any hu-
man being's, situation of action, but the system of relationships in whicl
these objects stand to each other, and which includes the child himself,
constitutes the most fundamental structure of the situation or environ-
PARSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 111
ment in which his action takes place. A child, throughout his life cycle,
Is never exposed to just one person or "social object" but always to
structured systetns of social objects. In this sense the social system (or
systems) in which he participates always constitutes the essential envi-
ronment of any personality in its action processes, so far as this system
operates on the social interaction level, rather than in relation to the in-
dividual's own organism, and the bodies of others.
Finally, something needs to be said about the status of the cultural
system relative to the other three. Its focus is the cultural pattern com-
ponent of all action the system of the meanings of the objects experi-
enced by individuals. Meanings, like object relations, are primarily
learned. Moreover there is an immensely heavy premium on the im-
portance of the respects in which meanings are shared with other indi-
viduals; only through meeting this criterion can such meanings facilitate
the processes of communication. Meanings, looked at from the point
of view of the individual, define norms governing action. This conclusion
follows from the primary significance of the social object whose re-
action to ego's action is the prototypical example of meaning. The
meaning of ego's own actions is essentially the codification of the set of
consequences for him that his own action evokes in relation to the en-
vironment. But if the objects concerned are also actors in the same so-
cial system, the meanings can be stabilized only if ego recognizes
alter's expectations of action as a norm which should govern his action
and vice versa. Complementarity of expectations, then, is the basis of
the commonness of norms. These common norms, or values, constitute
the cultural core of any system of social interaction. As part of the total
system of action, the cultural system is that aspect which is oriented
to the maintenance of such a set of common values in the system.
I have noted that relative to the organism the personality may be con-
ceived as a system of controlling agencies. Essentially the same relation
is repeated as we follow through the relations of personality to the other
subsystems of action. Social systems, that is, in certain essential respects
control personalities, and cultural systems in some respects control
social systems. There is a hierarchy of control relations.
The distinction between the aspects of the system of action centering
on the individual and his behavior on the one hand, and the transindi-
vidual factors of society and culture on the other hand, is a very old one.
In one major tradition at least, it stems from the problems of Darwinian
biology as applied to human behavior. More recently it has seemed
necessary to draw lines within each of the two categories resulting
from that distinction namely between cultural and social systems on
the one hand, between organism and personality on the other.
The importance of the latter distinction will be strongly stressed in
172 Social Theory and Personality
what follows. It is emergent in Freud's own work and was progres-
sively more strongly stressed. 4 This distinction is crucial to the under-
standing of the place of the theory of instincts in Freud's total psy-
chological theory, and to the whole problem of the role of pleasure and
of eroticism. The main emphasis in my analysis, however, will be on the
relations between personality and social system. I believe that, while
[the main content of the structure of the personality is derived from so-
cial systems and culture through socialization, the personality be-
comes an independent system through its relations to its own organism
and through the uniqueness of its own life-history experience; it is not a
mere epiphenomenon of the structure of the society. There is, how-
ever, not merely interdependence between the two, but what I call
interpenetration. From the sociological side the essential concept of role
designates this area of interpenetration. From the personality side a cor-
responding concept of relational needs may be used. The psychoanalyti-
cally central need for love may serve as an example.
THE ORAL STAGE AND THE PROCESS OF IDENTIFICATION
Let us now turn to Freud's theory of object relations. Following up my
initial remarks about instinct, it may be said that there are two main
directions of thinking about the nature of personality development. One
may be illustrated by analogy with the plant where the main qualities of
the mature organism for example, the number and qualities of wheat
grains produced, or the brilliance and shape of the flowers are pre-
determined in the genetic constitution of the species.' There will be dif-
ferences in outcome as a function of the favorableness or unfavorable-
ness of the environment within which development takes place. The
main pattern, however, is not determined by this process of interaction
with the environment, only the degree of excellence with which it
"comes out." The other direction of thinking sees the genetic constitu-
tion as a nonspecific base from which the pattern of the adult per-
sonality will be evolved. 5 The main pattern-setting components are not
so much the genetic elements, but are the values of the culture and the
meanings of social objects experienced in the course of personality de-
velopment, "v
These two directions of thinking are not mutually exclusive. Their dif-
ferences are primarily a matter of relative emphasis. It is my contention
that the main significance of Freud's work for the social sciences consists
in the seriousness and the fruitfulness with which he explored the
second direction of thinking. This is not to say that the theory of ob-
ject relations is "more important" than the theory of instincts. Rather,
in Freud's treatment of human personality, object relations acquire a
PARSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 1 73
quite different order of significance than they do in botany. This line of
thinking colors Freud's whole theory of personality including the theory
of instincts. 6
As noted above, three fundamental concepts in Freud's theory bear
most directly on the problem of object-relations, namely identification,
object-cathexis (or object-choice) and internalization or "introjection."
Freud associated these concepts particularly, though by no means ex-
clusively, with three different levels of the process of socialization. The
first, identification, referred in the first instance to the relation estab-
lished between mother and child in the oral phase. The second, object-
cathexis, was used preponderantly to characterize the relation of
mother and child in the later phase standing between the oral and the
oedipal, while the third, internalization or introjection, referred mainly
to the process of establishment of the superego in the oedipal phase. It
will be my thesis that each of these concepts, in different ways, desig-
nates an aspect of the integration of the personality of the individual
in a social system, an integration which is characterized by a particular
process of learning in a particular context of object-relations.
Therefore, I suggest: first that Freud tended to confuse the genetic
and the analytical uses of these concepts and, second, that for the theory
of personality in general, the analytical meaning of them is more im-
portant than the genetic. 7
In order to establish a basis for clarifying some theoretical implica-
tions of Freud's treatment of these processes, I shall attempt to sketch
them in my own terms, though with continual references to Freud.
Freud, in common with many other writers, maintained s that the start-
ing point for the process of socialization, was the action of persons re-
sponsible for gratifying the child's constitutionally given organic needs
in the first instance the mother. Though there is a plurality of such
needs, in the earliest phases, that for nutrition is presumably para-
mount. In addition, however, the mother is the primary object for grati-
fication of a series of instinctual responses at the behavioral level.
The psychological importance of physiological dependence on a hu-
man agent hinges only partly on the adequacy of the "satisfaction" the
agent gives to the inborn needs. It also depends on physiological
mechanisms by which the feeling of satisfaction is experienced as a
reward in the form of internal organic pleasure. 9 Satisfaction cannot
acquire this meaning, unless the child learns that instinctual gratifica-
tions are in some sense contingent, both on the action of the mother,
and on that of the child. To take one instinctual response for illustra-
tion, it seems to be established that there is an inborn sucking response,
but the child early learns to suckle better than he is equipped to do by
sheer "instinct." He learns motions of the lips, posture, when to exert
1 74 Social Theory and Personality
effort and when to relax (see Grinker, 1953). The amount of milk he
gets and the ease with which he gets it are contingent to an apprecia-
ble degree on his own goal-oriented action. This holds true apart
from any influence he may exert on when and under what circum-
stances the breast or bottle will be presented to him. These factors he
can also learn to influence through crying and other procedures.
On the mother's side also, feeding a baby is by no means purely
"instinctive" but involves elements of skill and of "intentional" (not
necessarily conscious) regulation. She tries to "get him" to nurse
properly. She can influence this through her manner of holding the baby,
through her sensitivity to his "need to rest/' through judgment as to how
far to "force" him, as to when he has "had enough." In addition, it is
clearly she who is the primary agent of imposition of any sort of sched-
ule on the timing of feeding. It is she who determines the "picking up"
and the "setting down" of the baby, the way he is dressed, covered,
bathed, cleaned, etc., along with the feeding.
Thus even at this very elementary level, the relations between mother
and infant constitute a genuine process of social interaction of which
"care" in the sense of sheer attending to physiological needs, is clearly
only one component. The child, from the beginning, is to some degree
an active agent who "tries" to do things and is rewarded or punished
according to his "success" in doing them. Obviously the degree to which
this is true increases rapidly with time. The mother, on her side, actively
manipulates the situation in which this learning process takes place.
However genuine the process of interaction as such, she is in the over-
whelmingly predominant position of power, as manifested in her ca-
pacity to control the timing of feeding and other acts of care, indeed
the whole setting of the experience.
Whatever the relation between the mother's agency in caring for
basic metabolic needs and whatever the child's own instinctual responses
on the behavioral level, this agency is the primary factor in developing
an attachment to her as an object. The organization of the emerging
motivational system is a function, not simply of the needs of the child,
but of the way in which the mother's responses to these needs have them-
selves been organized. 10
Translating these familiar psychological facts into sociological terms
the essential consideration is that the infant in the first few weeks, if
not days, of life, comes to be integrated into a social system. There are
built up relatively definite expectations of his behavior, not only in the
predictive, but in the normative sense. He nurses "well" or "badly"; he
cries only when he "should" and is quiet the rest of the time, or he cries
"when there isn't any good reason." Inevitably, the behavior of adults
PA RSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 175
takes on the character of rewarding him for what they feel to be "good"
behavior, and punishing him including omission of reward for what
they feel to be bad behavior, and otherwise manipulating sanctions in re-
lation to him.
From the point of view of the infant, there are two particularly crucial
aspects which present cognitive problems to him. The first is the
problem of "understanding" conditions on which his gratifications and
frustrations depend. What are the cues, or conditional stimuli, which
indicate the direction of consequences for him, if he acts in a given
way? From the psychology of learning we know that it does not require
any high level of "rationality" or "higher mental process" for significant
learning to take place if certain modes of action consistently produce re-
wards, while others do not. The second basic problem to him is the
focus of organization of this system of cues. This is not simply the
question of what specific cues indicate probable gratification or depriva-
tion of specific needs, but rather, of what general formula of action can
improve the chances of generalized gratification.
Here again, it is not necessary to assume any rationalistic hypotheses.
If the pattern of sanctions imposed is consistent over a range of more
specific actions, we may assume that there will be generalization from
the more specific items to the pattern. 11 Thus, where the child "tries" to
nurse properly in the sense of "cooperating" with the mother, he is more
likely to be gratified. In a way, she presents cues and supplementary
rewards. It is not a very long step from this level to think of the organized
pattern of sanctions in terms of the intentions of the mother. The sig-
nificance of this step derives from the fact that there is generally a
single primary agent of early child care, 12 and that in a variety of signifi-
cant respects, the actions of this agent come to be contingent on what
the child does. In these circumstances, the learning of the meaning of a
cue is, I think, synonymous with the imputation of intention to the
agent.
The concept of intention as here used involves two central compo-
nents. The first is the contingency of what alter (the agent of care) does
on what ego (the child) has done or is expected to do, so that alter's
action may be treated as a sanction in relation to ego's action. The
second is the component of generalization. There exist not merely
discrete, disconnected sanctions, but a pattern of sanctions. This pat-
tern is relatively systematic and organized and eventually leads to the
learning of a complementary pattern of responses which is also or-
ganized and generalized. In its relation to discrete, particularized acts on
either side of the interaction process, the pattern component of the sanc-
tion system acquires the character of a set of values or norms. These
176 Social Theory and Personality
norms define the relation between acceptable, rewarded behavior on
the one hand, and unacceptable, nonrewarded or punished behavior on
the other.
Because of the immense inequality of the power relationship, the most
important change brought about by this early phase of the process of
interaction is the change in the personality of the child. Presumably
there is also some change in the personality of the mother. The pri-
mary change in the child is the introduction of a new level of organiza-
tion into his behavior system. It is a new level of capacity for organized
behavior in the external world, for successfully attaining his goals and
for coping with a variable situation. Internally, it is a new level of or-
ganization of his motivational or instinctual impulses or needs. A sys-
tem of control over these impulses is introduced and a pattern provided
for their utilization in the interest of the newly learned goals and inter-
ests. In Freud's famous metaphor (1933), 13 this new organization de-
rived from contact with objects, the ego, was likened to a rider on the
impulse system, the id, a horse which may ordinarily do the rider's
bidding, but on occasion may be difficult or impossible to control.
The essential point here is that this system of internal control over the
child's own instinctual or impulse system has become established through
a generalized pattern of sanctions imposed by the mother. The child
learns to respond, not simply to specific proffered rewards, but to
"intentions" and thereby to "conform" with her wishes or expectations.
In so doing he has learned a new generalized goal. It is no longer simply
to gratify his constitutionally given instinctual needs, especially for
food, but to "please" his mother. It is the attainment of this new level
of generalized organization of the motivation of behavior, including a
new goal, which I think Freud primarily designated as identification.
This is a mode of organization of the ego with reference to its relation
to a social object. We can clearly say that, at the same time, it is learning
to act in conformity with a set of norms.
Let me sum up the main characteristics of this basic learning process.
It depends on the establishment of a determinate set of relations be-
tween inborn mechanisms of the organism, on both metabolic and be-
havioral levels, and stimuli from the environment. There are particulari-
ties, of organic and instinctual gratification and of practices of care;
but equally on both sides there is generalization. For the learning infant
the most important vehicle of generalization probably is the pleasure
mechanism, 14 not to be confused with sheer organic or instinctual gratifi-
cations in the particularized sense. On the environmental side it is the
patterning of the system of sanctions which constitutes the element of
generalization.
It is the correspondence of these two patterns of generalization which
PARSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 111
is the essential basis on which a new motivational structure the ego
is built up. Important as this correspondence of pattern is, it is also essen-
tial to discriminate between these two references. The external, environ-
ment-oriented process, which may be called "goal-gratification," con-
cerns the relation of the child to a social object outside itself. The in-
ternal, organism-oriented process concerns his relation to a generalized
neurological mechanism by which a plurality of gratifications is organ-
ized to produce or maximize what we have come to call pleasure.
Freud speaks of the ego as an organization established through learn-
ing to govern the relations between internal organic processes and the
environment. Externally, the goal of the ego must be the attainment of
goal-gratifications the establishment of optimal relations to environ-
mental objects. Internally, we may speak of the ego which Freud
treated as originally a subsystem of the id as oriented to the maximiza-
tion of pleasure. The external situation and the internal physiological
system are to an important degree independent of each other. This fact
is the fundamental basis of Freud's contention that the pleasure princi-
ple and the reality principle must be treated as analytically independent.
At the same time their integration is the most fundamental condition of
the functioning of a personality as a system at this nodal point of articu-
lation between the organism and the external world.
Freud's commonest formula for instinctual impulse (governed by
the pleasure principle) is that it is the "representative" of the needs of
the organism to the psychic apparatus the ego. 15 This formula is ac-
ceptable for our analysis. The most crucial part of "reality" even at the
oral level, and predominantly from then on, is social. It is "mother" as
a social object, acting in a role in a system of social interaction.
Even at the oral level one aspect of reality is non-social, e.g., milk as
food-object. But in terms of learning and of personality development it
is the agency of the mother as the source of the milk which organizes
the learning process. It is in terms of generalization that the social
qualities of the significant object become crucial.
Let us look at the structure of this aspect of the mother-child sys-
tem. Identification implies that the child's basis of "interest" in the
mother is, after a time, no longer exhausted by the fact that she acts as
an instrumentality of discrete organically or instinctually significant
goal-gratifications such as food or clinging. She, as role-person, becomes
on a higher level a meaningful object. Inevitably, in the learning process,
the meaning of the mother as object must be established through gener-
alization from gratification (and deprivation) experiences on non-social
levels. But once this meaning has become established, then in a sense
the tables are turned. The discrete, instinctually significant gratifications
and deprivations become symbols of the intentions or attitudes of the
178 Social Theory and Personality
mother. Food then is no longer sought only because it produces the or-
ganic pleasure specific to alimentary stimulation. Perhaps just as im-
portant, it is no longer rejected simply because of alimentary discom-
fort associated with it. More generally, a primary, indeed the primary
goal of the developing personality, comes to be to secure the favorable
attitude, as it is often called, the love of the mother. Specific gratifica-
tions on lower levels then have become part of an organization on a
wider level. Their primary meaning derives from their relation to the
paramount goal of securing or maximizing love. Indeed, it seems a legit-
imate interpretation of Freud to say that only when the need for love
has been established as the paramount goal of the personality can we
say that there is a genuine ego present. This need then, in an important
sense, comes to control the ontogenetically older goal-needs of the or-
ganism including, eventually, that for pleasure. There must be provision
for the adequate gratification of the latter, but at the same time, they
must each take their place in an organized system of gratifications.
What, now, of the internal aspect at the level of oral generalization?
Undoubtedly one of Freud's greatest discoveries was the significance of
childhood eroticism and its tracing back to the oral stages of develop-
ment. 16 I have suggested that the integration of external and internal
references, of reality principle and pleasure principle, is the most im-
portant single condition of attainment of an organized ego. Though
Freud was not able to spell out its physiological character very far, I
think that his discovery of childhood eroticism is essentially the dis-
covery of a built-in physiological mechanism of the generalization of
internal reward, which matches the generalization of external goal-
gratification. Erotic pleasure seems to be essentially a diffuse generalized
"feeling" of organic well-being which is not attached to any one discrete
instinctual need-fulfillment. When hungry, feeding produces gastric
pleasure, when cold, being warmed produces another specific feeling
of pleasure, as does clinging, etc. But erotic pleasure is not as such de-
pendent on any one of these or any specific combination of them. The
mouth, Freud held, is an erogenous zone. This means that oral stimula-
tion through sucking is one important, specific source of this more gen-
eralized erotic pleasure. The essential points about oral stimulation are
two: first it produces a pleasure which is independent of that produced
by the ingestion of food, e.g., through sucking as such, and second, this
pleasure is capable of generalization to a higher level. Organically
the main manifestation of oral eroticism seems to be the capacity for
pleasure in diffuse bodily contact. This is connected by generalization
with stimulation of the mouth, 17 so that holding, fondling, and the like,
produce pleasure as a fundamental type of generalized reward.
Certain capacities of the organism thus operate as mechanisms which
PA RSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 179
facilitate the generalization of cathexis, and hence of goals, from the
goal-objects which immediately gratify particularized needs, to the
agent of these gratifications (treated as an organized system of sanc-
tioning behavior). Eroticism, whatever the physiological processes in-
volved, 18 is a mechanism of internal reward by which fixation on the
more specific instinctual gratifications is overcome in favor of pleasure
in the diffuse and generalized relationship to a nurturing social object.
This establishment of an organized ego in the personality through
a pattern of sanctions designates essentially what Freud meant by
identification. Several of Freud's own formulations of the concept stress
the striving to be like the object. This emphasis requires elucidation
and some qualification. Only in a very qualified sense can we say that
an infant learns to be like his mother. The important sense, for us, is that
he learns to play a social role in interaction with her. His behavior (hence
his motivation) is organized according to a generalized pattern of
norms. These norms define shared meanings of the acts which are in-
ternalized in terms of values and norms. Together, that is, mother and
child come to constitute a collectivity in a strict sociological sense. But
this does not mean that the two members of the collectivity are alike in
the sense that they play identical roles; on the contrary their roles are
sharply differentiated as are the norms which define the respective ex-
pectations. In the light of these considerations I should like to speak of
identification as the process by which a person comes to be inducted
into membership in a collectivity through learning to play a role comple-
mentary to those of other members in accord with the pattern of values
governing the collectivity. The new member comes to be like the others
with respect to their common membership status and to the psychologi-
cal implications of this, above all the common internalized values.
Psychologically the essential point is that the process of ego develop-
ment takes place through the learning of social roles in collectivity
structures. Through this process the normative patterns of the collec-
tivity in which a person learns to interact become part of his own per-
sonality and define its organization. 19
OBJECT CHOICE AND INTERNALIZATION
The other two of Freud's basic concepts in this area are object-choice
or cathexis, and internalization, or what is sometimes called by Freud's
translators "introjection." 20 I have emphasized that for the infant the
mother is a social object and becomes the most important part of his
"reality," the environment external to him. But though he comes
to be profoundly "attached" to her (i.e., to "cathect" her as an object)
the infant can scarcely be said to have "chosen" her. Object choice is an
1 80 Social Theory and Personality
act of the ego, and the neonate does not yet have an ego. He can be
rejected by the mother, but he can neither choose nor reject her at first.
In the phase of primary identification the infant is in the process of
learning a role in, and the values of, a collectivity. There is of course an
essential element of spontaneity or autonomy in response to the actions
of alter. But the motivation to action which is in conformity with the
expectations of the new role is still directly dependent on the sanctions
appropriate to the learning process. There is a period of capacity to ful-
fill alter's expectations in anticipation of reward. This period precedes
the development of the capacity autonomously to implement the newly
learned values in the absence of the accustomed goal-gratification re-
wards. Freud clearly recognizes this when he speaks of identification
as having fully taken place only when the object has been re-
nounced or lost. 21
The process of learning a role vis-a-vis the mother, 22 as we have
seen, involves at least two levels of generalization and organization.
The pattern of sanctions imposed by the mother incorporates and ex-
presses the higher of these two levels. Successful identification enables
the individual to implement this higher pattern level in his own auton-
omous behavior and not merely in response to the expected rewards
of another. This capacity to implement independently is perhaps the
most important respect in which the child has through identification
come to be like the mother.
If, however, action in accordance with the newly acquired value-
pattern is to be reality-directed, it must establish goals in relation to ob-
jects. The object world is not to be treated merely as given, taking over
the care of the helpless infant. Rather, the new ego actively "tries out" its
capacity for organized behavior in its object-environment. Object-
choice, in Freud's sense, is the "spontaneous" investment by the ego of
libido in seeking attachment to an object in the external world.
Typically, at the first main stage of this process, the object "chosen"
is the same concrete person, the mother, who was the primary agent of
care in the oral phase. But it is a mother who comes to play a different
role vis-a-vis her child. She shifts from rewarding his conformity with
the minimum expectations of being a "good child" to rewarding his at-
tempts to perform above that minimum. His role shifts, in turn, from
an emphasis on ascription to one on achievement. The minimum base
is taken for granted, but beyond that his rewards depend far more
heavily on how well he performs.
There is a sense in which this shift involves a turning of the tables. If
the diffuse attitude of the mother toward her child in the oral phase
could be called love, then we may say that by his identification the child
PARSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 181
has become capable of displaying and acting upon a similar attitude to-
ward another object. He can love an object, normally his mother.
If the child's need to love and be loved is strongly attached to an ob-
ject, then this object gains a very strong point of leverage for motivating
him to new levels of achievement. The mother not only dispenses spe-
cific rewards for specific performances, but she can treat these as sym-
bols of her reciprocation of his love.
It is undoubtedly significant that the period when the love-attachment
to the mother is paramount, is the period of the learning of the basic
skills of action. Pre-eminent among these are learning to walk, which is,
in a sense, the foundation of the whole complex of motor skills, and
learning to talk, which is the foundation of skills in communication.
Object-choice thus is the motivational foundation of that aspect of so-
cialization in which basic performance patterns are learned. The diffuse
attachment to the object of cathexis is the basis for the motivational
meaning of the more specific rewards of specific performances.
It is worth while here to note the double reference of the category of
meaning. In speaking of the process by which identification is estab-
lished, I referred to the organized pattern of sanctions as establishing
the meaning of the specific acts of the child, and of the mother. This was
the factor of generalization in the process of interaction as such. Now, in
speaking of the process of achievement-learning, I refer to the diffuse
love-attachment as the primary reference of the meaning of particular
rewards and of course of ego's own acts of performance in relation to
these rewards. This, essentially, is what is meant by the internalization
of a value-pattern: it comes to define meanings for the personality sys-
tem as such. The first set of meanings is organized about the sanctions
applied to the child, the second about a set of performances he has spon-
taneously tried out and learned successfully to complete.
Freud's concept of object cathexis designates the primary basis on
which one type of process of differentiation in the structure of the per-
sonality takes place. 23 The base-line starting point for this process is the
"internalized mother" established through the previous identification.
But from this base comes to be differentiated an autonomous subsystem
of the personality oriented to active manipulation of the object-world.
The dependency component of the personality then becomes the re-
structured residue of the internalized mother, which gives a more diffuse
and generalized motivational meaning to the specific acts and rewards
involved in the exercise of motor and communication skills. On the other
hand, the "self," or the ego in a more differentiated sense than at the
oral level, assumes the role of autonomous initiative in the performance
process.
182 Social Theory and Personality
The great increases in performance capacity which occur in this pre-
oedipal love-attachment period lead to an immense widening of the
child's range of contacts with the world in which he lives. He is continu-
ally engaged in trying out new motor skills and in learning about his
world, both by direct observation and by insistent questioning through
the newly learned medium of language.
In the phase of infancy the mother plays a role determined to a very
important degree by her commitment to roles other than that of mother
of this particular child: her relation to her husband, to older siblings of
the infant, to the family-household and to various extrafamilial respon-
sibilities. In infancy these other involvements of the child's mother ap-
pear to him mainly as sources of restrictions on her exclusive devotion
to him. But with growing mobility and wider ranges of communication,
the other persons to whom his mother is related become more and more
clearly defined objects to him also. Though he has various relations to
extrafamilial persons, typically it is the other members of his family, his
father and his siblings including perhaps by now a younger sibling
which form the primary focus of this new structuring of the situation in
which he acts and learns.
Gradually, a new phase in the processes of identification emerges.
This time, its focus is the assumption of membership in the child's total
nuclear family of orientation. This is a far more complex process than
the original identification with the mother. It involves at least three such
identifications which are interdependent but also are partially independ-
ent, namely identification with the family as a collectivity, identifica-
tion defined in terms of sex with those family members of his own sex,
and identification by generation as defined by himself and his siblings
as contrasted with the parents.
The child must now internalize a higher level of generality and/or
organization in his personality system. In his relation with his mother he
has already learned the fundamentals of reciprocal role-behavior in a
diadic relationship, the simplest type of social system. In this relation-
ship the most fundamental question is that of the balance between de-
pendency and autonomy, the ranges within which the child can take in-
dependent initiative and within which on the other hand, he must give
way to the wishes and sanctions of his role-partner. We may say that the
circumstances of early socialization have stacked the cards in favor of
dependency. Therefore, the problem of independence training is a focal
one in the pre-oedipal period.
In the oedipal period the child begins to have a plurality of diadic rela-
tions: to mother, to father, to sister, to brother, but these in turn must
be organized into a higher-order system, the family as a whole. It is in
this context that Freud most prominently raises the problems of the su-
PA RSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 1 8 3
perego and its place in the personality. I have mentioned the way in
which he treats identification with the mother as producing an internal-
ized base from which object choices are made. In a parallel way he
speaks of the superego as providing, for the latency period and later, the
internal surrogate of the parental function as it operated in the control
of the pre-oedipal child (see Freud, 1933, p. 91).
During the primitive mother-identification the situation was socio-
logically very simple because the child was primarily related to a single
person as object. The essential points were that it was a social object, and
that mother and child together formed a collectivity. Now the situation
has become much more complex, but nevertheless the same basic prin-
ciples obtain. What Freud refers to as the parental function may be in-
terpreted to mean a function in the family as a system. Moreover it in-
cludes the functions of both parents as what, sociologically, may be
called the "leadership coalition" of the family. Seen in these terms, the
family is an object with which the child identifies. Through this identifi-
cation he now becomes a full-fledged member of that family. He and its
other members come to constitute a collectivity which, if not new, is
at least, through his altered status and the adjustments made by other
members, a changed one.
The superego, then, is primarily the higher-order normative pattern
governing the behavior of the different members in their different roles
in the family as a system. It is first impressed upon the child through the
pattern of sanctions applied to his behavior, through rewards and pun-
ishments. If the family is at all well integrated, these sanctions, though
administered by all the members of the family in different ways, have a
certain coherence as a system which derives mainly from the coordi-
nated leadership roles of the two parents. Therefore a new element of
organization is introduced into the personality by this process of identi-
fication. It is an organization on a higher level of generality and com-
plexity than before, which gives the child new goals and values.
Through this process the child comes to be "like" the object of his
identification in the same essential sense, and with the same qualifica-
tions, as he came to be like his mother at the earlier stage of identifica-
tion. He has acquired a pattern of orientation which he holds in common
with the other, more socialized members of his family. When this pat-
tern has been internalized he can act in relation to the extrafamilial
world, in terms of that pattern without reference to the continuing ad-
ministration of the earlier pattern of external sanctions. In the same
sense in which for the post-oral child, the oral mother became a "lost ob-
ject," for the latency child his family of orientation eventually becomes
a lost object. The completion of this process normally occurs in late ado-
lescence.
184 Social Theory and Personality
Within the family, the child's role has become far more complex than
it was earlier; he has as many subroles as there are diadic relations to
other family members. But from the point of view of the wider society,
he plays only one role, namely that defined by his age-status as latency-
period child of his family, and by his sex. 24
SEX ROLE, EROTICISM AND THE INGEST TABOO
One aspect of the greater complexity of the new system of identifica-
tions and object-relations is the fact that the child cannot identify indis-
criminately with all the available objects of his nuclear family. Two of
the subsidiary identifications within the nuclear family, by sex and by
generation, are to become structurally constitutive for his status in the
wider society, and these are cross-cutting. It is essential to the under-
standing of the differential impact of the oedipal situation on the sexes
that for the boy the tie to his mother, the original object of identification
and of subsequent object-cathexis, is not included in either of these new
identifications, whereas for the girl the tie to the mother is included in
the identification by sex.
Hence the girl can, in relation to her mother, repeat on a higher level
the infantile identification. She can, to a degree, take over the mother's
role, which she does as an apprentice in the household and, in phantasy,
in doll-play. She is, however, precluded from taking over the mother
role in relation to the father by her categorization as belonging to the
child generation.
The boy, on the other hand, must break radically with his earlier
identification pattern. He cannot turn an object-cathexis into an identi-
fication except on the familial level which has to be shared with the other
members. The mother has been the boy's primary object of cathexis and
previously of identification. But he is blocked by the importance of the
sex categorization from identifying with her in intraf amilial function and
he is blocked by the generation categorizatior?. from taking a role like the
father's in relation to her. Moreover, the father is a more difficult object
of identification for a child because so much of his role is played outside
the household. Considerations such as these seem to be as important in
explaining the boy's ambivalent attitudes toward the father as is the
boy's subjection to his father's authority. The authority factor is only one
component in a larger complex. It is not, as has often been held, the one
central factor which overshadows all others. The authority factor does
explain, however, why the child, at the oedipal period begins to have
much more important relations outside his family. In a sense, the father
is the primary representative of the family in the outside society, and vice
versa of the latter in the family.
Another important complexity in the identification situation in the
PA RSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 185
oedipal period is that the ascribed identification is selective except for
the overall familial identification among the members of the family.
The very important possibilities of object choice of the child for the par-
ent of opposite sex and vice versa are excluded from the main formal
identification structure. They are relegated to the status of "secondary"
or informal attachments which, if they become too strong, can become
both disruptive of the family as a system and distorting factors in the per-
sonality development of the child.
This relates to two fundamental and interrelated sociological problems
in which Freud took a considerable interest those of the roles of the
sexes, and of the incest taboo. Freud was clear and insistent about the
existence of what he called constitutional bisexuality. He believed that
the motivational structure of sex role was importantly influenced by the
individual's object-relations in the course of his life-history. We may go
further and say that the learned aspect of sex role provides an essential
condition for the maintenance of the family as an integral part of the so-
cial structure, and hence of its functions in the socialization of the child.
The feminine role is primarily focused on the maternal function
which, through the combination of instrumental child care and love,
seeks to provide a suitable object for the child's earliest identification,
and subsequently his autonomous object-cathexis. The agent of these
functions must be anchored in an organizational unit of the larger so-
ciety; otherwise the leverage for socialization beyond the earliest stage
would not be adequate. The family which, in its membership, includes
an adult male, is of course the usual unit.
The masculine role, on the other hand, is not primarily focused on
socialization, but on the performance of function in the wider society,
economic, political or otherwise. If boys are to achieve in this arena they
must make the proper set of transitions between the intrafamilial context
of early socialization and the larger societal context. The coalition of the
two parents in the family leadership structure is the main sociological
mechanism which makes this possible (see Bales, 1953, Chapter 4).
Clearly, also, the relation of girls to their fathers, and hence to men in
general, is just as important as that of boys to their mothers in balancing
these forces.
Consideration of the incest taboo brings us back to the role of eroti-
cism in the socialization process. Throughout the oral stage, the stage of
first main object-choice and the oedipal stage, the main principle operat-
ing in the socialization process is internaHzation of cultural patterns of
the organization of behavior. It takes place through successive identifi-
cations on progressively higher levels of generalization. These new iden-
tifications lead to new object-choices and new definitions of goals in rela-
tion to these objects.
At the oral level, eroticism is primarily significant because it provides
1 86 Social Theory and Personality
a vehicle for the generalization of reward in its internal physiological
aspect. There seems to be a duality of levels of the object relation to the
mother which can be matched with a duality of hedonistic rewards which
makes oral eroticism so important. I am not competent to follow the sub-
sequent course on a physiological level. With a difference, there is prob-
ably a repetition of this pattern in the ''phallic" stage. The erotization of
the genital organs at this stage is presumably partly instinctive and partly
learned, either through masturbatory activities or through some kind of
adult stimulation, or both.
At this period, the differentiation of personalities by sex role becomes
of critical significance for the first time. The genital organs are clearly the
primary anatomical differentiae by sex, particularly in the prepubertal
period. Hence they are particularly appropriate as symbols of sex-iden-
tification. The erotic gratification attained through genital stimulation
constitutes a type of internal pleasure which can become directly as-
sociated with learning to act in the role of a member of the appropriate
sex group. The diffuse sense of bodily well-being which is the critical
feature of erotic gratification in its generalized aspect may then come to
be associated with proper fulfillment of the expectations of sex role.
These considerations are essential as background for the discussion
of the incest taboo. Eroticism, I have suggested, operates on two levels:
through the stimulation of one or more specific erogenous zones and
through the induction of a diffuse sense of bodily well-being, through
affectionate physical contact with another person. In the case of identifi-
cation with the mother, the primary object of identification is a single
person. Physical contact with her, being caressed or fondled, remains
the prototype of erotic gratification on the more generalized level.
In the oedipal period, the significant object for identification is not a
human individual, but a collectivity. Tender physical contact with a com-
plex collectivity is clearly not possible. Thus eroticism cannot play the
same role as a socialization mechanism as it did in the pre-oedipal pe-
riod. Indeed, the necessity to achieve a fundamental identification with-
out the help of this internal reward constitutes one of the main sources of
strain in this stage. This, more than the punishing aspects of paternal
authority, may be why the superego stands out as being peculiarly "im-
personal and in some respects threatening.
In the process of socialization, the incest taboo functions primarily as
a mechanism by which the child is both forced and enabled to internalize
value systems of a higher order than those which can be exclusively em-
bodied in a diadic two-person relation or in a social system as simple and
diffuse as the nuclear family. The inherent tendency of erotic relations
is to reinforce solidarity a deux, to give the single person an object prior-
ity over the larger collectivity or system of collectivities in which the diad
PARSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 1 87
is embedded. To internalize these higher-order value-systems the child
must learn, in the requisite contexts, to do without the crutch of erotic
gratification.
Looked at from the point of view of the society as a system, the incest
taboo has another order of functional significance, closely linked with
the above. This concerns the importance of maintaining a diversity of
cultural patterns on the lowest level of internalization in personalities, so
that their combinations on the higher levels of generality can support the
high-level patterns without too strong a tendency to "reduce" them to a
less general common denominator. The incest taboo insures that new
families of procreation will be set up by persons socialized in two distinct
families of orientation. The culture internalized in the early stages by the
children of the new family will then have a dual origin, and will in cer-
tain respects constitute a new variant a little different from either of the
parental ones. The argument is not that the process of crossing of famil-
ial cultures will reduce them to greater uniformity. On the contrary, by
preserving variability at the lower levels of generality it protects against
the establishment of a uniformity which might lessen the pressure to
achieve higher levels of generality capable of including all the variable
versions.
Another aspect of the problem which ties these two together is the
bearing of the incest taboo on the internal structure of the nuclear fam-
ily. The erotic relation of the parents to each other is a primary focus of
their solidarity. Its exclusiveness tends to symbolize their solidarity vis-
a-vis third persons even the small child. As the child becomes more ac-
tive and develops higher capacities for performance there is a strong
pressure for him to develop or reinforce erotic relationships to both par-
ents, in different ways. The developing importance of sex as an ascribed
focus of status then fosters attachment to the parent of the opposite sex,
thereby implicitly challenging the relationship to the parent of the same
sex. In the face of this competition, the erotic solidarity of the parents
tends to lead to rejection of these advances. This forces the child's pri-
mary new identification into the mold of member of the family as a
whole, and his sex and generation roles within it. It does not allow him
to concentrate on a single diadic relation within the family. He is forced
to a higher level of value-internalization than that governing any diadic
relation. It thus prepares him, in his latency period and in subsequent
orientations outside his family, to internalize still higher-level patterns
of value.
These considerations alone do not adequately account for the brother-
sister aspect of the incest taboo. While this is the weakest of the taboos
within the nuclear family, it is none the less very strong. I believe that
this version of the taboo is internalized, at least in part, by emphasis on
188 Social Theory and Personality
the factor of generation as an institutionalized status-component. Erotic
relations to parents are prohibited because they are inadmissible in the
age-status of the oedipal child. He is too old for infantile erotic gratifica-
tions, and too young for adult. He must be classed with the parent of the
same sex with respect to sex, but cannot presume to the adult privilege
of genital eroticism. The identifications with the family as a whole and
by sex create a configuration in his environment which leaves no place
for an erotic relation to a sibling or even another person of the opposite
sex. Two siblings having both internalized the same "generalized par-
ent" cannot maintain the internalized generation differentiation as well
as when their parental figures are independent.
More generally, in one major aspect the significance of the oedipal
transition lies in the fact that the child reaches a level of internalized
values and a complex structure of identifications, which enables him to
dispense with erotic rewards as a primary mechanism of further socializa-
tion. The basic difference between the pre-oedipal stages within the
family and the post-oedipal stages mainly outside it, lies in the fact that
in the former, identification and object-choice involve an erotic attach-
ment to a primary personal object, whereas later they do not. This shift
is, as we have seen, essential if the internalization of social value systems
on high levels of generality is to be achieved. 25
The immediately pre-oedipal attachment of erotic significance to sex-
role, and the symbolization of this by the awakening of genital eroticism
at the phallic level, has laid the foundations for the formation later by
the individual, through his marriage, of a new family in which he or she
will play conjugal and parental roles, In the new family, erotic attach-
ment will form one primary component in the solidarity of the parental
pair, a solidarity which is the essential prerequisite of their successful
performance of their socialization function. But the erotic need, thus
restructured, is allowed expression only in the context of an adult char-
acter structure in which the higher-level value-patterns have had an op-
portunity to develop and consolidate their position. It is only through
this non-erotic component of the individual's personality structure that
parents have a sufficiently strong superego and a sufficiently mature ego
to be able to serve as a model for identification for their children, and
that socialization beyond the stages of early childhood becomes possible.
In the light of these considerations Freud's famous view about the
sexual genesis of all the neuroses may perhaps be interpreted in current
socio-psychological terms. The most important point is that the person-
ality structure, as a precipitate of previous identifications and of lost
objects., develops by a process of differentiation from the earliest and
simplest identification with the mother. Both this early relationship of
identification and the succeeding object-choice relationship contain in
PA RSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 189
their motivation an essential erotic component. Without the element of
erotic attachment there could not have existed sufficient motivational
leverage to bring about the learning processes involved in the identifica-
tion and in the performance learning later based upon it. The erotic
needs thus built up are never extinguished but remain permanent parts
of the personality structure.
Neuroses, like other disturbances of personality functioning, involve
important regressive components because the more generalized moti-
vational structures as distinguished from social values where the order
of generality is the reverse are laid down- in early childhood. Regres-
sion to deep enough levels then will always involve motivational struc-
tures in which erotic needs form an essential component. Hence in a
neurosis which pervades the personality as a whole, an erotic component
will always be present, not to say prominent. By the same token, in so
far as the etiology of the neurosis goes back to early childhood experi-
ences which if it is pervasive enough will always be the case there
will of necessity, be a prominent component of erotic disturbance.
This does not mean that "all motivation is in the last analysis sexual."
Rather, on the genetically earliest and hence in one sense most funda-
mental levels, the sexual (or better erotic) element is always promi-
nently involved, both symptomatically and etiologically. This does not in
any way contradict the importance of the capacity to develop and oper-
ate motivational structures which are not primarily oriented to erotic
gratifications, but rather to impersonal or "affectively neutral" patterns
of behavior. This occurs by the process which Freud usually referred to
as sublimation. 26
POST-OEDIPAL OBJECT-RELATIONS
Let us now return to a brief discussion of the post-oedipal sequence
of development. Freud treated the relation between oedipal and latency
periods as essentially parallel to the earlier oral and object-choice peri-
ods. The oedipal period involves an identification process through which
the "parental function" is internalized to form the superego. The identi-
fication, I have argued, must be interpreted to refer to membership in the
nuclear family as a collectivity, and within that, with the child's own sex
and generation roles. But once this process of identification has been
completed, the child can turn to a new process of object-choice, this time
in relationships primarily outside his family of orientation. What may be
called his "dependency base" still remains inside that family; he "lives"
with his parents and siblings and they remain responsible for his sub-
sistence and general protection. Moreover, his place in the community is
still defined primarily by his family membership.
1 90 Social Theory and Personality
But from this base, which is analogous to his identification with his
mother at the earlier period, the child ventures out to establish impor-
tant relations outside the family. In a differentiated society of the mod-
ern Western type this occurs typically in two overlapping contexts
the school, in which his formal education begins, and the informal "peer
group," usually composed of age-mates of his own sex (see Parsons,
1959). There are two particularly prominent features of these new ob-
ject-relations. First, none of them is overtly erotic in content or tone
hence Freud's concept of "latency." Second, for the first time, the pat-
tern of relationship is not ascribed in advance. Age and sex status are
ascribed, but not the level of performance and the rewards for it which
the child may gain in the school and in his relations with his peers. He is
exposed, within the limits permitted in the community, to open competi-
tion with his age-peers. A significant structuring of the social groups in
question will result which is independent of the structure of the families
from which the competitors come. 27
This structuring seems to revolve about two main axes. The first is the
learning of achievements which can be evaluated by universalistic stand-
ards. The prototype of these achievements is the mastery of the intel-
lectual content of the school curriculum; but other things like athletic
prowess fall into the same category. It is certainly of first-rate significance
that the foundations of the more abstract skills involved in intellectual
function are laid down in the latency period, notably the use of written
language and the skills of abstract reasoning, as Piaget has so fully
shown.
The second axis is the establishment of position in more or less or-
ganized groups where status is not ascribed in advance. The focus is on
such roles as leadership and followership, and on primarily task-ori-
ented or primarily integrative roles in relation to one's fellows. The con-
texts in which this learning takes place range all the way from the school
class itself, under the direct supervision of the teacher, to wholly informal
peer activities entirely removed from adult participation.
It is a striking fact, perhaps particularly striking in the United States
with its tradition of coeducation in the schoolroom, that in the latency
period the peer group is overwhelmingly a one-sex peer group. The child
is here "practicing" his sex role in isolation from the opposite sex. When
this isolation begins to break down and cross-sex relations assume a
prominent place, this is in itself a sign of the approach of adolescence.
With this a further differentiation begins to take place, namely into first
a sphere in which erotic interests are revived, which leads over into mar-
riage and eventually the family of procreation, and second a sphere of
organizations and associations where the direct expression of erotic in-
PA RSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 191
terests remains tabooed. 28 The essential point is the existence of a dis-
crimination between the contexts in which erotic interests are treated as
appropriate from those in which they are not. Thek appropriateness is
clearly confined to a single role-complex within a much larger context,
most of which is treated as non-erotic.
It is my principal thesis that, in the analysis of object relations, there
is complete continuity in the basic conceptual framework appropriate to
identification in the oral stage, and of object-choice in the post-oral stage
on the one hand, and the analysis of latency period and adolescent so-
cialization on the other. The learning of roles in school and peer group
occurs through the mechanisms of object-choice, motivated by prior
identifications. But, in the first instance, it is now much more clearly col-
lectivities rather than persons which are the most significant objects. Just
as within the nuclear family significant new diadic relations besides the
relation to the mother develop and influence the child's personality de-
velopment, so in school and peer groups significant new diads form,
with the teacher and with particular age-mates. But the significance of
these diads must be understood within the context of the new collectivity
structures in which the child is in process of learning to play a role, or a
complex of roles.
Similarly, this later process of object-choice leads to a new set of iden-
tifications, which involve the collectivity-types outside his family in
which the child acquires memberships and roles. As in the case of the
mother-child diad and of the nuclear family, he internalizes the values
of these collectivities as part of the process of identification with them
and assumption of a role in them. The differences lie in the greater di-
versity of memberships the child acquires, the higher level of generality
of the values he internalizes, and the mechanisms of the learning process.
One of the most striking features of the differences is the absence of
erotic rewards made possible by the more highly differentiated and or-
ganized personality structure with which the post-oedipal child ap-
proaches his object relations. The regressive associations of erotic ex-
perience would militate against attaining the higher disciplines which
have now become necessary.
By the completion of the major phase of adolescence, the normal child
has, outside the family of orientation, achieved identification with four
main types of collectivity, and has hence internalized their values and
become capable of pursuing the goals appropriate to them independent
of the detailed pattern of sanctions which have operated during the in-
ternalization process. These are represented by ( 1 ) the subsociety of his
age-peers as a whole, i.e., the values of the so-called "youth culture,"
(2) the school, which is the prototype of the organization dedicated to
1 92 Social Theory and Personality
the achievement of a specified goal through disciplined performance,
(3) the peer-association, the prototype of collective organization to sat-
isfy and adjust mutual interests, and (4) the newly emerging cross-sex
diad, which is the prototype of the sole adult relationship in which erotic
factors are allowed an overt part.
