Social Identity,

Personality, and Gender

Lecture Outline Nature-nurture controversy Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory Piaget’s Cognitive Development theory What is enculturation? How does enculturation influence personality? World-view beliefs Are different personalities characteristic of

different cultures? Stereotypes Gender Normal behaviour

The Self and the Behavioral Environment

Culture is created and learned rather than biologically inherited.

All societies must ensure that culture is transmitted from one generation to the next.

Enculturation begins soon after birth.

Piaget’s Cognitive Development theory

- Sensorimotor stage – birth to year 2- Preoperational stage – 2 to 6 or 7(conservation, centration, irreversability,

egocentrism, animism)- Concrete operations stage - 6 or 7 to 11- Formal operational stage - 11 through

adulthood

Transition from stage to stage – gradual2 mechanisms responsible for movement from one stage to the

next: - Assimilation- Accomodation

Enculturation

AGENTS:

- People – parents, siblings, extended families, peers

- Institutions and organizations

Parents

Parenting styles:

- Authoritarian- Permissive- Authoritative- Uninvolved

Exposure to peer groups

- Postfigurative cultures

- Configurative cultures

- Prefigurative cultures (according to Margaret Mead)

Self Awareness

The ability to:

– Identify oneself as an object.– React to oneself.– Appraise or evaluate oneself.

Attaching positive value to the self ensures individuals act to their own advantage.

Requirements for Self-awareness

Object orientation - aware of the world of objects other than self