These identifications, which are normally achieved in adolescence,
form the main basis in personality structure on which adult role-partici-
pations are built. Through at least one further major step of generaliza-
tion of value-level, participation in the youth culture leads over to par-
ticipation in the values of the society as a whole. The participation in the
school leads over into the adult occupational role with its responsibility
for a productive contribution, for independent choice of occupation, and
for self-support in the role. The peer-association identification leads over
into the roles of cooperative association memberships in a variety of
fields, of which the role of citizen in a democratic society is perhaps the
most important. Finally the "dating" pattern of adolescence leads over
to marriage and to the assumption of parental responsibilities in the fam-
ily of procreation.
I emphasize this continuity from the objects of identification in child-
hood to the role and collectivity structure of the adult society in order
to bring out the central point of the whole analysis. This is that Freud's
theory of object-relations is essentially an analysis of the relation of the
individual to the structure of the society in which he lives. Freud ana-
lyzed this relation from the point of view of the individual rather than
from the point of view of the structure of the social systems concerned.
His perspective also was primarily developmental in the psychological
sense. Sociologically stated, he was mainly concerned with the processes
by which the individual comes to acquire membership in social collec-
tivities, to learn to play roles in them, and to internalize their values.
Moreover, he was most interested in the identifications entered into in
early childhood.
But straight through, the process of identification, of object-choice and
of internalization are processes of relating the individual to and integrat-
ing him in the social system and through it, the culture. Since this process
is a relational matter, eventually technical analysis has to be applied to
both sets of relata as well as to the relationship itself. Had Freud lived
long enough to enter more deeply into the technical analysis of the ob-
ject-systems to which the individual does become related, he would in-
evitably have had to become in part a sociologist, for the structure of
this object system is it is not merely "influenced by" the structure of
the society itself. Essentially Freud's theory of object-relations is a the-
ory of the relation of the individual personality to the social system. It is
PARSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 1 93
a primary meeting ground of the two disciplines of psychology and soci-
ology.
CONCLUSION
If the importance of the individual's object-relations in the course of
his life-history is as great as it seems to be, then the significance of in-
ternalized social objects and culture cannot, as some psychoanalysts
have tended to assume, be confined mainly to the content of the super-
ego. On the contrary since, with all his emphasis on its differentiation,
Freud consistently treated the human personality as an integrated sys-
tem, it ought to permeate the whole system, and not be confined to one
restricted part of it.
In certain respects the ego should provide the key test case of this
hypothesis. Indeed the increasing attention of Freud himself in his later
years to problems of ego psychology, a tendency which has been con-
siderably further developed in the work of such authors as Hartmann
and Kris, seems to be closely related to his increasing attention to the
field of object relations. At the same time I do not think that the id
should be exempted from the logic of this development.
Since the ego is the primary location of interchange between the per-
sonality and the outside world of reality, and since the most important
aspect of reality itself is social, the conclusion is inescapable that the ego
is "socially structured." It is a particularly welcome confirmation of this
hypothesis, much of which has been worked out from a sociological
point of view, that Freud himself explicitly recognized this conclusion.
The most striking passage I have found deserves to be quoted at length.
When it happens that a person has to give up a sexual object, there quite
often ensues a modification in his ego which can only be described as a rein-
statement of the object within the ego, as it occurs in melancholia; the exact
nature of this substitution is as yet unknown to us. It may be that by under-
taking this introjection, which is a kind of regression to the mechanism of
the oral phase, the ego makes it easier for the object to be given up or renders
that process possible. It may even be that this identification is the sole condi-
tion under which the id can give up its objects. At any rate, the process,
especially in the early phases of development, is a very frequent one, and it
points to the conclusion that the character of the ego is a precipitate of
abandoned object-cathexes and that it contains a record of past object-
choices. 29 (1935, p. 36, italics added)
It can, then, quite safely be said that object-cathexes and identifica-
tions do not, in Freud's own mature view, simply "influence" the devel-
opment of the ego, in the sense in which environmental temperature or
moisture influences the growth of a plant, but that the structure of the
1 94 Social Theory and Personality
object-relations a person has experienced is directly constitutive of the
structure of the ego itself.
If the ego can be regarded as a precipitate of abandoned object-
cathexes, there does not seem to be any serious doubt that the superego
is primarily social and cultural in origin. Indeed this has been clearly
recognized by psychoanalysts from the introduction of the concept by
Freud. Freud's formula that it represents the "parental function" is to
my mind the most adequate one. He also quite explicitly refers to it as
the focus of "that higher nature" representing the "moral, spiritual side
of human nature," (1935, pp. 46-7) which we have "taken into our-
selves" from our parents.
The role of the id has been focal to the issue with which the present
discussion started, namely the relative importance of "instinctive" as
compared with cultural, social and other "environmental" influences in
the motivation of personality. The concept of the id in Freud's later work
is of course one primary heir, though by no means the only one, of such
concepts as the unconscious, the primary process and the libido in his
earlier work. Furthermore in the strong enthusiasm of discovery the id
tended to be contrasted as sharply as possible with the ego which seemed
to be the closest of all the components of the personality to traditionally
rationalistic common sense. Freud sometimes makes extreme statements
of this contrast when he speaks of the id as entirely lacking in organiza-
tion (see e.g., 1933, p. 103).
Against the tendency to highlight the conflicts between the ego and id
must be set the conception of the ego as a system of control, as implied in
the metaphor of the horse and rider. Furthermore, the id is treated at
many points in specific relation to the pleasure principle, and we have
seen a variety of reasons for assuming that pleasure is an organizing
mechanism which integrates diverse motives at lower levels of organiza-
tion.
A still further consideration is the progressive increase in the general-
ity which Freud attributed to the basic instinctual urges, ending up with
only a single underlying duality. This is not inconsistent with Bowlby's
views of the importance in more specialized contexts of various more
particularized instinctual responses. But it does imply that, from a very
early phase of development, the basic organization of the motivational
system cannot be derived from instinctual sources, but must resort to
identifications and internalized objects.
It is my own view that the distinction between instinctual and learned
components of the motivational system cannot legitimately be identified
with that between the id on the one hand, the ego and superego on the
other. I believe that the two distinctions cut across each other. The id
like the other subsystems, is organized about its experience in object rela-
PA RSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 195
tions. It differs, however, in two fundamental respects from the other
subsystems. First it is oriented, as the other two are not, to the individ-
ual's own organism as object. This seems to me to be the essential sig-
nificance of the pleasure principle as the governing principle of the id.
Secondly, however, the object-cathexes which are constitutive of the
structure of the id are predominantly those of the earlier phases of the
process of socialization. In any internal conflicts involving the problem
of regression, id-drives represent the regressive side of the conflict.
However much it may be true that to advance beyond certain early
levels of development it is necessary to transcend the fixation on these
early cathexes, and however much the mature personality must effec-
tively control them through ego and superego mechanisms, it still re-
mains true that these are particular cases of identification and internal-
ized objects, not the leading example of motivation in their absence.
Thus it seems to me that the general principles involved in the signifi-
cance of object-relations through identification, object-cathexis and in-
ternalization, must be extended to the whole psychoanalytic theory of
personality. Indeed, though he had not ironed out all the inconsisten-
cies in his treatment, nor reconciled many earlier with later statements,
in his latest phase of development Freud himself had, in all essential
respects, come to this position.
There are two particular virtues of this position when seen in a more
general setting than is often done. First, it formulates psychoanalytic
theory in a set of terms where direct and detailed articulation with the
theory of social systems is enormously facilitated. This is of the first im-
portance to the theory of the motivation of social behavior and hence,
in my opinion, an essential prerequisite of the advance of sociology. But
at the same time there are reciprocal benefits for psychoanalysis, for ex-
ample, in enabling it to do far greater justice to the problem of the senses
which requires that personality theory take account of variations in the
structure of the social systems on which it impinges.
On a still more general level, this view should do much to relieve dis-
cussion of psychoanalytic theory from involvement in a false dilemma
through its use of the categories of heredity and environment. As has by
now become clear in general biology, the main question is not whether
or how much one or the other factor influences outcomes. The trend is
strongly away from a "predominant factor" explanation of the phenom-
ena of life toward a more analytical one. Analytically conceived varia-
bles, except for limiting cases, are always all important. The salient
technical problems concern their clear definition and analysis of their
intricate modes of interrelationship with each other. This chapter is in-
tended as a contribution to what I conceive to be the major trend of psy-
choanalytic theory in this direction.
196 Social Theory and Personality
NOTES
1. Notable ones were made by Lionel Trilling (1955), and by Alfred
Kazin (1956). It is perhaps significant that this view is particularly strong
in literary circles.
2. This chapter belongs in a series of my own writings on the relations
between psychoanalytic theory and the theory of social systems. The most
important of these are: "Psychoanalysis and the Social Structure" (1950);
"The Superego and the Theory of Social Systems" (1952); "Psychoanalysis
and Social Science" (1954); Twenty Years of Psychoanalysis; Family,
Socialization and Interaction Process (1955); "The Incest Taboo in Rela-
tion to Social Structure and the Socialization of the Child" (1954); and "An
Approach to Psychological Theory in Terms of the Theory of Action"
(1958).
3. Of course, from the point of reference of the personality as system,
the organism, that is the person's own body, is itself an object of his situa-
tion.
4. See Lord Adrian, 1953. This stands in contrast to the interpretation
of many other commentators, less qualified in biology than Lord Adrian.
Compare also the formula that the instinct is the "representative" of the
needs of the organism to the "psychic" apparatus.
5. This, for example, is clearly what happens in learning intellectual con-
tent. Such learning requires "capacity"; but a textbook of algebra, for ex-
ample, to one not previously trained in the subject, is not just a "relatively
favorable influence" on the outcome; it is the primary source of the content
of the learned pattern.
6. In this connection I am particularly indebted to a paper by Dr. John
Bowlby, "The Nature of the Child's Tie to its Mother," 1958, and to per-
sonal discussions with Dr. Bowlby. The most essential point for our purposes
is that there are two main levels in Freud's treatment of the problem of
instinct. One tended to predominate in his earlier work, the other in the
later. The first is closer to the main biological tradition in emphasizing
relatively specific inborn patterns of behavior which do not need to be
learned. It is a type of mechanism prominently emphasized by current
"ethologists" like Lorenz and Tinbergen. Bowlby emphasizes five such "in-
stinctual responses," as he calls them, which figure prominently in the first
year or so of life, namely sucking, crying, smiling, clinging and following.
The second level concerns the more diffuse "motivational energy" which is
particularly involved in Freud's later conception of the id.
The role attributed by Bowlby to the more specific instinctual responses
does not seem to me to be incompatible with the general thesis of this chap-
ter. That these and other patterns are definitely inborn is certain. But the
higher level of organization of the behavioral system, which we think of as
the personality, cannot be derived from the organization of these responses
without reference to the influence of object relations exerted in the course
of the process of socialization. It has, however, been necessary to revise a
Dumber of statements made in an earlier draft of this chapter in the light of
these considerations. Essentially the "instinctual responses" may be thought
of as a set of mechanisms of behavior which operates at a level intermediate
between the metabolic needs of the organism, on which Freud himself and
PA RSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 197
many later psychoanalysts have laid such great emphasis, and the higher
order mechanisms of control of behavior through internalized objects.
7. There is a notable parallel in this respect between Freud and Durk-
heim. Though the empirical subject-matters of their concern are far apart.
Durkheim, in his discussion of the relations of mechanical and organic
solidarity, particularly in his Division of Labor, tended to treat these con-
cepts as associated with stages in the evolution of social systems. He also
tried to put them in the context of an analytical theory of social systems.
See my paper, "Durkheim's Contribution to the Theory of the Integration
of Social Systems."
8. The thesis is perhaps most clearly stated in The Problem of Anxiety.
9. In this connection I am particularly indebted to the work of James
Olds who strongly emphasizes the independence of pleasure-reward mech-
anisms from the instinctual needs. Frustration of the latter is closely as-
sociated with pain and other compulsion mechanisms. See Olds, 1958.
10. Part, however, of the mother's position vis-a-vis the child is deter-
mined by the fact that third parties are always involved in the relationship.
Typically there is a father also present in the situation; he may not partici-
pate very actively in early child care, but the fact that the mother "lives
with" him in a common household greatly affects her treatment of her child.
There may also be older siblings. Then of course this family is a part of a
larger society which imposes both relational constraints and a set of values
which, among many other things, set certain norms for what is considered
proper treatment of infants.
11. The presumption is that the generalized pleasure mechanism plays a
crucial part in this learning process and is a primary reason for the impor-
tance of childhood eroticism.
12. This proposition needs qualification for certain types of variability
in the structure of social situations (i.e., kinship systems).
13. It goes without saying that in terms of "motivational force" the id is
"stronger" than the ego, as a horse is far stronger than its human rider.
The ego, however, is not an energy system but a "cybernetic" type of con-
trol system. For this function relatively little energy is needed.
14. For some purposes it may well be necessary to distinguish different
kinds of pleasure; thus, erotic pleasure may be a special type.
15. In somewhat different and more strictly theoretical terms we might
say that it constitutes an input from the organism to the personality system.
16. My own previous views on eroticism and its functions have been
stated most fully in "The Incest Taboo . . . " 1954.
17. It may be that a special connection is thus established between the
independent instinctual responses of sucking and clinging. Such a connec-
tion between discrete gratifications would imply a generalized medium
analogous to money in social systems. It is as such a medium that I con-
ceive pleasure. (See Olds, 1958.)
18. Olds's work implies that they operate at the level of the central nerv-
ous system, not of the "erogenous" peripheral areas alone.
198 Social Theory and Personality
19. Freud (1935) clearly recognized the duality of being both like and
unlike the object in speaking of the boy's identification with the father, and
the girl's with her mother in the oedipal period.
20. The German term used by Freud is Introjektion.
21. The Ego and the Id, pp. 36-7.
22. Throughout this discussion I speak of the mother as the primary
object of cathexis. More strictly one should refer to a "generalized parent"
since before the oedipal transition presumably the category of sex has not
yet been fully internalized, nor the agency-roles of the two parents fully
discriminated.
23. I have analyzed this elsewhere at considerably greater length than is
possible here. See Parsons and Bales, (1955) especially Chapter II. This
book may be used for general reference though my views have changed in
a few respects since its writing.
24. See Merton (1957), for an excellent discussion of the complexity of
role-constellations.
25. The taboo on homosexuality is dynamically closely related to that on
incest. It applies, however, mainly to emancipation from the latency-period
one-sex peer group, not from the family of orientation. Homosexuality
would be the most tempting latency-period form of eroticism.
26. Freud's own analysis of these processes is, in my opinion, consider-
ably less satisfactory than his analysis of the earlier ones.
27. On the sociological significance of this transition see S. N. Eisenstadt
(1956), especially Chapters I and III.
28. Same-sex friendship seems to occupy an intermediate position be-
tween these two types. See Eisenstadt (1956), p. 43.
29. The relation of this passage to Freud's late view of the role of anxiety
in The Problem of Anxiety as concerned primarily with the fear of object-
loss, is clear.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adrian, Lord. 1953. "Review of Jones, E. The Life and Work of Freud,"
The Observer. London. Vol. I. November.
Alexander, F. 1950. Psychosomatic Medicine. New York: Norton.
Bales, R. F. 1953. "The Equilibrium Problem in Small Groups," in Parsons,
T., Bales, R. F. and Shils, E. A. Working Papers in the Theory of Action.
Glencoe: The Free Press.
Bowlby, John. 1958. "The Nature of the Child's Tie to His Mother," Inter-
national Journal of Psycho-analysis, Vol. 39, Pt. V.
Eisenstadt, S. N. 1956. From Generation to Generation. Glencoe: The Free
Press.
Freud, S. 1933. New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis. New York:
Norton.
. 1935. The Ego and the Id. London: Hogarth.
PA RSONS: Social Structure and Personality Development 199
. 1936. The Problem of Anxiety. New York: Norton.
Grinker, R. 1953. Psychosomatic Research. New York: Norton.
Kazin, A. 1956. "The Freudian Revolution Analyzed," New York Times
Magazine, May 6, p. 22.
Merton, R. K. 1957. "The Role Set," British Journal of Sociology, 8:2.
Olds, J. 1958. "Self Stimulation of the Brain," Science, Feb. 14, 127:315-24.
Parsons, T. 1950. "Psychoanalysis and the Social Structure," Psychoanalytic
Quarterly, 19:371-94.
~. 1952. "The Superego and the Theory of Social Systems," Psychiatry,
15:15-25.
. 1 954a. "Psychoanalysis and Social Science," in Alexander and Ross
(eds.) , Twenty Years of Psychoanalysis.
-. 1954b. "The Incest Taboo in Relation to Social Structure and the
Socialization of the Child," British Journal of Sociology, June, pp. 101-17.
-. 1958. "Durkheim's Contribution to the Theory of the Integration
of Social Systems," in Wolff, K. (ed.) Volume Honoring the Centenary of
Emile Durkheim. Ohio State University Press.
-. 1959a. "An Approach to Psychological Theoiy in Terms of the
Theory of Action," in Koch, S. (ed.), Psychology, A Science. Vol. III.
New York: McGraw-Hill.
. 1959b. "The School Class as a Social System," Harvard Educa-
tional Review, Fall, 1959.
Parsons, T. and Bales, R. F. 1955. Family, Socialization and Interaction
Process. Glencoe: Free Press.
Parsons, T., Bales, R. F. and Shils, E. A. 1953. Working Papers in the
Theory of Action. Glencoe: Free Press.
Parsons, T. and Shils, E. A. 1951. Toward a General Theory of Action.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Trilling, L. 1955. Freud and the Crisis of Our Culture. Boston: Beacon Press.
About the Chapter
In relationship to the more theoretical chapters in this section, this chap-
ter may be regarded as a case study. Jt is a prototype of researches linking
modal personality to the functioning of a social system. The authors com-
pare their Russian sample with an American control group. Their analysis
is divided into a description of Russian modal personality trends and an
analysis of the relationship of these trends to the needs and pressures of the
Soviet socio-political system. Particular attention is given to congruence be-
tween personality modes and social systems and the implications of in-
congruence for the functioning of the Soviet system.
About the Authors
ALEX INKELES is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, and Di-
rector of Studies in Social Relations at the Russian Research Center. He is
the author of Public Opinion in Soviet Russia, and co-author of How the
Soviet System Works and The Soviet Citizen. The inter-relations of person-
ality and social structure are at the center of his research interests, and he is
currently engaged in comparative studies of the social-psychology of indus-
trial societies.
EUGENIA HANFMANN is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Stu-
dent Counseling Center at Brandeis University. She is a diplomate of the
American Board of Examiners in the specialty of Clinical Psychology. She
obtained her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Jena in 1927. She
has done research, teaching and clinical work at Smith College, Worcester
State Hospital, Mount Holyoke College, the Office of Strategic Services and
Harvard University. Her special research interests are in the fields of disturb-
ances of thinking, personality dynamics and projective techniques.
HELEN BEIER studied at the Universities of Munich, Jena, London, Berlin,
and in 1933 received her doctoral degree in psychology from the University
of Danzig. She holds the position of Instructor in Psychology in the Depart-
ment of Psychiatry of Boston University, as well as that of Chief Psycholo-
gist in the Child Guidance Center of the Boston City Hospital. She formerly
did research at the Russian Research Center at Harvard.
A cknowledgments
This chapter, in slightly different form, was published first in Human Rela-
tions, XI, 1, 1959. The authors wish to express their warm appreciation for
the prolonged support of the Russian Research Center at Harvard. Revisions
were made by the senior author while he was a Fellow of the Center for Ad-
vanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; the Center's support is gratefully
acknowledged.
Modal Personality and Adjustment to
the Soviet Socio-Political System
ALEX INKELES, Harvard University
EUGENIA HANFMANN, Brandeis University
HELEN BEDER, Boston University
I wo main elements are encompassed in the study of national character. 1
The first step is to determine what modal personality patterns, if any, are
found in a particular national population or in its major sub-groups. In
so far as such modes exist, one can go on to the second stage: studying
the interrelations between the personality modes and various aspects of
the social system. Even if the state of our theory warranted the drafting
of an "ideal" research design for studies in this field, they would require
staggering sums and would probably be beyond our current methodologi-
cal resources. We can, however, hope to make progress through more
restricted efforts. In the investigation reported here we studied a highly
selected group from the population of the Soviet Union, namely, former
citizens of Great Russian nationality who "defected" during or after
World War II. Attention is focused mainly on one aspect of the complex
interrelations between system and personality; our subjects' participa-
tion in and adjustment to their Communist socio-political order. 2 We
found that certain personality modes were outstanding in the group, and
believe that we can trace then: significance for our subjects' adjustment
to Soviet society.
201
202 Social Theory and Personality
SAMPLE AND METHOD
An intensive program of clinical psychological research was conducted
as part of the work of the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System. 3
The Project explored the attitudes and life experiences of former Soviet
citizens who were displaced during World War II and its aftermath and
then decided not to return to the USSR. Almost 3,000 completed a long
written questionnaire, and 329 undertook a detailed general life history
interview. The individuals studied clinically were selected from the lat-
ter group. Criteria of selection were that the interviewee seemed a nor-
mal, reasonably adjusted individual who was relatively young, had
lived most of his life under Soviet conditions, and was willing to under-
take further intensive interviewing and psychological testing.
The group studied clinically included 51 individuals, 41 of whom
were men. With the exception of a few Ukrainians, all were Great Rus-
sians. Almost half were under 30, and only 8 were 40 or older at the
time of interview in 1950, which meant that the overwhelming majority
grew up mainly under Soviet conditions and were educated in Soviet
schools. Eleven had a minimum education of 4 years or less, 22 had be-
tween 4 and 8 years, and 18 had advanced secondary or college train-
ing. The group consisted predominantly of urban residents. But if those
who had moved from the countryside to the city were included with the
rural, then approximately half fell in each category. As might be ex-
pected from the education data, the group included a rather large pro-
portion of people in high status occupations, with 1 1 professionals and
members of the intelligentsia, 7 regular army officers, and 9 white col-
lar workers. Sixteen were rank and file industrial and agricultural work-
ers, and 5 rank and file army men. In keeping with the occupational
pattern but running counter to popular expectations about Soviet refu-
gees, a rather high proportion were in the Party (6) or the Young Com-
munist League (13). Again running counter to popular expectations
about refugees, the group was not characterized by a markedly high in-
cidence of disadvantaged family background as reflected either in mate-
rial deprivation, the experience of political arrest, or other forms of re-
pression at the hands of the regime. Ten were classified as having been
extremely disadvantaged, and 15 as having suffered minor disadvantage.
All of the Soviet refugees have in common their "disaffection" from
Soviet society. The clinical group included mainly the more "active"
defectors, who left Soviet control on their own initiative rather than the
"passive" who were removed by force of circumstance. Thirty-four had
deserted from the military 4 or voluntarily departed with the retreating
German occupation armies. In general, however, the clinical group was
not more vigorously anti-Communist than the other refugees. They
overwhelmingly supported the principles of the welfare state, including
1NKELES, et al: Adjustment to the Soviet System 203
government ownership and state planning, and credited the regime with
great achievements in foreign affairs and economic and cultural develop-
ment. They refused to return for much the same reasons given by other
refugees: fear of reprisal at the hands of the secret police, memories of
former oppression, opposition to institutions like the collective farm, or
resentment of the low standard of living and the absence of political
freedom. In psychological adjustment, finally, they seemed to reflect
fairly well the tendency toward adequate adjustment which character-
ized the refugees as a whole.
With regard to the parent refugee population, then, the clinical group
was disproportionately male, young, well educated, well placed occupa-
tionally and politically, and "active" in defecting. 5 In its internal com-
position, the sample was also unbalanced in being predominantly male.
Otherwise the sample gave about equal weight to those over and under
35, manual and white collar occupations, urban or rural backgrounds,
and education above or below the advanced secondary level.
Each respondent was interviewed about his childhood experience,
some aspects of his adult life, and his adjustment to conditions in a dis-
placed persons camp. Each took a battery of tests which included the
Rorschach, TAT, a sentence completion test of 60 items, a "projective
questions" test including 8 of the questions utilized in the authoritarian
personality study, and a specially constructed "episodes" or problem-
situations test. We regard the use of this battery of tests as a matter of
special note, since most attempts to assess modal tendencies in small
scale societies have relied upon a single instrument, particularly the
Rorschach. The various tests differ in their sensitivity to particular di-
mensions or levels of personality, and differentially reflect the impact of
the immediate emotional state and environmental situation of the sub-
ject. By utilizing a series of tests, therefore, we hope that we have in sig-
nificant degree reduced the chances that any particular finding peculiar
to the special combination of instrument, subject, and situation will have
been mistakenly interpreted as distinctively Russian. In addition, the use
of this battery enables us to test our assumptions in some depth, by
checking for consistency on several tests.
Each test was independently analyzed according to fairly standard
scoring methods, and the results reported separately. 6 In reporting their
results, however, each set of analysts made some observations on the
character traits which seemed generally important to the group as a
whole. Further, in drawing these conclusions the analysts made use of a
criterion group of Americans matched with the Russian sample on age,
sex, occupation, and education. The availability of such test results
posed a challenge as to whether or not these general observations, when
collated and analyzed, would yield any consistent patterns for the group
as a whole.
204 Social Theory and Personality
To make this assessment we selected the eight major headings used
below as an organizing framework. We believe that they permit a fairly
full description of the various dimensions and processes of the human
personality, and at the same time facilitate making connections with
aspects of the social system. These categories were, however, not part
of the design of the original clinical research program, and were not
used by the analysts of the individual instruments. While this circum-
stance made for lesser comparability between the tests, it forestalled the
slanting of conclusions to fit the analytic scheme. The statements in the
conclusions drawn by the analysts of each instrument were written on
duplicate cards, sorted, and grouped under all the categories to which
they seemed relevant. The evidence with regard to each category was
then sifted and weighed. Where there were ambiguous findings the origi-
nal tables were re-examined for clarification. Relevant impressions based
on the interviews were also used. Similarities and differences between
those in our sample and the matching Americans aided in grasping the
distinctive features of the Russian pattern. On this basis a characteriza-
tion of the group was developed under each heading of the analytic
scheme.
It should be clear that the sketch of modal personality characteristics
presented below is not a simple and direct translation of particular test
scores into personality traits. Rather, it is an evaluative, summary state-
ment, following from the collation and interpretation of conclusions
drawn from each test, conclusions which were in turn based both on test
scores and supplementary qualitative material. The word "modal"
should not be taken too literally in this context. We have relied on some
test scores when only a small proportion of the sample manifested the
given response or pattern of responses, if this fit with other evidence in
developing a larger picture. In stating our findings we have been freer
with the evidence than some would permit, more strict than others would
require. We attempted to keep to the canons of the exact method, with-
out neglecting the clinical interpretations and insights. In this way we
hoped to arrive at a rich and meaningful picture of the people studied, a
picture that would provide an adequate basis for an analysis of their ad-
justment to the socio-political system.
BRIEF SKETCH OF RUSSIAN MODAL PERSONALITY
CHARACTERISTICS
1. Central Needs 7
Since all human beings manifest the same basic needs, we cannot as-
sert that some need is unique to a given national population. Among
these universal needs, however, some may achieve greater strength or
INKELES, et al: Adjustment to the Soviet System 205
central importance in the organization of the personality, and in this
sense be typical of the majority of a given group.
Probably the strongest and most pervasive quality of the Russian per-
sonality which emerged from our data was a need for affiliation. By this
we mean a need for intensive interaction with other people in immedi-
ate, direct, face-to-face relationships, coupled with a great capacity for
having this need fulfilled through the establishment of warm and per-
sonal contact with others. Our subjects seemed to welcome others into
their lives as an indispensable condition of their own existence, and gen-
erally felt neither isolated nor estranged from them. In contrast to the
American subjects, the Russians were not too anxiously concerned about
others' opinion of them and did not feel compelled to cling to a relation-
ship nor to defend themselves against it. Rather, they manifested a pro-
found acceptance of group membership and relatedness. These orienta-
tions were especially prevalent in test situations dealing with relations
between the individual and small face-to-face groups such as the fam-
ily, the work team, and the friendship circle.
Closely linked with the need for affiliation is a need for dependence
very much like what Dicks (1952) spoke of as the Russians' "strong
positive drive for enjoying loving protection and security," care and af-
fection. This need shows not only in orientation towards parents and
peers, but also in the relations with formal authority figures. Unlike
Dicks, we did not, however, find a strong need for submission linked
with the need for dependence. In addition there is substantial evidence
for the relatively greater strength of oral needs, reflected in preoccu-
pation with getting and consuming food and drink, in great volubility
and in emphasis on singing. These features are especially conspicuous by
contrast with the relative weakness of the more typically compulsive
puritanical concern for order, regularity and self-control. However, our
data do not permit us to stress this oral component as heavily as does
Dicks, who regards it as "typical" for the culture as a whole.
Several needs rather prominent in the records of the American con-
trol group did not appear to be of outstanding importance in the per-
sonality structure of the Russians. Most notable, the great emphasis on
achievement found in the American records was absent from the Rus-
sian ones. Within the area of interpersonal relations our data lead us to
posit a fairly sharp Russian-American contrast. Whereas the American
records indicate great strength of need for approval and need for auton-
omy, those needs were rather weakly manifested by the Russians. In
approaching interpersonal relations, our American subjects seemed to
fear too close or intimate association with other individuals and groups.
They often perceived such relations as potentially limiting freedom of
individual action, and therefore inclined above all to insure their inde-
206 Social Theory and Personality
pendence from or autonomy within the group. At the same time the
Americans revealed a strong desire for recognition and at least formal
acceptance or approval from the group. They are very eager to be
"liked," to be regarded as an "all right" guy, and greatly fear isolation
from the group. Finally we noted that certain needs important in other
national character studies were apparently not central in either the
American or the Russian groups. Neither showed much need for domi-
nance, for securing positions of superordination or for controlling or
manipulating others and enforcing authority over them. Nor did they
seem markedly distinguished in the strength of hostile impulses, of de-
sires to hurt, punish, or destroy.
2. Modes of Impulse Control
On the whole the Russians have relatively high awareness of their
impulses or basic dispositions such as for oral gratification, sex, ag-
gression, or dependence and rather freely accept them as something
normal or "natural" rather than as bad or offensive. 8 The Russians
showed evidence, furthermore, of giving in to these impulses quite read-
ily and frequently, and of living them out. Although they tended after-
wards to be penitent and admit that they should not have "lived out" so
freely, they were not really punitive towards themselves or others for
failure to control impulses. Of course, this does not mean complete ab-
sence of impulse control, a condition which would render social life pa-
tently impossible. Indeed, the Russians viewed their own impulses and
desires as forces which needed watching, and often professed the belief
that the control of impulses was necessary and beneficial. The critical
point is that the Russians seemed to rely much less than the Americans
on impulse control to be generated and handled from within. Rather,
they apparently felt a need for aid from without in the form of guidance
and pressure exerted by higher authority and by the group to assist them
in controlling their impulses. This is what Dicks referred to as the Rus-
sian's desire to have a "moral corset" put on his impulses. The Ameri-
cans, on the other hand, vigorously affirm their ability for ^//-control,
and seem to assume that the possession of such ability and its exercise
legitimates their desire to be free from the overt control of authority and
the group.
In this connection, the review of individual cases revealed a relative
lack of well developed defensive structures in many of the Russian sub-
jects. Mechanisms which serve to counteract and to modify threatening
feelings and impulses including isolation, intellectualization and reac-
tion formation seem to figure much less prominently among them than
among the Americans, The Russians had fewer defenses of this type
and those they had were less well established.
INKELES, et al: Adjustment to the Soviet System 207
3. Typical Polarities and Dilemmas
Within certain areas of feelings and motives individuals may typically
display attitudes and behavior that belong to one or the opposite poles of
the given variable, or else display a preoccupation with the choice of
alternatives posed by these poles. Such preoccupation may be taken to
define the areas of typical dilemmas or conflicts, similar to the polarized
issues, such as "identity vs. role diffusion" and "intimacy vs. isolation,"
which Erikson (1950) found so important in different stages of psycho-
logical maturation.
In our Russian subjects we found a conscious preoccupation with the
problem of trust vs. mistrust in relation to others. They worried about
the intentions of the other, expressing apprehension that people may not
really be as they seem on the surface. There was always the danger that
someone might entice you into revealing yourself, only then to turn
around and punish you for what you have revealed. Another typical
polarity of the Russians' behavior is that of optimism vs. pessimism, or
of faith vs. despair. One of our projective test items posited the situation
that tools and materials necessary for doing a job fail to arrive. In re-
sponding to this item our Russian subjects tended to focus on whether
the outcome of the situation will be good or bad for the actor, while the
Americans at once sprang into a plan of action for resolving the situa-
tion. Finally, we may include under the typical polarities of the Russians'
attitude that of activity vs. passivity, although in the case of this variable
we found little indication of a sense of a conscious conflict. However,
the subjects' choices of alternatives in the projective tests tended to be
distributed between the active and the passive ones, while the Ameri-
cans' preference for the active instrumental response was as clear-cut
and strong as was their generally optimistic orientation.
The pronounced polarities of the Russians' orientation lend support
to Dicks's assertion that "the outstanding trait of the Russian personality
is its contradictoriness its ambivalence" (1952, p. 168). Two qualifi-
cations, however, must be kept in mind. First, the strength of our Rus-
sian subjects' dilemmas may have been greatly enhanced by the condi-
tions of their lives, both in th Soviet Union and abroad. Second, the
American subjects also show some involvement in problematic issues,
though the issues were different from the Russian ones. Thus the prob-
lem of "intimacy vs. isolation" or "autonomy vs. belongingness" to
which we have already alluded, seemed a major dilemma for Ameri-
cans but not for the Russians.
4. Achieving and Maintaining Self-Esteem
In their orientations toward the self, the Russians displayed rather
low and unintense self-awareness and little painful self-consciousness.
208 Social Theory and Personality
They showed rather high and secure self-esteem, and were little given to
self-examination and doubt of their inner selves. At the same time they
were not made anxious by examination of their own motivations or that
of others, but rather showed readiness to gain insight into psychological
mechanisms. The American pattern reveals some contrasts here, with
evidence of acute self-awareness, substantial self-examination and
doubting of one's inner qualities.
We were not able to discern any differences between Americans and
Russians in the relative importance of guilt versus shame as sanctions.
There were, however, some suggestive differences in what seemed to
induce both guilt and shame. The Americans were more likely to feel
guilty or shamed if they failed to live up to clear-cut "public" norms, as
in matters of etiquette. They were also upset by any hint that they were
inept, incompetent, or unable to meet production, sports, or similar per-
formance standards. The Russians did not seem to be equally disturbed
by such failures, and felt relatively more guilty or ashamed when they
assumed that they had fallen behind with regard to moral or interper-
sonal behavior norms, as in matters involving personal honesty, sincer-
ity, trust, or loyalty to a friend. These latter qualities they value most
highly and they demand them from their friends.
5. Relation to Authority 9
Our clinical instruments presented the subjects with only a limited
range of situations involving relations with authority. No pronounced
differences in basic attitudes between Russians and Americans ap-
peared, except that Russians seemed to have more fear of and much less
optimistic expectations about authority figures. Both of these manifesta-
tions might, of course, have been mainly a reflection of their recent ex-
periences rather than of deeper-lying dispositions. Fortunately, we can
supplement the clinical materials by the life history interviews which
dealt extensively with the individual's relations with authority. A definite
picture emerges from these data. Above all else the Russians want their
leaders whether boss, district political hack,, or national ruler to be
warm, nurturant, considerate, and interested in the individuals' prob-
lems and welfare. The authority is also expected to be the main source
of initiative in the inauguration of general plans and programs and in
the provision of guidance and organization for their attainment. The
Russians do not seem to expect initiative, directedness, and organized-
ness from an average individual. They therefore expect that the author-
ity will of necessity give detailed orders, demand obedience, keep check-
ing up on performance, and use persuasion and coercion intensively to
insure steady performance. A further major expectation with regard to
the "legitimate" authority is that it will institute and enforce sanctions
INKELES, et al: Adjustment to the Soviet System 209
designed to curb or control bad impulses in individuals, improper moral
practices, heathen religious ideas, perverted political procedures, and
extreme personal injustice. It is then the government which should pro-
vide that "external moral corset" which Dicks says the Russian seeks.
An authority which meets these qualifications is "good" and it does
what it does with "right." Such an authority should be loved, honored,
respected, and obeyed. Our Russian subjects seemed, however, to ex-
pect that authority figures would in fact frequently be stern, demanding,
even scolding and nagging. This was not in and of itself viewed as bad
or improper. Authority may be, perhaps ought to be autocratic, so long
as it is not harshly authoritarian and not totally demanding. Indeed, it is
not a bad thing if such an authority makes one rather strongly afraid,
makes one "quake" in expectation of punishment for trespassing or
wrongdoing. Such an authority should not, however, be arbitrary, aloof,
and unjust. It should not be unfeeling in the face of an open acknowledg-
ment of one's guilt and of consequent self-castigation. Indeed, many of
our subjects assumed that authority can in fact be manipulated through
humbling the self and depicting oneself as a weak, helpless person who
needs supportive guidance rather than harsh punishment. They also
assumed that authority may be manipulated by praise or fawning, and
seduced through the sharing of gratificatory experiences provided by
the supplicant as through the offer of a bottle of liquor and the subse-
quent sharing of some drinks. Russians also favor meeting the pressure
of authority by evasive tactics, including such devices as apparently well-
intentioned failure to comprehend and departures from the scene of ac-
tion.
Throughout their discussions of authority our respondents showed
little concern for the preservation of precise forms, rules, regulations,
exactly defined rights, regularity of procedure, formal and explicit limi-
tation of powers, or the other aspects of the traditional constitutional
Anglo-Saxon approach to law and government. For the Russians a gov-
ernment which has the characteristics of good government listed above,
justifies its right to rule by virtue of that performance. In that case, one
need not fuss too much about the fine points of law. By contrast, if gov-
ernment is harsh, arbitrary, disinterested in public welfare which it is
apparently expected to be more often than not then it loses its right to
govern no matter how legal its position and no matter how close its ob-
servance of the letter of the law.
6. Modes of Affective Functioning
One of the most salient characteristics of the Russian personality was
the high degree of their expressiveness and emotional aliveness. On most
test items the Russian responses had a stronger emotional coloring, and
210 Social Theory and Personality
covered a wider range of emotions than did the American responses. The
Russians' feelings were easily brought into play, and they showed them
openly and freely both in speech and in facial expression, without much
suppression or disguise. In particular they showed a noticeably greater
freedom and spontaneity in criticism and in the expression of hostile
feelings than was true for the Americans. There were, further, two emo-
tions which the Russians showed with a frequency far exceeding that
found in the Americans fear, and depression or despair. Many of the
ambiguous situations posited in the tests were viewed by them in terms
of danger and threat, on the one hand, and of privation and loss on the
other. Undoubtedly this was in good part a reflection of the tense social
situation which they had experienced in the Soviet Union, and of their
depressed status as refugees, but we believe that in addition deeper ly-
ing trends were here being tapped. These data provide some evidence
in support of the oft noted prevalence of depressive trends among the
Russians.
7. Modes of Cognitive Functioning
In this area we include characteristic patterns of perception, memory,
thought, and imagination, and the processes involved in forming and
manipulating ideas about the world around one. Of all the modes of per-
sonality organization it is perhaps the most subtle, and certainly in the
present state of theory and testing one of the most difficult to formulate.
Our clinical materials do, however, permit a few comments.
In discussing people, the Russians show a keen awareness of the
"other" as a distinct entity as well as a rich and diversified recognition of
his special characteristics. Other people are usually perceived by them
not as social types but as concrete individuals with a variety of attributes
distinctly their own. The Russians think of people and evaluate them
for what they are rather than in terms of how they evaluate ego, the lat-
ter being a more typically American approach. The Russians also paid
more attention to the "others' " basic underlying attributes and attitudes
than to their behavior as such or their performance on standards of
achievement and accomplishment in the instrumental realm.
Similar patterns were evident in their perception of interpersonal
situations. In reacting to the interpersonal relations "problems" pre-
sented by one of the psychological tests they more fully elaborated the
situation, cited more relevant incidents from folklore or their own ex-
perience, and offered many more illustrations of a point. In contrast, the
Americans tended more to describe the formal, external, characteristics
of people, apparently being less perceptive of the individual's motiva-
tional characteristics. The Americans also tended to discuss interper-
sonal problems on a rather generalized and abstract level. With regard
INKELES, et al. : A djustment to the Soviet System 211
to most other types of situation, however, especially problems involving
social organization, the pattern was somewhat reversed. Russians tended
to take a rather broad, sweeping view of the situation, generalizing at
the expense of details, about which they were often extremely vague
and poorly informed. They seemed to feel their way through such situa-
tions rather than rigorously to think them through, tending to get into a
spirit of grandiose planning but without attention to necessary details.
8. Modes of Conative Functioning
By conative functioning we mean the patterns, the particular behav-
ioral forms of the striving for any valued goals, including the rhythm or
pace at which these goals are pursued and the way in which that rhythm
is regulated. In this area our clinical data are not very rich. Neverthe-
less, we have the strong impression that the Russians do not match the
Americans in vigor of striving to master all situations or problems put be-
fore them. Rather, problems are met primarily through adaptive instru-
mental orientations. Though by no means listless, Russians seem much
more passively accommodative to the apparent hard facts of situations.
In addition, they appeared less apt to persevere systematically in the
adaptive courses of action they did undertake, tending to backslide into
passive accommodation when the going proved rough. At the same time,
the Russians do seem capable of great bursts of activity, which suggests
the bi-modality of an assertive-passive pattern of strivings in contrast to
the steadier, more even, and consistent pattern of strivings among the
Americans.
To sum up, one of the most salient characteristics of the personality of
our Russian subjects was their emotional aliveness and expressiveness.
They felt their emotions keenly, and did not tend to disguise or to deny
them to themselves, nor to suppress their outward expression to the same
extent as the Americans. The Russians criticized themselves and others
with greater freedom and spontaneity. Relatively more aware and tol-
erant of impulses for gratification in themselves and others, they relied
less than the Americans on self-control from within and more on external
socially imposed controls applied by the peer group or authority.
A second outstanding characteristic of the Russians was their strong
need for intensive interaction with others, coupled with a strong and se-
cure feeling of relatedness to them, high positive evaluation of such be-
longingness, and great capacity to enjoy such relationships. The image
of the "good" authority was of a warm, nurturant, supportive figure. Yet
our subjects seemed to assume that this paternalism might and indeed
should include superordinate planning and firm guidance, as well as
control or supervision of public and personal morality, and if necessary,
of thought and belief. It is notable, in this connection, that in the realm
212 Social Theory and Personality
of conative and cognitive functioning orderliness, precision of planning
and persistence in striving were not outstandingly present. Such qualities
were rather overshadowed by tendencies toward over-generalizing,
vagueness, imprecision, and passive accommodation. Countering the
image of the good authority, there was an expectation that those with
power would in fact often be harsh, aloof, and authoritarian. The effect
of such behavior by authority is alienation of loyalty. This fits rather
well with the finding that the main polarized issues or dilemmas were
those of "trust vs. mistrust" in relations with others, "optimism vs. pessi-
mism," and "activity vs. passivity," whereas the more typically Ameri-
can dilemma of "intimacy vs. isolation" was not a problem for many
Russians.
Though strongly motivated by needs for affiliation and dependence
and wishes for oral gratification in contrast to greater strength of
needs for achievement, autonomy, and approval among the Americans
our Russian subjects seemed to have a characteristically sturdy ego.
They were rather secure in their self-estimation, and unafraid to face up
to their own motivation and that of others. In contrast to the Americans,
the Russians seemed to feel shame and guilt for defects of "character" in
interpersonal relations rather than for failure to meet formal rules of
etiquette or instrumental production norms. Compared to the Ameri-
cans, however, they seemed relatively lacking in well developed and
stabilized defenses with which to counteract and modify threatening im-
pulses and feelings. The organization of their personality depended for
its coherence much more heavily on their intimate relatedness to those
around them, their capacity to use others' support and to share with
them their emotions.
RELATIONS OF MOBAL PERSONALITY AND THE
SOCIO-POLITICAL SYSTEM
In the following comments we are interpreting "political partici-
pation" rather broadly, to cover the whole range of the individual's role
as the citizen of a large-scale national state. We therefore include his
major economic and social as well as his specifically political roles. This
may extend the concept of political participation too far for most na-
tional states, but for the Soviet Union, where all aspects of social life
have been politicized, it is the only meaningful approach. Specifically,
the questions to which we address ourselves are as follows:
Assuming that the traits cited above were widespread among the
group of Great Russians studied by our project, what implications would
this have for their adjustment to the role demands made on them by the
social system in which they participated? To what extent can the typi-
INKELES, et al: Adjustment to the Soviet System 213
cal complaints of refugees against the system, and the typical com-
plaints of the regime against its own people., be traced to the elements
of non-congruence between these personality modes and Soviet social
structure?
A full answer to these questions would involve us in a much more
extensive presentation and a more complex analysis than is possible
here. We wish to stress that our analysis is limited to the Soviet socio-
political system as it typically functioned under Stalin's leadership,
(Bauer, Inkeles and Kluckhohn, 1956; Fainsod, 1953) since this was
the form of the system in which our respondents lived and to which
they had to adjust. To avoid any ambiguity on this score we have fairly
consistently used the past tense. We sincerely hope that this will not lead
to the mistaken assumption that we regard the post-Stalin era as mas-
sively discontinuous with the earlier system. However, to specify in
any detail the elements of stability and change in post-Stalin Russia, and
to indicate the probable effects of such changes on the adjustment of
Soviet citizens to the system, is beyond the scope of this chapter. As for
the personality dimensions, we wUl discuss each in its relations to sys-
tem participation separately, rather than in the complex combinations
in which they operate in reality. Only those of the personality traits
cited above are discussed that clearly have relevance for the individual's
participation in the socio-political system.
Need Affiliation
Virtually all aspects of the Soviet regime's pattern of operation seem
calculated to interfere with the satisfaction of the Russians' need for
affiliation. The regime has placed great strains on friendship relations
by its persistent programs of political surveillance, its encouragement
and elaboration of the process of denunciation, and its assignment of
mutual or "collective" responsibility for the failings of particular indi-
viduals. The problem was further aggravated by the regime's insistence
that its elite maintain a substantial social distance between itself and the
rank-and-file. In addition, the regime developed an institutional system
which affected the individual's relations with others in a way that ran
strongly counter to the basic propensities of the Russians as represented
in our sample.
The desire for involvement in the group and the insistence on loyalty,
sincerity, and general responsiveness from others, received but little op-
portunity for expression and gratification in the tightly controlled Soviet
atmosphere. Many of the primary face-to-face organizations most im-.
portant to the individual were infiltrated, attacked, or even destroyed
by the regime. The breakup of the old village community and its replace-
ment by the more formal, bureaucratic, and impersonal collective farm
214 Social Theory and Personality
is perhaps the most outstanding example, but it is only one of many.
The disruption and subordination to the state of the traditional family
group, of the Church, the independent professional associations and the
trade unions are other cases in point. The regime greatly feared the de-
velopment of local autonomous centers of power. Every small group was
seen as a potential conspiracy against the regime or its policies. The
system of control required that each and all constantly watch and report
on each other. The top hierarchy conducted a constant war on what it
scornfully called "local patriotism," "back scratching" and "mutual se-
curity associations," even though in reality it was attacking little more
than the usual personalizing tendencies incidental to effective business
and political management. The people strove hard to maintain their
small group structures, and the regime persistently fought this trend
through its war against "familieness" and associated evils. At the same
time it must be recognized that by its emphasis on broad group loyalties,
the regime probably captured and harnessed somewhat the propensities
of many Russians to give themselves up wholly to a group membership
and to group activity and goals. This is most marked in the Young Com-
munist League and in parts of the Party.
Need Orality
The scarcity element which predominated in Soviet society, the strictly
rationed economy of materials, and men, and the physical requirements
of daily life seem to have aroused intense anxieties about further oral
deprivation which served greatly to increase the impact of the real
shortages which have been chronic to the system. Indeed, the image of
the system which most individuals in our sample held is very much that
of an orally depriving, niggardly, non-nurturant leadership. On the other
hand, the regime can hope to find a quick road to better relations with
the population by strategic dumping or glutting with goods. To some ex-
tent, this was attempted during the period of Malenkov's ascendancy,
although perhaps more in promise than reality.
Need Dependence
The regime took pride in following Lenin in "pushing" the masses. It
demanded that individuals be responsible and carry on "on their own"
with whatever resources were at hand. It clamored for will and self-
determination (see Bauer 1952). Clearly, this was not very congruent
with the felt need for dependent relations. At the same time certain as-
pects of the regime satisfied the need for dependence. The popular image
of the regime as one possessed of a strong sense of direction fits in with
this need. Similarly emphasis on a massive formal program of social-
welfare measures helped, even if they were not too fully implemented.
INKELES, et al: Adjustment to the Soviet System 2 1 5
This directedness has a bearing also on the problem of submission. Al-
though the regime had the quality of a firm authority able to give needed
direction, it did not gain as much as it might because it was viewed as
interested in the maximation of power per se. This appears to alienate
the Russian as represented in our sample.
The Trust-Mistrust Dilemma
Everything we know about Soviet society makes it clear that it was
extremely difficult for a Soviet citizen to be at all sure about the good in-
tentions of his government leaders and his immediate supervisors. They
seemed always to talk support and yet to mete out harsh treatment. This
divided behavior pattern of the leadership seemed to aggravate the
apparent Russian tendency to see the intentions of others as proble-
matical, It intensified the dilemma of trust-mistrust. On the basis of our
interviews one might describe this dilemma of whether or not to grant
trust as very nearly the central problem in the relations of former Soviet
citizens to their regime. The dilemma of optimism vs. pessimism, of
whether outcomes will be favorable or unfavorable, presents a very
similar situation.
The Handling of Shame
The regime tried exceedingly hard to utilize public shame to force or
cajole Soviet citizens into greater production and strict observance of
the established rules and regulations. Most of our available public
documentary evidence indicates that the regime was not outstandingly
successful in this respect. Our clinical findings throw some light on the
reason. The regime tried to focus shame on nonperformance, on fail-
ures to meet production obligations or to observe formal bureaucratic
rules. To judge by the clinical sample, however, the Russian is little
shamed by these kinds of performance failures, and is more likely to
feel shame in the case of moral failures. Thus, the Soviet Russian might
be expected to be fairly immune to the shaming pressures of the regime.
Indeed, the reactions of those in our sample suggest the tables often
get turned around, with the citizen concluding that it is the regime which
should be ashamed because it has fallen down in these important moral
qualities.
Affective Functioning
The general expansiveness of the Russians in our sample, their easily
expressed feelings, the giving in to impulse, and the free expression of
criticism, were likely to meet only the coldest reception from the regime.
It emphasized and rewarded control, formality, and lack of feeling in
relations. Discipline, orderliness, and strict observance of rules are what
216 Social Theory and Personality
it expects. Thus, our Russian subjects could hope for little official re-
ward in response to their normal modes of expression. In fact, they
could be expected to run into trouble with the regime as a result of their
proclivities in this regard. Their expansiveness and tendency freely to
express their feelings, including hostile feelings, exposed them to re-
taliation from the punitive police organs of the state. And insofar as
they did exercise the necessary control and avoided open expression
of hostile feelings, they experienced a sense of uneasiness and resent-
ment because of this unwarranted imposition, which did much to color
their attitude to the regime.
Conative Functioning
The non-striving quality of our Russian subjects ties in with the
previously mentioned characteristics of dependence and non-instru-
mentality. The regime, of course, constantly demanded greater effort
and insisted on a more instrumental approach to problems. It empha-
sized long-range planning and deferred gratification. There was a con-
tinual call for efforts to "storm bastions," to "breach walls," "to strive
mightily." With the Russian as he is represented in our sample, it does
not appear likely that the regime could hope to meet too positive a
response here; in fact it encountered a substantial amount of rejection
for its insistence on modes of striving not particularly congenial to a
substantial segment of the population. Indeed, the main influence may
have been exerted by the people on the system, rather than by the sys-
tem on them. Soviet official sources have for many years constantly
complained of the uneven pace at which work proceeds, with the usual
slack pace making it necessary to have great, often frenzied, bursts of
activity to complete some part of the Plan on schedule, followed again
by a slack period. It may well be that this pattern results not only from
economic factors such as the uneven flow of raw material supplies, but
that it also reflects the Russian tendency to work in spurts.
Relations to Authority
In many ways the difficulties of adjustment to the Soviet system ex-
perienced by our subjects revolved around the gap between what they
hoped a "good" government would be and what they perceived to be the
behavior of the regime. Our respondents freely acknowledged that the
Soviet leaders gave the country guidance and firm direction, which in
some ways advanced the long-range power and prestige of the nation.
They granted that the regime well understood the principles of the wel-
fare state, and cited as evidence its provision of free education and
health services. The general necessity of planning was also allowed, in-
deed often affirmed, and the regime was praised for taking into its own
INKELES, et al: Adjustment to the Soviet System 217
hands the regulation of public morality and the conscious task of
"raising the cultural level" through support of the arts and the encour-
agement of folk culture.
Despite these virtues, however, the whole psychological style of
ruling and of administration adopted by the Bolsheviks seems to have
had the effect of profoundly estranging our respondents. A great gulf
seemed to separate the rulers and the ruled, reflected in our respond-
ents' persistent use of a fundamental "we" "they" dichotomy. "They"
were the ones in power who do bad things to us, and "we" were the
poor, ordinary, suffering people who, despite internal differences in
status or income, share the misfortune of being oppressed by "them."
Most did not know that Stalin had once asserted that the Bolsheviks
could not be a "true" ruling party if they limited themselves "to a mere
registration of the sufferings and thoughts of the proletarian masses."
(Stalin, 1933) Yet our respondents sensed this dictum behind the style
of Soviet rule. They reacted to it in charging the leaders with disinterest
in individual welfare and extraordinary callousness about the amount
of human suffering engendered in carrying out their plans. Our subjects
saw the regime as harsh and arbitrary. The leaders were characterized
as cold, aloof, "deaf" and unyielding to popular pleas, impersonal and
distant from the people's problems and desires. The regime was seen not
as firmly guiding but as coercive, not as paternally stern but as harshly
demanding, not as nurturant and supportive but as autocratic and ra-
paciously demanding, not as chastening and then forgiving but as
nagging and unyieldingly punitive.
The rejection of the regime was however by no means total, and the
Bolshevik pattern of leadership was in many respects seen not as totally
alien but rather as native yet unfortunately exaggerated. This "ac-
ceptance" did not extend to the coldness, aloofness, formality, and
maintenance of social distance which were usually rejected. It did, how-
ever, apply to the pressures exerted by the regime, which were felt to
be proper but excessive. Coercion by government was understandable,
but that applied by the regime was not legitimate because it was so
harsh. The scolding about backsliding was recognized as necessary, but
resented for being naggingly persistent and caustic. And the surveillance
was expected, but condemned for being so pervasive, extending as it did
even into the privacy of one's friendship and home relations, so that
a man could not even hope to live "peacefully" and "quietly." The ele-
ments of acceptance within this broader pattern of rejection have im-
portant implications for the future of the post-Stalin leadership. They
suggest that the regime may win more positive support by changing the
mode of application of many of its authoritarian and totalitarian policies
without necessarily abandoning these policies and institutions as such.
218 Social Theory and Personality
Indeed in watching the public behavior of men like Khrushchev and
Bulganin one cannot help but feel that their style of leadership behavior
is much more congenial to Russians than was that of Stalin.
The preceding discussion strongly suggests that there was a high de-
gree of incongruence between the central personality modes and dis-
positions of many Russians and some essential aspects of the structure
of Soviet society, in particular the behavior of the regime. Most of the
popular grievances were clearly based on real deprivations and frus-
trations, but the dissatisfactions appear to be even more intensified and
given a more emotional tone because they were based also on the poor
"fit" between the personality patterns of many Soviet citizens and the
"personality" of the leaders as it expressed itself in the institutions they
created, in their conduct of those institutions and the system at large,
and in the resultant social climate in the USSR.
SOCIAL CLASS DIFFERENTIATION
Since personality traits found in the Russian sample are merely
modal rather than common to the group at large, it follows that sub-
groups can meaningfully be differentiated by the choice of appropriate
cutting points on the relevant continua. As a way of placing the indi-
viduals in our sample on a common scale, three elements from the total
range of characteristics previously described were selected. They were
chosen on the grounds that they were most important in distinguishing
the Russians as a group from the Americans, and also because they
seemed meaningfully related to each other as elements in a personality
syndrome. The three characteristics were: great strength of the drive for
social relatedness, marked emotional aliveness, and general lack of well
developed, complex, and pervasive defenses. The two clinicians rated all
cases for a combination of these traits on a three point scale. Cases
judged on the basis of a review of both interview and test material to
have these characteristics in a marked degree were placed in a group
designated as the "primary set." Individuals in whom these charac-
teristics were clearly evident but less strongly pronounced, were desig-
nated as belonging to a "variant" set. The "primary" and "variant" sets
together constitute a relatively homogeneous group of cases who clearly
revealed the characteristics which we have described as "modal." All
the remaining cases were placed in a "residual" category, characterized
by markedly stronger development of defenses, and in most instances
also by lesser emotional expressiveness and lesser social relatedness.
This group was relatively the least homogeneous of the three because its
members tended to make use of rather different combinations of de-
fenses without any typical pattern for the set as a whole. Subjects placed
INKELES, et al: A djustment to the Soviet System 2 1 9
in the "residual" group appeared to differ more from those in the "vari-
ant" set than the "primary" and the "variant" sets differed from each
other. However, even the "residual" pattern was not separated from the
others by a very sharp break: emotional aliveness and relatedness to
people was present also in some members of this group.
Each of our 51 cases was assigned to one of four social status cate-
gories on the basis of occupation and education. All those in group A
were professionals and higher administrative personnel most of whom
had university training, and all those in the D group were either peas-
ants, or unskilled or semi-skilled workers with no more than five years of
education. Placement in the two intermediary categories was also de-
termined by the balance of occupation and education, group B con-
sisting largely of white collar workers and semi-professional and middle
supervisory personnel, and group C of more skilled workers with better
education.
Table 1 gives the distribution of cases among the three personality
types within each of the four status groups. It is evident that the pri-
mary pattern has its greatest strength in the lower classes, becomes rela-
tively less dominant in the middle layers, and plays virtually no role at
all in the top group. The "residual" pattern predominates at the top
level and is very rare among peasants and ordinary workers.
Table 1
STATUS DISTRIBUTION OF PERSONALITY
TYPES AMONG FORMER SOVIET CITIZENS
Personality Type
Status primary
^
B 2
C 3
D _8
total 13
The distinctive patterns of adjustment to the Soviet system by the
various socio-economic groups are discussed in detail in another pub-
lication (Inkeles and Bauer 1959). Here we restrict ourselves to a few
general observations. First, we wish to stress that, as our interviews
indicate, both the more favored and the rank-and-file share substantially
the same range of complaints against the regime, find the same broad
institutional features such as the political terror and the collective farm
objectionable, and view the same welfare features such as the system of
education and free medical care as desirable. In spite of these common
variant
residual
total
1
12
13
8
6
16
4
2
9
3
2
13
16
22
51
220 Social Theory and Personality
attitudes, our data suggest that personality may play a massive role
with regard to some aspects of participation in and adjustment to the
socio-political system. The educational-occupational level attained
and/or maintained by an individual in an open-class society is one of
the major dimensions of such participation. This is particularly the case
in the Soviet Union where professional and higher administrative per-
sonnel are inevitably more deeply implicated in the purposes and plans
of the regime, are politically more active and involved, and are sub-
jected to greater control and surveillance. It seems plausible that per-
sons in whom the affiliative need was particularly strong, expressiveness
marked and impulse control weak, and the defensive structures not well
developed or well organized, would be handicapped in competition for
professional and administrative posts in any society; they certainly
could not be expected to strive for or to hold on to positions of responsi-
bility in the Soviet system.
The pattern of marked association between certain traits of person-
ality and educational-occupational level clearly invites a question as to
whether the personality really affected the level attained and held, or
whether the appropriate personality traits were merely acquired along
with the status. This question raises complex issues which we cannot ex-
plore here. We do wish to point out, however, that the characteristics on
which our psychological grouping was based belong to those that are
usually formed at an early age and are relatively long enduring and
resistant to change. At first glance this affirmation of the early origins of
the patterns described seems to be inconsistent with their observed
association with educational-occupational level. However, the con-
tradiction exists only if one assumes that obtaining a higher education
and a superior occupation in Soviet society is a matter either of pure
chance or exclusively of ability, unrelated to family background and
the person's own attitudes and strivings. The data on stratification and
mobility in Soviet society show, however, that persons born into fami-
lies of higher social and educational level have a much better chance
than do others to obtain a higher education and professional training
(Feldmesser, 1953; Inkeles, 1950). Consequently, many people of the
professional and administrative class grew up in families of similar
status, and in those families were apparently reared in a way dif-
ferent from that typical of the peasant and worker families (see Rossi,
1954). Presumably, this produced enduring effects on their personality,
which were important prior to exposure to common educational ex-
periences.
In Addition, mobility out of the lower classes may have been mainly
by individuals whose personality was different, for whatever reason,
from that of the majority of their class of origin. Such differences can
INKELES, et al : A djustment to the Soviet System 22 1
easily express themselves in a stronger drive for education and for a
position of status. We must also allow for the role played by the re-
gime's deliberate selection of certain types as candidates for positions
of responsibility. Finally, there is the less conscious "natural selection"
process based on the affinity between certain personality types and the
opportunities offered by membership in the elite and near elite cate-
gories. In this connection we are struck by the relative distinctness of the
highest status level in our sample, since only one person with either of
the two variants of the modal personality of the rank and file shows up
among them. These results bear out the impression, reported by Dicks,
of radical personality differences and resultant basic incompatibilities
between the ruled population and the rulers. The latter, we assume, are
still further removed from the "modal pattern" than are our subjects in
the elite group.
We have yet to deal with the question of how far our observations
concerning a group of refugees can be generalized to the Soviet popu-
lation and its adjustment to the Soviet system. The answer to this ques-
tion depends in good part on whether personality was an important
selective factor in determining propensity to defect among those in the
larger group who had the opportunity to do so. 10 It is our impression
that personality was not a prime determinant of the decision not to re-
turn to Soviet control after World War II. Rather, accidents of the indi-
vidual's life history such as past experience with the regime's
instruments of political repression, or fear of future repression because
of acts which might be interpreted as collaboration with the Germans,
seem to have been the prime selective factors. Furthermore, such ex-
periences and fears, though they affected the loyalty of the Soviet
citizen, were not prime determinants of his pattern of achievement or
adjustment in the Soviet socio-political system. The refugee popu-
lation is not a collection of misfits or historical "leftovers." It includes
representatives from all walks of life and actually seemed to have a
disproportionately large number of the mobile and successful.
Though we are acutely aware of the smallness of our sample, we
incline to assume that the personality modes found in it would be found
within the Soviet Union in groups comparable in nationality and occu-
pation. We are strengthened in this assumption by several consider-
ations. First, the picture of Russian modal personality patterns which
emerges from our study is highly congruent with the traditional or classic
picture of the Russian character reported in history, literature and
current travellers' accounts. 11 Secondly, much of the criticism directed by
the regime against the failings of the population strongly suggests that
some of the traits we found modal to our sample and a source of strain
in its adjustment to the system are widespread in the population and
222 Social Theory and Personality
pose an obstacle to the attainment of the regime's purposes within the
U.S.S.R. Third, the differences in personality between occupational
levels are consistent with what we know both of the general selective
processes in industrial occupational systems and of the deliberate se-
lective procedures adopted by the Soviet regime. Because of the meth-
odological limitations of our study, the generalization of our findings to
the Soviet population must be considered as purely conjectural. Un-
fortunately we will be obliged to remain on this level of conjecture as
long as Soviet citizens within the U.S.S.R. are not accessible to study
under conditions of relative freedom. We feel, however, that, with all
their limitations, the findings we have reported can be of essential aid in
furthering our understanding of the adjustment of a large segment of the
Soviet citizens to their socio-political system and of the policies adopted
by the regime in response to the disposition of the population.
NOTES
1. For a discussion of the basic issues and a review of research in this
field see Inkeles, A. and Levinson, D. J. (1954).
2. For analysis of another aspect of the psychological properties of this
group, see Hanfmann, 1957.
3. The research was carried out by the Russian Research Center under
contract AF No. 33(038)-12909 with the former Human Resources Re-
search Institute, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. For a general account
of the purposes and design of the study see: Bauer, Inkeles and Kluckhohn,
1956. The clinical study is described by Hanfmann and Beier, 1958.
4. This was in part a result of our selection procedure. The larger project
was particularly interested in post-war defectors, almost all of whom came
from the Soviet military occupation forces in Germany. Half of the men
fell in that category.
5. The young post-war defectors on the whole did prove to be less stable
and more poorly adjusted. Apart from their adjustment or "integration,"
however, they shared with the rest of the sample much the same range of
outstanding personality traits. Therefore, no further distinctions between
that group and the rest are discussed in this chapter. See Hanfmann and
Beier, 1958.
6. See Hanfmann and Getzels, 1955, for a detailed report on the "Epi-
sodes Test." A brief account of results on the Projective Questions has also
been published in Beier and Hanfmann, 1956. Some of the TAT results are
described in Rosenblatt, 1960. The other results were described in the fol-
lowing unpublished reports of the Project, which may be examined at the
Russian Research Center: "Some Systematic Patterns of Relationship be-
tween Personality and Attitudes among Soviet Displaced Persons," by Marc
Fried, October 1954, 133 pages; "Relationships between Personality and
Attitudes among Soviet Displaced Persons: A Technical Memorandum on
the Derivation of Personality Variables from a Sentence Completion Test,"
by Marc Fried and Doris Held, August 1953, 125 pages; "A Comparative
INKELES, et al: Adjustment to the Soviet System 223
Analysis of the Responses to a Sentence Completion Test of a Matched
Sample of Americans and Former Russian Subjects," by H. E. Roseborough
and H. P. Phillips, April 1953, 80 pages.
7. See H. Murray, 1938. We do not strictly follow Murray In our use of
the "need" terminology.
8. Such a statement must of course always be one of degree. We do not
mean to say that such threatening impulses as those toward incest are present
in the awareness of Russians or are accepted by them more than by Ameri-
cans.
9. Relations to authority may be thought of as simply one aspect of a
broader category "conceptions of major figures," which includes parents,
friends, etc. We have included some comments on the Russians' perceptions
of others under "cognitive modes" below.
10. It is impossible to estimate accurately how many former Soviet citi-
zens had a real chance to choose not to remain under Soviet authority. The
best available estimates suggest that at the close of hostilities in Europe in
1945 there were between two and a half and five million former Soviet citi-
zens in territories outside Soviet control or occupation, and of these between
250,000 and 500,000 decided and managed to remain in the West (see
Fischer, 1952).
11. After this article was completed we discovered a report based almost
entirely on participant observation which yielded conclusions about modal
personality patterns among Soviet Russians extra-ordinarily similar to those
developed on the basis of our tests and interviews (see Pfister-Ammende,
1949).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bauer, R. 1952. The New Man in Soviet Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Bauer, R., Inkeles, A. and Kluckhohn, C. 1953. "How the Soviet System
Works." In Fainsod, M. (ed.) , How Russia is Ruled. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
. 1956. How the Soviet System Works. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press.
Beier, H. and Hanfmann, E. 1956. "Emotional Attitudes of Former Soviet
Citizens as Studied by the Technique of Projective Questions," Journal of
A bnormal and Social Psychology, 53 : 143-53.
Dicks, H. V. 1952. "Observations on Contemporary Russian Behavior,"
Human Relations, 5:11 1-74.
Erikson, E. 1950. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton.
Fainsod, Merle, (ed.) 1953. How Russia is Ruled. Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press.
Feldmesser, R. 1953. "The Persistence of Status Advantages in Soviet Rus-
sia," American Journal of Sociology, 59: 19-27.
Fischer, G. 1952. Soviet Opposition to Stalin. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press.
224 Social Theory and Personality
Hanfmann, E. 1957. "Social Perception in Russian Displaced Persons and an
American Comparison Group," Psychiatry, 20: 131 49.
Hanfmann, E. and Beier, H. 1958. "The Mental Health of a Group of Rus-
sian Displaced Persons," American Journal of Ortho psychiatry, 28:24155.
Hanfmann, E. and Getzels, J. 1955. "Interpersonal Attitudes of Former
Soviet Citizens as Studied by a Semi-Projective Method," Psychological
Monographs, 69, No. 4.
Inkeles, A. 1950. "Stratification and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union:
1 940-1 950," A merican Sociological Review, 1 5 : 465-79.
Inkeles, A. and Bauer, R. 1959. The Soviet Citizen. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Inkeles, A. and Levinson, D. J. 1954. "National Character: The Study of
Modal Personality and Sociocultural Systems." In Lindzey, G, (ed.) , Hand-
book of Social Psychology. Cambridge: Addison- Wesley, 11:977-1020.
Murray, H. 1938. Explorations in Personality. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Pfister-Ammende, M. 1949. "Psychologische Erfahrungen mit Sowjetrus-
sischen Fliichtlmgen in der Schweiz." In Pfister-Ammende, M. (ed.), Die
Psychohygiene: Grundlagen und Ziele. Bern: Hans Huber.
Rosenblatt, D. 1960. "Responses of Former Soviet Citizens to Selected TAT
Cards," Journal of General Psychology, 63:273-84.
Rossi, A. 1954. "Generational Differences Among Former Soviet Citizens."
Unpublished Ph.D. thesis in sociology, Columbia University.
Stalin, J. 1933. Leninism. New York: International Publishers, 1:95-96.
About the Chapter
Dr. Devereux's chapter analyzes the modal personality concept, one of
the most central and widely utilized concepts in the culture and personality
field. He distinguishes between psychological and sociological interpretations
of the concept. The former deal with the actual motivations that occur in
individuals in a particular group, the latter emerge from the sociologist's need
to explain uniformities in social behavior by positing some shared motiva-
tion. In his discussion of the motivational bases of revolutionary behavior
during the Hungarian uprising of 1956, Dr. Devereux suggests that the
sociologists' conception of modal personality implies socially relevant mo-
tives like "patriotism," "economic interest," and others which stand in an
"instrumental" relationship to the actual motives of persons, and serve to
channel the diversity of motives into shared behavior patterns, which sup-
port social processes. He contends that the modal personality concept, when
used in this way, does not require that persons participating in a social proc-
ess be homogeneous in their motivational dispositions/ This position is related
to Dr. Spiro's analysis in Chapter 2.
About the Author
GEORGE DEVEREUX is Professor of Research in Ethnopsychiatry, Temple
University School of Medicine, Lecturer in Anthropology, Columbia Univer-
sity School of General Studies and a licensed psychologist in the State of
New York, He is a graduate of the University of Paris, the University of
California, and the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis. He did field work
among various American Indian tribes, especially the Mohave, and in Papua,
New Guinea and Indochina. He was formerly Director of Research of
Winter V.A. Hospital, Topeka, Kansas and of the Devereux Schools, Devon,
Pa. and taught in the Menninger School of Psychiatry, the Topeka Institute
for Psychoanalysis and various universities. In 1959 he was the Geza Roheim
Memorial Lecturer. His main field of interest is psychoanalytic anthropology
and ethnopsychiatry. His scientific contributions include 6 books and over
150 articles.
A cknowledgments
For permission to use data obtained from a group of recent Hungarian
refugees by a multidisciplinary team, the author is indebted to Professors
Harold G. Wolff, M.D. and Lawrence E. Hinkle, Jr., M.D., who direct the
Study Program in Human Health and Human Ecology at Cornell Medical
College, and to the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, which
supported the study of Hungarian refugees. Many of the data were presented
by Drs. Hinkle and Stephenson in the Second Seminar on the Hungarian
Revolution of October 1956 in papers of exemplary psycho-social sophistica-
tion. Somewhat different interpretations of the material by certain other so-
cial scientists who participated in that seminar induced the author to offer
a rebuttal at that time. That rebuttal eventually led to the writing of the
present chapter. The papers just mentioned, the supplementary discussions
and the author's rebuttal of certain interpretations other than those of Drs.
Hinkle and Stephenson were published by the Society for the Investigation
of Human Ecology in 1958.
6
Two Types of Modal
Personality Models
GEORGE DEVEREUX
Temple University School of Medicine
and
Columbia University School of General Studies
JLt is one of the hallmarks of a maturing science that each empirical
problem which it solves creates new questions concerning the nature of
the science itself. This chapter reappraises the view that the basic con-
struct of culture and personality studies the socio-psychological con-
ception of the personality represents a true synthesis of the data and
frames of reference of both psychology and social science. This new
conceptual model is usually supposed to be a homogeneous, structurally
integrated and coherent whole, equally relevant, in the same way, for
the social scientist and for the psychologist. Logical qualities supposedly
characterize all personality models of this type, regardless of variations
in their actual form, content or theoretical orientation. Thus, regardless
of whether a given (psychoanalytic, HuHian, Tolmanian, etc.) model
represents the "modal" personality of Mohaves, of males, of shamans,
or of old persons, or the much more concrete and specific "modal 59
personality of old Mohave male shamans, it is usually supposed to
possess all the above mentioned criteria of homogeneity, coherence
and dual relevance. Finally, it has been claimed that all such personality
models are identical types of logical constructs and belong to the same
227
228 Social Theory and Personality
universe of discourse, in the broad sense in which triangles, squares,
pentagons . . . and circles are all polygons belonging to the domain of
plane geometry.
This chapter seeks to disprove the belief that all "modal" personality
constructs used in culture and personality studies are, in fact, specimens
of one and the same category of logical constructs. It will be demon-
strated that there are actually at least two ways in which current models
of "modal" personalities have been constructed and that each of these
two procedures produces a distinctive, sui generis model of the "modal"
personality. These two models do not differ from each other in form and
content only, the way the model of the "Mohave male" may differ from
the conjugate model of the "Mohave female," or from the non-conjugate
model of the "Hottentot female." Actually these models belong to
wholly different conceptual species, having different relevances and
demanding to be used in wholly different ways. It is unfortunate that
there should almost inevitably exist two logically distinct types of
models of the "modal" personality. It is infinitely worse that this fact is so
systematically ignored, that the two models are treated as interchange-
able. Yet, because social scientists and psychologists ask entirely dif-
ferent questions, they must, of necessity, construct different models of
the "modal" personality, if they are to find meaningful answers
within their own frames of reference.
Those social scientists who are not exponents of the extreme culturo-
logical position and take cognizance of the existence of real people, seek
to develop the kind of model of "modal" personality which will ex-
plain the type of cooperative, or conjugate, or parallel action on the
part of many individuals, which permits the unfolding of social and
cultural processes. The question such social scientists ask, with various
degrees of sophistication, is: "Given all the known facts about society
and culture, what characteristics must I impute to real people to make
their actualization of social and cultural processes understandable?" A
typical "modal" personality model evolved in order to answer this ques-
tion is "the economic man," whom no one ever met in the flesh, for the
good and sufficient reason that he does not exist. The logical construction
process which culminates in the model of "the economic man" is funda-
mentally the same as the one which culminated in certain learning
theorists' model of the "stat rat," which, even though it does not exist, is
a construct or "thought token" enabling one to build one type of logi-
cally coherent pattern out of disparate facts related to "learning."
The psychologist who is not too biologically oriented, nor too indi-
vidual-centered, to ignore society and culture is faced with one of two
tasks:
(1) Whenever he observes certain biologically inexplicable con-
DEVEREUX: Two Types of Modal Personality Models 229
gruences between the behavior of two or more individuals, he seeks to
develop the kind of model of society and culture which renders these
congruences understandable. In so doing he may develop models of so-
ciety and culture which are quite as esoteric and quite as unsociologistic
and unculturalistic as the social scientist's concept of "economic man" is
unpsychologistic. He may then, by circular reasoning, explain these
psychological uniformities of behavior in terms of a psychologistic model
of society and culture, exactly as the naive social scientist circularly ex-
plains socio-cultural uniformities in terms of a sociologists; model of man.
(2) The more sophisticated psychologist, aware of society and
culture, will construct a "modal" personality which, by social and cul-
tural means, can be made to fit the prevailing socio-cultural climate and
to operate in a manner which implements social and cultural processes.
The key characteristic ascribed to this model is socio-cultural teacha-
bility, reinforced by a primary orientation to society and culture.
This model of man is definitely psychologistic though its systematic
use tends to produce, in the long run, a habitual lack of concern with the
non-socio-cultural aspects of the personality. Where the "stat rat" of at
least some extreme learning theorists has practically no sensorium and is
made up almost entirely of an imaginary sort of "inner motor," which
has only the remotest connection with the real neurophysiology of living
rats, the "stat human" of the culture-and-personality extremist seems to
be all sensorium and no "inner works" or backbone. At this point the
extremist, though remaining a psychologist, comes singularly close to the
exponent of superorganic or culturalistic extremism. 1 The extreme
culturalist position in culture and personality studies is held by the
neo-Freudians. Probably because they can do so only by fleeing every-
thing reminding them of the non-socio-cultural segment of man's
personality, they have managed to be accepted by many anti-
psychological anthropologists and sociologists as more "modern" and
more "realistic" than Freud. At this point it seems expedient to turn
to a set of carefully documented facts, obtained from a group of some
seventy recent Hungarian refugees by a multidisciplinary team which
included the present writer.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGICAL AND
SOCIAL ANALYSES OF ACTUAL BEHAVIOR
The type of motivation in terms of which certain historians and
political scientists tried to explain the participation of actual persons in
the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (see Society for the Investigation of
Human Ecology, 1958) proved, on careful psychological scrutiny, to
have played an almost negligible role in the case of those individuals
230 Social Theory and Personality
who actively participated in that struggle. Whenever such a discrepancy
between the explanations of two types of behavioral scientists occurs, it
is a methodological error especially at first to tackle the problem
primarily in terms of concrete facts. Such discrepancies are best ap-
proached by determining the actual relationship between the divergent
frames of reference with which the contending disciplines operate.
In such cases one deals essentially with the vexing problem of the real
relationship between psychological-psychiatric (subjective) and
socio-cultural-historical-economic-political (collective) explanations of
human phenomena. These two sets of disciplines study radically dif-
ferent phenomena. The basic difference between the two subject matters
can be clarified most easily by means of an analogy from physical
science. (1) The behavior of the individual, when seen as an indi-
vidual and not in terms of his membership in human society, is under-
standable only in a specifically psychological frame of reference and in
terms of psychological laws sui generis. In the same sense, the behavior
of the individual molecule in a given gas model must be understood in
terms of classical mechanics, dealing with reversible phenomena. (2)
The behavior of a group, seen as a group, and not primarily as an aggre-
gate of discrete individuals, is understandable only in terms of a specific
sociologistic frame of reference and in terms of socio-cultural laws sui
generis. In the same sense, the behavior of the gas model as a whole must
be understood in terms of statistical mechanics pertaining to irreversible
phenomena (Devereux, 1940).
Somewhere between these two extremes lies a borderline or tran-
sitional set of phenomena, whose usual locus is the small group. We may
define as "small" any group in which the over-all interaction pattern is
about equally determined by, or equally understandable in terms of,
the individual makeup of the individuals composing it and in terms of
the fact that these discrete individuals constitute a group. In such cases
it is possible to explain even certain group events equally satisfactorily
in exclusively social-collective and in exclusively psychological-indi-
vidual terms. The extent to which this is possible depends primarily on
the number of the members. As their number increases, exclusively
psychological-individual explanations account for increasingly smaller,
and more and more peripheral, portions of the total group behavior,
causing the explanations to become increasingly vague. A good physical
analogy is the fact that the behavior of two bodies in relative motion to
each other can be fully and precisely accounted for in terms of classical
mechanics. By contrast, the behavior of three or more bodies can be
described only approximately in terms of classical mechanics because
the problem of three bodies has never been solved in general terms.
DEVEREUX: Two Types of Modal Personality Models 23 1
Moreover, such approximations become less and less accurate as the
number of bodies in relative motion to each other increases. Hence, at
the point where the number of bodies to be studied becomes unmanage-
ably large, it becomes more efficient, economical and accurate to ig-
nore the individual particles and to study instead the system, or aggre-
gate itself, in terms of statistical mechanics. In so doing, one not only
shifts one's frame of reference, but even seeks to obtain new and
different kinds of results. The relevance of this analogy for an under-
standing of the difference between the psychological and the social is
obvious (Devereux 1940, 1945, 1955, 1958).
Thus, in abstract terms, the question is never: "At what point do
individuals and individual phenomena become irrelevant and society
and social phenomena all important?" nor vice versa, of course. The
real question is simply this: "At what point is it more economical to use
the sociological, rather than the psychological approach?" The same is
true, mutatis mutandis, hi regard to the nature-nurture controversy
(Devereux 1945).
Where only individuals and relatively small groups are concerned,
the actual outcome of a given process can be equally effectively pre-
dicted and equally fully explained either sociologically or psychologi-
cally. Thus, it was possible to show (Devereux 1960) that the self-
incited (provoked) murder of a Mohave lesbian witch was as absolutely
inevitable in terms of Mohave cultural mandates as in terms of that
witch's distinctive and unique personality makeup. Moreover, in this
case, and in numerous others as well, there is an almost incredibly
compendious, perfect and subtle dovetailing of individual and socio-
cultural processes: each intrapsychic development mobilizes certain
reinforcing cultural mandates and each cultural response mobilizes
reinforcing subjective motives and processes. The real objective is not to
determine whether the phenomenon is "ultimately" a psychological or a
socio-cultural one, but to analyze, as precisely as possible, the dove-
tailing, interplay and mutual reinforcement (most often through a
"feedback") of the psychological and socio-cultural factors involved.
The possibility of adequately predicting and understanding an event
in terms of a particular frame of reference, such as psychology, does
not mean in the least that the phenomenon is primarily a psychological
one and that equally satisfactory explanations and predictions could
not have been formulated in socio-cultural terms. Indeed, even though
any frame of reference necessarily uses and operates in terms of partial
abstractions, it can, nonetheless, provide an operationally satisfactory
and '"complete" explanation and prediction of a given phenomenon.
A failure to grasp this point is largely responsible for Kroebefs ( 1948)
232 Social Theory and Personality
recurrent objections to alleged attempts to "reduce" anthropology to
psychology.
Even more important perhaps is the fact that there appears to obtain
a quite genuine complementarity relationship between the individual
(psychological) and the socio-cultural (collective) understanding of a
given phenomenon (Devereux 1945, 1958). Thus, the more fully I
understand John Doe's anger over the arrival of his mother-in-law in
socio-cultural terms (autonomy of the U.S. nuclear family, the tra-
ditional stereotype of the mother-in-law, etc.) the less I can understand
it simultaneously in psychological terms (John's irritability, his wife's
infantile dependency on her mother, the mother-in-law's meddlesome-
ness, etc.) and vice versa, of course. It is logically impossible to think
simultaneously in terms of two different frames of reference, especially
if, in terms of one of these, the key explanation is: "All mothers-in-law
are defined by our culture as nuisances," while in the other system the
key explanation is: "Mrs. Roe systematically interferes with her
daughter's marriage." Needless to say, the same complementarity re-
lationship also obtains between the sociological and the psychological
understanding of phenomena involving large groups and nations. This
accounts for many of the exquisite complexities of problems involving
"national character" and of many problems in social psychology as
well. The difficulty is simply that consistent thinking in terms of, for
instance, the psychological frame of reference makes it impossible to
think, at the same moment, also in consistently socio-cultural terms.
The social scientist is, thus, literally forced to develop an individual
"psychology" to fit his data. In order to understand how a large scale
phenomenon can be produced by an inherently heterogeneous col-
lection of individuals, he must assume that these individuals func-
tion in accordance with a series of pseudo psychological specifica-
tions. This "as if" approach is quite legitimate, but only in regard to
that particular set of phenomena, 2 and only as long as one knows that
one is dealing with "thought tokens" and "thought experiments." What
is not legitimate though it is done day after day is to go one step
further and ascribe or impute to the real and living individual members
of that group the specific characteristics ascribed to the explanatory
model of man. Such a procedure is as scurrilous as though a student of
statistical mechanics said: "Since certain gas molecules go from the
denser segments of the gas model to the less dense portions thereof,
they obviously wish to escape crowding." This is strange reasoning in-
deed. Yet, it is precisely the type of reasoning used by some historians
and political scientists who assume that everyone who rebels and fights
against an economically unfair and politically oppressive system has
been personally underpaid and harassed. No matter how sophisticated
DEVEREUX: Two Types of Modal Personality Models 233
the manner in which such a statement is made, it is still factually in-
correct and logically fallacious.
The reverse process psychologistic sociologizing is equally ille-
gitimate. Since man is, both actually and by definition, a social being,
even the student of the individual must learn to view him as part of a
society and as the product of a culture. For example, if one is a Freud-
ian, one must explore and clarify the nexus between the superego, the
ego ideal and the patterning of ego functions on the one hand, and the
structure of the socio-cultural matrix on the other hand. This is both
necessary and legitimate. What is by no means legitimate, however, is
the transposition of conceptual models pertaining to the individual to
the socio-cultural system as a whole, and the interpretation of the
socio-cultural structure and process purely in terms of the psychology
of the individual, even if he does happen to belong to the society whose
structure and processes one "interprets" in this manner. Specifically,
and in simplest terms, the Constitution of the United States is not and
can never be the "superego" or the "ego ideal" of American society.
Moreover, it can never function in that capacity within that or any
other society, for the good and sufficient reason that society does
not have a superego or an ego ideal, any more than the psyche of an
individual has a Constitution or a Supreme Court. What can and does
happen, is that a particular individual may incorporate into his psyche
but only in the form of psychological materials certain aspects of
his society and culture and then assign these incorporated psychic repre-
sentations of outer socio-cultural realities to the sphere of his superego
or of his ego ideal. A jurist may subjectively adapt his superego to the
Constitution, while a pious Catholic may adapt his to the Creed of the
Apostles. Conversely, in times of stress, society may change its formal
tenets to fit the average superego needs of the citizen. All this does not
make the Constitution a social superego, nor the superego a psychic
Constitution.
The social scientist must view his conception of "modal" man as a
model valid only in the study of social phenomena, just as the psy-
chologist must view his conception of society and culture as valid only in
the study of individual phenomena. In the individual-psychological
universe of discourse, society and culture are simply means for the
implementation of subjective needs and psychic mechanisms, just as in
the collective-sociological universe of discourse individual psychic
structures and processes are simply means for the implementation of
the collective needs and mechanisms of the socio-cultural system.
A summary analysis of facts and fancies regarding the actual moti-
vation of individual Hungarians as distinct from the "motivation" of
the Hungarian people who revolted against the system under which
234 Social Theory and Personality
brute force on the part of their enemies and timid tergiversation on the
part of their friends obliged them to live will demonstrate with striking
clarity the points just made.
MOTIVATION OF THE HUNGARIAN FREEDOM FIGHTER
A tabulation of the conscious motivation of individual Hungarian
freedom fighters revealed that many of them had no genuinely personal
experiences with cynical exploitation and brute oppression. In fact,
quite a few of them were in relatively privileged positions and, ex-
ternally at least, better off than they might have been under the Horthy
regime. Hence, some political scientists held that those fighters who had
no private grievances of a tangible type and may even have had
much to lose by participating in the revolution were effectively and
subjectively actuated by their indignation over the inherent viciousness
of the system and the brazenness of alien rule, or else by national pride
and the like. In so interpreting the motivation of these individuals, these
political scientists actually ascribed to individuals certain characteristics
of a sociologistic "modal" personality construct, developed strictly in
order to account for collective participation in mass movements and
social processes.
It is true, of course, that some of those who had no real personal
grievances did, themselves, interpret their conduct in terms of sociolo-
gistic and socially respectable motives, such as patriotism, love of free-
dom and the like. It would, indeed, be quite fallacious to deny that they
were in part actuated by such motives, which are essentially components
of the sociologistically conceived motivational structure of the soci-
ologist's construct of the "modal" personality.
Unfortunately, this explanation of the active fighting in which these
persons had voluntarily engaged, raises more questions than it solves.
It leaves unexplained at least the following challenging facts:
( 1 ) Those fighters who did have private and personal grievances and
did cite these grievances in explanation of their participation in combat
did not, in general, explain their own conduct also in terms of patriotism
and the like, or at least did not explain it primarily and convincingly on
those terms. This raises the question whether admittedly gallant fighters,
who did have personal grievances, were simply unpatriotic and un-
idealistic individuals, seeking to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth. A supplementary question is whether those who, despite un-
pleasant personal experiences with the Communist system, did not
fight, were unidealistic, unpatriotic, or cowardly, or else simply pious
Christians, who refuse to kill and who leave vengeance to the Lord.
(2) The second, and theoretically more relevant, question is
DEVEREUX: Two Types of Modal Personality Models 235
whether it has not become customary to cite sociologistically conceived
motives only where no Information about the individual's subjective
motivation is available. In practice, it is precisely this criterion which is
used in courts of law to determine the legitimacy of a plea of "not guilty
by reason of insanity." A careful scrutiny of what actually happens when
such a plea is made, shows that the plea is accepted only if the judge and
the jury do not seem able to "understand" what could cause a person to
commit such a crime. The accused is held to be "not guilty by reason of
insanity" if his judges cannot emphathize with his deed, as distinct from
his motivation. Once the court feels that the deed itself is understandable
in terms of the layman's conception of "common sense" (i.e., sociolo-
gistically defined) motives, the plea of insanity is nearly always rejected.
Hardly ever is there an attempt to inquire into the accused's real, in-
stead of imputed, motivation. Yet, only an understanding of the ac-
cused's real motives enables one to determine- in a valid manner
whether or not his seemingly "understandable" deed actually had the
"sane" motivation imputed to it by judge and jury.
The fact is that if the list of non-subjective reasons for the individual
fighter's participation in the revolution is supplemented by certain
psychiatric insights, derived from data provided by the same informants
to the interviewing psychiatrist (Dr. F. Kane) and to the present writer,
one suddenly realizes that even these socio-culturally motivated indi-
viduals were also motivated in a highly subjective manner, though
their motivation may not have been entirely conscious to them, and may
have had no direct relationship to the social issues of the 1956 revo-
lution.
The simple fact is that, as a Roman common sense psychologist
pointed out long ago: "Si bis faciunt idem, nan est idem" (If two people
do the same thing, it is not necessarily the same thing) . Where one man
revolts because he had been exploited, another because, twelve years
earlier, the Russians had raped his wife, another because he hates all
authority, still another may revolt because he wishes to impress his girl
friend with his patriotism and valor. All these men may fight with equal
ardor, kill an equal number of secret police and Russians, and therefore
achieve militarily and socially identical results. Psychologically, how-
ever, the results may not be the same. Thus the one who thought that he
fought from idealism may, in the long run, experience fewer guilt feel-
ings than will the one who sought to destroy a hated father image by
killing a secret police captain or the one who, at great personal risk and
with conspicuous courage, blew up a Russian tank to impress his girl
friend or to reaffirm his membership in a nation noted for its valor.
An interesting case is that of a gentle, well-behaved and well brought
up teen age Jewish girl, who, at the risk of her life, carried hand gre-
236 Social Theory and Personality
nades to the active fighters. Except for the routine nationalization of
her father's luxury goods store, this girl's family had not been par-
ticularly persecuted by the Communists. On the other hand, while she
was still quite small, this girl and her family had been cruelly perse-
cuted by the Nazis, and had twice escaped execution at the very last
moment. Speaking in terms of so-called common sense (sociologistic)
psychology, the last person on earth who had real and "obvious" reasons
to risk her life in the revolutionary fighting was this girl. Moreover,
given her sweet and gentle disposition, she was the last person one
would using a "common sense" conception of the personality have
expected to engage in violence, be it but to the extent of carrying hand
grenades to the fighters.
On closer scrutiny, however, it became obvious that this girl, who
had been a helpless child during the Nazi regime, was abreacting,
twelve years later, her hatred of oppression and of oppressors. The most
telling proof of this is the fact that she merely carried grenades to the
fighters, but unlike some other teen age girls did not lob them per-
sonally at the foe, though, in so doing, she would have incurred little
additional risk. In other words, she functioned in the revolution simply
as a gallant child, doing what even a child can do: bring ammunition to
adult fighters, as did countless children raised on the American frontier.
Many other examples of unconscious motivations of an authentically
subjective nature, hiding behind a conscious facade of sociologistic
motivation, could be given. This, however, would represent only a labor-
ing of the obvious.
The real point to be stressed is that both organized and spon-
taneous social movements and processes are possible not because all
individuals participating in them are identically (and sociologistically)
motivated, but because a variety of authentically subjective motives
may seek and find an ego syntonic outlet in the same type of collective
activity. This is equally true of spontaneous revolutionary movements
and of extreme conformity. Indeed, there are few groups so rent by
internecine squabbles as revolutionary cells and hyperconformist or-
ganizations. Moreover, just as a revolutionary may fight because he
hates father figures, or because he has personal grievances, or else be-
cause he wishes to impress his girl friend, so a man may be a hyper-
conformist from sheer opportunism, from a fear of his own spontaneity,
or else because emotionally he still needs his mother's approval.
The way in which the subjective motivations of various individuals
find an outlet In the same type of activity, be it revolutionary or con-
ventional, is rather uniform, as far as social effects are concerned.
Individual differences in real motivation find a behavioral expression
only in differences in the specific details of one's fighting pattern or
DEVEREUX: Two Types of Modal Personality Models 237
conformity. Yet, though socially often unimportant, these individual
motivational differences may determine intense psychological reactions
to the deed which one has performed as a member of a collectivity.
Just as the conscious idealist among revolutionaries will, in the long ran,
probably experience fewer guilt feelings and self punitive urges than the
one who killed an anonymous oppressor instead of killing his father, so
the conformist actuated by a loyalty to the existing system will feel less
shame in an hour of lonely self-appraisal than will the cowardly oppor-
tunist.
The real theoretical import of the finding that many, highly divergent,
types of conscious and unconscious subjective motives can impel people
to seek gratification through participation in a given social process is that
it simplifies rather than complicates the possibility of obtaining a psy-
chological understanding of the motivational structure of participation.
Indeed taking the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 as our paradigm
were we to assume that all freedom fighters were identically "moti-
vated" (in the sociologistic sense of that term) we would have
"solved" the problem of motivation only to be confronted with an even
more complex problem. We would have to explain the mystery of a
sudden and synchronous mass intensification of one type of motivation
or need at a given point in history. At the same time, we would also have
to account for its prolonged latency and non-exacerbation from 1944 to
1956. Figuratively speaking, we would have to imagine a single, mas-
sive, but subterranean torrent erupting suddenly and inexplicably
from the ground, in a single huge explosion. By contrast, if we use the
model of multiple psychologistic motivations, all of which can derive a
certain amount of gratification from a given collective act, we have to
imagine only a very commonplace river, fed by a variety of tiny tribu-
taries coming from various directions.
Hence, it is sufficient to postulate that a large number of differently
motivated persons may come to perceive a given historical moment or
event as suitable for the gratification of their various subjective needs.
In the psychological frame of reference, this position enables us to see
the Hungarian revolution of October 1956 as a sudden opportunity and
means for the actualization and gratification of a variety of private
needs, which had been present all along. Moreover, we can visualize
various items of "motivation" formulated by some sound sociologists,
historians and political scientists nationalism, class struggle, resistance
to oppression, idealism, etc. as psychologically instrumental motives,
which render ego syntonic, and not only socially acceptable, the acting
out of certain needs. Were these needs acted out privately, they would
not only be unsanctioned socially, but would also be highly anxiety
arousing and productive of intense guilt feelings. Conversely, in the
238 Social Theory and Personality
sociologistic frame of reference, this position permits us to view the va-
riety of preexisting and highly individualized needs and motives as the
raw material from which a social process, spontaneous or traditional,
can crystallize just as a variety of fuels, when thrown in the same fur-
nace, can heat the same boiler.
These considerations do not imply that one must discard, as useless
and senseless, the sociologistic motivational structure of a given model
of the "modal personality." Indeed, a variety of differently and highly
subjectively motivated individuals may find that one and the same
process in society at large can provide certain long desired gratifications.
If they gratify their needs by participation in this social process, they
may be able to render the necessary gratifying acts more ego syntonic
than if these acts had to be performed privately. ITius, people go to
church for many reasons: to seem respectable; because of piety, and
all that piety implies in the unconscious; to show off a new Easter bon-
net, and so on. All derive some gratification from this act, even though
they are not actuated by a homogeneous set of motives, nor by one
massive social motive. Their actual motives, when juxtaposed, form
nothing more than a conglomerate, which can be studied only as a con-
glomerate and not as a motivational torrent, since each qualitatively dif-
ferent motivational "unit" present in that conglomerate will be gratified
by the collective act in a different way, and to a different extent.
The difference in the degree of gratification obtainable in this manner
is of some importance. One young Hungarian freedom fighter, who
fought with real courage and efficiency, would certainly have been a
great deal happier had he been able to fight from the deck of a battle-
ship flying the banner of the Holy Virgin, "Patrona Hungariae," not be-
cause he was an expert sailor or a religious traditionalist, but for purely
subjective reasons. He could think of nothing more glorious than Naval
Service (Horthy was an admiral!) unless it was a holy and virginal
woman. Yet, this naive worshipper of the Navy and of virgins fought as
well as another, almost delinquent, young worker, who simply hated
fathers and father representatives, or as well as still another worker,
who was angry over Rakosi's betrayal of the idealistic-socialistic "es-
sence" of communism, or another who had actually suffered persecu-
tion. The Russians which each of these men killed were, moreover,
equally dead.
In brief, one must sharply differentiate between psychologistic con-
ceptions of motivation and sociologistic conceptions of motivation, both
in the construction of models of "modal personality" and in the inter-
pretation of participation in social movements.
In the psychologistic model the motivation is and must be subjective.
Hence, the motivational structure of the "modal" personality of a
DEVEREUX: Two Types of Modal Personality Models 23 9
given group must be made up of motives and needs which are system-
atically stimulated either through constant and expectable gratification
or through systematic frustration in that society. In the sociologistic
model, the motivation must be collective and the motivational structure
of the "modal" personality of a given group must be constructed out of
the type of "common sense" motives which the social scientist must im-
pute to all members of a given group in order to be able to explain
their participation in collective activities: patriotism, economic self-
interest, idealism, traditional conformism and the like.
In a sound culture-and-personality theory, the psychologist's concep-
tion of the "modal" personality's motivation will be considered as "op-
erant" and the sociologistic conception of the "modal" personality's
motivation will be considered as "instrumental." In interpretations,
these two sets of motives will be brought into play only consecutively,
because one cannot think of the same phenomenon simultaneously both
in sociologistic and in psychologistic terms. The common denominator
of individual motivations which are statistically frequent in a given so-
ciety will be defined as the true operant mainsprings of social actions.
The sociologistic type of motivation obtaining in that culture and society
and closely related to its value system will be defined as the instru-
mental motivational means for the gratification of the more basic needs.
This theory does not undermine the sociologistic interpretation of col-
lective events. It does show that the psychologistic definition of the
"modal" personality's motivation leads to a science of operant motives,
whereas its sociologistic definition forms the basis of a science of in-
strumental motives, or of "outlets." This view, implies that society and
culture provide, by means of something like a feedback mechanism,
supplementary motivations which do not modify the initial operant
motivation of the personalities but reinforce, trigger and channel them,
by making their implementation ego syntonic and by providing the oc-
casion, and often also the means for their implementation and gratifi-
cation. This explains why a single exasperated but decent man may
not be able to bring himself to shoot down secretly the Gestapo, MVD
or AVO man representing a hated father figure, although he will be
able to do so if society provides him with the means of defining his act
as an ethical and patriotic one. Psychologically, this way of defining
the situation may be a simple "rationalization," facilitating the perform-
ance of acts leading to gratification. Sociologically, however, this defini-
tion of the act represents also its sanctioning. Thereafter the sanctioning
itself functions as a bona fide motive, but only instrumentally, and only
insofar as the execution of a subjectively desired act is concerned.
This thesis implies, in turn, that one must sharply differentiate be-
tween substantive, subjective and operant motives which are often quite
240 Social Theory and Personality
unconscious, and externally provided instrumental motives pertaining to
the actualization of behavior permitting need gratification. The psychol-
ogizing social scientist must know that his proper universe of discourse,
in the psychological frame of reference, is the problem of instrumental
motives. The sociologizing psychologist must know that his proper
sociological universe of discourse is the actualization of substantive basic
needs, representing operant motives, through socially provided means,
which, in sociology but not in psychology, can also function as instru-
mental motives.
CONCLUSION
Any explanation of behavior which uses the conceptual structures
known as models of "modal personality" must consist of a series of
steps:
( 1 ) The first, psychologistic, step is the listing of the real motives of
the actual participants in a given collective activity. These motives may
be discovered through interviewing techniques, psychological tests, psy-
choanalytic procedures and other psychological means.
(2) This list serves as a basis for the construction of a psychologistic
model of the modal personality, whose need-and-motivation structure
is limited to those needs which are statistically prevalent in, and appear
to be closely linked to the structure of a particular society-and-culture.
(3) Next, it must be specified that the needs-and-motivations
ascribed to this model of the "modal" personality can be, jointly and
severally, gratified in various social or cultural sub-contexts such as
participation in rituals, in parties, in revolutions, in counter-revolutions,
or in the acceptance of certain mandates of culture, in certain attitudes,
and so forth.
(4) Next, a sociologistic model of the modal personality must be
constructed, to which are ascribed needs-and-motives that explain so-
ciologically in terms of a social "common sense" psychology related to
value systems the actual participation of individuals in a given social
process. This list may include terms like economic interest, patriotism,
piety, class consciousness, or conformism.
(5) This list of sociologically meaningful "motives" is then psychol-
ogized, by being redefined as "instrumental." These motives then serve
to sanction actual individual maneuvers seeking to gratify subjective and
genuinely psychologically "operant" needs and motives; they are also
means for the actualization of gratification seeking behavior.
Of these five steps only the fifth and last permits the formulation of
statements genuinely pertaining to, and relevant in terms of, the cul-
ture-and-personality frame of reference.
DEVEREUX: Two Types of Modal Personality Models 241
NOTES
1. It is probably more than a coincidence that the most extreme current
exponent of the culturological position took his Master's degree in psy-
chology at a time when the most primitive sort of behaviorism dominated
all learning theory and most of American psychology.
2. In order to grasp the significance of this specification, it suffices to
imagine what would happen were an economist to decide to fill in existing
"gaps" in the present model of "economic man" and wrote a paper on "The
sexual and love life of economic man." His essay would be too weird even
for a science fiction magazine.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Devereux, George. 1940. "A Conceptual Scheme of Society," American
Journal of Sociology, 54:687-706.
. 1945. "The Logical Foundations of Culture and Personality Stud-
ies," Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II.
7:110-30.
. 1955. A Study of Abortion in Primitive Societies. New York: Julian.
. 1958. "The Anthropological Roots of Psychoanalysis." In Masser-
man, J. H. (ed.), Science and Psychoanalysis, I: Integrative Studies. New
York: Grune and Stratton. 73-84, 171-3.
. 1960. Mohave Ethnopsychiatry and Suicide. Bureau of American
Ethnology, Bulletin No. 175. Washington; Government Printing Office.
Kroeber, Alfred L. 1948. Anthropology. (New, revised edition.) New York:
Harcourt, Brace.
Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology. 1958. Second Seminar on
the Hungarian Revolution of October 1956. Forest Hills, L.I., N.Y.
Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, Inc. (Mimeographed).
(See papers by Hinkle and by Stephenson and discussion by Devereux.)
About the Chapter
The author of this chapter is a historian who is concerned with the problem
of character change in the American Negro in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries as he was detached from cultural backgrounds in Africa and sub-
jected to slavery In the large plantations of the South. Dr. Elkins compares
the Middle Passage and the closed system of slavery in the United States to
the Nazi concentration camp and explains why both created a particular
kind of character. The analysis focuses on the process of character change
that occurs when social requirements are altered. Dr. Elkins suggests that
character (or personality) is really a kind of action taken in response to so-
cially defined alternatives. This view differs somewhat from the generally ac-
cepted belief that character develops into a more or less hard mold as a re-
sult of experiences during the socialization period.
About the Author
STANLEY M. ELKINS studied at Harvard and received his M.A. and Ph.D.
degrees in history from Columbia. He is the author of Slavery: A Problem in
American Institutional and Intellectual Life,' and is currently at work on a
study of politics and culture in 19th century America. Mr. Elkins is now as-
sistant professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago.
A cknowledgment
Portions of this essay have been incorporated into the author's more ex-
tensive study entitled Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and
Intellectual Life, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1959.
T
Slavery and Personality
STANLEY ELKINS
University of Chicago
I. PERSONALITY TYPES AND STEREOTYPES.
L he study by Gunnar Myrdal of the American Negro, and the great va-
riety of writing on that subject done in the late 1930s and early
1940s under Myrdal's direct or indirect inspiration, left a vast deposit
of knowledge. The by-products, on the whole, have been salutary and
enlightening. There was one consequence, however, of this in-
tense intellectual involvement with the Negro problem in American life
that may not have fully operated in the interests of enlightenment. This
by-product was a moral embargo on generalizations about Negro per-
sonality types. Since "race" has been so completely and so properly dis-
credited as an explanation for any aspect of human behavior, the appli-
cation of personality stereotypes which for the American Negro have
meant virtually the same thing as race stereotypes can hardly have
helped falling into similar discredit. None of us believes in race any
more. Yet a great many of us have had the disturbing suspicion that in
censoring the once-familiar "Sambo" stereotype from all forms of dis-
course, we have actually been rather furtively sweeping something
under the rug. For present-day society, in all its complexity, we may
243
244 Social Theory and Personality
have been doing the right thing. But for a historical reconstruction of
Negro personality in slavery times, such a taboo may not be justified.
In this chapter, at any rate, we shall lift the embargo and assume that,
as a generalization, the Southerner's description of "Sambo," the ante-
bellum plantation slave, is essentially trustworthy. This picture referred
not necessarily to a universal type, but to a dominant plantation type,
and well over 50 per cent of the antebellum slaves lived on the large
plantations. "Sambo," in Southern lore, was docile but irresponsible,
loyal but lazy, humble but addicted to lying and stealing; his behavior
was full of infantile silliness and his talk inflated with childish exaggera-
tion. His relationship to his master was one of utter dependence and
childlike attachment: it was this childlike quality that was the very key
to his being. Our strategy here will be not to challenge either the exist-
ence of the type, or even the rough accuracy of its description. Rather
we shall take that much for granted, and consider instead how to account
for the development of such a type over a wide range of the slave popu-
lation. What, in short, were the conditions, and what were the mecha-
nisms, that could sustain infantilism within the structure of antebellum
slavery?
In contrast to the looseness and openness of structure found in the
legal and social arrangements of Latin American slavery, the plantation
system of the United States was essentially a closed system. The sanc-
tions of authority were virtually self-contained within the plantation
unit. Authority, though exercised, by and large, for non-malignant ends,
was absolute. The "given/* then, for the present purpose, is absolute
power in a closed system, and the problem for personality is that of ad-
justment to such power within such a system.
Two kinds of material will be invoked in an effort to picture the mech-
anisms whereby this adjustment, whose end-product included infantile
features of personality, may have been effected. One is drawn from
the theoretical knowledge presently available in social psychology, and
the other in the form of an analogy is derived from some of the data
that have come out of the German concentration camps. Most the-
ory holds that social behavior is regulated in some general way by ad-
justment to symbols of authority however diversely "authority" may
be defined, either in theory or in culture itself and that this adjust-
ment is closely related to the very formation of personality. The more
diverse those symbols of authority are, the greater is the permissible va-
riety of adjustment to them and the wider the margin of individuality,
consequently, in the development of the self. The question here con-
cerns the wideness or narrowness of that margin on the antebellum
plantation.
The other body of material, involving an experience undergone by
ELKINS: Slavery and Personality 245
several million men and women in the concentration camps of our own
time, contains certain items of relevance to our problem. The experience
was analogous to that of slavery, and was one in which wide-scale in-
stances of infantilization were observed. The material is sufficiently de-
tailed, and sufficiently documented by men who not only took part in the
experience itself but who were versed in the use of psychological the-
ory for analyzing it, that the possible advantages of drawing upon
these data for purposes of analogy seem to outweigh the risks the
risks being those of not using the material intelligently.
The introduction of this second body of material must to a certain
extent govern the theoretical strategy itself. It has been recognized
both implicitly and explicitly that the psychic impact and effects of the
concentration camp experience were not anticipated in existing theory,
and that consequently such theory would require some major supple-
mentation. It might be added, parenthetically, that almost any published
discussion of this modern Inferno, no matter how learned, demonstrates
how "theory," operating at such a level of shared human experience,
tends to shed much of its technical trappings and to take on almost
a literary quality. The experience showed, in any event, that infantile
personality features could be induced in a relatively short time among
large numbers of adult human beings coming from very diverse back-
grounds. The particular strain which was thus placed upon prior theory
consisted in the need to make room not only for the cultural and environ-
mental sanctions that sustain personality which Freudian theory al-
ready had but also for a virtually unanticipated problem: actual
change in the personality of masses of adults. Hence came a reappraisal
and new appreciation of how completely and effectively prior cultural
sanctions for behavior and personality could be detached to make way
for new and different sanctions, and of how adjustments could be made
to a species of authority vastly different from any previously known. One
of the revelations for theory, in short, was the process of detachment.
These cues, accordingly, will guide the argument on Negro slavery.
Several million people were detached with a peculiar effectiveness from
a great variety of cultural backgrounds in Africa a detachment operat-
ing with infinitely more effectiveness upon those brought to North Amer-
ica than on those who came to Latin America. Detachment was
achieved partly by the shock experience inherent in the very mode of
procurement, but most especially by the type of authority-system to
which these people were introduced and to which they had to adjust for
physical and psychic survival. The new adjustment to absolute power in
a closed system involved infantilization. The detachment was so com-
plete that little trace of prior and thus alternative cultural sanc-
tions for behavior and personality remained for the descendants of the
246 Social Theory and Personality
first generation. For them, adjustment to clear and omnipresent author
ity could be more or less automatic as much so, or as little, as it ii
for anyone whose adjustment to a social system begins at birth and tc
whom that system represents normality. We do not know how generally
the full adjustment was made during the first generation of fresh slave*
from Africa. But we do know from a modern experience that sue!
an adjustment was possible: not only within the same generation bui
within two or three years. It was possible even for a people in a full state
of complex civilization for men and women who were not black anc
not savages.
2. SHOCK AND DETACHMENT.
Just as no set of characteristics, Sambo-like or otherwise, may pos-
sibly be accounted for in terms of "race" or "inborn nature," so must
another "explanation" for Negro character, the one which hinges upon
survivals of African culture, likewise be eliminated. The slave traders
of the eighteenth century were themselves aware that there was no such
thing as a particular "African" type; they recognized, as their writings
show, a wide diversity in physical, temperamental, and cultural types;
and they had to be sensitive to the great variety of customs, social and
political arrangements, and languages of the people with whom they
had to deal. Slaves were brought to them from many different places.
Not only were their own trading stations scattered along an immense
stretch of the West African coast, but to each station slave coffles usu-
ally were brought from great distances inland, sometimes hundreds
of miles. The result, in sheer diversity, does much to undermine any ef-
fort to generalize about African cultural types and cultural survivals.
Even if we could in fact make out such continuities, they would be so
general as to be of very little value in explaining either the individual or
social behavior of slaves on our American plantations. The fact is that
every African who became a slave whether light or dark, timid or war-
like, primitive or in a high state of culture underwent an experience
whose crude psychic impact must have been staggering, and whose con-
sequences superseded anything that had ever previously happened to
him.
The majority of slaves were taken in native wars. This meant that no
one neither persons of high rank nor warriors of prowess was
guaranteed against capture and enslavement. Great numbers were
caught in surprise attacks upon their villages. Since the tribes acting as
middlemen for the trade had come to depend on regular supplies of
captives in order to maintain that function, the distinction between wars
and raiding expeditions was rather dim. The first shock, in an experi-
ence destined to endure many months and to leave its survivors irrevo-
ELKINS: Slavery and Personality 247
cably changed, was thus the shock of capture. The second one, the
long march to the sea, drew out the nightmare for many weeks. Under
the glaring sun, through the steaming jungle, they were driven along like
beasts tied together by their necks. Hardship, brutalities, thirst, and
near-starvation penetrated the experience of each exhausted man and
woman who reached the coast. The next shock aside from the fresh
physical torments which accompanied it was the sale to the European
slavers. After having been crowded into pens near the trading stations
and kept there sometimes for days, the slaves would be brought out for
examination. Those rejected were abandoned to starvation; the re-
maining ones those who had been bought were branded, given
numbers inscribed on leaden tags, and herded on shipboard. The epi-
sode that followed almost too protracted and stupefying to be called
a mere "shock" was the dread Middle Passage, brutalizing to any man,
black or white, who was involved in it. The holds, packed with squirm-
ing and suffocating humanity, became stinking infernos of filth and
pestilence, savagery and death. Stories of the things that happened on
the terrible two months' voyage darken the testimony which did much
toward ending the British slave trade forever.
The final shock in the process of enslavement came with the Negro's
introduction to the West Indies. Bryan Edwards, describing the arrival
of a slave ship, writes of hov 7 in times of labor scarcity crowds of people
would come scrambling aboard, manhandling the slaves and throwing
them into panic. The Jamaica legislature eventually "corrected the enor-
mity" by enacting that the sales be held on shore. Seeing the Negroes
exposed naked in public, Edwards felt a certain mortification, similar to
that felt by the trader Degrandpre at seeing them examined back at the
African factories. Yet here they did not seem to care. "They dis-
play . . . very few signs of lamentation for their past or of apprehen-
sion for their future condition; but . . . commonly express great eager-
ness to be sold" (Edwards, 1806, p. 340). The "seasoning" process
which followed completed the series of steps whereby the African Negro
became a slave.
The mortality had been very high. One-third of the numbers
first taken, out of a total of perhaps fifteen million, had died on the
march and at the trading stations; another third died during the Middle
Passage and the seasoning. Since a majority of the African-born slaves
who came to the North American plantations did not come directly but
were imported through the British West Indies, one may assume that the
typical slave underwent an experience something like that just out-
lined. This was the man one in three who was about to enter our
"closed system." What would he be like if he survived and adjusted to
that?
Actually, a great deal had happened to him already. Much of his past
248 Social Theory and Personality
had been annihilated; nearly every prior connection had been severed.
The old values, the tribal sanctions, the standards already unreal
could no longer furnish him guides for conduct, for adjusting to the ex-
pectations of a completely new life. Where then was he to look for new
standards, new cues? Who would furnish them now? He could now look
to none but his master, the one man to whom the system had committed
his entire being: the man upon whose will depended his food, his
shelter, his sexual connections, whatever moral instruction he might be
offered, whatever "success" was possible within the system, his very se-
curity in short, everything.
The thoroughness with which African Negroes coming to America
were detached from prior cultural sanctions should thus be partly ex-
plainable by the very shock sequence inherent in the technique of pro-
curement. But it took something more than this to produce "Sambo." A
comparable experience was also undergone by slaves coming into Latin
America; but very little that resembled our "Sambo" tradition ever de-
veloped there. So whereas the Middle Passage and all that went with
it must have been psychologically numbing, and should certainly be re-
garded as a long thrust toward the end product, its full fruition depended
on the events that followed. The process of detachment was completed
by the kind of authority-system into which the slave was introduced and
to which he had to adjust the "closed system" referred to above. At
any rate, a test of this detachment and its thoroughness is virtually
ready-made. Students of African cultural features among New World
Negroes agree that the contrast between North America and Latin
America is immense. In Brazil, according to Arthur Ramos, survivals
from African religion and other institutional practices are not only
encountered everywhere, but such carry-overs are so distinct that they
may even be identified with particular tribal groups. Fernando Ortiz,
writing of Cuba in 1905, considered the African witchcraft cults flourish-
ing on the island a formidable social problem. One of our own anthro-
pologists, on the other hand, despite much dedicated field work, has
been put to great effort to prove that in North American Negro society
any African cultural vestiges have survived at all.
3. ADJUSTMENT TO ABSOLUTE POWER IN THE
CONCENTRATION CAMP.
The system of the concentration camps was expressly devised in the
1930s by high officials of the German government to function as an in-
strument of terror. The first groups detained in the camps consisted of
prominent enemies of the Nazi regime. Later, when these had mostly
been eliminated, it was still felt necessary to institutionalize the system
&LK1NS: Slavery and Personality
and make it a standing weapon of intimidation which required a con-
tinuing flow of incoming prisoners. The categories of eligible persons
were greatly widened to include all real, fancied, or "potential" opposi-
tion to the state. Prisoners were often selected on capricious and random
grounds. Together they formed a cross-section of society which was
virtually complete: criminals, workers, businessmen, professional peo-
ple, middle-class Jews, even members of the aristocracy. The teeming
camps thus held all kinds not only the scum of the underworld but also
countless men and women of culture and refinement. During the war a
specialized objective was added, that of exterminating the Jewish popu-
lations of subject countries. This required special mass-production meth-
ods of which the gas chambers and crematories of Auschwitz-Birkenau
were outstanding examples. Yet the basic technique was everywhere
and at all times the same: the deliberate infliction of various forms of
torture upon the incoming prisoners in such a way as to break their
resistance and make way for their degradation as individuals. These
brutalities were not merely "permitted" or "encouraged"; they were pre-
scribed.
The concentration camps and everything that took place in them were
veiled in the utmost isolation and secrecy. Although a continuing
stream of rumors circulated among the population, so repellent was the
nature of these stories that in their enormity they transcended the experi-
ence of nearly everyone who heard them. In self-protection it was some-
how necessary to persuade oneself that they could not really be true.
The results, therefore, contained elements of the diabolical. The individ-
ual who actually became a prisoner was in most cases devastated with
fright and utterly demoralized to discover that what was happening to
him was not less, but rather far more terrible than anything he had im-
agined. The shock sequence of "procurement," therefore, together with
the initial phases of the prisoner's introduction to camp life, is not with-
out significance in assessing some of the psychic effects upon those who
survived as long-term inmates.
The arrest was typically made at night, preferably late. This was
standing Gestapo policy, designed to heighten the element of shock,
terror, and unreality surrounding the arrest. After a day or so in the
police jafl came the next major shock, that of being transported to the
camp itself. "This transportation into the camp, and the 'initiation' into
it," wrote Bruno Bettelheim (1943, p. 424), an ex-inmate of Dachau
and Buchenwald, "is often the first torture which the prisoner has ever
experienced and is, as a rule, physically and psychologically the worst
torture to which he will ever be exposed." It involved a planned series
of brutalities inflicted by guards making repeated rounds through the
train over a twelve to thirty-six hour period during which the prisoner
250 Social Theory and Personality
was prevented from resting. If transported in cattle cars instead of
passenger cars, the prisoners were sealed in, under conditions not dis-
similar to those of the Middle Passage. Upon their arrival if the camp
were one in which mass exterminations were carried out there might
be sham ceremonies designed to reassure the exhausted prisoners tem-
porarily. The fresh terrors in the offing would then strike them with re-
doubled impact. An SS officer might deliver an address, or a band might
be playing popular tunes, and it would be in such a setting that the ini-
tial "selection" was made. The newcomers would file past an SS doctor
who indicated, with a motion of the forefinger, whether they were to go
to the left or to the right. To one side went those considered capable of
heavy labor; to the other would go wide categories of "undesirables";
those in the latter group were being condemned to the gas chambers.
The laborers would undergo the formalities of "registration," full of
indignities, which culminated in the marking of each prisoner with a
number.
Certain physical and psychological strains of camp life were espe-
cially debilitating in the early stages. These should be classed with the
introductory shock sequence". There was a state of chronic hunger whose
pressures were unusually effective in detaching prior scruples of all
kinds; even the sexual instincts no longer functioned in the face of the
drive for food. The man who at his pleasure could bestow or withhold
food thus wielded, for that reason alone, abnormal power. Another
strain at first was the demand for absolute obedience; the slightest
deviation brought savage punishments. The prisoner had to ask permis-
sion by no means granted as a matter of course even to defecate.
The power of the SS guard, as the prisoner was hourly reminded, was
that of life and death. A more exquisite form of pressure lay in the fact
that the prisoner had never a moment of solitude: he no longer had
a private existence; it was no longer possible, in any imaginable sense,
for him to be an "individual." Another factor having deep disintegra-
tive effects upon the prisoner was the prospect of a limitless future in
the camp. In the immediate sense this meant that he could no longer
make plans for the future. But there would eventually be a subtler mean-
ing: it made the break with the outside world a real break. In time the
"real" life would become the life of the camp the outside world
an abstraction. Had it been a limited detention, whose end could be
calculated, one's outside relationships one's roles, one's very "per-
sonality" might temporarily have been laid aside, to be reclaimed
more or less intact at the end of the term. Here, however, the prisoner
was faced with the apparent impossibility of his old roles or even his old
personality ever having any future at all; it became more and more
difficult to imagine himself resuming them. A final strain, which must
ELKINS: Slavery and Personality 25 1
have been particularly acute for the newcomer, was the omnipresent
threat of death and the very unpredictable suddenness with which death
might strike. Quite aside from the periodic gas-chamber selections, the
guards in their sports and caprices were at liberty to kill any prisoner any
time.
In the face of all this, one might suppose that the very notion of an
"adjustment" would be grotesque. The majority of those who entered
the camps never came out again. But our concern here has to be with
those who survived an estimated 700,000 out of nearly eight million.
For them, the regime must be considered not as a system of death but as
a way of life. These survivors did make an adjustment of some sort to
the system; it is they themselves who report it. After the initial shocks,
what was the nature of the "normality" that emerged?
A dramatic species of psychic displacement seems to have occurred at
the very outset. This experience, described as a kind of "splitting of
personality," has been noted by most of the inmates who later wrote of
their imprisonment. The very extremity of the initial tortures produced
in the prisoner what actually amounted to a sense of detachment. These
brutalities went so far beyond his own experience that they became
somehow incredible. They seemed to be happening no longer to him,"
but almost to someone else. "[The author] has no doubt," writes Bruno
Bettelheim (1943, p. 431), "that he was able to endure the transporta-
tion, and all that followed, because right from the beginning he became
convinced that these horrible and degrading experiences somehow did
not happen to 'him' as a subject, but only to 'him' as an object." This sub-
ject-object "split" appears to have served a double function: not only
was it an immediate psychic defense mechanism against shock, but it
also acted as the first thrust toward a new adjustment. This splitting-off
of a special "self" a self which endured the tortures but which was not
the "real" self also provided the first glimpse of a new personality
which, being not "real," would not need to feel bound by the values
which guided the individual in his former life. One part of the prisoner's
being was thus, under sharp stress, brought to the crude realization that
he must thenceforth be governed by an entire new set of standards in
order to survive. "... I think it of primary importance," writes Elie
Cohen (1953, p. 136), "to take into account that the superego acquired
new values in a concentration camp, so much at variance with those
which the prisoner bore with him into camp that the latter faded." But
then this acquisition of "new values" did not take place immediately;
it was not until some time after the most acute period of stress was over
that the new, "unreal" self would become at last the "real" one.
"If you survive the first three months you will survive the next three
years." Such was the formula transmitted from the old prisoners to the
252 Social Theory and Personality
new ones. Its meaning lay in the fact that the first three months
would generally determine a prisoner's capacity for survival and adapta-
tion. "Be inconspicuous" was the golden rule. Any show of bravado, any
heroics, any kind of resistance condemned a man instantly. There were
no rewards for martyrdom: not only did the martyr himself suffer, but
mass punishments were wreaked upon his fellow-inmates. To "be in-
conspicuous" required a special kind of alertness almost an animal in-
stinct against the apathy which tended to follow the initial shocks. To
give up the struggle for survival was to commit "passive suicide"; a care-
less mistake meant death. There were those, however, who did come
through this phase and who managed an adjustment to the life of the
camp. It was the striking constrasts between this group of two- and
three-year veterans and the perpetual stream of newcomers which made
it possible for men like Bettelheim and Cohen to speak of the "old pris-
oner" as a specific type.
The most immediate aspect of the old inmates' behavior which struck
these observers was its child-like quality. "The prisoners," writes Dr.
Bettelheim (1943, p. 441), "developed types of behavior which are
characteristic of infancy or early youth. Some of these behaviors de-
veloped slowly, others were immediately imposed on the prisoners and
developed only in intensity as time went on." The inmates' sexual im-
potence brought about a disappearance of sexuality in their talk; in-
stead, excretory functions occupied them endlessly. They lost many of
the customary inhibitions as to soiling their beds and their persons. Their
humor was shot with silliness and they giggled like children when one of
them would expel wind. Their relationships were highly unstable; they
could fight each other savagely one minute and become close friends
the next. Dishonesty, lying, and theft among the prisoners themselves
became chronic. Benedikt Kautsky (1946, p. 188) observed of his own
behavior: "I myself can declare that often I saw myself as I used to be in
my school days, when by sly dodges and clever pretexts we avoided being
found out, or could 'organize' something." Bruno Bettelheim remarks on
the extravagance of the stories told by the prisoners to one another:
They were boastful, telling tales about what they had accomplished in their
former lives, or how they succeeded in cheating foremen or guards, and
how they sabotaged the work. Like children they felt not at all set back or
ashamed when it became known that they had lied about their prowess.
(1943, pp. 445-46)
This development of childlike behavior in the old inmates was the
counterpart of something even more striking that was happening to
them. "Only very few of the prisoners" Cohen says (1953, p. 177),
"escaped a more or less intensive identification with the SS" As Bettel-
heim puts it (1943, p. 447) : "A prisoner had reached the final stage of
ELKINS: Slavery and Personality 253
adjustment to the camp situation when he had changed his personality
so as to accept as his own the values of the Gestapo." To all these men,
reduced to complete and childish dependence upon their masters, the
SS had actually become a father-symbol. "The SS man was all-power-
ful in the camp, he was the lord and master of the prisoner's life. As a
cruel father he could, without fear of punishment, even kill the pris-
oner and as a gentle father he could scatter largesse and afford the
prisoner his protection." The result, admits Dr. Cohen (1953, pp.
176-77), was "That for all of us the SS was a father image. . . ." The
closed system, in short, had become a kind of grotesque patriarchy. Few
cases of real resistance were recorded; there was a relative scarcity of
purposeful suicides, and even afterwards a surprising absence of
hatred toward the SS. "It is remarkable," Hottinger noted (1948, p. 32)
of the survivors, "how little hatred of their wardens is revealed in their
stories."
4. THREE THEORIES OF PERSONALITY.
The immense revelation for psychology in the concentration camp
literature has been the discovery of how elements of dramatic personal-
ity change could be brought about in masses of individuals. And yet it is
not proper that the crude fact of "change" alone should dominate the
conceptual image with which one emerges from this problem.
"Change" per se change that does not go beyond itself, is productive of
nothing; it leaves only destruction, shock, and howling bedlam be-
hind it unless some future basis of stability and order lies waiting to
guarantee it and give it reality. So it is with the human psyche, which is
apparently capable of making terms with a state other than liberty as
we know it. The very dramatic features of the process just described
may shatter the nicety of this point.
There is the related danger, moreover, of unduly stressing the indi-
vidual psychology of the problem at the expense of its social psy-
chology. To minimize these hazards, it may be strategically judicious to
maintain a conceptual distinction between two phases of the group ex-
perience. The process of detachment from prior standards of behavior
and value is one of them, and is doubtless the more striking but there
must be another one. That such detachment can, by extension, involve
the whole scope of an individual's culture is an implication for which the
vocabulary of individual psychology was caught somewhat unawares.
Fluctuations in the state of the individual psyche could formerly be
dealt with, or so it seemed, while taking for granted the more or less
static nature of social organization, and with a minimum of reference
to its features. That such organization might itself become a potent
254 Social Theory and Personality
variable was therefore a possibility not highly developed in theory.
The other phase of the experience should be considered as the "sta-
bility" side of the problem. It stabilized what the "shock" phase only
opened the way for. This phase was essentially a process of adjustment to
a standard of social normality though in this case a drastic re-adjust-
ment, and compressed within a very short time. This process, under typi-
cal conditions of individual and group existence, is supposed to begin at
birth and last a lifetime and be transmitted in many and diffuse ways
from generation to generation. Normally, the adjustment is slow and
organic. Its numerous aspects extend much beyond psychology and
have in the past been treated at great leisure within the rich provinces
not only of psychology but of history, sociology, and literature as well.
What rearrangement and compression of those provinces may be needed
to accommodate a mass experience that not only involved profound in-
dividual shock but also required rapid assimilation to a profoundly dif-
ferent form of social organization, can hardly be known. But perhaps a
conservative beginning may be made with existing psychological theory.
The theoretical system whose terminology was orthodox for most of
the Europeans who have written about the camps was that of Freud. It
was necessary for them to do a certain amount of improvising, since the
scheme's existing framework provided only the narrowest leeway for
dealing with such radical concepts as out-and-out change in personal-
ity. This was due to two kinds of limitations which the Freudian vo-
cabulary places upon the notion of the "self." One is that the superego
that part of the self involved in social relationships, social values, ex-
pectations of others, and so on is conceived as only a small and highly
refined part of the "total" self. The other is the assumption that the con-
tent and character of the superego is laid down in childhood and under-
goes relatively little basic alteration thereafter. Yet a Freudian diagnosis
of the concentration camp inmate whose social self, or superego, did
appear to change and who seemed basically changed thereby is still
possible, given these limitations. Elie Cohen's thorough analysis spe-
cifically states that "the superego acquired new values in a concentra-
tion camp." The old values, according to Dr. Cohen, were first silenced
by the shocks which produced "acute depersonalization" (the subject-
object split: "It is not the real 'me' who is undergoing this"), and by
the powerful drives of hunger and survival. Old values, thus set aside,
could be replaced by new ones. It was a process made possible by
"infantile regression" regression to a previous condition of childlike
dependency in which parental prohibitions once more became all-
powerful and in which parental judgments might once more be internal-
ized. In this way a new "father-image," personified in the SS guard,
came into being. That the prisoner's identification with the SS could be
ELKINS: Slavery and Personality 255
so positive is explained by still another mechanism: the principle of
"identification with the aggressor." The child's only "defense" in the
presence of a cruel, all-powerful father is the psychic defense of identifi-
cation.
Now one could, still retaining the Freudian language, represent all
this in somewhat less cumbersome terms by a slight modification of the
metaphor. It could simply be said that under great stress the superego,
like a bucket, is violently emptied of content and acquires, in a radically
changed setting, new content. It would thus not be necessary to postu-
late a literal "regression" to childhood. Something of the sort is suggested
by Leo Alexander. "The psychiatrist stands in amazement," he writes,
before the thoroughness and completeness with which this perversion of es-
sential superego values was accomplished in adults. ... it may be that the
decisive importance of childhood and youth in the formation of [these]
values may have been overrated by psychiatrists in a society in which alle-
giance to these values in normal adult life was taken too much for granted
because of the stability, religiousness, legality, and security of the 19th Cen-
tury and early 20th Century society. ( 1 948, p. 1 73 )
A second theoretical scheme is better prepared for crisis and more
closely geared to social environment than the Freudian adaptation. It
may consequently be more suitable for accommodating not only the
concentration camp experience but also the more general problem of
plantation slave personality. This is the "interpersonal theory" devel-
oped by the late Harry Stack Sullivan. One may view this body of work
as the response to a peculiarly American set of needs. The system of
Freud, so aptly designed for a European society in which stability of
institutional and status relationships could always to a large extent be
taken for granted, turns out to be less clearly adapted to the culture of
the United States. The American psychiatrist has had to deal with indi-
viduals in a culture where the diffuse, shifting, and often uncertain qual-
ity of such relationships has always been more pronounced than in
Europe. He has come to appreciate the extent to which these relation-
ships actually support the individual's psychic balance the full extent,
that is, to which the self is "social" in its nature. Thus a psychology
whose terms are flexible enough to permit altering social relationships
to make actual differences in character structure would be a psychol-
ogy especially promising for dealing with our problem.
Sullivan's great contribution was to offer a concept whereby the
really critical determinants of personality might be isolated for pur-
poses of observation. Out of the hopelessly immense totality of "in-
fluences" which in one way or another go to make up the personality, or
"self," Sullivan designated one the estimations and expectations of
others as the one promising to unlock the most secrets. He then made
256 Social Theory and Personality
a second elimination: the majority of "others" in one's existence may,
for theoretical purposes, be neglected; what counts is who the signifi-
cant others are. Here, "significant others" may be understood very
crudely to mean those individuals who hold or seem to hold the keys
to security in one's own personal situation, whatever its nature. As to the
psychic processes whereby these "significant others" become an actual
part of the personality, it may be said that the very sense of "self first
emerges in connection with anxiety about the attitudes of the most im-
portant persons in one's life (initially the mother, father, and their
surrogates persons of more or less absolute authority), and automatic
attempts are set in motion to adjust to these attitudes. In this way their
approval, their disapproval, their estimates and appraisals, and indeed a
whole range of their expectations become internalized, and are reflected
in one's very character. Of course as one "grows up," one acquires more
and more significant others whose attitudes are diffuse and may in-
deed compete, and thus "significance," in Sullivan's sense, becomes
subtler and less easy to define. The personality exfoliates; it takes on
traits of distinction and as we say "individuality." The impact of
particular significant others is less dramatic than in early life. But the
pattern is a continuing one. New significant others do still appear, and
theoretically it is conceivable that even in mature life the personality
might be visibly affected by the arrival of such a one supposing that
this new significant other were vested with sufficient authority. In any
event, there are possibilities for fluidity and actual change inherent in
this concept which earlier schemes have lacked.
The purest form of the process is observed in the development of
children. This is not so much due to their "immaturity" as such
though their plasticity is great and the imprint of early experience goes
deep but rather because for them there are fewer significant others.
For this reason because the pattern is simpler and more easily con-
trolled much of Sullivan's attention was devoted to what happens in
childhood. Unlike the adult, the child, being drastically limited in the
selection of significant others, must operate reverting to a previous
terminology in a "closed system."
Such are the elements which make for order and balance in the
normal self: "significant others," plus "anxiety" in a special sense
conceived with not simply disruptive but also guiding, warning functions.
The structure of "interpersonal" theory thus has considerable room in it
for conceptions of guided change change for either beneficent or
malevolent ends. One technique for managing such change would of
course be the orthodox one of psychoanalysis; another, the actual chang-
ing of significant others. Patrick Mullahy, a leading exponent of Sulli-
van, believes that in group therapy much is possible along the latter
ELKINS: Slavery and Personality 257
lines. A demonic test of the whole hypothesis is available in the con-
centration camp.
Consider the camp prisoner not the one who fell by the wayside but
the one who survived. Consider the ways in which he was forced to
adjust to the one significant other which he now had: the SS guard, who
held absolute dominion over every aspect of his life. The very shock of
his introduction was perfectly designed to dramatize this fact; he was
brutally maltreated ("as by a cruel father"); the slightest resistance
would bring instant death. Daily life in the camp, with its fear and ten-
sions, taught over and over the lesson of absolute power. It prepared the
personality for a drastic shift in standards. It crushed whatever anxieties
might have been drawn from prior standards such standards had be-
come meaningless. It focused the prisoner's attention constantly on the
moods, attitudes, and standards of the only man who mattered. A truly
childlike situation was thus created: utter and abject dependency on
one, or on a rigidly limited few significant others. All the conditions
which in normal life would give the individual leeway which allowed
him to defend himself against a new and hostile significant other, no
matter how powerful were absent in the camp. No competition of
significant others was possible; the prisoner's comrades for practical pur-
poses were helpless to assist him. He had no degree of independence, no
lines to the outside, in any matter. Everything every vital concern
focused on the SS: food, warmth, security, freedom from pain, all de-
pended on the omnipotent significant other, all had to be worked out
within the closed system. Nowhere was there a shred of privacy; every-
thing one did was subject to SS supervision. The pressure was never
absent. It is thus no wonder that the prisoners should become "as
children." It is no wonder that their obedience became unquestioning,
that they did not revolt, that they could not "hate" their masters. Their
masters' attitudes had become internalized as a part of their very
selves; those attitudes and standards now dominated all others. They
had, indeed, been "changed."
There still exists a third conceptual framework within which these
phenomena may be considered the growing field of "role psychology."
This psychology is not at all incompatible with interpersonal theory; the
two might easily be fitted into the same system. But it might be strategi-
cally desirable, for several reasons, to segregate them for purposes of
discussion. One such reason is the extraordinary degree to which role
psychology shifts the focus of attention upon the individual's cultural
and institutional environment rather than upon his "self." At the same
time it gives us a manageable concept that of "role" for mediating
between the two. As a mechanism, the role enables us to isolate the
unique contribution of culture and institutions toward maintaining the
258 Social Theory and Personality
psychic balance of the individual. In it, we see formalized for the indi-
vidual a range of choices in models of behavior and expression, each
with its particular style, quality, and attributes. The relationship
between the "role" and the "self," though not yet clear, is intimate; it is
possible at certain levels of inquiry to look upon the individual as the
variable and upon the roles extended him as the stable factor. We
thus have a potentially durable link between individual psychology and
the study of culture. It might even be said, inasmuch as its key term is di-
rectly borrowed from the theater, that role psychology offers in workable
form the long-awaited connection apparently missed by Ernest Jones
in his "Hamlet" study between the insights of the classical dramatists
and those of the contemporary social theorist. But be that as it may,
for the concentration camp situation it provides the most flexible ex-
planation of how the ex-prisoners may have succeeded not only in
adjusting to the camp but also in resuming their places in normal life.
A "social role" is definable in its simplest sense as the behavior ex-
pected of persons specifically located in specific social groups. Its tex-
ture may be interwoven with many subtle qualities, which constitute its
style. There is a distinction between "expectations" and "behavior";
the expectations of a role (embodied in the "script") theoretically exist
in advance and are defined by the organization, the institution, or by
society at large. Behavior the "performance" refers to the manner
in which the role is played. Another distinction involves roles which are
pervasive and those which are intermittent, transitory, and limited. A
further concept is that of "role clarity." Some roles are more specifi-
cally defined than others; their impact upon performance and indeed,
upon the personality of the performer depends on the clarity of their
definition. And finally, those roles which carry with them the clearest
and most automatic rewards and punishments are those which will be,
so* to speak, best played.
What sorts of things might this explain? It might illuminate the
process whereby the child develops his personality in terms not only of
the roles which his parents offer him but of those which he "picks up"
elsewhere and tries on. It could show how society, in its coercive
character, lays down patterns of behavior with which it expects the in-
dividual to comply. It suggests the way in which society, now turning its
benevolent face to the individual, tenders him alternatives and defines
for him the style appropriate to their fulfillment. It provides us with a
further term for the definition of personality itself: to some extent we
can say that personality is actually made up of the roles which the in-
dividual plays. And here, once more assuming "change" to be possible,
we have in certain ways the least cumbersome terms for plotting its
course.
ELKINS: Slavery and Personality 259
The application of the model to the concentration camp is simple and
obvious. What was expected of the man entering the role of camp pris-
oner was laid down for him upon arrival: absolute obedience. Expec-
tation and performance, in short, must coincide exactly; the lines were
to be read literally; the missing of a single cue meant extinction. The
role was pervasive; it vetoed any other role and smashed all prior
ones. "Role clarity" was absolute; its definition was burned into the
prisoner by every detail of his existence. The role was actually that of
the child who had no measure of independence. Its impact upon both
performance and personality have already been observed. Its rewards
were brutally simple life rather than death; its punishments were
automatic. By the survivors it was, it had to be, a role well-played.
Nor was it simple, upon liberation, to shed the role. Many of the in-
mates, to be sure, did have prior roles which they could resume, former
significant others to whom they might reorient themselves, a repressed
superego which might once more be resurrected. To this extent they were
not "lost souls." But to the extent that their entire personalities, their
total selves, had been involved in this experience, to the extent that old
arrangements had been disrupted, that society itself had been over-
turned while they had been away, a "return" was fraught with in-
numerable obstacles.
The foregoing analysis has shed some light upon the question with
which this section began, though the very hideousness of the special
kind of slavery may have partially disqualified it as a test for certain
features of a far milder and more benevolent form of slavery. Still, one
should be able to say, with regard to the individuals who lived as
slaves within the respective systems, that just as on one level there is
every difference between a wretched childhood and a carefree one,
there are limited features which both types share.
Both were closed systems from which all standards based on prior
connections had been effectively detached. A working adjustment to
either system required a childlike conformity, a limited choice of "sig-
nificant others." Cruelty per se cannot be considered as the primary key
to this; of far greater importance was the sheer "closedness" of the sys-
tem, in which all lines of authority descended from the master, and in
which alternative social bases that might have supported alternative
standards were systematically suppressed. The individual, conse-
quently, for his very psychic security, had to picture his master in some
way as the "good father," even when, as in the concentration camp, it
made no sense at all. But why should it not have made sense for many a
simple plantation Negro whose master did exhibit, in all the ways that
could be expected, the features of the good father who was really
"good"? If the concentration camp could produce in two or three years
260 Social Theory and Personality
the results that it did, one wonders how much more pervasive must
have been those attitudes, expectations, and values which had, cer-
tainly, their benevolent side, and which were accepted and transmitted
over generations?
From the master's viewpoint, slaves had been defined in law as
property, and the master's power over his property must be absolute. But
then this property was still human property. These slaves might never
be quite as human as he was, but still there were certain standards that
could be laid down for their behavior: obedience, fidelity, humility,
docility, cheerfulness, and so on. Industry and diligence would of course
be demanded but a final element in the master's situation would un-
doubtedly qualify that expectation. Absolute power for him meant
absolute dependency for the slave the dependency not of the develop-
ing child but of the perpetual child. For the master, the role most aptly
fitting such a relationship would naturally be that of the father. As a
father he could be either harsh or kind, as he chose, but as a wise
father he would have, we may suspect, a sense of the limits of his situa-
tion. He must be ready to cope with all the qualities of the child, exas-
perating as well as ingratiating. He might conceivably have to expect in
such a child besides his loyalty, docility, humility, cheerfulness, and,
under supervision, his diligence such additional qualities as irre-
sponsibility, playfulness, silliness, laziness, and, quite possibly, tenden-
cies to lying and stealing. Should the entire prediction prove accurate,
the result would be something resembling "Sambo."
The social and psychological sanctions of role-playing may in the last
analysis prove to be the most satisfactory of the several approaches to
Sambo, for without doubt, of all the roles in American life that of
Sambo was by far the most pervasive. The outlines of the role might be
sketched in by crude necessity, but what of the finer shades? The sanc-
tions against overstepping it were bleak enough, but the reward the
sweet applause, as it were, for performing it with sincerity and feeling
that was something to be appreciated on quite another level. The law,
untuned to the deeper harmonies, could command the player to be pres-
ent for the occasion, and the whip might even warn against his missing
the grosser cues but could those things really insure the performance
that melted all hearts? Yet there was many and many a performance,
and the audiences, whose standards were high, appear to have
been for the most part well pleased. They were actually viewing their
own masterpiece. Much labor had been lavished upon this chef
d'oeuvre; the most genial resources of Southern society had been availa-
ble for the work. Touch after touch had been applied throughout the
years, and the result embodied not in the unfeeling law but in the
richest layers of Southern lore had been the product of an exquisitely
ELKINS: Slavery and Personality 261
rounded collective creativity. And it was indeed in a sense that some-
how transcended the merely ironic a labor of love. "I love the simple
and unadulterated slave, with his geniality, his mirth, his swagger, and
his nonsense," wrote Edward Pollard,
I love to look upon his countenance shining with content and grease; I love
to study his affectionate heart; I love to mark that peculiarity in him, which
beneath all his buffoonery exhibits him as a creature of the tenderest sensi-
bilities, mingling his joys and his sorrows with those of his master's home.
(1859, p. 58)
Love, in short even on those terms was surely no inconsequential
reward. But what were the terms? The Negro, though a happy child,
was to be a child forever. Few Southern writers failed to describe with
obvious fondness the bubbling gaiety of a plantation holiday or the per-
petual good humor that seemed to mark the Negro character the good
humor of an everlasting childhood.
The role, of course, must have been rather harder for the earliest
generations of slaves to learn. "Accommodation," according to John
Bollard,
involves the renunciation of protest or aggression against undesirable condi-
tions of life and the organization of the character so that protest does not
appear, but acceptance does. It may come to pass in the end that the unwel-
come force is idealized, that one identifies with it and takes it into the per-
sonality; it sometimes even happens that what is at first resented and feared
is finally loved. (1937, p. 255)
Might the process, on the other hand, be reversed? It is hard to imag-
ine it being reversed overnight. The same role might still be played in the
years after slavery we are told that it was and yet it was played to
more vulgar audiences with cruder standards, who paid infinitely less
for what they saw. The lines might be repeated more and more me-
chanically, with less and less conviction. The incentives to perfection
could become hazy and blurred, and the excellent old piece could de-
generate over time into low farce. There could come a point, conceiva-
bly, with the old zest gone, that it was no longer worth the candle. The
day might come at last when it dawned on a man's full waking conscious-
ness that he had really grown up that he was, after all, only playing
a part.
5. MECHANISMS OF RESISTANCE TO ABSOLUTE POWER.
One might say a great deal more than has been said here about
mass behavior and mass manifestations of personality, and the picture
would still amount to little more than a grotesque cartoon of humanity
were not some recognition given to the ineffable difference made in any
262 Social Theory and Personality
social system by men and women possessing what is recognized, any-
where and any time, simply as character. With that, one arrives at
something too qualitatively fine to come very much within the crude
categories of the present discussion. But although it is impossible to gen-
eralize with any proper justice about the incidence of "character" in its
moral, irreducible, individual sense, it may still be possible to conclude
with a note or two on the social conditions, the breadth or narrowness of
their compass, within which character can find expression.
One is struck once more, turning to Latin America, by the fact that
there one finds no Sambo: more specifically, one finds no social tradi-
tion in which slaves were defined, by virtually complete consensus, as
children incapable of being trusted with the full privileges of freedom
and adulthood. There, the system surely had its brutalities. The slaves
arriving from Africa had also undergone the capture, the sale, the Mid-
dle Passage. They too had been uprooted from a prior culture, from a
life very different from the one in which they now found themselves.
There, however, the system was not closed.
Once again the concentration camp, paradoxically enough, can be in-
structive. A very small minority of the survivors of the camps had under-
gone an experience in crucial ways different from that of the others, an
experience which protected them from the full impact of the closed sys-
tem. These people, mainly by virtue of wretched little jobs in the camp
administration which offered them a minute measure of privilege, were
able to carry on "underground" activities. In a practical sense the actual
operations of such "undergrounds" as were possible may seem to us un-
heroic and limited: stealing blankets; "organizing" a few bandages, a
little medicine, from the camp hospital; black market arrangements with
a guard for a bit of extra food and protection for oneself and one's com-
rades; the circulation of news; and other such apparently trifling activi-
ties. But for the psychological balance of those involved, such activities
were vital; they made possible a fundamentally different adjustment to
the camp. To a prisoner so engaged, there were others who mattered,
who gave real point to his existence. The SS was no longer the only one.
Conversely, the role of the child was not the only one he played. He
could take initiative; he could give as well as receive protection; he did
things which had meaning in adult terms* He had, in short, alternative
roles. This fact made such a prisoner's transition from his old life to that
of the camp less agonizing and destructive; those very prisoners, more-
over, appear to have been the ones who could, upon liberation, resume
normal lives most easily.
It was just such a difference, indeed, a much greater one, that sep-
arated the typical slave in Latin America from the typical slave in the
United States. Though he too had experienced the Middle Passage, he
ELKINS: Slavery and Personality 263
was entering a society where alternatives were significantly more diverse
than those awaiting his kinsman in North America. Distinct and, at cer-
tain points, competing institutions were concerned in some sense with
his status. Multiple and often competing "significant others" existed.
His master was, of course, clearly the chief one but not the only one.
There could, in fact, be a considerable number: the friar who boarded
his ship to examine his conscience; the confessor; the priest who made
the rounds and who might report irregularities in treatment to the
procurator; the zealous Jesuit quick to resent a master's intrusion upon
such sacred matters as marriage and worship a resentment of no small
consequence to the master the local magistrate, with his eye on the
king's official protector of slaves, who would find himself in trouble were
the laws too widely evaded; the king's informer who received one-third
of the fines. For the slave, the result was a certain latitude; the lines did
not all converge on one man; the slave's personality, accordingly, did
not have to focus on a single role. He was, true enough, primarily a
slave. Yet he might in fact perform multiple roles. He could be a hus-
band and father the American slave was legally denied such roles.
Open to him also were such activities as artisan, peddler, petty mer-
chant, truck gardener the law reserved to him the necessary time and
a share of the proceeds; such arrangements were against the law for
Sambo. He could be a communicant in the church, a member of a reli-
gious fraternity roles guaranteed by the most powerful institution in
Latin America. Comparable privileges in the American South depended
on a master's pleasure. These roles were all legitimized and protected
outside the plantation; they offered a diversity of channels for the de-
velopment of personality. Not only did the individual have multiple
roles open to Mm as a slave, but the very nature of these roles made
possible a certain range of aspirations should he some day become
free. He could have a fantasy-life not limited to catfish and watermelons;
it was within his conception to become a priest, an independent farmer,
a successful merchant, a military officer. The slave could actually
to an extent quite unthinkable in the United States conceive of himself
as a rebel. Bloody slave revolts actual wars took place in Latin
America. Nothing on this order occurred in the United States. But even
without a rebellion, society here had a network of customary arrange-
ments, rooted in antiquity, which made possible at many points a smooth
transition of status from slave to free, and which provided much social
space for the exfoliation of individual character.
To the typical slave on the ante-bellum plantation in the United
States, society of course offered no such alternatives. But that is hardly
to say that something of an "underground" something rather more,
indeed, than an underground could not exist in Southern slave society.
264 Social Theory and Personality
And there were those in it who hardly fitted the picture of "Sambo."
The American slave system, compared with that of Latin America,
was closed and circumscribed. But like all social systems, its arrange-
ments were less perfect in practice than they appeared to be in theory.
It was possible for significant numbers of slaves to escape, in varying
degrees, the full impact of the system and its coercions upon personal-
ity. The house servant, the urban mechanic, the slave who arranged his
own employment and paid his master a stipulated sum each week, were
all figuratively members of the "underground." Even among those work-
ing on large plantations, the skilled craftsman or the responsible slave
foreman had a measure of independence not shared by his simpler
brethren. Even the single slave family owned by a small farmer had a
status much closer to that of house servants than that of a plantation
labor gang. For all such people there was a margin of space denied to
the majority: the system's authority-structure claimed their bodies but
not quite their souls.
It would be out of such groups that an individual as complex and as
highly developed as William Johnson, the Natchez barber, might emerge.
Johnson's diary reveals a personality that one recognizes instantly as a
type but a type whose values came from a sector of society very dif-
ferent from that which formed Sambo. Johnson is the young man on
the make, the ambitious free-enterpriser of American legend. He be-
gan life as a slave, was manumitted at the age of eleven, and rose
from a poor apprentice barber to become one of the wealthiest and most
influential Negroes in ante-bellum Mississippi. He was respected by
white and black alike, and counted among his friends some of the lead-
ing public men of the state.
It is of great interest to note that the danger of slave revolts like
Communist conspiracies in our own day was much overrated by
touchy Southerners. The revolts that actually did occur were in no in-
stance planned by plantation laborers but rather by Negroes whose
qualities of leadership were developed well outside the full coercions of
the plantation authority-system. Gabriel, who led the revolt of 1800,
was a blacksmith who lived a few miles outside of Richmond; Denmark
Vesey, leading spirit of the 1822 plot at Charleston, was a freed Negro
artisan who had been born in Africa and served several years aboard a
slave trading vessel; and Nat Turner, the Virginia slave who fomented
the massacre of 1831, was a literate preacher of recognized intelligence.
Of the plots that have been convincingly substantiated, moreover
whether they came to anything or not the majority originated in urban
centers.
For a time during Reconstruction, a Negro elite of sorts did emerge in
the South. Many of its members were Northern Negroes; but the
ELKINS: Slavery and Personality 265
Southern ex-slaves who also comprised it seem in general to have
emerged from the categories just indicated. Vernon Wharton, writ-
ing of Mississippi, says:
A large portion of the minor Negro leaders were preachers, lawyers, or
teachers from the free states or from Canada. Their education and their in-
dependent attitude gained for them immediate favor and leadership. Of the
natives who became their rivals, the majority had been urban slaves, black-
smiths, carpenters, clerks, or waiters in hotels and boarding houses; a few of
them had been favored body-servants of affluent whites. (1942, p. 164)
The William Johnsons and Denmark Veseys have been accorded,
though belatedly, their due honor. They are, indeed, all too easily
identified, thanks to the system that enabled them as individuals to be
so conspicuous and so exceptional, and as members of a group, so few.
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Ill
METHODOLOGICAL
ISSUES IN THE CROSS-
CULTURAL STUDY
OF PERSONALITY
About the Chapter
From the confusing variety of theoretical conceptualizations of person-
ality processes. Dr. Miller tries to identify categories which are best suited
for cross-cultural study. He believes that the interpersonal relationship is the
minimal unit of psychological analysis and discusses in detail the problems
of describing such relationships. The schema he develops is a skillful blending
of sociological, Lewinian, and psychoanalytic concepts.
About the Author
DANIEL R. MILLER is Research Associate at the Institute for Social Re-
search and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. In 1955-
56, he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
He is co-author with Guy E. Swanson of two books, The Changing American
Parent and Inner Conflict and Defense. The first of these received the Burgess
Award in 1960 for the best monograph on the family and socialization in the
previous two years.
Personality and Social Interaction
DANIEL R. MILLER
University of Michigan
lo study personality cross-culturally, one must first have a picture of
personality. A specific set of categories is necessary to define testable
questions and to classify the empirical data obtained from answering
the questions. But which are the best categories for mapping the human
personality? The social scientist is likely to feel bedeviled by the many
systems described in a standard text on personality. There is no easy
way to choose among them; each has its particular assets and liabilities.
The selection of a system must be determined by the investigator's prob-
lems and the kind of material he is studying. This chapter begins with a
list of reasons why social scientists study personality in different socie-
ties. There then follows a presentation of concepts that have been help-
ful in my own empirical investigations of personality. The concepts rep-
resent a recasting within an interpersonal context of intrapersonal
concepts traditional in psychology. After the interpersonal approach
has been outlined, it will be evaluated in the light of the purposes of
cross-cultural research.
Criteria for Selecting Concepts
Psychological theories provide a wealth of seemingly fruitful terms.
The literature on personality in different societies contains many refer-
271
272 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
ences to motives, displacement, Oedipus complex, reinforcement, fixa-
tion, self-esteem, internalization, anxiety, and many other concepts.
But the very variety of concepts is confusing; the theoretical pie has
been cut In too many different ways. Some writers take a physiological
approach and some focus on personal experience; some devote their at-
tention to perception, some stress learning, and some stress motivation.
Some investigate the internal dynamics of an individual and some the
behavior of people In groups. There are many other such differences in
basic orientation.
It Is not possible to integrate the best of the different orientations into
one all-embracing system. Thus far, no approach seems inherently su-
perior to the others. It Is usually very difficult to decide, therefore, on
labels for behavior and on methods of comparing people in different so-
cieties. Will an investigator learn more about anxiety if he collects
dreams or if he measures psychogalvanic responses; if he administers the
Rorschach Test or interviews mothers about weaning practices?
There being no a priori basis for selecting concepts and methods, the
most obvious basis Is an empirical one: consideration of the ends to
which the concepts will be applied. If the investigator intends to com-
pare the personalities of people In different societies, his concepts
should satisfy at least three criteria. First, the terms must have com-
parable meanings In the different societies. The satisfaction of this cri-
terion Is no simple matter. While general enough to have cross-cultural
meaning, the concepts must also be specific enough to describe concrete
behavior In a particular society.
A second criterion is suggested if we ask why one goes to the trouble
of traveling to different societies in order to study personality. Why not
stay at home? Usually, the investigator is interested in the connections
between personality traits and different social structures. He may be
asking how personality supports the social system or how certain forms
of social organization affect personality. He cannot phrase hypotheses
with psychological concepts that apply only to the internal distribution
of energy and sociological concepts that are specific to the organiza-
tion of social groups. To find answers, he needs concepts of personality
that he can integrate with categories for describing social structure.
A final criterion for the selection of concepts is suggested by the na-
ture of personality. To be described in a meaningful way, it requires
terms that permit the analysis of individual differences.
These, then, are the three criteria for selecting concepts: they should
have comparable meanings in different societies; they should permit the
phrasing of associations between social structure and personality; they
should lend themselves to the analysis of individual differences.
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 273
The Interpersonal Relationship
In the short space of one chapter it is not possible to outline a com-
plete system of classification that satisfies the three criteria. It is possible
only to indicate the nature of such a system by illustrating a few critical
concepts. Underlying uhe orientation to the selection of concepts is one
basic assumption: the minimal unit of psychological analysis is the in-
terpersonal relationship. This relationship is viewed as a system, much
as the individual person is viewed as a system in the realm of traditional
psychology.
To convey the nature of questions about interaction between two
people, it is first necessary to list the primary factors in the system's
dynamics. Most obvious are the dramatis personae, the two partici-
pants. To explain their behavior, the investigator needs information
about their dispositions, their values, their defense mechanisms, and the
like. To picture their relationship he needs concepts that describe inci-
dents from the point of view of each perceiver. The terms are self-iden-
tity and object. Another integral part of the picture is the situation. Are
the participants at a cocktail party or at a business meeting? Are they
in a kitchen or in an office? The final major source of variance is the
nature of the interaction between the two participants. Have they been
planning a cooperative venture or have they been arguing? Is the rela-
tionship an authoritative one or is it a relationship on the level of
peers?
In terms of such categories of concepts, one can define not only many
traditional problems but one that is basic to many cross-cultural studies.
It involves the forces which contribute to the stability and rigidity of an
interpersonal system. If the two people are man and wife, we can study
the forces, both internal and external, that keep the marriage intact:
the fit between the partners' personalities, the maturity of defense
mechanisms, the number of mutual satisfactions, the social pressures
to maintain the marriage. If the participants are friends, we can analyze
the forces that affect the stability of the friendship: the common inter-
ests, the extent to which the shared activities gratify reciprocal needs, the
sources of friction.
The primary purpose of the ensuing discussion, then, will be to pre-
sent an interpersonal orientation to theory-building. As will become in-
creasingly evident, this orientation has been influenced considerably by
the writings of Cooley (1922) and M. Mead (1935) in sociology, and
of Lewin (1939), Parsons, Shils and Murray (1951) hi psychology,
and of Freud (1949), Klein (1948), Erikson (1954) and Sullivan
(1947) in psychoanalysis.
274 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
Psychological Space
The concepts to be discussed have been selected with a view to pic-
turing an interpersonal event as it is perceived by the participants.
Subjectively many aspects of a situation, and the people in it, are ex-
perienced in spatial terms. One thinks in such terms as the distance be-
tween people, directions of goals, and deterrance by barriers. It is help-
ful, therefore, to analyze many aspects of an interpersonal event, by
means of concepts developed by Lewin (1939) to describe psychologi-
cal space.
In spatial terms, an event is experienced as consisting of component
regions. Regions may represent persons and parts of persons, and
physical space between people. Each region has its special structure, de-
fined by component sub-regions, and is delimited by boundaries. At such
points its qualitative properties begin to change into those of another
region. Boundaries may be sharp or vague enough to constitute zones,
easily crossed or resistant to communication and movement. In the
latter case, boundaries constitute barriers between regions. Changes
are induced by forces, each of which has a point of application, strength,
and direction.
In some of the comments on the interpersonal relationship, it will be
viewed structurally as consisting of component and interacting regions,
and functionally as a system of forces in some sort of equilibrium. The
specific regions on which we will concentrate are the situation, the ob-
jects and the self-identity. The forces we will consider are the ones that
underly reactions of people to each other. In describing dynamics of
interpersonal reactions, we will focus on one factor, the defense mecha-
nism, which is of considerable importance in many cross-cultural
studies of personality.
I. SITUATION
The interaction between two persons obviously varies with the situa-
tion in which they find themselves. A fundamental aspect of the situation
is its actual physical characteristics. A locked door can act as a physical
barrier; the living room is designed for different functions than the
kitchen. But regions need not be defined by physical characteristics and
need not even refer to physical places. They may refer to areas in fan-
tasy. Whether a region refers to a real space or a fantasied one, the in-
vestigator is interested in its location relative to other regions, its con-
nections with them, its attributes, its amenability to change, the
clarify of its boundaries, and their resistance to perception and locomo-
tion.
A situation can also be mapped in terms of the forces that prompt ob-
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 275
jets to move in various directions, and the tensions, or force fields,
i particular regions. Tensions tend to create changes, often by prompt-
ig an object to move to goals or to other regions or to retreat from
Durces of potential pain.
To apply such general functional and struccural terms, one also needs
iformation about content. Data are required about kinds of forces,
oals, and barriers. Some of this information can be gained from a
onsideration of social structure. To define a situation we begin with the
3tal social system, which is the network of social relationships current in
particular culture. Such a network can be conveniently divided ac-
ording to at least three different principles, all of which can throw light
n the regions in a situation. The most familiar method involves a divi-
ion into various types of organized social units, like the family, the fac-
Dry, the church, and the club; and unorganized, but recognized so-
ial categories, like men and women, Negroes and whites, white collar
Corkers and manual laborers. The second method classifies the net-
work of relationships in terms of such salient characteristics as economic,
olitical, religious, and educational features. Finally, an organized social
nit can ultimately be viewed as a set of social positions. A family,
:>r example, may be divided into the positions of father, mother, hus-
and, wife, son, daughter, brother and sister.
By analyzing a social situation in these three ways, we can usually get
clear picture of the most prominent regions and forces. In an en-
ounter between a saleslady (social position) and a female customer in
department store (social unit), the physical structure of the store, the
ature of the saleslady's job, the rules established by the organization,
le age, sex, race, and social class of the customer all these factors may
ffect the meaning of the situation, which is organized, in great part, to
icilitate the distribution of goods and services. The selling situation
lay be viewed in terms of two regions, the counter acting as a physical
ad social barrier between them. During working hours the saleslady
annot cross the barrier. She cannot leave her post without seeking a re-
lacement. This rule is reinforced by the presence of superiors, the
Darnings of peers, and the possible complaints of customers. The ten-
ions in the two regions promote actions leading to the interchange of
loney for goods and services. The goals of this action are partially in-
jrpreted in terms of the meanings and values entailed in the company's
tructuring of the situation, both physically and psychologically. For a
iven person, these rudimentary details are rounded out by many others.
E the saleslady is very anxious to keep her job, for example, or is very
sspectful to authorities, she will seldom cross the barrier of the counter
nd she will experience strong tensions to. promote the exchange of goods
nd services.
276 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
2. OBJECTS
Perceptually, the participants In a relationship are most aware of the
regions we shall call objects. These can be inanimate, but the ones that
are most Important in most people's lives are animate and human.
"Significant others" parents, siblings, spouses, friends, gods, fellow-
employees provide fulcra about which each person organizes his life.
Objects provide the foci of one's deepest needs, one's primary values,
and the fundamental goals of the larger community.
Sub-Identities of Objects
Each object can be differentiated Into sub-regions with discernible
characteristics and Interrelationships. To analyze the structure of an
object, one must identify Its sub-regions, their dimensions and attributes,
and their centrality and fluidity.
What are the regions by which a man is known to others? How is he
Identified by his public? There are two different ways. One refers to his
positions In various social units and his various social categories. People
thiak of him In terms of the kind of father or lawyer or man or Catholic
or citizen he is. Another basis for picturing him- is provided by the identi-
ties he developed during earlier stages of his life. People may refer to
the self-centered child in him or the infant in him. Some of these earlier
identities seem to be organized in terms of people with whom he has
identified most strongly. When he does something that reminds us of one
of these internalized objects, his father, for instance, we say that his
action reflects the father in him.
Together, all the regions by which a man is known constitute his
public identity. The specific regions into which the total identity is di-
vided are sub-identities. Sub-identity is an organized set of attributes
representing a particular person: the kind of lawyer he is, the kind of
father he is when he manifests the attributes of his internalized father,
the kind of child he becomes when he is very fatigued. Like a finger-
print, each pattern of attributes is unique to a particular individual.
The sub-Identity identifies him and him alone to others in a particular
social group. It gives him a continuity of meaning for the others in the
group.
Analysis of Sub-Identities: Dimensions and Values
Attributes are actually locations on particular dimensions. A di-
mension is a set of alternative attributes which is conceived as a roughly
linear scale. Dimensions are the basic categories for defining the mean-
ings of objects. The particular dimensions and their definitions vary with
the social group. In American society, for example, some dimensions of
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 277
the masculine sub-identity are Initiative, physical strength, preference
for certain types of dress. Such dimensions are not relevant to mascu-
linity in all societies.
A dimension can contain many attributes or only a few. Attributes on
a dimension typically represent only a partially ordered set. They can-
not be assigned precise numerical values, so that locations on different
dimensions, like degree of maturity and relative status, are not always
commensurable.
Social groups assign various values to different locations. The distri-
bution of values for a dimension does not always constitute a linear
scale. The values also define thresholds which may divide the dimension
into forbidden, acceptable, desirable, and ideal segments. It is desirable
for a man to show a lot of initiative and undesirable for him to be pas-
sive. It is evil to steal and good to be honest. Sometimes the ideal and
the undesirable segments are at opposite extremes of the distribution;
sometimes the ideal is in the middle, like Aristotle's golden mean. Then
the two extremes tend to include unacceptable attributes.
Types of Sub-Identity
A man can be known to others in terms of the kind of ditch-digger,
American, Mason, brother, infantile person, lover, or even pipe smoker,
he is. There are obviously many other possible labels. Again we face the
issue of content. How does one select a delimited number of sub-identi-
ties that is most crucial for explaining the interaction of two people?
A consideration of the nature of attributes suggests one basis for
selection. The fact that attributes are experienced as positions on dimen-
sions permits members of a social group to evaluate the relative good-
ness of two individuals or to compare a man's current attributes with the
ones he had previously. This process of invidious comparison is one of
the ways in which a social group imposes its will on its individual mem-
bers. Attributes with considerable significance for the group elicit strong
evaluations and often some kind of action. But attributes which do not
have much significance for the group's welfare are not evaluated in
particularly emotional terms. A banker's career is likely to depend on
his business acumen and honesty, but not on his skill as a bridge player
or his taste in music. As each member of a group participates in its ac-
tivities, he learns the common definitions of dimensions, values, and
social significance. He uses them to conceptualize the sub-identities of all
the members including himself.
Degree of social significance, then, is the primary criterion for de-
ciding on the contents of sub-identities. If we use this criterion, we find
that a person's sub-identities are organized primarily with respect to
his positions in the social structure, his social categories, and his earlier
278 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
sub-identities. These, in turn, reflect his former positions and social
categories.
Social Positions, Social Categories, and Sub-Identities
Social positions, the basic units of social structure, are defined inde-
pendently of their occupants. In great part the definitions Implement
the functions of particular organizations like families or businesses.
By occupying positions like father or parishioner, a person becomes
subject to the constraints created by the definitions of the positions. He
has certain obligations as well as rights. Within particular groups, there
are commonly shared standards about the fulfilment of these obligations.
There are also standards about different social categories. Standards
applicable to the more socially significant dimensions may be enforced
by the law and by public pressure. In most cases norms are internal-
ized, so that many define ideals or are enforced by the pressures of
conscience.
In relating to a particular member, others in the group perceive him
primarily in terms of various social positions and categories. For that
reason he becomes known as the person with particular attributes on
the dimensions of those positions and categories. He has public sub-
identities as a lawyer, a father, a southerner, a man, a Mason, and so
forth.
It is important to stress, parenthetically, some similarities and a dif-
ference between sub-identities and social positions and categories. At
all stages of development, a person has to learn styles of behavior
which satisfy his needs and also fulfill his obligations as an occupant of
positions in the social structure. Such styles are evaluated as acceptable
or ideal; styles which violate his obligations are evaluated as unac-
ceptable or sinful. As a member of the family, the school, the club and
other groups, he internalizes their meanings and values. And they define
the ways he learns to behave. Hence there is a rough isomorphism be-
tween positions and categories, on one hand, and sub-identities on the
other.
Another similarity between the social and psychological concepts is
crucial for the understanding of human interactions. The concepts are
either defined In reciprocal terms or connote reciprocity. Norms to which
the occupant of a social position must conform are defined as rights and
obligations. A person in a given position has a right to expect he will be
treated In a particular way by a person In the reciprocal position. A per-
son In a particular category expects certain kinds of treatment from
people In other categories. Similarly, the attributes of a man with a
particular sub-identity are established in his relationships with others.
By virtue of those attributes he expects certain types of responses from
others. All concepts are defined in terms of human interaction.
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 279
Although isomorphic and interpersonal, the two types of concepts
differ in a fundamental respect. Social positions exist whether or not
they are occupied, and are independent of the attributes of particular
people. All kinds of people can be fathers or accountants. A sub-identity
describes the pattern of psychological characteristics of a particular per-
son in a position or category. His sub-identity refers to the kind of father
he is: whether he is supportive or conscientious or sadistic or consistent.
Some other man occupying the same position might have a very dif-
ferent sub-identity: a different set of attributes on the same dimensions,
or even attributes on additional dimensions.
Sub-Identity and Component Sub-Identities
When viewed as a region, each sub-identity contains certain
structured components, which are the sub-identities of earlier years.
Within him, each man contains such earlier identities as an infant and a
little boy and an adolescent. These represent the kind of infant and boy
and adolescent he became as a result of the unique relationships he
developed with his particular mother and father and brother and teacher
and heroes. As an infant, for example, he learned to make passive re-
quests in his relationship with a particular kind of mother a supportive
or a cold or an inconsistent one so that he became the kind of baby he
was. And he internalized his mother he developed an internal picture
of her as the kind of person with whom one relates passively. As an
adult, he is sometimes inclined to project this picture to Ms wife, par-
ticularly when things go wrong and he falls back on his passive, infantile
self. If he is mature, the earlier sub-identity is integrated with the total
structure so that he is passive or demanding at appropriate times, and
he rarely resorts to inappropriate infantile expressions.
Spatial Properties of Sub-Identities
In what structural sense can the different sub-identities of an object
be considered as separate regions within the total public identity? First
they differ in their dimensions and attributes. A man behaves dif-
ferently when he is expressing the kind of father he is than when he is
expressing the kind of husband he is. Some of the attributes of different
sub-identities are incompatible. In expressing a childish part of himself,
a man may be very greedy; in his more mature identity, he may be
generous.
The boundaries of some sub-identities are defined by particular times
and regions. A man is an employee at Ms plant on weekdays, a member
of a golfing group on Saturday afternoons, and a teacher of religion in
Sunday school. Because of the temporal and spatial separations, the
kind of person he is in his golf group might surprise his fellow employees
or the children in his Sunday school. Communications among the three
280 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
sub-Identities and their interdependence are affected by their positions
in time and space in addition to the differences in their attributes.
Structurally, most objects are surprisingly fluid: their attributes are
readily changed. Gods, for example, can take the forms of different
animate and inanimate objects, can become infinitely small or can
encompass everything, including the observer. Of course a man is
usually experienced as being less amenable to change he is usually
identified in terms of the confines of his skin, his actions, and, sometimes,
his possessions and kin. Yet his attributes, particularly his psychological
ones, can vary markedly in the minds of the observers. Even a man^s
physical attributes can vary to a considerable extent. This variation is
extreme when he appears in one of our night dreams or daydreams, or
when we are drugged or very fatigued. Even during the waking ^state,
however, our picture of a man can change markedly. After heroic ex-
ploits his stature may assume heroic proportions to the onlookers. And
he can look "small" if he engages in certain petty, underhanded ac-
tivities.
3. SELF-IDENTITY
Origins of a Conception of Self
Body Image
Boas (191!) once observed that "the three personal pronouns I,
thouu and he occur in all human languages," and that "the underlying
idea of these pronouns is the clear distinction between the self as
speaker, the person or object spoken to, and that spoken of." To be
understood, the self, a special kind of object, must be traced back to a
body image. Studies of infants during the first year reveal a continual
growth of the capacity to discriminate between what is later labelled
as self and non-self. The discrimination, which is initially made be-
tween the boundaries of one's body and the rest of the world, is based
on two kinds of experience. The child learns very early the difference
between his sensations when he touches part of his body and when
he touches other objects. He arrives at the same division of body and
non-body when he compares the things he can and cannot control. He
can. make his hand move if he wills it, but he cannot make a chair
move by an act of will.
Language and Meaning
The concept of self cannot really be described outside the context of
the society in which the self is developed. Language provides labels
for positions in space and in time, thus enabling a person to think of
objects as having an identity. In his social experiences a child learns the
necessary labels, the personal and possessive pronouns.
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 28 1
Most important for the present topic, interactions with other peo-
ple orient a child to the meanings of various facets of self and to the
standards for evaluating oneself. Once the standards are internalized
they provide the limits for behavior and the incentives necessary for
implementing the goals of various social groups. A young child cries
for nourishment and soon realizes that his mother wants to provide it.
He later learns to think he has a right and that she feels obligated to
honor it. Such a definition presumes the interaction of people and the
evaluation of the behavior of each.
Social Interaction and the Development of Self-Identity
To picture the conditions under which a self-identity develops, and is
continually modified, one need only consider a meeting between two
people. At a particular moment, each person reacts to the previous be-
havior of the other and in anticipation of his next reaction. During the
encounter, each person is aware of himself and of the other person. Each
evaluates his own behavior and the other's reactions; each gets im-
pressions of the judgments of his behavior by the other, and each reacts
to these judgments (Cooley, 1922).
An interaction depends on the participants being members of the
same society and having a shared group of meanings and values. Only
then can the two people communicate. Only then can either participant
anticipate that the other will know the signs of the social positions
held by both, and of their different sub-identities. Only then can either
participant be confident of obtaining the appropriate behavior from the
other; only then can the participants engage in complementary internal
and external reactions.
By working out possible responses in his own mind before he makes
them, a participant can inhibit impulses that are not consistent with the
values of his group and his internalized values, and can substitute more
acceptable alternatives. The other person's reactions, both internal and
external, prove a test of the adequacy of the- resultant action, and elicit
new impulses in turn. And so the encounter continues until it termi-
nates.
An individual learns about his identity, then, not only from observing
what he is thinking, feeling, and doing, but also from reactions to him by
important people in his social group. From the responses of others to
his identity, he becomes increasingly aware of it as an object and of the
necessity to behave and feel in such ways as to make his identity ac-
ceptable to himself and to others. From variations in the responses of
others to differences in his behavior, he develops a picture of an ideal
self, an acceptable self, and an unacceptable one.
Social interaction conveys to a man not only how people in the com-
munity have come to view him, but also how they regard other mem-
282 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
bers. The communication of such pictures among the members in the
group contributes to a common frame of reference concerning the
meanings, evaluations, and social consequences of actions or other
attributes in terms of which identities are defined. The shared definitions
of attributes must be learned before a person can evaluate the adequacy
with which he fulfills the requirements of different positions. Partici-
pation in a group's activities thus ultimately indoctrinates a man into
its structure, functions, and rules. A man cannot be regarded as a true
member of a group until he develops a public identity within the
group, and he becomes concerned with maintaining a self-identity which
is compatible with the group's primary goals. The self is then a primary
object of value, an object with attributes that must be kept consistent
with the requirements of social positions. As Mead (1935) has put it,
"Until one can respond to himself as the community responds to him,
he does not genuinely belong to the community."
Sub-Identity and Centrality
In much of the literature, the self is viewed as a totality. Such an
approach cannot do justice to the complexity of an identity. Since one
reacts to one's own identity as an object, one experiences it in the same
terms as other objects. It may help the reader to review the terms here,
since a considerable number have been presented in a short space. We
have been concerned with the analysis of identity as an object of per-
ception. One's public identity is what one stands for in the minds of
others. An identity consists of many dimensions, the meanings of which
are derived from social experiences. Most of the meanings are shared
by members of particular social groups. On interacting with significant
people, an individual identifies himself in terms of his social positions
and categories. To people in a given social position or category, some
subsets of the possible alternative attributes within a dimension are con-
sidered undesirable, some are acceptable, and some attractive or even
ideal.
Centrality
Self-identity is the picture of oneself built up from the reactions of
others and from looking at oneself from others' points of view. A man's
evaluation of an attribute and his feelings about the evaluation depend
on tfie centrality of the dimension. The degree of centrality is a function
of social consequences. The consequences of some attributes can be very
great. Certain attributes of the masculine sub-identity provide vivid
examples. Nonconsummation of a marriage is considered a justifiable
reason for divorce. Attributes contributing to nonconsummation, like
lack of sexual desire and impotence, are devalued as effeminate, and
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 283
seriously lower a man's standing in the eyes of his peers. Similarly, in
some societies, a man's skin color or his hereditary background have a
considerable bearing on the status of people to whom he has access, the
jobs he can hope to obtain, and his level of education. Being in the ac-
ceptable or non-acceptable segments of such dimensions can seriously
affect a man's public identity. It is not surprising, therefore, that they are
among the more central dimensions of Ms self-identity. They are heavily
loaded in his self-evaluation.
Fluctuations of one's locations on central dimensions, like sexual
potency or occupational skill, produce greater variations in self-esteem
than do the same amounts of fluctuation of locations on less central
dimension, like skill in bridge or baseball. Evaluations of attributes
on central dimensions are likely to be applied to one's total self-identity.
A man who fails in his occupation is likely to consider himself a failure;
a man who consistently plays a poor game of bridge is more likely to be
critical not of himself but of his skill providing he is not a profes-
sional bridge player.
4. INTERACTION
The complex process involving the behavior of two people can be
divided into units, which we shall call reactions. A reaction is any kind
of response to another person. It can be a thought, a glance, a gesture,
a statement. Thinking is an internal reaction; it is experienced by one-
self but not necessarily communicated to the other person. Communi-
cated reactions, those conveyed to the other person, are the primary
vehicle for carrying on interpersonal behavior.
Motives and Action
A need or motivational state is a complicated system of reactions
that has significance for interaction and for variations in self-esteem.
One judges oneself in terms of the acceptability of one's needs. A need
is defined here as a predisposition to engage in any of a group of ac-
tions that implement a particular goal state.
The impulse to action can be analyzed in terms of at least four di-
mensions 1 : the intended act, the object, the affect, and the agent. Ele-
ments within each of the dimensions can be ordered from most to least
direct with respect to attainment of the goal state. If the goal state is the
expression of aggression, physical attack may be the most direct act, an
irritating person the most direct object, the self the most direct agent,
and rage the most direct affect. But unless direct expression on such
central dimensions is provoked, it is evaluated as undesirable in most
social groups. To avoid a marked decline in self-esteem, the average
284 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
person has a tendency to relinquish the most direct forms of expression
In favor of other locations on the dimensions of motivational states.
In what terms might the contents of dimensions such as action or
objects be analyzed? For purposes of the cross-cultural study of per-
sonality, a scheme is needed which is applicable in different societies.
There Is, unfortunately, no consensus about any of the tentative methods
which have been proposed for classifying types of action. Murray
(in Parsons and Shils, 1951) has prepared a carefully considered,
promising list of actions. Some examples are renunciation, rejection,
acquisition, construction, and retention.
Research into the learning process has thrown some light on the
organization of dimensions of objects. Empirical work, both clinical and
experimental, reveals various dimensions of people, of animals, and of
inanimate objects. A person in conflict about an impulse to express a
need directly can substitute a less direct dimension for an original one.
When all human objects are proscribed, an inanimate one can be sub-
stituted by even mature people. And when only some human objects
are proscribed, they may be replaced by others that are more acceptable.
Chains of Reactions
A meeting between two people can be viewed as an episode. The
events follow a meaningful sequence. There is a beginning and a middle
and a termination. At the beginning, each person greets the other and
anticipates a greeting in return. Social practice provides other forms of
prescribed behavior for the subsequent parts of the episode.
In addition to such socially determined aspects of the sequence,
there are others which reflect the sub-identities of the two participants
and the nature of the situation. If the relationship is an authoritative one,
the episode may start with the dominant person making a demand. The
person in the inferior position then engages in an act of compliance or
deference, to which the authority responds by signifying his intention
to provide a reward or forego a penalty. If one participant relates pas-
sively to the other and is inclined to seek succorance, the two manifest
another chain of reactions. The passive one first finds that he has a
problem, but avoids any attempts to solve it. Instead he makes implicit
or explicit requests of the other, who provides help. Having terminated
the emergency, the supportive person obtains satisfaction from signs of
adequacy or of gratification.
There exist many other such chains of surprisingly predictable steps.
Little information is available about such chains. It is not possible,
therefore, to classify them at this time. Some of them are difficult to
study because they contain unconscious links. Interactions are difficult
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 285
to interpret because they usually contain a number of simultaneous or
overlapping chains. During the same few minutes, a man and woman
in an office may be working to finish a job, flirting with each other, and
striving for dominance over each other.
Although hard to analyze, chains of reactions demonstrate some
consistent characteristics even on casual observation. Unconscious
links, for example, involve repudiated wishes, which are too painful to
acknowledge. Consequently, they are not amenable to conscious control.
The more unconscious links in a chain, the more slavishly it tends to
be followed.
Interactions on the conscious and unconscious levels tend to be
complementary. Two people who are consciously involved in a co-
operative pursuit may be unconsciously trying to prevent its completion
or to hurt each other. Or two people with conscious asexual reactions
may have unconscious sexual ones.
Cathexes and Bonds
It is the intra-individual forces which probably contribute the most
to the stability of relationships. Forces linking people to each other are
not amenable to direct observation. They must be inferred. One such
force is the cathexis of an object by a sub-identity of the self. A cathexis
develops when a particular emotional state has been aroused by some
fantasied or actual commerce with an object. One can infer the
cathexis from the disposition to re-experience the affect. One is inclined
to repeat appropriate acts with the object: to play chess with a friend, to
argue with a relative. As forces, cathexes have a point of origin. It is in
the sub-region of the self involved in the particular relationship. Ca-
thexes also vary in force, and they have direction. They are aimed at a
particular object or type of object. It may be a person, but it can just as
easily be a goal, like a university degree. When the object is a person he
does not have to be aware of the cathexis; he may even be a creation of
fantasy.
Bonds are mutual cathexes. The emotional resultants of a chain of
reactions create a bond between two people. As a result, they are in-
clined to seek opportunities to repeat the shared activities. If they
enjoy a trip to the seashore, they look forward to the next holiday
when they can make such a trip.
Bonds can entail gratification or pain or both. Examples of the grati-
fying or positive types come to mind readily: two people love each
other, or share a common interest. When pain is involved, it usually
provides relief of a more unpleasant condition. A guilty child, for ex-
ample, may confess a misdeed in order to be spanked. The confession
286 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
represents an attempt at atonement or a wish to get rid of the fear of
inevitable punishment.
Coniici and Sub-Identity
The explanation of the dynamics of interaction requires the con-
sideration of one more concept, that of defense mechanisms. Defenses
provide one means of resolving conflicts, particularly those between in-
compatible sub-identities or aspects of a sub-identity. Such conflicts can
be very painful if they involve central dimensions.
Values pertaining to the more central dimensions are often difficult to
satisfy. The high standards of achievement in certain groups of our
society provide a good example, as do the standards for controlling
aggression that are imposed on the young child in the middle class. It
Is" often difficult for the child to establish a filial sub-identity which
simultaneously satisfies such standards and permits him to gratify his
needs.
Once an acceptable identity is established it tends to be maintained
tenaciously. It becomes an object of gratification in its own right because
it provides a means of relating to others in a socially acceptable manner,
and simultaneously gratifying one's needs. But, as we have noted, a boy
can persist in his picture of the kind of adequate son he is only as long
as it is validated by the reactions of parents and other members of his
family. He enters each social situation with certain set anticipations
that people will respond in a manner that is appropriate, within limits,
to his sub-identity. What if they act as though he is disobedient or dis-
respectful or destructive attributes which violate his moral stand-
ards? He must then face the contradiction between his self-identity and
his public identity.
Some conflicts often involve different sub-identities of the self. In
responding to an aggressive action by a competitor, a businessman may
be simultaneously prompted to display the initiative characteristic of his
occupational identity and the sensitivity and passivity characteristic of
his identity as a young child. Or In competing with a relative, the busi-
nessman may be prompted to display the overt aggression characteristic
of his particular occupational identity and the warmth and sacrifice
characteristic of his particular sub-identity as a kinsman.
Both kinds of conflict represent desires for incompatible locations on
the same dimension. If a man takes initiative he cannot also make pas-
sive appeals. If he makes sacrifices he cannot also regard himself as a
tough competitor. Such discrepancies are basic to conflicts involving
identity. The selection of either attribute violates the minimal standards
for one of the sub-identities, and thus produces a serious lowering of
self-esteem.
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 287
Defense Mechanisms
To resolve the problem, the man can try to be as realistic as possible
about the facts and think about a possible solution. He can change his
values for example, or discuss his problem with his relative. If there is
no good solution, or if his anxiety becomes too intense, he may have to
resort to another kind of problem-solving technique. He modifies his
perception of the conflicting attributes.
The concept of defense must be used with caution. Many psycho-
analysts describe any kind of behavior that reduces anxiety or any
kind of substitute or process of substitution or behavior that might be a
substitute for a forbidden impulse as defense. Symptoms and myths
and some customs have been described as defenses, which they are in
this broad sense.
When a term is applied to so many different kinds of phenomena Its
meaning becomes imprecise. It seems preferable to use the original con-
cept of defense, a concept that refers to internal processes and not ob-
servable behavior (Freud, 1949). Criteria for identifying such proc-
esses have been inferred by Miller and Swanson (1960) from clinical
practices. One necessary condition for identifying a defense is the In-
ability of a person to give an accurate report of certain anxiety-pro-
ducing information. A second condition requires that he express the
information indirectly in a language he does not understand. The in-
direct expression may take such forms as slips of the tongue or dreams.
A third condition Is the initiation of the processes by conflict or some
other source of anxiety.
According to this definition, a defense accounts for the mispercep-
tion of facts. The present criteria reflect the traditional psychoanalytic
orientation, one that may have to be broadened. As will be Indicated
in the next section, some of the same perceptual mechanisms may
be found both in defenses and in phenomena involved in accurate
social perception.
The nature of a specific defense is inferred from the kind of interpre-
tation and behavior substituted for the original Information that Induced
anxiety. Projection Is inferred If a boy gives Indirect evidence of a wish
to hurt his father, is not conscious of the impulse, but attributes it to his
father. If the boy substitutes a dog for his father, the defense is labelled
as displacement of the object. If he Is inordinately helpful instead of
aggressive the mechanism is reversal. If he has attacked his father and
now believes that the act was a helpful or friendly one, then the defense
is denial.
Symptoms, myths, and customs are not defense mechanisms, but may
or may not be the derivatives of blocked impulses. Such behaviors are
288 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
derivatives if they have been substituted unconsciously for anxiety-
provoking information that cannot be reported accurately.
Projection and Introjection
Of particular significance for social interaction are the mechanisms of
projection and introjection. The psychological literature contains a num-
ber of different conceptions of projection, so that it is necessary to define
the one used here. According to the present definition, projection is a
displacement of the perceived agent: a person sees an attribute of his
own as applying to another person. Such displacement may be viewed
as a style of perception, and not necessarily a defensive one. The attri-
bute is not necessarily unacceptable, nor need its perception be dis-
torted in oneself. The perceiver may feel happy and be inclined to
exaggerate the happiness of friends. And he does not necessarily feel
that he no longer has the attribute after he has used the defense.
As defined here, projective perception is probably a component of
the defense mechanism of projection described in the clinical literature.
According to that description, an undesirable attribute is disowned and
seen or exaggerated in somebody else. A man who is tempted to steal
feels he is scrupulously honest, but erroneously suspects others of trying
to cheat him. This process seems to involve more than the non-defense
version of projection described here. There is also a disowning of the
impulse, which is probably accomplished by the mechanism of denial.
Introjection, too, requires clarification, since it need not be a defense,
and it is often used interchangeably with identification. We shall view
introjection as a perceptual process resulting in the taking to oneself
of the attributes of others. Again, such attributes can be either highly
valued or devalued. Projection and introjection seem to differ pri-
marily with respect to the direction in which the borrowed attributes are
transferred. In the former mechanism, they are shifted from oneself to
an object; the process is experienced as putting part of one's sub-identity
into the object. In the latter mechanism, the attributes are shifted from
the object to oneself. The process is experienced as an internalization of
a sub-identity or part of one.
Social Communication and the Splitting of Sub-Identities
A combination of projective and introjective perceptions seems to be
a minimal requisite for all interpersonal communication. Klein (1948)
has labelled the simultaneous use of the two types of perception as pro-
jective identification. Her description of this combination is very similar
to Cooley's description of interpersonal behavior. To communicate with
someone, we have to know what he is thinking and feeling. First we get
information from his statements and his gestures. From this information,
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 289
we get an impression which we then project to him. Next we put our-
selves in his place by means of introjection. We can then visualize what
he is thinking and how he is feeling. Then we check the accuracy of this
impression in terms of his next comments and acts and our subsequent
projections and introjections.
The checking of another's probable reactions is an extremely com-
plex process. It is very easy to err when we judge how he feels in terms
of what we would feel if we were in his place when he reacts to us.
Temporary confusion about the attributes of self-identity and object are
very common. Most normal people use subsequent information to cor-
rect their errors. Some neurotic people perpetuate certain kinds of mis-
interpretations as a means of allaying anxiety. Their perceptions may
be interpreted in the light of defensive distortions.
The ways in which a person uses the projective and introjective types
of perception also affect the integrity of his sub-identities. Of course,
some splitting of the total identity into sub-identities is normal and
necessary. The formal, competitive businessman at the office becomes
the warm, supportive father at home. He would be in difficulty with his
colleagues and with his wife and children if he did not maintain a barrier
between the two sub-identities: if he expressed his occupational sub-
identity at home and his sub-identity as a father at the office.
Conflict between the ideal and forbidden aspects of a sub-identity,
or between incompatible, simultaneous sub-identities sometimes split a
sub-identity into the parts that Sullivan has called the "good me" and the
"bad me." The splitting is accomplished by projecting the unacceptable
part of the sub-identity or the bad introjected object to some real person,
who is then perceived as a persecutor. In that event the perception be-
comes defensive. The bad attributes in one's sub-identity may then be
denied and the remainder idealized (Klein, 1948).
Another kind of splitting is accomplished by denying the bad attri-
butes in oneself and explaining them as properties of introjected bad
objects. In our society, a man may explain his unwelcome aggression by
reporting that he was mistreated in childhood by a cruel parent. Hence
the man feels that it is not he but the cruel father in him who is re-
sponsible for the aggression. His introjected bad object has been split
from the rest of the self. This kind of split is common in Thailand where
people assume that they can be inhabited by the spirit of a person who
has recently died. A woman who was bathing in a river was possessed
by the spirit of a man who had drowned not long before. She spoke in
his voice, and talked of past experiences in his life as though she were
he. After she was beaten vigorously her body rejected the spirit. 2 One
is tempted to guess that this woman was split between her feminine, or
good, self and her masculine, or bad, one, that she introjected the man
290 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
whose death was known to her, and that she denied and projected her
feminine self. Hence she was "possessed" by hh spirit. Similar proc-
esses may be involved in the performances of some religious mediums.
Splitting of sob-Identities need not be the result of defensive mis-
perceptions, but can reflect extreme incompatibility in the identities, an
incompatibility caused by discontinuities in socialization. Normally a
sub-identity of an adult represents an organization of earlier sub-identi-
ties. It may not be possible to integrate them if earlier stages of develop-
ment have been very discontinuous. According to Erikson (1954)
sudden changes in the rearing of the Southern Negro make it virtually
impossible for him to integrate his sub-identities. In an initial stage, he
learns to be a tender, rhythmic, mammy's honey child. Next he becomes
the anal compulsive, clean, friendly Uncle Tom. Still later, he develops
an identity as a dirty, anal-sadistic, phallic, rapist. Such incompatible
early sub-identities cannot be organized as part of the masculine sub-
identity of adulthood. By rather primitive defenses the Negro maintains
impenetrable boundaries between the different sub-identities, and usu-
ally obliterates awareness of all but one of them at any particular time.
Perception of Interrelationships 3
Events in an interpersonal relationship vary constantly with the per-
ceptions, both conscious and unconscious, of self and other on the part
of each participant. The actual sources of information are many, as is
indicated in the following diagram.
The two semicircles on the left represent one person. The top half is his
conscious sub-identity, and the bottom half is his unconscious sub-
identity* On the right are two semicircles representing another, inter-
acting person. The arrows represent directions of perception. The two
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 29 1
conscious identities have access to each other, as do the two un-
conscious ones. The conscious part of neither person is aware of his
unconscious part, but the obverse is not necessarily true. The conscious
part of each participant can also perceive attributes in the other par-
ticipant of which he is unconscious. And each can respond uncon-
sciously to attributes of which he is conscious in the other participant.
The diagram can be illustrated by some details from a marital re-
lationship. The conscious part of the man is his masculine sex-
identity, and the conscious part of the woman is her feminine sex-
identity. Unconsciously the man is feminine and the woman masculine.
Consciously, the woman can perceive some of her husband's uncon-
scious feminine attributes, just as he can perceive some of her masculine
ones. Such perceptions may or may not provide the bases for cathexes or
avoidances. The unconscious feminine attributes of the man may
enable him to establish a bond with the conscious identity of the
woman on the basis of a common interest in cooking. If the man is too
feminine, the woman may be repelled.
Bonds and Defense Mechanisms
The presence and absence of bonds is affected in great part by the
nature of the mutual defense mechanisms. A man and wife who have
become very angry at each other can maintain the relationship if they
deny their feelings. But the peace is an uneasy one. It is subject to
constant strain by events that contradict the false beliefs of the par-
ticipants.
A relationship with many more frictions develops if each participant
is inclined to project the unconscious, aggressive part of his sub-
identity to the other person. While neither individual has to suffer the
pangs of guilt, both feel attacked and must defend themselves. Such
mutual projection is apparently common among the Dobuans (Fortune,
1932). Yet by itself, projection does not have to cause a weakening of
bonds. The stability of a relationship is increased when the aggressive
parts of the self are projected to external objects. The Arapesh (Mead,
1935) learn that all friends are good and that most other people are bad.
Projections of evil selves to outsiders therefore help to stabilize friend-
ships and to unify the in-group.
The Fit Between Sub-Identities
Almost all the sub-identities of each person in the family tend to be-
come involved in bonds with parallel or complementary sub-identities
of the other members. The relationships involve sub-Identities developed
in earlier years and current ones. Adding to the complexity of bonds be-
tween people are split sub-identities and contradictor^ reactions to ob-
292 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
jects that have also been split. During his childhood, for example, a
man might have developed a good self which co-operated well with a
supportive segment of his mother's identity and an evil self which en-
gaged In mutual attack with a non-maternal aspect of her identity.
Both of these selves may enter into his current bonds with his wife.
In stable families, many of the bonds between husband and wife are
present from the beginning of marriage. The couple also develop
other bonds in the course of trying out their relationships with each
other, of reliving old bad relationships and finding them improved, and
of reorganizing their marriage because* of events like the birth of a child.
Even very disturbed people with poorly formed sub-identities and
primitive defenses often fit each other astonishingly well. One ex-
ample Is provided by the marriage of a very dominant woman and a
man obsessed with Ms aggression. The woman had been deprived of
recognition and love throughout her first twenty years of life by parents
who rejected her in favor of her brother. Her husband's sadistic father
had been brutal both psychologically and physically and had provoked
his son to constant rebellion. In later years, the husband continued
the old battle with other men. He was easily overwhelmed by rage, and
he sometimes had thoughts, and even committed acts, which caused
Mm considerable guilt. One very strong bond in the marriage was
forged by the continuous criticism of the husband by his wife, an act that
produced lengthy arguments. Although they were painful, the argu-
ments enabled the woman to reassure herself of her power over a man,
and they gave her husband relief of his constant guilt about his homi-
cidal wishes. So strong was the mutual relief provided by the constant
conflict between the boyish, aggressive sub-identity of the wife and the
raging, guilty, filial sub-identity of the husband that the marriage lasted
for many years despite an almost complete lack of common conscious
interests, friends, or activities. The couple finally sought professional
help because their ten year old son was failing in school and was having
accidents in which he hurt himself badly. Both parents had identified
with neglectful, cruel fathers and had been taking turns in beating the
son. The son got some gratification from these attacks because they re-
lieved his guilt. But they were very painful, and he found he could stop
them by hurting himself academically and physically. His resultant in-
adequacy reassured the mother of her power and reassured the father
that the son was not a serious competitor for his wife's love. Tempo-
rarily the parents gave the son a respite from attack and granted him
some of the attention he craved. Were it not for some of the son's socially
handicapping problems., the marriage would probably have continued
without professional assistance. Of theoretical interest is the family's
stability, a characteristic that would have been difficult to predict from
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 293
psychological tests of either or even both parents. The stability de-
pended less on the parents' intrapersonal attributes than on an attribute
of their interaction: the good fit between unconscious components of the
parents' sub-identities.
Stability and Flexibility of Relationships
The issues that have been discussed thus far point to a primary dif-
ference between questions raised about intrapersonal and interpersonal
events. Interpersonal questions employ the information about indi-
viduals, but place it in a special context. Each attribute or defense
mechanism or moral standard is interpreted in terms of its contri-
bution to the stability and flexibility of a relationship. If we study
honesty, we do not restrict our inquiry to a person's moral standards
and his honesty under various circumstances. We also ask how his
attributes affect his ability to make bonds with a particular individual in
a specific situation.
The possible benefits of viewing attributes in an interpersonal context
can be illustrated further by the case of a thirteen-year-old boy who
could not read. Tests revealed that his intelligence was at least average.
Some light was thrown on his problem by such attributes as his
high anxiety with adults, and his inclination to retreat into a world of
daydreams when others were talking with him. But the organization of
his attributes into a meaningful pattern required further information
about his relationships with other members of his family. Some years
earlier the boy's parents had become separated, a fact that disturbed
him very much. He had made some progress in learning to read, but
he lost his skill because he became very anxious and neglected his work.
Then his parents patched up their differences. At the time they ex-
pressed guilt about having caused the son's symptoms, which they at-
tributed to the broken home. One of their primary reasons for living to-
gether again, therefore, was to give him enough security to overcome
his problems. From then on, he neglected reading because of the im-
pression that his lack of ability was the one thing that kept his parents
together. From his point of view, his symptom maintained the stability
of the family.
Factors Promoting Stability and Instability
Some social scientists are inclined to use intrapersonal labels of pa-
thology in describing certain attributes of people in different societies.
It is tempting, for example, to describe the Dobuans (Fortune, 1932)
and Kwakiutls (Benedict, 1934) as paranoid, the Arapesh (Mead,
1935) and Alorese (DuBois, 1944) as having poor ego structures, and
the Balinese (Bateson and Mead, 1942) as schizoid. Such descriptions
294 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
may be accurate, but in some cases they would be clarified further by
information about their positive contributions to interpersonal re-
lationships. It is assumed here that even when "symptoms" are socially
handicapping, they are contributing to the stability of some relation-
ships at least in the eyes of the participants.
Which factors affect the stability relationships between people?
Empirical evidence is lacking, but it is possible to speculate with confi-
dence about answers that seem applicable to behavior in different
societies. In what follows, the points are phrases in the psychological
language of this chapter, and the examples illustrate sources of in-
stability in the marital relationship.
A frequent cause of instability is a poor fit between the sub-identities
of participants. The sub-identities may lack congruence because the
husband and wife come from different societies or social classes. The
resultant differences in the meanings of attributes and values about them
interfere with the communication necessary for making bonds. Some-
times a it is not possible because one of the spouses never developed a
particular identity, possibly because of a difficult past, and cannot re-
spond to the complementary identity in the other person.
External factors can also make relationships unstable. A provocative
mother-in-law can elicit expressions of early sub-identities and con-
siderable friction between the spouses. Membership in social groups
who reject traditional morality weakens the boundaries of the marriage
and provides temptations to violate the marital vows thus weakening
the marital relationship. A system can be stabilized by some external
forces. Examples are rigid external boundaries of the marriage, like the
prohibition of divorce among Catholics, and coercive social forces, like
the shared belief in some groups that a woman should always obey her
husband.
Defense mechanisms provide a third source of fluctuation in stability.
A marriage is likely to be stormy if the two people project their hostile,
unconscious sub-identities to each other, so that they come to regard
each other as attackers; or if either partner acts aggressively and denies
the meaning of his act. Frictions can be avoided if the same defenses
are applied to other objects or facts: if the husband and wife project
their hostilities to an outsider or deny each other's inadequacies. Still
more conducive to stability are realistic methods of solving problems
or relatively mature defenses like rationalizing one's difficulties.
Poorly formed or immature sub-identities in one or both marital part-
ners can create a further reason for instability. Even if there is a good
fit between different sub-identities, the predominant reliance on methods
of relating which were serviceable in earlier years produces ambivalent
reactions, sudden alternations between different parts of the sub-
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 295
identity, and splitting of objects, which are seen as either very good or
very bad. The more mature the participants, the less they manifest such
handicapping reactions, and the more possible it is for them to behave
toward each other in a predictable manner.
Ultimately the stability of relationships will probably be viewed in
quantitative terms. The positive components will probably include the
number and strength of bonds, the number of cathexes, the number
and strength of internal and external forces prompting the couple to
work together, and the impermeability of the external boundary. The
contributors to instability will probably include avoidances caused by
various kinds of incompatibilities, splits in the perceptions of sub-
identities and objects, the numbers and strengths of internal and ex-
ternal forces prompting the couple to separate, the relative permeability
of the boundary, and the presence of attractions beyond the boundary
that are greater than the attractions within it.
Factors Affecting the Flexibility of Relationships
Relationships vary not only in stability, but also in degree of flexi-
bility. The more rigid the relationship, the less it can withstand changes
in the situation or in the internal forces of either individual.
A common cause of rigid relationships is provided by values which
proscribe many forms of behavior. Some couples have such strict moral
standards, for example, that they react with guilt to certain impulses
which other couples express without qualms. Outlets can also be de-
limited by the standards of other people. A man thinks twice, for
instance, before he acts in ways that friends regard as manifesting ac-
tions of questionable taste.
A relationship becomes rigid if a couple maintain considerable psy-
chological distance to overcome the difficulties caused by such prob-
lems as poorly fitting sub-identities and incompatible values. The
anxiety is allayed by the avoidance of intimacy. On occasions when
the marital partners fail to maintain the customary distance, both
become anxious.
Rigid measures are also required to stabilize a marriage when there
are weak bonds between husband and wife and strong bonds between
each spouse and other objects. Such a situation is illustrated by a
family in which the father and mother had little in common with each
other. The little time they spent together seemed pleasant enough to
them, but not particularly absorbing. At home the father had his ac-
tivities, and the mother hers. The father conducted his activities with his
son; the mother conducted hers with her daughter. The bonds between
father and son were very strong as were the bonds between mother and
daughter. Hence the marriage continued placidly until the children
296 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
entered adolescence, spent most of their time with their many friends,
and virtually abandoned the parents to their own devices.
Stable and rigid marriages can be maintained by means of a number
of defense mechanisms. Most conducive to rigidity are denial and dis-
placement of hostility to external scapegoats. Such defenses are not very
efficient because the resulting perceptions are often obviously inac-
curate. To corroborate them the couple may solicit impression^ from
people outside the family. A rigid stability may give way to instability if
the corroboration is not forthcoming. Isolation and self-attack are
more effective in promoting stability, but are also costly. Isolation
creates psychological distance. Turning one's aggression inward results
in depression, a reaction that can create considerable difficulties in the
relationship. Only more mature techniques, like rationalization and ra-
tional problem solving, seem to facilitate a fairly flexible relationship.
In general the stronger the unconscious bonds and the weaker the
conscious ones, the more rigid the relationship has to be. The uncon-
scious bonds are the ones that cannot be faced. They may be bonds be-
tween sadistic and masochistic components of sub-identity, between the
perverted components, or between immature components. If such bonds
are stronger than the conscious ones, the couple has to restrict their be-
havior so as to maintain the unconscious bonds and to avoid becoming
aware of their significance. Situations and activities which may expose
the meanings of the bonds or weaken them have to be avoided.
A REVIEW
This chapter has been devoted to selection of personality concepts
useful in cross-cultural research. At the outset, it was assumed that this
could be accomplished most effectively by treating the relationship be-
tween two people as the .unit for describing personality. The interper-
sonal situation was divided into four categories: the situation, the ob-
ject, the self-identity, the interaction.
Functionally, concepts were viewed in perceptual terms. They were
analyzed as part of the lifespace, and interpreted in such terms as
regions, boundaries, and forces. Objects and self-identity, for example,
were regarded as psychological regions which could be divided into sub-
regions, and which could be analyzed in terms of dimensions and at-
tributes. Contents for the concepts were derived from conceptions
of social structure and from some of the current conceptions of personal-
ity. In the concluding section interaction was described in terms of
cathexes, bonds, defense mechanisms, and compatibility between sub-
identities. Factors affecting the relative stability and flexibility of inter-
personal systems were enumerated. A number of examples were given
MILLER: Personality and Social Interaction 297
of insights to be gained from viewing some problems in an interpersonal
context.
The interpersonal orientation seems to satisfy the criteria for selecting
concepts listed at the start of this chapter. The proposed concepts lend
themselves to analyses of associations between social structure and per-
sonality. The concepts are also general enough to be meaningful in dif-
ferent societies, and are sufficiently linked to common sociological and
psychological problems to permit the phrasing of testable problems in
a specific society. Finally, the concepts lend themselves to the analysis
of individual differences. People can be compared with respect to such
characteristics as locations on dimensions, relative strengths of bonds,
and predilections for certain defense mechanisms.
NOTES
1. The reasoning behind the selection of these dimensions is discussed by
Miller and Swanson ( 1 960) .
2. Reported in a personal communication from Eric Miller.
3. The remainder of the chapter was rewritten after I participated with
Peter Hildebrand, Herbert Phillipson, and John Sutherland in the planning
of a research on marriage. I am grateful to them for their help in clarifying
some of the concepts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bateson G. and Mead, Margaret. 1942. Balinese Character. New York:
Academy of Sciences.
Benedict, Ruth. 1934. Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Boas, F. 1911. The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: The Macmillan Co.
Cooley, C. H. 1922. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York:
Charles Scribner and Sons.
Du Bois, Cora. 1944. The People of Alor. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Erikson, E. H. 1954. "On the Sense of Inner Identity." In Knight, R. P. and
Friedman, C. R. (eds.), Psychoanalytic Psychiatry and Psychology. New
York: International Universities Press.
Fortune, R. 1932. Sorcerers of Dobu. London: G. Routledge and Sons.
Freud, S. 1949. Collected Papers. London: Hogarth Press.
Klein, Melassie. 1948. Contributions to Psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth
Press.
Lewin, K. 1939. The Conceptual Representation and the Measurement of
Psychological Forces. Durham, N. C. : Duke University Press.
Mead, G. H. 1939. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
298 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
Mead, Margaret. 1935, Sex and Temperament In Three Primitive Societies.
London: G. Routledge and Sons.
Miller, D. R. and Swanson, G. E. 1960. Inner Conflict and Defense. New
York: Henry Holt.
Parsons, Talcott and Shifs, E. A., et al 1951. Toward a General Theory of
Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sullivan, H. S. 1947. Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry. Washington: Wil-
liam Alanson White Foundation.
About the Chapter
A theory of action is an essential frame of reference for understanding
\vhat the subject expresses in the personality study situation. This frame of
reference requires specification of the motivational component supporting the
action as well as the normative component of the situation to which the ac-
tion is oriented. It is held in this chapter that completion of these two kinds
of analyses will reveal the subject's accessibility to study and will make his
communications understandable.
About the Author
BERT KAPLAN, the editor of this volume, is Associate Professor of Psy-
chology at the University of Kansas. He received his graduate training in
clinical psychology at Harvard and has taught there in the Department of
Social Relations and the School of Public Health. He has done field work with
the Navaho and Zuni Indians in the Southwest. Together with T.F.A. Plaut
he is the author of Personality in a Communal Society; An Analysis of the
Mental Health of the H utter ties. He is editor of Primary Records in Culture
and Personality and is presently engaged in research on Navaho psycho-
pathology.
9
Personality Study and Culture
BERT KAPLAN
University of Kansas
1 his chapter is based on the premise that the optimal approach to per-
sonality study varies considerably from one culture to another and that
both culture and the modal personality characteristics influence the per-
sonality study process. Clinical psychologists have long observed that
their techniques work differently with different persons. One subject
taking the Rorschach test, for example, may give a full, rich expressive
protocol which gives insight into his deepest and most central personality
processes while another gives a brief, sparse, stereotyped record which
hardly yields any information at all. One of the major problems of the
clinical psychologist is the failure of his techniques to yield the hoped-
for information in a very substantial number of individual cases. He
remedies this principally by varying his tools since experience has shown
that very often rich expressive material will be elicited by one method
but not by another. (Unfortunately there is a substantial group for
whom nothing seems to work very well.) In general one can say that
there is undoubtedly a very interesting and important interaction be-
tween the personality characteristics of subjects and the methods that
should be used to study them. This interaction, about which all too little
is known, has an important influence on the success of the study.
301
302 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
During the past four years as editor of the Microcard publication,
Primary Records in Culture and Personality (1956, 1957), I have ex-
amined closely the raw materials of almost seventy-five culture and per-
sonality studies. Looking at Rorschachs from thirty societies, for exam-
ple, or TATs from fifteen societies, the main impression is that the tests
work differently in different cultures. While many of the sets of data ap-
pear to seem so similar to each other that it is difficult to distinguish
them as coming from different groups (see Kaplan, Rickers-Ovsiankina
and Joseph 1956) protocols from other cultures are so unique and dis-
similar that they can be distinguished at a glance. The Rorschachs may
be rich and expressive like those collected from the Hindu groups by
G. M. Carstairs (1956), or sparse, stereotyped and defensive like the
numerous ones collected from the Ojibwa. They can involve the
Pilaga children's responses to details so tiny that we have difficulty in
seeing them at all (Henry, 1956) or the vagueness and diffuseness of
many of the Melanesian records. The TATs range from the long sev-
enty-five typewritten page records collected from Javanese men by
Hildred Geertz (1957) to the two and three sentence stories collected
by William Henry from Navaho and Hopi children (1947). The tests
obviously are working differently from one culture to another, and in
some groups the general result is sparse unexpressive data that is of
little use to anyone. I do not believe that this variability necessarily
reflects directly any corresponding personality differences or that the
reason Hindu Rorschachs are more differentiated than Navaho records
is that the former are highly differentiated people and the latter are
undifferentiated. Instead the difference appears to be a matter of the
approach of the subjects to the test.
Lucien Hanks, Jr.'s TAT study (1957) of Thai agricultural workers
from Bang Chan is relevant here. Hanks' subjects almost all told ex-
tremely brief stories to a set of specially drawn TAT pictures, with
hardly any element of fantasy. Hanks, in speculating on the briefness of
the stories, wondered whether the test created anxiety which led to
defensive inhibition, or whether the ability to fantasy was undeveloped
in his subjects. An examination of the records themselves suggests that
the subjects without exception were not telling stories but describing
the pictures and saying what seemed to be happening in them. The sim-
plest explanation of their behavior is that they were not trying to pro-
duce fantasy. This motivational factor was the crucial one. It seems very
possible that the Thais have the capacity for rich imaginative fantasy.
The problem is to discover the conditions under which it will be ex-
pressed.
One prevalent attitude in work with projective techniques tends to dis-
courage the flexibility and tentativeness necessary in personality study,
KAPLAN: P'ersonality Study and Culture 303
both in our own society and cross-culturally. This is the view that if re-
sults are to be comparable, procedures must be standardized. Standard-
ization, in effect, requires that the same procedures be followed in the
same way regardless of what the results are. This is directly counter to
my belief that good results in the sense that they reflect personality
adequately depend upon tailoring the procedures to the characteris-
tics of the subject and his culture.
This chapter seeks to analyze the cultural factors relevant to the per-
sonality study situation and attempts to provide the rudiments of a gen-
eral theory dealing with the individual's accessibility to such study.
It is hoped that this theoretical orientation will permit some under-
standing and prediction of the nature of the subject's expression and
communication about himself, and the relevance of culture to such ex-
pression and communication,
Robert White (1944) has divided personality processes into three
categories: those that the subject is aware of and will tell, those that
he is aware of and will not tell and those that he is not aware of and
thus cannot tell. This division may be modified by adding a fourth cate-
gory; those the subject is not aware of but will tell anyway. The addi-
tion recognizes that expression and communication do not depend on
the subject's explicit awareness of what he is doing. The fourfold scheme
suggests that the two main variables in personality study are the sub-
ject's awareness of what is going on and, what is perhaps more impor-
tant, the subject's motivation with respect to communications about
himself.
In general, clinical psychologists have been most interested in the
category of expressive behavior in which the subject reveals himself
without intending to or knowing that he is doing so. The projective tests
have been developed to facilitate this kind of expression which has been
regarded as depending upon the subject's lack of attention to the mean-
ing of his behavior. Such expressions have most usually been under-
stood as deriving from the pressure of what the psychoanalyst has called
the repetition compulsion and the working through of unconscious per-
sonality processes.
In order to understand the social contexts of such expressions of per-
sonality processes, we shall make the assumption which some might
hold to be debatable that they are not a separate category of be-
havior but that they can be understood in the same terms as other action
can. This assumption is fraught with serious consequences since it im-
plies that these expressions are: a) motivated and b) that they are
oriented to the subject's understanding of the situation. This means
that what the subject expresses can be viewed as being exactly what he
wanted to express. Otherwise, he would not lend the support of his
304 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
motivational energies to the action and without this support no action
would be possible. This expression takes place in relation to a social
situation. One of the main elements of the social situation is a normative
expectation defining what alternatives for action are available and
specifying the legitimacy, morality and appropriateness of each alterna-
tive. This is a highly simplified version of the sociologist's view of action
(see Parsons, 1951).
Action in the personality study situation is almost always action that
is taken in relationship to the expectations of another person. For this
reason it seems correct to speak of the communicative element in social
action. In addition, the self provides an always present observer an
observer who judges action by more rigorous standards than other per-
sons do.
When, therefore, the subject gives a particular response on the
Rorschach test we can view this response not simply as something that
he sees, a perception for which he has no responsibility, but as a means
of saying something to the examiner about himself and at the same
time as saying something to the self about himself. In the first context
the subject is constituting himself, for the benefit of the other, as a par-
ticular kind of person, and in the second context he is constituting him-
self as a particular kind of person, for his own benefit. 1 In both cases in
order to understand the action it is necessary to understand the situa-
tion the attitudes, values, and expectations to which the action is
oriented and the motivations (what the person wants to do) relevant
to the situation.
In analyzing personality study in these terms, one should be able to
specify the social and cultural elements defining the behavioral alterna-
tives, and the personal or motivational elements supporting particular
choices of action. Within this framework it should be possible to under-
stand the action of the subject of a personality study in the same way
that all other social action can be understood.
The discussion which follows attempts to spell out some of the socio-
cultural components of the system of action in the personality study
situation. We shall divide our discussion in terms of the two main con-
texts of such action, the self and the examiner.
THE SELF
Being the subject of a personality study creates the problem neces-
sarily of what one is to tell the examiner. Perhaps equally important, it
involves the problem of what one is to tell oneself. Selves do not simply
grow or develop; they are made or constructed by the individual. This
process of self-building goes on all the time bnt the personality study is
KAPLAN: Personality Study and Culture 305
a specially good time for it to happen. The building of the self concep-
tion thus is one of the factors which dominate communication. This
construction undoubtedly occurs in relationship to normative patterns.
It is clear enough that such patterning governs social or interpersonal
behavior; it is perhaps less obvious that it orients intrapsychic func-
tioning as well. There is reason to believe, however, that even in ac-
tions involving purely personal problems, persons are oriented un-
consciously to both latent and explicit definitions of correct and incorrect
action. In our society, for example, there is a strong expectation that the
person will manage his impulse life in a way that will allow mastery and
control but still permit adequate satisfaction. This expectation is re-
flected in the Freudian conception of a strong ego as being the equiva-
lent of maturity and good health. While this kind of solution may be
universally advocated, and is perhaps a condition for existence in a cul-
ture, it is none the less a cultural prescription. Ego strength, from this
point of view, may be regarded not simply as a characteristic of the
person that has developed as a result of particular past experiences, but
as a way of experiencing and acting that is consciously or unconsciously
selected from a variety of alternatives and can be mainly understood as
a consequence of motivational dispositions toward conformity.
A. I. Hallowell (1954) has made a very penetrating analysis of the
cultural shaping of conceptions of self. He states:
Just as different peoples entertain various beliefs about the nature of the
universe, they likewise differ in their ideas about the nature of the self. And,
just as we have discovered that notions about the nature of the beings and
powers existent in the universe involve assumptions that are directly relevant
to an understanding of the behavior of the individual in a given society, we
must likewise assume that the individual's self-image and his interpretation
of his own experience cannot be divorced from the concept of the self that
is characteristic of his society. For such concepts are the major means by
which different cultures promote self-orientation in the kind of meaningful
terms that make self-awareness of functional importance in the maintenance
of a human social order. In so far as the needs and goals of the individual
are at the level of self-awareness, they are structured with reference to the
kind of self-image that is consonant with other basic orientations that pre-
pare the self for action in a culturally constituted world. (1955. Culture and
Experience, p. 76)
One of the most important aspects of the constitution of the self con-
ception is its place as a primary object of value among other objects.
Hallowell regards the needs of the person for self enhancement,
preservation, defense, and the like as the "keystone of the characteris-
tic motivational structures that we find in man." He suggests that these
needs occur in relationship to belief systems and other aspects of culture.
One gets the impression that such ego needs vary in their strength from
306 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
culture to culture although they appear to be universal Vanity espe-
cially is particularly stfong in some groups where it is almost the main
theme around which the personality is constructed. In the personality
study situation the material communicated by the subject is almost
certainly governed by the strength and form of these needs.
Hallowell makes the additional point that normative orientations
have an important part in the constitution of the self image. He reasons
that self awareness is shaped and organized around the dimension of
appraisal and that the self therefore is known and experienced in rela-
tionship to normative propositions which are frequently phrased in
moral imperatives. The outcomes of these self appraisals are the main
basis for feelings of self respect and self esteem. The apprehension lest
some transgressions of standards be either committed or brought to
light is experienced as guilt and anxiety. The particular content of what
the self feels guilty or anxious about is a direct consequence of the con-
tent of normative orientations.
Since we have held that the building and maintenance of the self
conception occurs directly in the personality study situation, it follows
that the action of the subject should be seen in relation to the belief
systems and values to which the subject is oriented. The subject's rela-
tionship to these belief systems or normative propositions however is
often complicated. Where it is positive, we can speak of conformative
tendencies and see the subject's actions as governed by the norms. How-
ever, the relationship to the norms is sometimes negative or ambivalent.
In this case, the action or the self conception may be either directly op-
posite to what is expected or adhere to one of the culturally patterned
alternatives for deviance.
The point to be emphasized, however, is that the personality or moti-
vational component of the action, either in constituting the self or in
presenting a particular picture to the examiner, generally has to do
with the subject's relationship to what is expected, rather than directly
to the action itself. Thus if the subject indicates either directly or indi-
rectly that he is lazy, the motivation supporting this action does not have
to do only, or even principally, with his passivity and dependence, but
with his rejection of the value which holds that he should be energetic
and hard working.
What the subject does, according to this view, either in or out of the
personality study situation, is not to be explained by motivational
processes which lead the subject to seek particular ends or prefer this
or that action. Rather it is explained by motivations which have only an
indirect relationship to the actions, their direct significance having to do
with the subject's relationship to the situation.
This view has certain implications for the understanding of social
KAPLAN: Personality Study and Culture 307
behavior and for the empirical task of the culture and personality
worker. It suggests that socially appropriate behavior is not necessarily
a result of motivational processes that are isomorphic to the normative
pattern (see the Spiro, Wallace and Devereux chapters in this volume)
and which lead the person "to want to do as he has to do" to use Erich
Fromm's classic phrase (1941). Instead, such behavior depends on a
generalized conformative orientation (see Kaplan, 1957), The moti-
vational or personality support for this orientation involves not the to-
tal of the personality processes of the individual but a very specific set
of processes. Description of these specific processes may be regarded
as the main task of the culture and personality worker. General de-
scriptive studies of the personality characteristics of a particular people
must be replaced by selective discovery and analysis of the particular
processes that are relevant to the conformity-deviance orientation.
David Riesman's, The Lonely Crowd (1950) suggests that these bases
of conformity are themselves socially shared; they constitute "social
character."
Applied to the social action which we have called "the constitution of
the self," these considerations provide a formula for dealing with the
social influences on the formation of self conceptions themselves and
with the social influences on communication about the self to others.
They suggest that in the analysis of the normative definition of the so-
cial situation of the personality study, and of the subject's orientation to
the normative structure and the motivations relevant to this orientation,
there lies the key to both the interpretation of the data of the personality
study and the understanding of the success or failure of the study. This
is, of course, a key which does not short cut by very much the need
for detailed individual and cultural analysis. But it should be clear by
now that no easy solution to the problem of cross-cultural personality
study will be forthcoming.
Before closing our discussion of the "self and personality study, a
variety of other issues may be mentioned briefly. Communication about
the self can be seen in the subject's attempt to cope with and solve the
variety of problems confronting him and communication will depend
upon the nature of the solutions that are attempted. Such solutions or
coping measures include the defenses, a category of action that has the
greatest consequences for the success or failure of personality studies.
The defenses are generally regarded as functioning to inhibit or repress
communication about processes that disrupt the orderly construction of
the self conception. If, however, they are viewed more positively and
more broadly as belonging in that category of action which involves
coping with the problem of living, it is apparent that not all defenses are
inhibiting in nature and that some are primarily expressive or commu-
308 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
nicative in nature. Projection, for example, serves the purpose of denial
of undesirable impulses. But it is also a solution which involves a con-
siderable degree of expression and communication about the impulse
even if this expression is disguised. Other defenses such as intellectual-
ization, displacement and rationalization have similar qualities. On the
other hand denial and repression, when successful, prevent impulse
expression and inhibit communication. There is much to suggest that
choice of defenses is oriented to implicit cultural patterning. Thus mid-
dle class values in our society encourage attempts at mastery of prob-
lems that are based on active confrontation and working through, rather
than withdrawal and inhibition. In cultures where this is so we can
expect better results with our personality study procedures than in cul-
tures where it is not.
INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS
Although communicating to someone else about the self is considera-
bly different than making statements about the self when the self is
the only observer, the two situations have much in common. Whereas
the latter involves the construction of a self conception, the former in-
volves the construction of a social conception in others. Both require
purposefulness and planning that do not seem congruent with the ap-
parently spontaneous and often casual interplay that goes on in the per-
sonality study. In the projective tests especially, the appearance is main-
tained that the subject's responses do not have any great significance.
He is just saying what he sees, or whatever happens to come into his
mind, or telling a made-up story. The subject is encouraged not to
think too much about what he is doing, and the examiner generally
maintains the fiction that the subject really is not aware of what is going
on and is, instead of acting responsibly, relinquishing his capacity to
make decisions and placing himself passively in the examiner's hands.
It is to be doubted, however, that this is an accurate picture. There is
much evidence that the subject exercises considerable selectivity in his
communications, even when he is naive and unsophisticated about per-
sonality tests. If nothing else, he exercises the ability not to say any-
thing when what he has to say is dangerous or disturbing.
If the subject is really acting responsibly and purposefully in what he
communicates, he must be doing so in relation to the same kinds of
standards and expectations we have discussed earlier in this chapter. The
appearance he presents to others is related to his conception of how he
should appear, although there may be a deviant relationship as well as a
conformative one. The important point to be emphasized is that the per-
sonality study situation is dominated by the prevalent social concep-
KAPLAN: Personality Study and Culture 309
tions of what people are supposed to be like. The subject's productions
must be understood in relationship to them. The description and analysis
of these social conceptions is perhaps the first step to be undertaken in
the interpretation of personality materials in all personality study, cross-
cultural or otherwise. In our own society this method is not followed ex-
plicitly, in part because psychologists and psychiatrists have not paid
enough attention to cultural variables, but also because the relevant be-
lief systems are implicitly recognized and understood and are taken into
account unconsciously. In cross-cultural studies these implicit or covert
understandings are potential sources of error since they are not easily
corrected. There is the danger that they will be carried over to situations
where the cultural definitions are quite different.
The actions that psychologists and psychiatrists call defenses are as
frequently taken in relationship to the interpersonal situation as they are
to the intrapsychic one. Such defenses are generally understood to in-
volve the subject's deceiving himself into believing that he does not have
some impulse that he in fact really does have. However, since it is he
who is doing the deceiving, it would seem that there must be some sense
in which the disguise is not "really deceptive and in which the person is
allowing himself to express indirectly what he would prefer not to
acknowledge openly. The defense is really, I believe, not against the
impulse or repressed process but against its open and explicit acknowl-
edgment which would have serious consequences for the person's re-
lationships and for the conception of himself that he is trying to present.
Thus defensive behavior can be understood as an attempt to maintain
a conformative relationship to normative prescriptions both in the intra-
psychic and interpersonal spheres.
Our discussion thus far has emphasized the normative factors that
govern what a person says about himself. The social patterning of in-
terpersonal relationships also is important, however. Personality study
usually occurs in the context of a relationship between two people.
Leaving aside the influence of the structuring of the roles of examiner
and subject, which in our own society define with great clarity the ex-
pectations for nurturance and responsibility from the former and respect
and compliance from the latter, it seems probable that the much-needed
openness of the subject can only occur when the subject feels trust and
dependence on the examiner. The subject must want to communicate,
and his desire must be based on his conception of the nature of the rela-
tionship. In our own society the "Wise Elder" theme is so universally
understood that subjects in general easily accept and respond to the
examiner in these terms. However, we recognize that this supporting re-
lationship can easily be disrupted with a consequent failure of the per-
sonality study. In other societies the typical patterns of interpersonal
3 1 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
relationships may not encourage openness and free communication.
Although very little has been written about variations in the kinds of
relatedness that exists in different cultural groups, such differences may
be very wide.
Cross-cultural personality study is difficult and complicated and
should not be undertaken lightly with inadequate time and resources.
Ideally, it should proceed only after some knowledge of typical patterns
of relationship has been accumulated so that the investigator can modify
his behavior to conform to the subject's conception of an appropriate
setting. Practically this is often impossible since the knowledge of such
conceptions is one of the aims of the study itself and is not available be-
fore it begins. An intensive exploratory study may be necessary to dis-
cover what settings and techniques work best. This seems preferable to
the usual practice of going ahead with a particular method in a par-
ticular way whether or not useful information is being obtained. The
idea that the personality characteristics of a people can be studied sim-
ply by the administration of a single test like the Rorschach seems to
me to be a complete illusion. Such a procedure may yield interesting
information; but the information will inevitably be fragmentary and
not susceptible to integration into a serious culture and personality
study. Also, if these fragments are treated as though they constituted the
whole picture, the worker may be led into serious errors.
The present analysis unfortunately has not dealt adequately with the
problem of how to discover the best approach to personality study in a
particular society, I have merely attempted to provide a theoretical per-
spective that will point the way to a method of taking cultural factors
into account both at the time of data collection and data interpreta-
tion.
NOTE
1. This argument owes a good deal to the Existentialist position that ac-
tion is not to be understood as some by-product of the real characteristics of
the person but as being the only means of constituting reality itself. The
person, in effect, creates himself by what he does.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carstalrs, G, M. 1956. "Rorschachs of 40 High Caste Hindus and 10 Moslem
Men from Delware, Udaipur, India." In Kaplan, B. (ed.), Primary Rec-
ords In Culture and Personality. Vol. I. Madison, Wisconsin: The Micro-
card Foundation.
Fromm, E. 1941. Escape from Freedom. New York: Farrar, Strauss and
Young.
Geertz, H, 1957. "Modified TATs of 33 Javanese Men and Women." In
Kaplan, B. (ed.), Primary Records in Culture and Personality. Vol. II.
Madlson 9 Wisconsin: Hie Microcard Foundation.
KAPLAN: Personality Study and Culture 3 1 1
Hallowell, A. I. 1954. u The Self and Its Behavioral Environment." Explora-
tions. Vol. II. Reprinted in Hallowell, A. I. 1955, Culture and Experience.
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Hanks, L. 1956. "Modified TATs of 47 Thai Men and Women." In Kaplan, B.
(ed.), Primary Records in Culture and Personality. Vol. I. Madison, Wis-
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Henry, W. 1947. "The Thematic Apperception Technique in the Study of
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Kaplan, B. 1957. "Personality and Social Structure." In Gittler, J. B. (ed.),
Review of Sociology, Analysis of a Decade. New York: Wiley and Co.
Kaplan, B., Rickers-Ovsiankina, M. and Joseph, A. 1956. "An Attempt to
Sort Rorschach Records from Four Cultures," Journal of Protective Tech-
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Parsons, T. 1951. The Social System. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.
Riesrnan, D. 1950. The Lonely Crowd. New Haven: Yale University Press.
White, R. W. 1944. "The Interpretation of Imaginative Productions." In
Hunt, J. McV. (ed.), Personality and Behavior Disorders. New York:
Ronald Press. Pp. 233-39.
About the Chapter
The relationship of linguistics to culture and personality study is both close
and incompletely understood. Dr. Hymes surveys the variety of linguistic
studies and theories that bear on the field and especially on the problem of
cross-cultural personality study. He considers the ways in which personality
is expressed and perceived in acts of speech and what the content of language
reveals about the personality patterns of those who speak it. The important
field of paralinguistics with its focus on the nature of the carriers of meaning
and emotion in expression is discussed. This new development is producing a
number of insights that are basic to an understanding of the kind of com-
munication that goes on in the personality study situation and especially to
an appreciation of the role of cultural factors.
About the Author
DELL H. HYMES is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics
at the University of California, Berkeley. Within the fields of anthropology,
linguistics, and folklore, he has contributed articles and reviews to a variety
of journals, especially in connection with the description and classification of
American Indian languages, problems of method in historical linguistics and
anthropology, and the analysis of verbal art. His interest in the role of
linguistics in the study of personality developed while he was a Fellow at the
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1957-8.
A cknowledgments
The author is indebted to the Center for Advanced Study in the Be-
havioral Sciences, where this chapter was begun, and to the Laboratory of
Social Relations of Harvard University for aid in its completion. For helpful
references, comments, and stimulation in many ways, thanks go to several
Fellows and Associates of the Center in 1957-8: Ethel Albeit, Roger G.
Barker, Sol Becker, Ward Goodenough, Neal Gross, David Landes, Sidney
Siegel, Milton Singer, Fritz Stern, and John Tukey; to Gordon Allport and
Talcott Parsons; and, especially regarding the experimental literature in psy-
chology, to Volney Stefflre.
1O
Linguistic Aspects of Cross-Cultural
Personality Study
DELL H. HYMES
University of California
INTROBUCTION
In the literature of culture and personality, language is somewhat kin
to Mark Twain's weather: many praise It, but few do much about it.
Sometimes language does not figure at all in a general treatment of cul-
ture and personality. When it does, the discussion usually amounts to
two propositions: (a) language is important; (b) linguistic differences
are important differences. It may be pointed out how important lan-
guage is to the socialization of the child, the perception and cognition of
adults, the functioning of human society; that linguistic differences may
be evidence of differences in personality, among individuals or between
cultures; and, sometimes, that linguistic differences may be responsible
for differences in personality.
These ideas have long been familiar. George Herbert Mead, for one,
stressed the importance of language as the medium through which an in-
dividual acquires his personality. Probably intelligent observers have
been making such propositions since shortly after the dawn of human so-
ciety.
313
3 1 4 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
What such general propositions need is substantive flesh and analytic
bones, but little research has been devoted to this. In this chapter I shall
try to highlight problems and developments which promise to be of most
help for studying personality cross-culturally. I shall begin with the his-
tory of interest in personality shown by contemporary linguists, and
then discuss the use of linguistic methods by the fieldworker, since this
underlies any contribution which linguistic evidence can make. Next I
shall take up two broad questions: (1) the signals by which personal-
ity is expressed and perceived in acts of speech, and (2) the information
which the content of a language may provide about the personality of
those who use it. Finally, I shall raise a series of questions about the
functions of speech in a society in relation to cultural personality and
socialization.
BACKGROUND
Given that language is important to personality, one might expect
linguistics, the science of language, to make a considerable contribu-
tion to personality study. Yet, there is little in the work of American lin-
guists which bears on personality, and most of this is very recent.
Some thirty years ago the linguistic aspects of personality were posed
as a problem by Edward Sapir. In one paper he presented a framework
for analyzing speech as a personality trait (1927). In another he stated
that "We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do
because the language habits of our community predispose certain
choices of interpretation" (1929, p. 162). Thus, these papers broached
the two broad questions stated in the Introduction: the relation be-
tween personality and ( 1 ) acts of speech, (2) the content of a language.
Some of Sapir's students investigated these questions. Stanley New-
man published several papers on the linguistic aspect of individual per-
sonalities (1938, 1939, 1941, 1944), and argued vigorously for the
study of individual patterns of verbal expression as part of linguistics
(1941, pp. 96, 106). Benjamin Lee Whorf explored the relation of
habitual thought and behavior to language (1936, 1941). But other-
wise, Sapir's interest was not reflected in the development of linguistics
during the ensuing decade or two. When a psychologist, Sanford, re-
viewed the literature on speech and personality, he had to conclude that
"The problems are still more numerous than the facts" (1942, p. 840).
There have been two more recent discussions by linguists, one which
illustrates pertinent speech phenomena (Herzog, 1949), and one which
is broadly discursive (Firth, 1950), but these amount to little substan-
tive advance. Whorf s analyses of semantic patterns were exceptional
at the time, and only after his death did Ms writings become a focus of
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 315
American concern with the place of language in culture (Hoijer, 1953;
1954).
Instead, the theoretical interest of American linguists centered during
most of the last thirty years on the development of descriptive concepts
and methods. Here, as in European centers such as Prague and Copen-
hagen, a revolution took place in standards for the description of lan-
guages. While there are differing schools of descriptive methodology, all
share allegiance to some conception of a language as a system, and
thus to a fundamental distinction between language and speech. Typi-
cally, one refers to the act or process or continuum of speech, but to the
structure, pattern, or system of language. Speech is message, language
is code. Speech is observable behavior, language a set of habits. In
recent years, American linguists have been preoccupied with inferring
the constants of the linguistic code from the behavioral variation of
speech.
Thus, the major advances were in methodological problems internal
to linguistics, and the period was characterized by very narrow defini-
tions of the proper scope of linguistics. Semantics especially tended to be
defined as someone else's responsibly. Focus was on the qualitatively
different, socially shared basic units of the linguistic code, phonemes
and morphemes, and their patterns of occurrence relative to each other.
Much of psychological importance in speech and language was neg-
lected. The quantitatively varying attributes of the voice are im-
portant in expressing personality, and insofar as the content of lan-
guage reveals cultural personality, semantics is central. But the former
is not part of the linguistic code, and the latter was neglected as not
necessary to its formal description. Perhaps the main current of
American linguistics in the period need not have been so swept by back-
washes of behaviorism and positivism- Still, not only linguistics neg-
lected these broader problems of language. A few years ago Osgood
wrote: "In terms of its central relevance to general psychological theory
and its potential applicability to complex social problems, no other
area of experimental psychology so greatly 'demands attention as
language behavior and in the past has received so little" (1953, p. 727;
note also the statement by Spence, in 1957, on the importance of lan-
guage to the psychology of behavior).
Moreover, the advances in descriptive methods were essential to
progress in the study of other aspects of language and of the relation of
language to other things. No use of linguistic evidence can be better than
the methods by which the evidence is obtained and analyzed. The
greater the precision with which the formal units and patterns of a lan-
guage can be established, the greater the precision with which such
things as the linguistic aspects of personality can be investigated.
316 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
Sometimes the intensive development of method has been accom-
panied by a hierophantic air, but this is lessening, and fetishistic concern
for methodological purity is giving way to an attitude which has been
dabbed "rough justice" (Householder, 1957a), a change which is fortu-
nate for the cooperation of linguists with other scholars.
While descriptive methods continue to be improved, they are ade-
quate, and a growing number of scholars trained in these methods
are investigating psychological problems. 1 In general, the interest of
linguists has turned more and more to the external relations of their
work to other fields, an interest reflected in such terms as "ethno-lin-
guistics" and u psycho-linguistics." While surveys of the linguistic aspects
of personality still must draw upon hopes and suggestions more than
upon tested conclusions, this situation is changing for the better.
USE OF LINGUISTIC METHODS
There are four ways in which the student of personality in another cul-
ture may utilize the descriptive methods which modern linguistics has
developed. These methods will facilitate his practical use of a language
in field work. If he has to obtain and analyze linguistic data himself,
he will need them. If he draws upon the linguistic work of others, he
still should have some control of linguistic methods in order to evaluate
the work, if it is already done, or to guide it in relevant directions, if it
is undertaken as part of his research project. Finally, there is the possibil-
ity that linguistic methods may have an application outside language.
Serious students of other ways of life long have realized that no real
penetration of a people's psychological makeup is possible without
knowledge of their language. Among anthropologists, Franz Boas (who
defined ethnology as the study of mental phenomena) wrote that the
deeper problems of ethnology could not be approached except through
language. Sapir, Lowie, Radin, Kluckhohn, and others have reiterated
the point. Kluckfaohn's account of the role of language in obtaining auto-
biographical material is pertinent to all culture and personality research.
Stressing linguistic insight as requisite for insight into covert culture, he
writes:
I suspect that the meanings which the happenings of his life have for the
subject will remain forever opaque to the investigator unless he has ob-
tained entrance to this foreign world of values and significances which are
pointed to by the emphases of the native vocabulary, crystallized in its
morphological categories, Implicit in its semantic differentiations. (1945, p.
112)
Anastasi and Foley (1949, p. 717) make a point about intelligence
tests that applies to tests generally: instruments of research that do
HYMES: Linguistic A spects 317
not Involve language are not equivalent to instruments that do, and can-
not be substituted for them. They state: 4fc When unfarailiarity with the
language makes the application of verbal tests impossible in a given
group, the range of processes which can be measured in that group is
thereby narrowed."
Kluckhohn points out:
Learning a language, then, is not the only alternative to complete neglect of
the language. The direct advantages of using a language are to record, to ask
set questions, to give stereotyped instructions. No language is easy, but sub-
stantial progress in the use of any language can be made by the field worker
who is patient and willing and who has certain minimum skills for going about
the task. (1945, p. 113)
For the practical use of another language, descriptive methods are of
great value. Every learner must make some analysis, conscious or not,
of the other language; linguistic methods make the analysis explicit and
precise. For both analyst and user, the goal is a model of the lan-
guage habits of a group. For the analyst, it is true, it is enough to have
the model in his head and notebooks. The user, in addition, must intro-
duce the model into his habits of articulation. The analyst must be
able to recognize and accurately record the native speaker's repetitions
of utterances; the user must also be able to make the repetitions himself.
But for both, the test of success is ability to produce novel utterances
which native speakers will accept.
Descriptive analysis is especially helpful in coping with Interference
between the learner's own system of language habits and that of the
language to be learned. If the field worker has a descriptive analysis of
the units and patterns in Ms own language and in the one to be used, he
can compare the two to make conscious the points where Ms own lan-
guage habits are most likely to impede his perception and control of the
other set of habits. Interference is clearly critical for the fieldworker
sorting out clues to personality in acts of speech. English-speaking field-
workers are especially likely to be unaware of their complex patterns
of stress, pitch, and juncture, and so to misinterpret the emotional im-
port of the use of stress, pitch, and juncture In another language.
For English linguistic habits, Hockett (1958) is the best single guide.
The fact that interference in learning can be described precisely and
predicted is perhaps the best proof of the vital role that linguistic analy-
sis plays in the practical use of another language. Weinreich (1953,
1957) has made a theoretical analysis of linguistic interference. There
is a useful discussion in Gleason (1955, Cfa. 18) and a brilliant illustra-
tion of phonemic interference in Wolff (1952). Lado (1957) devotes
a book to the problems of comparing linguistic systems, and extends the
approach to the comparison of cultures. Perhaps the theoretical frame-
3 1 8 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
works of Weinreich and Lado may shed light also on problems of inter-
ference in judging other manifestations of personality.
If the fieldworker goes to a group whose language has been more or
less adequately described, his task is relatively easy, whether he obtains
formal instruction, or is self-taught with the aid of generalized expert
advice. Bloomfield (1942) is an outstanding guide, together with Fries
(1945); there is valuable advice in Nida (1947, 1950, 1956), Pike
(1947), Reyburn (1958) and Swadesh (1937). If the fieldworker has
to undertake his own descriptive analysis, he will need some formal in-
struction. Roger Brown (1957, 1959) has written lucid introductions to
linguistic concepts, oriented to psychologists. Good, brief, introductions
oriented toward psychologists and anthropologists, respectively, are
those of Miller (1954) and Lounsbury (1953). Introductory texts for
students of linguistics give a more detailed understanding of its opera-
tions (Hockett, 1958; Gleason, 1955; Nida, 1949; Pike, 1947); on a
more advanced level, Harris (1951) is a storehouse of analytic proce-
dures.
Whether the fieldworker makes his own analysis, or uses the analyses
of others, it is essential to realize that there are two broad stages to
linguistic description. 2 The first may be loosely called that of the "facts."
In this stage one determines all the phonological and grammatical fea-
tures that are relevant in each particular linguistic context. In the second
stage, one infers general phonological and grammatical patterns for
the language as a whole. This requires relating the relevant features of
particular contexts to each other, so as to obtain a description that com-
prises them all in a simple and consistent way. Linguists who agree on
the facts of specific contexts may disagree on the pattern to be inferred.
The disagreement will be due to differences in the criteria of inference
which are given priority, or to different conceptions of the ideal model
for linguistic description. 3
The non-linguist should know that if a language is described and
handled accurately in the first stage, this will suffice for field research.
Some inference must be made, but it need not be theoretically elegant.
As long as the first stage is clear, others can make other inferences
later, and, moreover, adequate handling of the first stage itself con-
tributes to the science of language, if the data are not otherwise known.
The consumer of linguistic research should know that errors or inade-
quacies in the first stage will vitiate the results. Disagreements as to the
second stage may spring more from theoretical assumptions than from
the data. For his purposes it may make no difference which of two con-
flicting interpretations is chosen.
The advances in descriptive analysis have encouraged some lin-
guists to suggest that their methods could be used by others. This hope
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 319
has been shared by anthropologists such as Kluckhofan and Levi-Strauss.
The nature of the hope has been that linguistic methods might help
establish units and patterns in learned behavior outside language.
It is worth noting that language and linguistics figure prominently in
discussions of methods for national character study In The Study of Cul-
ture at a Distance (Mead and Metraux, 1953). Mead and Gorer use
them both by way of analogy and as example (pp. 10-11, 13-14, 16,
59, 80-81). This is so much the case, that it is remarkable that neither
Mead nor Gorer explicitly suggests the direct transfer of linguistic
method to the study of national character.
As Hockett has observed, the difficulty is that we do not know how
much the success of linguistic methods depends on what is peculiar to
language and how much on what language shares with the rest of cul-
ture. All culturally patterned behavior may be as systematic as speech,
as Mead asserts (1953, pp. 16-17), but we do not yet know for sure.
Probably there is a gradient from the least to the most systematized
aspects. It is worth mentioning the principal work along these lines be-
cause of its promise. This work is of two sorts, extensions of linguistic
method and generalizations of it.
For personality study, a particularly promising extension concerns
gesture, or "body-language." The communicative importance of gesture
has long been recognized, together with its cultural basis (LaBarre,
1947). Working with several linguists, Birdwhistell (1952) has
sketched an analytic framework for gesture, including a system of nota-
tion. If this culminates in the successful descriptive analysis of gesture-
systems cross-culturally, it will be a significant contribution to the study
of how personality is expressed and perceived.
There are two major examples of the generalization of linguistic
methods. Kenneth Pike (1954, 1955, 1956, 1959) seeks to comprehend
linguistic and non-linguistic behavior within a single descriptive frame-
work. (The 1956 essay is the best concise exposition of Pike's ap-
proach.) Hans Uldall (1957) has published the first part of work done
in collaboration with the Danish linguist, Louis Hjelmslev, with whom
he developed the school of linguistic thought known as glossematics.
Uldall's monograph generalizes a glossematic algebra for all the non-
natural sciences, so that its application to language is a special case. It is
interesting that a psychologist, Floyd AUport (1955), has developed a
concept of structure within which Pike's linguistics-based theory might
find a natural place, and that Barker and Wright (1954) discuss their
basic concepts and problems, such as "dividing the behaviour stream,"
in terms remarkably suggestive of linguistic principles. Still, the direct
transfer of linguistic ways of handling units and patterns to such areas as
culture and personality remains an undemonstrated possibility. It will
320 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
be some while before we know how much of the attempt to take linguis-
tic methodology beyond language is a "breakthrough," and how much it
is the artifact "of a climate of opinion. General advocacy of this attempt
is found in the writings of Claude Levi-Strauss (see several of the essays
in his Anthropologie structural , 1957), Ward Goodenough (1957),
George L. Trager (1959), Edward T. Hall (1959), and some other an-
thropologists. Positive results for problems in social structure have been
reported by Goodenough (1951, p. 64) and Levi-Strauss (1957, pp.
37-62, fct L/ Analyse structurale en linguistique et en anthropologie").
Katherine French (1955) has used linguistic principles like those of
Pike to analyze ceremonial patterns on an American Indian reserva-
tion, and Marvin Mayers (1959) has applied Pike's approach cogently
to the Pocomchi of "Mexico. The growing field of ethnoscience has
used linguistics-inspired methodology to get at cognitive organization in
the areas of kinship, botany, and disease. This could be extended to
conceptions of personality and to personal differences in cognitive or-
ganization. Applications such as these by people rooted in substan-
tive fields outside linguistics are the crucial test for the broader utility of
linguistic methods.
To sum up the central point of this section: linguistic methods are es-
sential for the cross-cultural study of personality. They aid the field-
worker in using the native language; if he is a talented polyglot, they
expedite his mastery. Even if the investigator does not use the native
language, even if he does not care what the language itself may reveal,
it mus^be controlled so that speech behavior may be observed and re-
corded. People talk; their talk involves their personalities. Linguistic
methods are simply the way an adequate account of what goes on in
talking can be rendered.
ACTS OF SPEECH
What are the signals by which personality is expressed and perceived
in speech? To judge from a review of literature (Bruner and Tagiuri,
1954) and a recent conference (Tagiuri and Petmllo, 1958), the grow-
ing interest in person perception neglects speech. The importance of
speech (especially to a theory of personality such as that of Kelly,
1956) is obvious nevertheless.
Sapir (1927) provides a general formulation of the problem, one
which is followed by Chao (1953). He proposed two approaches. The
first would concern the difference and relation between the individual
and social components of speech. This is stressed by Newman (1941)
and by Krech and Crutchfield (1948). Sapir observed that speakers are
alert for individual speech variations and subtle cues, but are relatively
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 32 1
naive about the specific signals to which they respond. They also often
forget that there is a socially-shared pattern in relation to which the in-
dividual variations are perceived. Individual expressions of personality
in speech can be understood only after the specific signals and the
shared patterns have been analyzed.
The second approach would concern different levels of speech. Sapir
distinguished five: voice, the most fundamental and a form of gesture;
voice dynamics, including intonation, rhythm, relative continuity, speed,
and the musical handling of the voice generally; pronunciation, includ-
ing individual differences in pronunciation, and symbolic associations of
sounds; vocabulary, that is, individual differences in choice and fre-
quency of morphemes; style. Sapir stressed that each level has both a
cultural and individual aspect. One level may be used in conflict with
another in a given message, so that there could be "a conflict between
explicit and implicit communications in the growth of the individual 1 s
social experience" (1931, p. 79) a point Gregory Bateson has re-
cently developed, and that de Groot (1949) has formulated as the
"law of the two strata," by which the message of the intonation always
takes precedence over that of the words.
The phenomena which Sapir classed under voice and voice dynamics
have been very little understood until recently. Studies had shown that
people do judge personality from speech (Pear, 1931; Taylor, 1934;
Allport and Cantril, 1934; Wolff, W., 1943; McGehee, 1944; Zucker,
1946). But these studies were more in terms of general impression than
in terms of the signals which conveyed the impression. Partly this could
not be avoided. Our traditional orthography almost wholly ignores an
important group of such signals, so that they are lost when acts of speech
are transcribed in ordinary writing. Though part of this group, the
complex English systems of pitch, stress, juncture and intonation, form
an essential part of the English linguistic code, only recently has lin-
guistics provided an adequate analysis. 4 Very recently, some linguists
have begun to analyze what Sapir termed "the linguistically irrelevant
habits of speech manipulation which are characteristic of a par-
ticular group" (1927, p. 540), that is, ways of using speech which are
conventionalized, even though not part of the linguistic code proper,
Pittenger and Smith (1957) have addressed an introduction to this
pioneering work to psychiatrists, and McQuown (1957) has presented
an example of its application to interview material. An extensive publica-
tion is to come from one group (Bateson, et a/.). Meanwhile Trager
has published a framework for analyzing the entire group of non-lin-
guistic signals in acts of speech.
Trager distinguishes voice set as a background against which are
measured voice qualities and vocalizations. These latter two together
322 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
are termed paralanguage found in systematic association with lan-
guage though distinct from it. Voice set involves the physiological and
physical peculiarities which identify individuals as members of a popula-
tion and as persons of a certain sex, age, state of health, and so on.
Voice qualities are actual speech events. They are modifications both
of language and of vocalizations. The categories of voice quality noted
so far are: pitch range, vocal lip control, glottis control, pitch control,
articulation control, rhythm control, resonance, tempo. For each of
these there are intermittent degrees on a continuum between polar
extremes, for instance, for vocal lip control, from heavy rasp or hoarse-
ness to various degrees of openness. Vocalizations are specifiable noises
or aspects of noises. There are three kinds: vocal characterize, vocal
qualifiers, and vocal segregates. The vocal characterizers include laugh-
ing and crying, between which giggling, snickering, whimpering and
sobbing are considered intermediate; yelling and whispering; moaning
and groaning; whining and breaking; belching and yawning; and prob-
ably other groups. One "talks through" all these. Vocal qualifiers are
three: intensity, pitch height, and extent (which ranges between drawl
and clipping) . Vocal segregates comprise such items as English "uh-uh"
for negation, a uh-huh" for affirmation, the Japanese hiss, and other
actual sounds that do not fit into the ordinary phonological patterns of a
language. It is important to note that this classification is based on de-
tailed study of actual speech. Trager suggests a repertoire of symbols
for transcribing these paralinguistic phenomena.
The work which Trager synthesizes is still very much in progress. It
needs extension to other speech communities outside the English sphere
as a check on its adequacy as a transcriptional arsenal. 5 Such exten-
sion has already been begun by Trager at Taos Pueblo 4 in New Mexico
(Trager, I960), and the only addition found necessary is one category
of voice quality retracted vs. projected articulation. At present the
focus of this work is chiefly on identifying and describing the relevant
features. How these features occur relative to each other, how their
distribution of occurrences interrelates with such things as situation, role,
personality most of this is yet to be determined. A noteworthy be-
ginning has been made by Danchy, Hockett, and Pittenger, whose
fine-grained analysis of the communication system constituted between
a patient and a psychiatrist and their interaction during the beginning
of their first interview is rich with examples and leads. Besides the
Danchy, Hockett, and Pittenger manuscript, recent papers by Bateson
(1958), Pittenger (1958), and a manuscript by Hockett are valuable.
At present this work must at the very least alert the student of per-
sonality to the significance of paralinguistic phenomena. Much of what
would be coded as aggression, nurturance, succorance and the like may
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 323
be communicated paralinguistically, by what we would conventionally
call tone of voice, inflection, innuendo. It should be no surprise if the
child's learning of and response to paralinguistic cues is found to play an
important part in the process of identification.
The concept of expressive devices should be singled out here. As de-
fined by linguists of the Prague School, these may be equivalent to the
vocal segregates of the Trager scheme. In a given language, expressive
devices are precisely ordinary speech elements which are not part of its
code, that is, which do not make a difference to the referential
meaning of messages. Their expressive function is made possible by
this very fact. Thus, there is a phoneme /h/ in the code of some lan-
guages, such as English, where Eat It is cognitively different from
Heat it. French has no /h/ phoneme, hence the sound h can be used ex-
pressively; Gauthier remarks that love is well expressed by "Je
t'h'aime," and Flaubert writes "h'enorme" for "enoraie" to render
emotion.
Expressive devices are important in the speech development of the
child, but little is known aboutthem cross-culturally. Intonation seems to
appear very early; it is reported to be the first speech element which
Czech children acquire to express emotion. Other expressive devices
also seem to appear very early: palatalization of consonants is used as a
purely expressive device in the first words of Czech children. Though
we can single out certain features as expressive per $e, we must re-
member that it is also possible to view all the features of a speech event
as in varying degree expressive of their source. Each feature is selected
from among a set of features. Since another feature might have oc-
curred in its place, the selection reflects the sender of the message. Of
course, this statement is never literally true, due to the dependence
of some features on others. But it serves to single out the importance of
not forgetting that in the functioning of speech, as elsewhere, what on
one level seems an inherent property is on another level dependent on
the point from which we are viewing. An expletive may be colorless
through over use, and an intrinsically colorless "no" may be explosive if
the preceding utterance has been "Do you take this woman to be your
lawful wedded wife?"
New analytic frameworks may prove to be needed for the phenomena
which Sapir treated under pronunciation, vocabulary, and style, but
well known methods can be used. It is generally a question of describing
the units and patterns of a language and of then studying the relative
frequency and contexts of their occurrence. Some linguistic traits, in-
cluding particular pronunciations and words, may be diagnostic of
individuals, of roles, of groups, of situations. This includes the char-
acters in myths, whose personalities and roles are built up wholly by the
324 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
use of language. 7 Some linguistic traits may differ in the relative fre-
quency of their use by certain people or in certain situations; this is per-
haps what Sapir had in mind when he mentioned style, though he may
also have intended to indicate some controlling pattern of selection.
All this, then, is a matter of knowing the code and content of a lan-
guage. One can then tell, for example, whether the use of an /z-sound is
normal functioning of the language, or expresses emotion. Knowing the
norms of a speech community, one can tell whether an emotional utter-
ance has a conventional acceptation or reveals a deviant personality.
One can know when stereotyped perception of personality is likely to
be aroused by the use of particular pronunciations, vocabulary, or
styles, which may signal a class, local area, or conventionally recognized
type of individual. One can note and follow up regression to an earlier
dialect usage or pronunciation under stress, if such occurs. One may be
able to detect the subtle interpersonal manipulation of status-controlled
levels of vocabulary in languages such as Japanese, Javanese and
Ponapean, or the shift between formal and informal styles which oc-
curs in any language. All this entails a control of a language which
comes only together with control of the culture as well, but it is essential
to any systematic phenomenological approach to personality.
Ideally, linguistics should provide the investigator with complete
description of the linguistic and paralinguistic codes in the speech of the
people studied and in his own speech. The investigator, or an ac-
companying linguist, would then be able to specify without interference
all those cues which express personality and by which personality is per-
ceived in oral communication. If linguistic research has already ade-
quately studied a language, the fieldworker is enviably prepared. In
much of the world this is not the case, but, armed with linguistic meth-
ods, or a linguist, the student of personality in another culture may still
penetrate the world of meanings borne by the small disturbances of air
which are acts of speech.
THE CONTENT OF LANGUAGE
What does the content of language reveal about personality? The
psychological import of differences in language has a recurrent fasci-
nation, and an honorable tradition in anthropological linguistics from
Wilhelm von Humboldt through Brinton, Boas and Sapir to the present
day. Most recently, Whorf s gifts for exposition and semantic insight
have made Ms views a reference point. There has been a flurry of stud-
ies, ranging from perception of vowel length to conceptual logic and
metaphysical presuppositions.
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 325
Carroll and Casagrande (1958, p. 20) have put the basic question In
these terms:
The linguistic relativity hypothesis is a special case of the culture-personal-
ity theory. Substituting terms in Smith, Braner, and White's precis of culture-
personality theory, we may express it this way: Each language creates a spe-
cial plight to which the individual must adjust. The human plight is in no
sense universal save in this fact: that however different the language may be,
it has certain common problems with which to deal time, space, quantity,
action, state, etc. But each language handles these problems differently and
develops special ways of communicating. These ways of communi-
cating create special needs, special responses, and lead to the development of
special modes of thinking.
The alternative to the linguistic relativity hypothesis would be a statement
that the behavior of a person is not a function of the language he happens to
speak or be speaking, that his modes of categorizing experience and dealing
with his world operate independently of language, that language is simply a
way of communicating something which is in every way prior to its codifica-
tion in language.
One will find other statements of this view, ranging from the sweepingly
provocative to the gently urbane, in writings of Sapir (1929, 193 lb),
Whorf (1940a, 1940b, 1941a, 1941b, 1941c), Lee (1938, 1940,
1944, 1949^ 1950), Hoijer (1951, 1953, 1954), Brown (1956), and
Brown and Lenneberg ( 1954, 1958) .
That language should make a difference follows from many con-
siderations in psychology itself. Carroll terms the hypothesis "essentially
a restatement or application of a well-known finding in discrimination
learning that we learn those discriminations which are reinforced; in
the present case, linguistic symbols are themselves the cues for the dis-
criminatory responses" (Carroll, 1958, p. 34). Moreover, "the vast
majority of signs used in ordinary communication are what we may
term assigns their meanings are literally "assigned 9 to them via asso-
ciation with other signs rather than via direct association with the objects
signified" (Osgood, Suci, Tannenbaum, 1957, p. 8). This view heightens
the importance of the patterning of linguistic symbols in a language, as
an influence on psychological processes affecting personality, and so
does Miller's view of the role of linguistic patterns in the retaining of
complex information. Discussing the great disparity between man's lim-
ited ability to discriminate sensory stimuli and his great capacity to store
information, Miller (1956a, p. 95) suggests that the gap is bridged by
successive recodings, "an extremely powerful weapon for increasing the
amount of information that we can deal with. In one form or another
we use receding constantly in our daily behavior. In my opinion the
most customary kind of recoding that we do all the time is to translate
into a verbal code." 8
326 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
We have only the beginnings of research, cross-cultural and other-
wise, devoted to demonstrating the nature and extent of the difference
that language makes. While many have testified from personal ex-
perience, or by selected examples, relatively few have conducted ex-
periments. I shall try to consider this experimental work to show its
trend.
Concerning lexical categories of English speakers, Cannichael, Hogan
and Walter (1932) showed a generation ago that recall and repro-
duction of visual shapes depended upon linguistic labels given them by
the experimenter. Subsequent work has refined and overwhelmingly
supported this proof of the influence of linguistic habit. Hanawalt and
Demarest (1939) showed not only the influence in reproduction of
visual shapes of labels given by the experimenter, but also brought out
the significance of labels the subjects themselves employ. The best
demonstration of this latter point is in Herman, Lawless, and Marshall
(1957). The results of Prentice (1954) on the relation between lan-
guage and recognition error were negative, but these must be inter-
preted in the light of the often overlooked positive results of Tresselet
(1948). Bniner, Busiek, and Minturn (1952) obtained positive results
with immediate reproduction. Here also should be mentioned the work
of Belbin (1950) and J. Brown (1956), and the interesting findings of
Norcross (1958).
Recent work by R. W. Brown and Lenneberg (1954) and by Lenne-
berg and Roberts (1956) found, under certain conditions, that recog-
nition memory for colors depends upon codability, that is, the ease with
which a sensory experience or concept can be transmitted in the code of
a particular language. Under these conditions, the greater the coda-
bility, the more speakers of the language agree on the name, and, prob-
ably, the shorter the name and the more frequent its use. That experi-
mentally given verbal labels improve recognition memory has been
shown by Pyles (1932), Spiker (1956) who summarizes work in this
area, and Weir and Stevenson (1959).
Cross-culturally, Lenneberg and Roberts indicate that speakers of
English and Zuni differ in their recognition and remembering of colors
ia ways that are predictable from the codability of the colors in the two
languages. Carroll (Carroll and Casagrande, 1958) reports suggestive
results using Hopi lexical categories to predict the sorting behavior of
Hopi speakers (although the illustrations unfortunately are incorrectly
keyed to the text in the published paper). The central importance of
lexical categories is considered demonstrated by Soviet psychology
(Tikhomirov, 1959, pp. 365-6, citing Pavlov).
Concerning grammatical categories, Brown (1957) found in research
of basic importance that English-speaking children take part-of-speech
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 327
membership of a novel word as a clue to its meaning. Large grammati-
cal classes, such as parts of speech, of course never correlate perfectly
with semantic attributes; the class of English nouns cannot be ade-
quately defined as names of persons, places, or things, but only by for-
mal features such as inflection and syntactic position. Still, parts of
speech do correlate sufficiently with certain semantic attributes for the
relationship to be detected and generalized by speakers of the language
(see FlaveU, 1958). If languages differ in their major parts-of-speech,
then, this may be diagnostic of differences in the cognitive psychologies
of those who use them.
Cross-culturally, ethnographic incidents that point to the influence of
grammatical categories, especially in Algonquian languages, have been
cited by Hallowell (1951, 1958). Casagrande (Carroll and Casagrande,
1958) obtained initially encouraging results using a specific Navaho
grammatical category to predict Navaho sorting behavior. This category
concerns the classification of objects into several classes according to
their shape or form. MacClay (1958) investigated it also, and since his
study brings out the problems of such research very well, I shall discuss
it in some detail.
MacClay tested sorting behavior of groups speaking Navaho, Eng-
lish, and Pueblo Indian languages, predicting differences in sorting and
latency, with what at first seem very discouraging results. He found
that subjects indeed sorted in terms of the kinds of classification built
into the experiment (by color, form, function or material), but neither
of the latency hypotheses was confirmed, and but one of the two sorting
hypotheses. Now in every case the latencies for the Navaho and
Pueblo groups were much closer to each other than either was to the
latency for the English group, which always was notably lower. It is
likely that some factor such as previous experience with test situations
was at work, and that latency is not a valid measure for the influence of
different language habits. Turning to the sorting hypotheses, the more
experience a Navaho had had with his language, the more likely he was
to sort in terms of its form categories, while the Pueblo group, whose
languages lack such categories, showed no such correlation with lan-
guage experience. The second sorting hypothesis produced surprise.
Navahos made more sorts on the basis of form than the Pueblo group,
as expected, but English speakers made as many or more such sorts
compared to Navaho.
Carroll and Casagrande offer an explanation of such a result. They
compared two groups of Navaho children, for one of whom the Navaho
language was dominant, for one English, and found a correlation be-
tween dominance of Navaho and tendency to match objects by form
rather than color or size. But when they compared this to data from
328 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
white American children, and considered age trends, they came to the
view that either of two kinds of experience could increase a child's
tendency to match objects on the basis of form: (a) learning a lan-
guage, like Navaho, which requires him to make certain discriminations
of form and material in order to be understood, or (b) practice with
toys and other objects which involves the fitting of forms and shapes.
Another problem emerged from MacClay's study. He found from post-
experimental interviews that sometimes two of the four objects in a test
had the same lexical category in Navaho. The list of objects used
suggests other influences may have been operative as well. English
speakers might have been classifying by function instead of form at
some points," and some of the sets of objects to be sorted contain items
that may be lexically linked for English speakers (as "metal," "paper,"
"cloth;' "rubber"). On the other side, it is not reported whether
Navaho speakers do indeed use the expected grammatical form of the
verb with each pair of test objects whose being sorted together was to
reveal the verb form's influence. Like English and other languages,
Navaho has no perfect fit between formal classes and semantic patterns;
its round-object class of verb stems is notorious for assimilating accul-
turational items, and most of the test materials were objects common to
American culture.
MacQay's study, then, brings out the great complexity of testing the
linguistic relativity hypothesis by predicting specific behavioral re-
sponses. His results go together with the general trend of others to indi-
cate that language has some influence for example, the difference be-
tween Navaho and Pueblo groups is always in the expected direction
but show how difficult this influence is to measure and specify. Lin-
guistic and non-linguistic experience both may converge on the same be-
havioral result, and experience with a language may be consistent
with alternative responses, since the language may have alternative ways
of categorizing a stimulus. Moreover, as Stanley Newman has stressed,
predictions from the presence of a feature ignore its frequency of oc-
currence; MacClay suggests that relative frequency may be the single
most significant factor for future experiments. 9 The English statistician
Herdan has proposed that la langue be conceived as having not only
a qualitatively defined structure, but also a set of quantitatively de-
fined probabilities of occurrence. But contemporary structural descrip-
tions of languages do not deal with frequency, and we have no informa-
tion about It for most languages of the world.
In short, the content of a language may predict non-linguistic be-
havior, but the relation is not one-to-one; rather, it is many-one and one-
many. Simply the known facts of semantic change in languages make
clear the interaction between a linguistic code and the other habits of
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 329
those who use it. Each Influences the other, for language is not a closed,
but an open system.
Here must be mentioned the Southwest Project in Comparative Psy-
chollnguistics, of which MacClay's work was a part. The field studies
were made in the summers of 1955 and 1956 by teams of psycholo-
gists and linguists, working with speakers of English, Spanish, Navaho,
Zuni, and Hopi. While the bulk of the results have not been published,
MacClay's work apparently is representative in that it does not make
the clear showing for the great importance of linguistic relativity that
some investigators had hoped for. From this failure to find strong posi-
tive effects, some students have drawn the negative conclusion that such
do not exist (Greenberg, 1959). Such an Inference may be plausible,
but it has no logical validity. In my opinion, the conclusion to be drawn
is the one already indicated: that the meticulous study of the question is
complex and difficult. Two summers is not a long time for the testing
and developing of instruments in the first experimentally designed field
research on the subject. Further research can profit from and build on
this pilot venture.
To support my conclusion, let us recapitulate with regard to the con-
tent of language as a factor In behavior, and hence personality. That
language as such makes no difference would scarcely be seriously argued
now, although the view has been stated and is sometimes Implied by
omissions in research and writing. 10 Against such a view is the massive
import of experimental work. To the studies cited, we should add that of
Stefflre (1958), which strongly showed the Importance of language
as a variable in experiments on concept formation, and the studies of
Shepard (1956), of Jeffrey (1953), and of Luria and his associates
(Luria, 1959a, 1959b; Luria and Yuovlch, 1959). u
That language Is vital in the child's Interaction with his world is shown
in the field as well as in the laboratory. As part of a cross-cultural study
of socialization, two similarly trained men observed the same Okina-
wan children according to the same procedures. One of the two could
understand much of what was said by virtue of his command of Jap-
anese, while the other began without knowledge of the language. When
the protocols from the first few months, during which this difference
obtained, were scored, one might not have guessed from the results that
the two men had been observing children of the same culture.
It might not follow from the generic importance of language that the
nature of the particular language makes a difference. Yet the student of
linguistic change finds in the results of contact of languages myriad
instances of selection and reshaping of perceived phenomena ac-
cording to a particular language's patterns. The difference that the par-
ticular language makes is quite evident to the field worker (see Phillips,
330 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
1959-60, and Nadel, 1951, pp. 39-48). And it is on this more obvious
or phenomenological level that the student of personality encounters
language. Undoubtedly the differences among languages are underlain
by universals, by a grounding which in fact makes it possible for the
field worker to understand and use a linguistic system other than his
own. Undoubtedly also the apparent surface differences may conceal
more linguistic universals than we now see; some investigators have
gone to extremes in stressing the differences as against the similarities.
If work such as that of the Southwest Project quiets those who see
little but relativity, well and good. Yet it would be mistaken to see little
but similarities instead. The determination of similarities or universals,
i.e., the calibration of differences in linguistic background of which
Whorf spoke, is something to be achieved rather than assumed. We must
recal that Whorf stressed linguistic relativity partly so that it could
be transcended. He dramatized the facts of difference among languages,
not only for their interest, but also because to be ignorant of them was to
be their captive. In my opinion, differences in fact loom larger than uni-
formities on the level of description and analysis with which the student
of another culture must begin. The only sound heuristic advice is to as-
sume differences until proven otherwise,
A final point in this connection is that the sort of linguistic differences
which Whorf stressed and which are most important to the study of per-
sonality cross-culturally are habitual differences (see Whorf, 1941c). It
is irrelevant to point out, as some students have done, that human
beings probably differ little in what they can potentially perceive and
think and do. And it may be misleading to look for differences only in ex-
perimental situations which focus on unfamiliar tasks. Each of us might
discriminate, for example, many hues and tones and intensities of
color, had we the time and interest; but in naming as we run, and in
remembering, we fall back on the few conventional labels of ordinary
language. That is what the conventions of language are there for, in part.
It is in ordinary behavior in its natural habitat that the greatest influence
of linguistic habit is to be expected. One can find even better instances
than those with which Whorf began his most noted paper on the sub-
ject (1941c). Recently a student reported that her roommate had said,
"Let's put the radio by the radiator so it will warm up faster."
To sum up, there does not exist an experimentally precise and com-
plete demonstration that differences of language are a major factor
in differences in behavior and personality. However, theoretical con-
siderations and a variety of experiences indicate that they are. Such dif-
ferences do not override the similarities among men due to their com-
mon human nature and common natural world, but for the student of
personality in another culture, they loom large.
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 331
What of the use of language content as evidence for national charac-
ter, for particular cultural values, world views, or predominant cultural
themes, such as motion (Navaho) or preparation (Hop!)? Lenneberg
has harshly attacked such interpretations, and they have been cautiously
or coolly regarded in some recent conferences (Lenneberg, 1953;
Levi-Strauss, et al, 1953; Osgood, 1954; Hoijer, 1954). Two major
criticisms are circularity and anachronism. It is charged that the only
evidence is language itself, which is used both to suggest and to prove
the presence of values or outlooks. The linguist's analysis of a word, say,
in Apache, may break it down into units which have no separate psy-
chological reality for contemporary speakers of Apache; the analysis
may be descriptive etymology. 12 Also, the grammatical labels used in
the analysis may be artifacts of our linguistic tradition rather than psy-
chological facts for the Apache.
These points are valid criticisms of any attempt to predict non-lin-
guistic behavior or infer psychological reality from language content. To
so predict, we go and look, that is, experiment, if we wish to be sure.
Instead of regarding language content as a cause, however, we may re-
gard it as the result of past behavior. Though an idiom may have no
vitality for speakers now, it must have had when coined. For Apache
speakers today, a dripping spring may or may not seem "as water,
whiteness moves downward"; for them, the visual metaphor may be
dead. For some Apache speaker it was once live, and his coinage was
collectively approved. Different semantic patterns must result from
cumulative differences in the selective perceptions and cognitions of
speech communities over time. As historical products, semantic patterns
can be appropriately compared with other historically derived cultural
patterns, including those of personality.
Here recent changes in the language are especially important, since
they certify the relevance of a semantic trend. In one recent study,
Casagrande (1955, p. 24) observes:
The Comanche characteristically describe many new traits, particularly
implements and machines, in dynamic, functional terms rather than static
ones of color, size and shape. One is tempted to speculate whether this may
be correlated with Comanche personality as described by Kardiner who com-
ments upon, "the emphasis on activity itself," and notes their capacity to deal
skillfully, assertively and selfconfidently with the world.
The best fit between language and non-linguistic patterns is to be ex-
pected for those areas of learned behavior which are themselves
highly structured (see Emeneau, 1941, 1950). There is no question but
that particular words and sets of words are often suggestive or illuminat-
ing (see Stone, 1954). Hanks (1954) investigates a Blackfoot term for
"disregard where respect is normally valued"; "crazy," which has many
332 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
North American Indian parallels, has been studied (Casagrande,
1955, p. 24; Olson, 1956, n. 5; Hymes, field notes, for Chinookan).
Hallowell (1951, 1958) has good discussions of various Ojibwa words
and categories. Detailed investigation of a key term (Oliver, 1949, is a
fine example) or of an area of vocabulary which shows special elabora-
tion (Evans-Pritchard, 1940, pp. 41-48; Marsh and Laughlin, 1956;
Nida, 1949, 1958) these should be standard and rewarding fieldwork
practices. Casagrande (1948, p. 14) points out: "From the vocabulary
(of baby words) itself, one can form some idea of the child's world in a
given culture; what objects and affects impinge upon it." For an area
of key interest, such as personality, an understanding of the categories
held by the people studied is essential; analysis of the terms they use is
part of such understanding. Recent discussions of person perception,
while calling attention to the importance of people's own categories,
also rely very much on English terms for describing emotions and per-
sons (Bruner and Tagiuri, 1954; Tagiuri and Petrullo, 1958, p. x;
Hastorf, Richardson, and Dombusch, 1958; Bruner, Shapiro, and
Tagiuri, 1958), Full analysis of these terms is essential, both for the un-
derstanding of personality among groups of English speakers, and to
avoid semantic interference through the use of the terms as translations
and tags in the study of personality in other cultures. Allport and Odbert
(1936) pioneered in the descriptive study of English names for per-
sonality traits. In a notable study, Asch (1946) showed the importance
of particular terms such as "hot" and "cold" in people's judgment of per-
sonality. 13 Wishner (1960) has explored Asch's distinction between
"central" and "peripheral" traits, showing that this distinction depends
upon the correlations within particular clusters of traits. His remarks on
context, a structural point of view, and the use of antonyms point toward
some kinds of problems and methods now being dealt with in anthro-
pology and linguistics. In anthropology there is a renewal of interest in
fields of folk-science such as ethnobotany and folk-medicine, using a
linguistic approach to the study of native categories (see Conklin, 1955,
and Frake, 1961). There also is a renewed attention to semantic de-
scription on the part of linguists (see especially Haugen, 1957, and
Joes, 1958), This work is especially concerned with the qualitative and
hierarchical relations among categories, and the methods devised can
be applied to the vocabulary, such as trait-names, which is of importance
in personality study. (See also the mention of componential analysis
and the semantic differential later in this section.)
The absence of terms is often suggestive. For instance, there is a psy-
choanalytic interpretation of the absence of an English slang term for the
clitoris. Absence of a term for "square" in Zulu helps substantiate
findings based on other evidence (Allport and Pettigrew, 1957).
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 333
Three points about language categories should be kept particularly in
mind. First, an important categorization may be unexpressed linguisti-
cally. This is what Goodenough (1951, pp. 61-64) found for some
basic Trukese property relationships. Second, the linguistic categoriza-
tions studied may be but one way the society has of classifying certain
phenomena. If the Trukese grammatical category of possession is taken
as a way of expressing property relationships, then Truk is an example.
Lounsbury (1956) has shown that a full semantic analysis of Iroquois
kinship terminology reveals a simple, coherent system for keeping track
of relatives, but one that does not at all match the way relatives are
classified for purposes of clan membership. Third, there may be more
than one level of linguistic categorization. Conklin (1955) reports four
broad color categories in Hanunoo, and Leach (1958) mentions four
broad clan categories among the Trobrianders. In each case these are
found to be conventional classifications, and a different, much more
detailed categorization of colors and sub-clans, respectively is also
made.
The student of personality in another culture must conclude that non-
linguistic differences will partly depend upon or correlate with differ-
ences in language, but there is no simple way of telling how or in what
degree from a description of the language by itself. Lexical and
grammatical categories can be taken as important guides, especially so
the more frequently they are used, but the field worker is likely to have
to estimate frequency himself.
As McClelland (1951, p. 152) observes, regarding individual per-
sonality, psychologists usually want to use speech or language as evi-
dence of something else. Yet acts of speech and languages embody
expressions of personality in their own right. As I shall stress in the final
section of this chapter, speech and language are independent and varia-
ble in their relation to personality in different cultures. They may or may
not fit neatly with other evidence of personality, but it remains true that
an account of personality cannot be complete if it omits speech and lan-
guage.
One important caution is that cultural personality and language may
sort differently. The general question to what kind of cultural unit are
personality data to be related is discussed by Hallowell (1953, pp.
606607) in relation to languages.
It is a far cry from Whorf s broad and subtle fashions of speaking,
which coordinate linguistic data of all sorts, or from a pervasive semantic
trend, to the experimental testing of behavioral response to a specific
item of lexicon or grammar. What about the specific chunks of language
in between? Can linguistics say anything about the implications of these
for personality? This is a question of the implications of language typol-
334 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
ogy for cultural personality. The interest might be put this way: Studies
with English-speaking subjects have found correlation between various
linguistic traits and personality traits, the most cited being between
adjective-verb ratio and such traits as anxiety (Balken and Masserman,
1940; Boder, 1940; Sanford, 1942b). Can languages be taken as indi-
viduals writ large? If a difference in relative frequency of adjectives and
verbs can be significant for an individual personality within a speech-
community, could such a difference between speech-communities as
wholes be significant? What does it signify if in one language adjectives
are a subclass of nouns, but in another a subclass of verbs? I know no
reliable investigation of such questions. A great many factors might
work to preclude any personality significance for such differences, and
the danger of ethnocentric judgment is great. Still, it cannot be assumed
that languages differ from each other in these dimensions to no purpose.
Some factors of selection and shaping by generations of speakers have
been at work. One cannot rule out the possibility that factors which
underly the selection and shaping of individual speech patterns may
have been collectively pervasive in shaping the patterns of a lan-
guage. 14
There is one forthright declaration of a principle running through
individual speech, speech disorders, and linguistic codes, which it
would be revealing to attempt to measure: Jakobson's definition of the
metaphoric and metonymic poles (see Jakobson, 1957, or Jakobson
and Halle, 1957). In general, we know very little about language typol-
ogy. We are far from having adequate frameworks for analyzing lan-
guage types in purely linguistic terms, let alone for correlating them
with culture and personality. A little should be said about phonological,
grammatical and lexical type in order to indicate the present situation.
Jespersen once said the phonological pattern of a language reflected
psychological characteristics. English is "masculine," contrasting with
soft, musical "feminine" languages of Spain, Italy and Hawaii: "You do
not expect much vigor or energy in a people speaking such a language."
But one might equally well expect speakers of a "masculine" language to
be exhausted from the effort of articulating it, and the speakers of soft,
musical languages to have energy left for other things. Such specula-
tions have cast a shadow over any attempt to associate personality type
with phonological type. Other aspects of the use of sound may still have
significance. Martin (1958), exploring Japanese and Korean for keys to
national character, notes that
Korean has perhaps the richest and most extensive sound symbolism in the
world; each of over a thousand lexemes occurs not as an isolated item, but as
a set of words with systematic variations in shape that correspond to subtle
but structured differences In connotation. The Japanese system is feeble by
comparison.
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 335
Perhaps such a difference in oral behavior (and gratification) is corre-
lated with other differences.
In the nineteenth century there were many classifications of languages
into a limited number of grammatical types, using terms such as isolating,
agglutinating, inflecting, analytic, synthetic, polysynthetic. The classifi-
cations were often not logically consistent, often carried untenable evo-
lutionary implications, and did not correlate with anything else. In 1921
Sapir presented a subtle classification of languages into basic conceptual
types, but this approach has not been developed by others. Recently in-
terest in typology has revived among linguists, and broad surveys of
phonological systems have been made, but much is yet to be done for
the grammatical and lexical aspects of language, which are of most in-
terest to personality study.
One thing of obvious interest is how languages handle the category of
person itself. Hallowell (1958, p. 83) has said that "the concept of per-
son, like the concept of self, may be expected to appear as a cultural
universal"; it would seem to be a linguistic universal. Unfortunately,
there has been much speculative writing, but no adequate empirical
study. The one attempt by Forchheimer in 1953 does provide data
for some hypotheses. All natural languages seem to distinguish three per-
sons in the singular, and between singular and plural in the first person.
These four ("I," "thou," "it," "we") seem to be the universal, minimal
set (Hymes, 1955, p. 298). Brown and Oilman (1959) have made an
extensive study of the intimate second person pronoun in five Indo-
European languages, isolating two dimensions of power and solidarity to
explain usage and change of usage. These dimensions underly other
types of pronominal usage, as the two third persons of Navaho, or the
inclusive-exclusive distinction in the pronouns of many languages, and
enter into the speech levels of Korean as analyzed by Martin. Sapir
(1915) provides a wealth of examples of "person-implication* 5 in vari-
ous parts of language, and Haas (1944) formulates the dimensions in
terms of which male and female differences in several languages are
organized. The literature abounds with interesting reports of linguistic
phenomena relevant to the perception, categorization and evaluation
of persons; but such reports are typically not related to a theoretical
perspective. Recently Jakobson has definitively clarified the semantic
nature of the personal pronoun itself, ending a confusion that has pro-
liferated through the literature of linguistics and psychology (1957).
In the same paper he explicates the traditional grammatical categories
of the verb in a way that relates these categories to the concept of per-
son. The inclusion of verbal categories in any study of how languages
differ in their treatment of person is thus made possible. This work, and
that by Haas, Martin, Brown and Oilman, seeking to determine under-
lying dimensions, is an important step forward.
336 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
Here two methodological tools should be mentioned. One is com-
ponential analysis, which has been applied to kinship terms by Louns-
bury (1956) and Goodenough (1951, 1956), and to personal pronouns
by Wonderly (1952). It is a precise way of revealing semantic dimen-
sions not marked by words themselves. As a trivial example, the English
kin terms "father, mother; uncle, aunt; son, daughter; grandfather, grand-
daughter; brother, sister" 1 are differentiated by a semantic component of
sex, although gender is not overtly marked in any of them. Many seman-
tic components are not obvious at all, and a careful analysis produces
new knowledge. 15 A basic assumption is that the words can be treated as
members of a set, or "semantic field." Another tool is the semantic dif-
ferential, developed by Osgood and others ( 1957) , who devote a chapter
in their book to "Semantic Measurement in Personality and Psycho-
therapy Research." Most results are tentative but very promising. A
striking result is the success of the semantic differential with a case of
triple personality ("Eve White; 5 "Eve-Black," and "Jane"). Insofar as
the differential could reveal the conceptual structure of the three per-
sonalities, each was found to be differently organized in its responses to
it (Osgood et al, pp. 258-271). The instrument has been tested with
Japanese, Koreans, and some American Indian groups. The differential
is based on factor analysis of seven-interval scales, whose poles are op-
posed adjectives such as "fair": "unfair," "strong": "weak," "clean":
"dirty." Subjects score concepts such as "myself," "God," "baby,"
"mother," "Adlai Stevenson," by checking one of the intervals between
each adjectival pair. Osgood is especially interested in the potential
universality of the main factors that the differential reveals, but the cross-
cultural differences are likely to be of even greater interest. 16
Asch (1958) has called attention to the terms used to describe per-
sons and psychological qualities. He seeks general principles governing
the metaphorical extension of physical terms to attributes of personality,
but cultural differences in metaphorical pattern are equally striking.
Thus, English speakers commonly use animal terms to describe persons
("bearish," "mulish," "pigheaded"), but speakers of Zuni (Newman,
1954) and Wishram Chinook (Hymes, field notes) do not. Such differ-
ences in metaphorical pattern are a rich source of insight, especially when
one recalls the points made by Kenneth Burke, that every perspective re-
quires a metaphor, implicit or explicit, for its organizational base, and
that there is a vast area of reference, such as the supernatural, where
metaphor must be used.
Ullmann (1952, 1954) has done the most recent work to describe
whole languages in semantic terms that would have import for personal-
ity. His efforts have the value that they state explicit dimensions on
which to contrast languages semantically, but they, like efforts to treat
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 337
language differences developmentally (Werner and Kaplan, 1956;
Kaplan, 1957), suffer from the methodological defect that is shared by
most work which relates languages to culture and personality. An In-
triguing or plausible hypothesis is supported by examples, but the
whole of the relevant data is not systematically analyzed. As Weinreich
(1955) emphasizes, illustrations are not evidence. Ullman contrasts
French and German, a favorite pair for those seeking linguistic evidence
of national character differences (e.g., Thorner, 1945), but does not cite
negative instances or statistically evaluate them.
In sum, there is no doubt that differences in culture and personality
are related to differences in language. There is also little or no satisfactory
knowledge of the nature of the relationship. Before such knowledge can
be obtained, linguistics must tackle the problems of semantics much
more vigorously. It has adequate methods for penetrating the formal
structure of a language, but little has been done to develop methods for
semantic description. 17 Nor have the concepts required by semantic de-
scription received anything like the intensive analysis that has been
lavished on the phoneme and morpheme. A number of recent studies
have shown requlckening interest in such problems, so that there is prom-
ise that linguistics will be able to make more of a contribution to that
aspect of language most bound up with personality meaning. In the
meantime, students of personality In other cultures, if they believe in the
relevance of linguistic evidence, and make It part of their research, con-
tribute to linguistics as well as to their own field.
THE FUNCTIONS OF SPEECH
Under this rubric, I want to raise questions about the functions of
speech In a society, after a few words about the functions of speech
in general. Whereas In the preceding section we considered language
more as a "countersign of thought," here we will consider it more as a
"mode of action" (see Malinowski, 1923, p. 326).
Many have classified language and speech into various aspects, one of
the most popular classifications in American behavioral science being
that of Morris (1939) into syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics. For
relating the act of speech to personality and culture, Jakobson's classifi-
cation is much more adequate. He has summarized It In remarks at con-
ferences (1953, 1959). I can only adumbrate it here. As factors in the
speech situation, Jakobson recognizes the sender, the receiver, the topic
of reference, the code, and the message. All are involved in every com-
munication, but focus on one or another may dominate. As tags for the
associated functions, we may use the adjectives "expressive," "persua-
sive" or "rhetorical" (after Burke, 1951), "referential," "metalinguis-
338 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
tic," and "poetic." According to Jakobson, one such function is dominant
in each communication; the others are hierarchically arranged below it.
In other words, focus on the several factors is hierarchically arranged,
either from the viewpoint of the participants or of the analyst. To this
classification, I believe that at least the factor of context or scene should
be added (see Burke, 1945). There remain problems of interpretation
and application which cannot be analyzed here, except to mention the
point made earlier regarding the expressive function. One may either
identify certain features as manifestations of a particular function or
look at the whole message from the point of view of each function in
turn." We may simply note, then, that Jakobson's classification of speech
functions keeps a full set of relevant dimensions in mind, and can
probably subsume many familiar but more limited concepts, such as
Malinowski's "pfaatic communion" and Piaget's distinction between
"egocentric" and "socialized" speech. It is worth pointing out that a
sensitive analysis by Burke (1958) largely agrees with the Jakobson
formulation.
In what follows, my general conception of the relevant dimensions of
speech as a mode of social action is an application of recent theoretical
work by Talcott Parsons. I would distinguish four broad aspects of
speech activity: the cultural values and evaluations associated with
speech activity; the social structure of the contexts of speech activity; the
personalities who participate in speech activity (this and the preceding
being connected by the speech aspects of roles); and the array of lin-
guistic repertoires and routines available in the society for use in ap-
propriate roles and situations. In Parsonian notation, these four
aspects would be dubbed in order L I G A. Since I have but recently
developed this conceptual scheme, what follows is not an analytic ap-
plication of it, but a discursive essay on some of the questions which led
to its formulation. I want to call attention to some of the neglected ques-
tions about the specific functions of speech. My premise is that speech
is vital to personality, and that it varies significantly from society to so-
ciety in its role as an oral activity and acquired skill. Differences in this
regard seem as important as differences in the use of any other learned
mode of behavior or of any other sensory modality. Because of space
limitations, I shall be skimpy with illustrations, but there are many in the
ethnographic literature.
First, cultural differences in the importance and evaluation of speech
and language can be taken as something which reflects cultural per-
sonality and shapes the personality development of individuals. Speech
communities differ in their insistence on skill and precision in speech,
certainly as regards the use of their language by outsiders, probably as
regards Its use among themselves. People differ in their attitude towards
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 339
speech material of foreign origin. Some refuse to borrow from other
languages, some are extremely hospitable to foreign words. In multi-
lingual situations there are differences in identification with the different
languages, especially when one language is being replaced or threatened.
Swadesh comments: "Obviously we have here a rich area in which to ob-
serve the interplay of culture and personality" (Swadesh, 1948, p. 234).
Bniner (1956, pp. 617-619) shows the crucial importance of this for
the relation between primary group experience and acculturation. Peo-
ples also differ in their conscious interest in the resources of their
language and in their exploitation of them. I have mentioned sound
symbolism in Korean. The coinage of words by sound symbolism has be-
come a convention in American popular culture, especially in that part,
such as comic books, directed ostensibly toward children. (For Russian
attitudes see Mead and Metraux, 1953, pp. 166 ff.) Newman has bril-
liantly contrasted the style of Yokuts, an Indian language of California,
to that of English, as austere restraint vs. wild proliferation (Newman,
1940).
Peoples differ in their evaluation of talking, in the kinds of talk and
talkers that are conventionally recognized, and in the way talking enters
into the definition of statuses and roles. Differences in rewards and
expectations will have a selective effect on the development of personali-
ties. Peoples also differ in their criteria for verbal ability.
Second, personality is shaped and reflected by differences in the han-
dling of speech situations. Barker and Wright (1954) have used the
methods of psychological ecology to discover what they term the behav-
ior settings of a community. By speech situations I mean the distribution
of acts of speech in relation to behavior settings. Every society defines
this relationship in a characteristic way. Most generally, there are some
behavior settings in which speech is proscribed, some in which it is pre-
scribed, and some in which it is optional. 18 One must take into account a
society's own theory as to who has the power of speech. Supernatural
beings, animals, objects may variously be attributed this power. Wher-
ever a society attributes speech, or the power of comprehension, it cre,-
ates behavior settings in which speech can occur.
The first step in analyzing speech situations would be to discover
which behavior settings fall into which general class. The second would
be to analyze the contents of the classes. One major factor would be
the relative number of settings in each class: societies differ markedly in
their toleration of silence (or of talk, depending on the point of view) . In
what sort of settings is speech proscribed or prescribed? In relation to
what persons and roles? Are there settings specifically defined as occa-
sions for speech, such as confession, prayer, praise, oath-taking, therapy,
verbal training of children? In our society family table-talk has been
340 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
studied by Bossard (1948, Ch. VIII, IX). He finds it "a form of family
interaction, important in the identification of personality roles and the
development of personality traits" (p. 175). In some societies the family
is not together at meals; other behavior settings and different persons
would be more important for the kind of subtle, indirect verbal condi-
tioning of the child which Bossard describes.
In any society there is a congruence between speech and its setting,
whether the setting be defined in terms of time, place, or personnel
(e.g., Smith, 1958; Evans-Pritchard, 1948). Some settings not only re-
quire speech, but speech about certain topics or the use of certain expres-
sions. From a psychoanalytic viewpoint, Devereux has highlighted cul-
tural differences in the settings in which profanity can occur, the objects
toward which it can be addressed, and what its use reveals about charac-
ter structure (Devereux, 1951). What one cannot talk about, what one
must talk about, when, where, and to whom these differ in ways that
involve differences in personality.
The content of speech plays a dual role regarding behavior settings. A
situation may define what kind of speech is appropriate. Speech itself
may serve to define a situation, and speech manipulation to define am-
biguous situations may be an important skill. This dual role of speech in-
volves usages shared by classes, regions, local communities, families,
occupants of certain statuses and roles, and even pairs of individuals. On
the broadest scale, levels of speech recognized throughout a society are
involved (see Bloomfield, 1927). The way these differ from one society
to another is itself significant. Thus, "the lack of congruence even be-
tween the conventional usage scales for English and French (slang-
colloquial-standard vs. vulgaire-populaire-jamilier, etc.) reflects an im-
portant difference in the linguistic sociology of the two communities"
(Weinreich, 1955fa, p. 538 ). 20
Some differences in speech behavior seem constant across behavior
settings, depending on the persons communicating. An Ainu husband
uses his wife's personal name to her, but she may never address him by
his. Sapir (1915) and Haas (1944) discuss phenomena of this sort,
such as differences in the speech of men and women. Still, the persons
involved communicate in certain behavior settings rather than others, so
that particular usages become linked to particular situations. Occurrence
of these usages elsewhere may refer to such situations, perhaps as a com-
ment on personality, for instance, use of baby-talk to insult an adult.
An important point Is made by Sapir:
Generally speaking, the smaller the circle, and the more complex the
understanding already arrived at within it, the more economical can the act
of communication afford to become. A single word passed between members
of an intimate group, in spite of its apparent vagueness, and ambiguity, may
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 341
constitute a far more precise communication than volumes of carefully pre-
pared correspondence interchanged between two governments. (1931, p. 79)
This seems to be the principle underlying effective use of speech sur-
rogates, such as the Mazateco whistle speech or West African dram
signals. 21 It also underlies functionally specialized idioms, such as the
argot of Ethiopian merchants, or the speech disguise of Tagalog young
people (Conklin, 1956, 1959). Friedson (1956) suggests use of the
principle as a measure of a speaker's perception of his intimacy with his
audience. In general, one would want to know what settings permit
conventional or individual economizing in communication.
Behavior settings may differ in the very language or code used. The
choice may be for concealment, prestige, or effective communication,
and differences will reveal and shape personality. Weinreich (1953)
analyzes many of the factors Involved.
To function successfully as an adult personality, the child growing into
a speech community must acquire a mastery of several sets of rules. He
must of course learn the phonological rales, the grammatical rules, the
semantic rales, which make an utterance a proper part of the language,
and which make possible the vital cultural property of language, the
production and understanding of novel utterances. There are the rales of
the parallnguistic system, of speech as expressive and persuasive behav-
ior. As Luria (1959a, 1959b) has shown, the child must also learn or
grow to associate utterances with actions. Linked perhaps with this kind
of "directive" or "adaptive" function of speech is another aspect of
speech activity which is also separate from knowing the rales of the lin-
guistic code proper. The successful adult must have mastered some part
of the available linguistic routines and repertoires; he must judge not
only of possible utterances, but also of their appropriate distribution
among roles and behavior settings. He must learn not only how to say,
but what to say. With all of this must go the internalization of certain at-
titudes toward speech activity and his language or languages.
Let us consider now the differences in the role that speech may play
in the actual process of socialization, first regarding the onset and rate of
language development, then regarding the context of development.
It is clear that children differ in the age at which speaking begins, and
in the rate at which they master language. To some extent this is innate,
but much depends upon cultural expectation and family situation. Num-
ber and relative age of siblings is one factor; only children have been
found superior to children-with-siblings, and twins often develop spe-
cial systems of communication, reducing the need for acquiring the lan-
guage of adults, while slngletons-with-siblings resemble twins more than
only-children (Anastasi and Foley, 1949, pp. 337 ff. summarize a num-
ber of studies). These results are from studies of North American chil-
342 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
dren, but the cross-cultural implication is clear. Language develop-
ment in children can be expected to vary with any social, cultural or
ecological conditions affecting the makeup of the household.
Most studies of language development are linguistically inadequate,
seizing upon external criteria such as number of words and length of ut-
terances, whereas the essential thing is mastery of patterns, which must
be studied in terms of a structural analysis of the language (Leopold,
1953-54) . Only bare beginnings of such study have been made (Jakob-
son, 1942; Velten, 1943; Leopold, 1939-1948; Kahane, Kahane, and
Saporta, 1958). Still the results discussed by Anastasi and Foley are
significant. The importance of the age and rate at which language is
achieved is succinctly stated by Bossard: "the acquisition of language is
necessary to set into motion the two conditioning factors of social inter-
action and cultural background which mold the personality of the child"
(1948, pp. 177-178). Thus children who differ in the age at which
language is acquired must differ in the age at which much of culture is
acquired, particularly that whole range of culturally-defined reality
which depends on language, such as the supernatural. They will also
differ in the part of their first years that is accessible in later life (see
Schachtel, 1947). A child who has successfully interacted with its en-
vironment without speech for a longer time may be more independent of
language's shaping effect in later life.
Societies may differ not only in the age at which children typically
acquire speech, but also in the context of its acquisition. For any so-
ciety, one would want answers to such questions as: When is the child
considered capable of understanding speech? Among the Tlingit, for in-
stance, "when the infant is but a few months old the mother talks to
him, tells him his moral tales, 'trains' Mm" (Olson, 1956, p. 681). Is
acquisition of speech accompanied by pressure, or treated as something
that comes in due course? Are there special word games or speech
patterns for teaching children? If there is pressure, at what stage of
psychosexual development is the pressure applied? When are other so-
cialization pressures applied, before or after the acquisition of speech?
Various writings make clear that pressure, deprivation, and overprotec-
tion may variously induce speech defects or the preservation of infantile
speech habits (Kluckhohn, 1954, p. 944; Lemert, 1952; Henry and
Henry, 1940; Klausner, 1955).
To what extent is a child rewarded by verbal praise, in contrast to ma-
terial rewards such as candy, or physical affection? To what extent is
the child punished by verbal reprimand, as opposed to deprivation, or
physical pain? What is the conception of proper speech behavior on the
part of the child, relative to particular persons and behavior settings?
Are a child's questions about words and meanings welcomed or rebuffed?
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 343
Overall, is a child allowed much or little oral gratification through
speech? Is a child encouraged, discouraged, or ignored in efforts to find
satisfaction in speech play? What is the proportion of speech activity to
communication by other means, such as gestures, on the part of the
child?
Are there special settings for verbal instruction of children? If there
are, how frequent and with what personnel, and about what topics? Is
the instruction conventionalized in content, as are proverbs and myths,
or only in theme? Is the tone of instruction categorical, as among many
American Indian groups, or not, as in West Africa? Is sex involved?
There is no sex instruction of the young among the Nupe (Nadel, 1954),
but many American Indian children were forced to listen to a mythology
rife with sexual incidents.
Does speech enter into the continuities and discontinuities in cultural
conditioning (Benedict, 1938)? Every child learns a special version of
its language first, usually its family's but that is a minor discontinuity;
more significant may be "baby-talk." Is there a specialized "baby-talk"?
How elaborated? What is its cultural content? Among American Indians,
a Hidatsa mother stated: "We don't like baby talk . . . when they talk,
we want them to talk just like us, right from the start" (Voegelin and
Robinett, 1954, p. 69, n. 6), whereas the Comanche had an unusually
rich, formalized vocabulary of special words used to teach the child to
speak between one year and three or four (Casagrande, 1948). Though
thought of as simple, baby-talk may be as difficult as the adult language.
Herzog (1949, p. 97) says some features of Comanche baby-talk are
as difficult to pronounce as corresponding features of the adult vocabu-
lary, and Ferguson (1957) finds some of the most difficult sounds in the
language to be among the most frequent in Arabic baby talk. The great-
est discontinuity may come in the multilingual situation. Perhaps the
most striking case is the Chontal of Zapotec, Mexico, where children
are taught Spanish first, learning Chontal when as adolescents they enter
the cultural life of the adult community (Waterhouse, 1949). Here an
important factor seems parents' desire for children's success in the Span-
ish-using school. The children actually are forbidden the use of Chontal
by their parents, for fear it will impede school progress.
One would expect differences in all these regards to correlate with dif-
ferences in the functions of speech in the adult society and with the
evaluation of speech activity in the adult culture. One could use the
methods developed by Whiting and Ford to test hypotheses such as
this: does the importance of verbal reward and punishment in socializa-
tion correlate with the importance of verbal interaction with the super-
natural in adult life? Does late acquisition of speech correlate with an im-
portance of glossolalia ("speaking in tongues") in adult religious life? 22
344 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
To conclude: language is a prerequisite of human society, but beyond
this universal function, its significance varies from group to group.
Speech is but one mode of communication, and its use involves the choice
of one sensory modality as opposed to others. Societies and persons differ
In the extent to which they choose this modality, the situations in which
they choose it, and their evaluation of it. They differ in the ways speech
enters into the definition of situations, conceptions of personality types,
the socialization of the child. Its universality should not make us forget
that speech activity, like sex and weaning, is a variable for the study of
personality cross-culturally.
NOTES
1. Much of the stimulus for this work has come from the Committee on
Psychology and Language of the Social Science Research Council.
2. See the discussion of gathering and collation in Hockett, 1958, Ch. 12.
3. Space does not permit a detailed example, but see Twaddell (1935)
and Hockett (1955, section 3232) for discussion of a favorite crux in Amer-
ican descriptive linguistics: the relation of the second consonant in spill to
the first consonants of pill and bill.
4. Trager and Smith (1951) is a milestone in this regard; again, Hockett
(1958) Is the best introduction. Householder (1957b) and Bollinger (1958),
and the references they cite, show that a definitive analysis is yet to be
stated, but the Trager-Smith system provides an adequate working model.
5. Devereux (1949) has remained one of the very few reports of such
phenomena in a non-Western society.
6. Stankiewicz has an excellent manuscript on expressive language, on
which I have drawn.
7. See Sapir (1915) and Herzog (1949) for a variety of American In-
dian examples; see McDavid (1952-53) for social differences in American
English.
8. See also, with regard to the role of language, Miller, 1956b, 1956c;
Miller, Galanter and Pribram, I960; and Pavlov, 1957, p. 537.
9. See the review of perceptual studies dealing with word recognition in
Allport, 1955.
10. Thus the chapter on "Socialization" in the Handbook of Social Psy-
chology (LIndzey, 1954) has a section on "oral behavior" but does not men-
tion speech.
11. Luria and Yuovich, 1959, pp. 11-12 declare: "The study of the
child's mental processes as the product of intercommunication with the en-
vironment, and the acquisition of common experiences transmitted by
speech, has, therefore, become the most important principle of Soviet psy-
chology which Informs all research." This follows the statement (p. 11) :
"By naming objects, and so defining their connections and relations, the
adult creates new forms of reflection of reality in the child, incomparably
deeper and more complex than those which he would have formed through
HYMES: Linguistic Aspects 345
individual experience. This whole process of the transmission of knowledge
and the formation of concepts, which is the basic way the adult influences
the child, constitutes the central process of the child's intellectual develop-
ment. If this formation of the child's mental activity in the process of edu-
cation is left out of consideration, it is impossible either to understand or to
explain causally any of the facts of child psychology."
12. Pulgram (1954) makes a vigorous attack on the use, without histori-
cal perspective, of linguistic evidence for national character.
13. Wishner (1960, p. 96) states that Asch reduced part of the problem
of how we know others to manageable proportions, and that "one of Asch's
more important contributions was to devise an experimental procedure
whereby the general problem is formulated in linguistic terms."
14. Doob (1958, p. 401) finds that from a practical point of view the
study of the personality correlates of grammatical style "is by itself not a
useful or feasible clinical instrument." One team of investigators (Benton,
Hartman, and Sarason, 1955) later found no correlation between the often-
cited adjective-verb quotient and manifest anxiety. Yet, as we have indi-
cated, to be important within the total picture of a personality, it is not nec-
essary for a linguistic trait to be highly diagnostic in isolation. Moreover,
the right grammatical traits may not have been found. Perhaps a folk-science
type of exploratory work is needed to discover if the users of the language
themselves notice, distinguish or respond to grammatical aspects of person-
ality expression. These might exist and yet not be the conventional classes
that loom large in memories of the schoolroom and in ordinary grammars.
Such traits may be more fine-grained. Teachers of composition, despite their
frequent misplaced pedantry, work closer to the uses of grammar that may
convey personality than do many grammarians. In any event, Doob's judg-
ment is with regard to individual differences. In my view, personality, like
style, is a term that can be applied at successive levels of generality. Es-
sentially it indicates differences among the members of a set. Often the set
we have in mind is a society or culture and it is individuals who differ. But
we can equally well have in mind a set of societies or cultures, and consider
the differences in style or personality not within but between them. This is
of course the perspective which underlies the relevance for personality of
most of the discussion of the content of language in this chapter, and it ap-
plies to other sectors of language and speech as well as to grammar.
15. See Wallace and Atkins (1960), on the psychological reality of the
components.
16. See reviews by Carroll (1959) and Weinreich (1958) and the ex-
change between Osgood (1959) and Weinreich (1959).
17. See Hoijer (1954, pp. 98-99), Newman (1954), Garvin (1958), be-
sides those cited already for contributions to this development.
18. On such recurrent problems of "selecting and grouping in attention,"
see Sinclair (1951).
19. See Woods (1956, pp. 26-29) for examples of culturally prescribed
reticence.
20. On levels in non-European communities, see Newman (1955), Mar-
tin (1958).
346 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
21. See Stern (1957) for a conceptualization aod survey of speech sur-
rogates.
22. See May (1956), for a survey of such phenomena as glossolalia.
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About the Chapter
Art, folklore and literature are aspects of culture that tell us much about
modal personality processes. On the one hand, they are institutions of so-
cialization, having the function of communicating key values and attitudes,
and on the other, they reflect key personality processes in a kind of cul-
turally sanctioned fantasy. In addition, they often seem interpretable in the
same terms that projecfive techniques are, although one must decide to
what or to whom the interpretations refer.
The present chapter is divided into two parts. The first part presents an
interpretation of the social and personal significance of artistic productions
and suggests how the analysis of art can contribute to an understanding of
personality processes. The second part is an account of the literature of psy-
chological interpretation of art and folklore. In this literature, which is one
of the most fascinating parts of the culture and personality field, we find a
meeting place in which anthropology, psychology, psychoanalysis, art and
literary criticism are all concerned with the same phenomena.
About the Authors
GEORGE DEVEREUX'S bibliographical note appears at the beginning of
Chapter 6.
WESTON LA BARRE, educated at Princeton and Yale, is Professor of An-
thropology at Duke University, and has also taught at Rutgers, New York
University, Wisconsin, Northwestern, North Carolina, and Minnesota. He
has been Sterling Fellow of Yale, an SSRC post-doctoral fellow, and Gug-
genheim Fellow; in 1958 he received the Roheim Award. In area an Ameri-
canist, in interests he is a student of culture-and-personality, psychoanalyti-
cally-oriented anthropology, native narcotics, and primitive religion and art.
He is the author of books on Peyote, the Aymara, and The Human Animal.
11
Art and Mythology
PART I: A GENERAL THEORY
GEORGE DEVEREUX, Temple University School of Medicine
PART II: THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PROBLEM
WESTON LA BARRE, Duke University
I. A GENERAL THEORY *
I he study of the relevance of art for the investigation of problems of cul-
ture and personality is severely handicapped by the inadequacy of basic
studies which seek to clarify:
(1) The nature of art,
(2) The socio-cultural function of art,
(3) The psychological function of art.
The entire field is so poorly understood that Freud himself "threw in
the towel" in a study devoted to Leonardo da Vinci, and declared that
the explanation of the nature of genius is, for the time being, beyond the
powers of psychoanalysis (Freud 1910, 1930). With a few exceptions,
the relevant studies on art compare unfavorably with the conceptual
tautness and methodological rigorousness of psychoanalytic and/or cul-
ture and personality investigations of science, such as Sachs' (1942)
essay on the delay of the machine age. Last but not least, both cultural
and psychological studies of the most essential of all arts music are,
on the whole, more disappointing and also much less numerous than are
similar studies devoted to the other arts.
* This portion of the chapter by George Devereux is the second (1959)
Geza R6heim Memorial Award Lecture.
36!
362 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
Art versus Expressive Behavior
The first distinction to be made In clarifying the nature of art pertains
to the difference between art and expressive behavior, including quasi-
artistic projective tests. If mere "expressiveness" and/or "projecting"
were the criteria whereby one determines whether a given product is art
or something else, then the bellowing of an agitated catatonic the al-
most uninhibited expression of a hypothalamic storm would be the
most genuine of all arts. Conversely, were style and other conventions
the true criteria of art, then classroom exercises in strict counterpoint
would represent the summit of artistic behavior.
Definition of Art
Ideally, the dynamic criterion of art is the straining of pure affect
against pure (culturally structured) discipline, and the incidental evolv-
ing of new roles which permit the less and less roundabout manifesta-
tion of more and more affect and also of hitherto artistically unusable
affect segments within an expanded, but internally even more coherent,
discipline. The discipline itself the rules of the game is the means
whereby society determines whether a given expressive act represents
art or something else, and also whether the product in question is good,
mediocre or bad art. The relevance of the first of these functions of the
"discipline" is best highlighted by the fact that folk and primitive arts
have only recently been recognized as genuine art, though artistic objects
of that type have existed long before they were recognized as art.
The arbitrariness of the rules whereby an item is adjudged to be good
art is revealed by the fact that Beethoven's Violin Concerto was
derisively called a "concerto for tympani" because most "improperly"
the first solo instrument heard is the tympanum. Hanslick ironically
called Liszt's First Piano Concerto a "Triangle Concerto," because
Liszt conspicuously used that instrument as part of the percussion sec-
tion. Even the kind and the amount of affect demanded or allowable is
culturally regulated. An early critic called Beethoven's Violin Concerto
"vulgar." The intellectually brilliant and musically impeccable "roman-
tic" music criticism of Schumann and of Berlioz used, side by side with
purely musical considerations, also the quality and intensity of affect as a
yardstick of musical excellence. Today's music criticism is as conscious
of affect as Schumann's was, but appraises affect negatively. It considers
an emotional deep freeze and a "well aereted" score the acme of
excellence, and demands a spuriously baroque music for spuriously
baroque organization men. This, by the way, may explain why those
who also seek affect in music sometimes take refuge in the hypothalamie
orgies of modern jazz, so as to sate the affect hunger left unstilled by
DEVEREUX: Art and Mythology 363
listening to tinny filaments of sound emitted by poorly balanced chamber
orchestras.
It is implicit in the preceding considerations that art is basically a
medium of communication, and conforms to certain rules which repre-
sent the grammar and syntax of a kind of meta-language. This finding
raises further questions as to the legitimacy of treating "Draw a man" or
"TAT" tests as art forms. It is my view that, insofar as such tests rep-
resent art, they are communications directed at an audience of one
the tester. Moreover, the testee's communication is couched in a 'lan-
guage" whose grammar and vocabulary the tester must decipher, the
way Champollion deciphered the Rosetta stone. Indeed, in test produc-
tions a kind of Alice in Wonderland system holds sway: Things mean
only what the test subject unconsciously intends them to mean. This
point is important enough to warrant a brief discussion of "tests and art."
A number of tests exist in which the subject is called upon to create
"art" or else to respond to "art"; the first type being represented by
Draw-a-Man and related tests, the second by the TAT and perhaps also
the Rorschach tests. It is my thesis that these tests do not really meet the
basic criteria which differentiate art from other activities.
( 1 ) The subject's behavior is primarily expressive rather than an act
of communication. Insofar as he communicates at all, he has an audience
of one: the tester. Moreover, the validity qua test of the subject's
productions decreases as his orientation to the tester increases and as his
productions become communication rather than expression.
(2) In optimum cases in the testing sense the production is pure
expressive behavior, which is then transformed by the tester into a
communication or, more specifically, into information. The tester is,
thus, not functioning like a person addressed in normal communication.
In the case of the latter, the communicator makes an effort to couch Ms
communication in terms understandable to his interlocutor. He uses a
language known to the latter, an audible intensity of voice production,
etc. What "noise" there is, is largely filtered out and is meant to be
filtered out. Moreover, both the speaker and the listener usually agree
on what is information and what is noise. The opposite is true in testing:
What, to the subject, is information which he communicates, may be
largely "noise" to the tester, and what may seem "noise" to the testee may
represent information for the tester. Moreover, the "grammar" of that
portion of the testee's communication which is of interest to the tester
must be reconstructed by the tester himself. It Is not a "given," except
empirically, in the sense in which certain Rorschach responses have been
empirically found to "mean" the presence of a certain trait.
Practically none of the considerations discussed in this section are ap-
plicable to genuine art, whose language is, by definition conventional.
364 Methodology in Cross-Cultural Personality Study
Whether this convention demands that the human figure remain more or
less undistorted, or that it be distorted according to certain rules;
whether it demands as early non-unison music theory did nothing
but parallel fifths, or whether it taboos parallel fifths all this is irrele-
vant. What is relevant, is that there is a kind of convention, and that
this convention must be viewed in a historical perspective, as an elabora-
tion of, or as a reaction against, the rules of an earlier period. The taboo
on parallel fifths outlaws the basic rules of an earlier practice and at
least some of the objectives of modern "neo-classical" music are those
of the romantics turned upside down (Barzun 1950).
The culturally standardized "discipline" of art is therefore of prime
concern to the student of culture and personality. The rules of artistic
communication, of which this discipline is made up, must be understood
as cultural conventions. The anthropologist must study the grammar, the
syntax and even the chosen vocabulary of art. He must trace changes in
the ratio between consonances and dissonances, between "noble" and
"four letter" words, etc. Moreover, he must realize that the intrusion of
four letter words into the artist's vocabulary did not expand the verbal
palette of literature. The genuine expressive gain represented by these
crude terms was balanced by an impoverishment of the palette in such
words as "noble," "elevated," "sublime," and the like, dear to romantics.
The student of culture may neither approve nor lament this change.
Rather must he stress that the evolution of every style represents a pat-
terned enrichment in one direction and impoverishment in another
direction, both as regards the building blocks at the artist's disposal, and
the range of affects deemed artistically acceptable by society. This im-
poverishment, balanced by enrichment, is never random and is as
Kroeber (1957) apparently did not fully realize the very essence of
style. Indeed, "let us have a roll in the hay" and "we shall walk hand in
hand under the starry sky" mean the same thing behavioristically . . .
and, now and then, even emotionally, alas. What concerns the student
of culture is simply this: Which of these two utterances is accepted as
artistic (and authentic) by a given society, at a given point in history?
At this juncture we must realize that, insofar as a style represents both
an enrichment and an impoverishment, insofar as style is a method of
selection, it inevitably implies a distortion. In relatively unsophisticated
art, the distortion affects primarily the substantive content of the state-
ment or utterance: the sculptor may shorten the legs of the human
figure; the novelist may populate his human scene with ideally pure
women and double dyed villains; the composer of a canon may discard
an inspired passage which comes to his mind, because it would disrupt
the orderly development of a strict canon; the writer of a sonnet may re-
mold an image in order to submit to the rhyme pattern and may short
DEVEREUX: A rt and Mythology 365
circuit his chain of thought in order not to exceed 14 lines. In some cases
the artist's physical material (medium) itself imposes distortions upon
the utterance: the fragility of marble and its inability to stand much
stress calls for a far more compact structure than does bronze. Hence, in
some marble statuary certain elements are included solely in order to sup-
port the weight of a jutting body or limb. A truly great artist like the
sculptor of Laocoon makes these structural additions seem indispensa-
ble and integral parts of his utterance, so that it is felt to be "communica-
tion" rather than "noise." The lesser artist asks us to Ignore the presence
of an inexplicable truncated pillar under the belly of a rearing horse,
In a Beethoven piano sonata the high treble imitation of a motif,
first played at a middle level, is changed because, in Beethoven's times,
the piano keyboard did not extend as far up as it does at present. Hence,
many modern pianists play that passage not the way Beethoven actually
wrote it, but the way he would have written it, had he had a modern,
extended keyboard piano at his disposal. In some instances certain
earlier material or performer limitations of the artistic utterance are
consciously exploited by the modern artist to produce striking effects.
The Hungarian peasant singer, whose untrained voice has a smaller
range than has that of a concert singer and who, moreover, does not
know enough about music to transpose a song so that its range will
not exceed the range of his voice, sometimes replaces a step of a
second downward, which is too low for him, with a leap of a seventh
upward. This "clumsiness 13 of peasant singers was transmuted into an
artistic device by Bartok. Examples of such octave displacements in
Bartok's violin sonatas are given by Stevens (1953), who cogently re-
marks: "This device is not resorted to indiscriminately; in the First
Sonata it gives the distinctive shape to the waltz-like second member of
the principal thematic complex, and is thereafter used, with very few
exceptions, only for reference to that member." An image inspired
by the rhyme pattern is a comparable phenomenon, revealing the cre-
ative side of technique.
In over-sophisticated art the medium itself is subjected to distortion.
Such manipulations range from maximal but spurious nondistortion, as
in "trompe 1'oeiT paintings, to Liszt's passion for experimenting with
out-of-tune pianos, 1 to Joyce's schizophrenoid experiments with lan-
guage and to those of some modem poets with punctuation. The latter
maneuver reaches a pathetic climax of absurdity in a semi-pornographic
French novel, in which a sexual act between a woman and an ape is
"described" for nearly a whole page exclusiv 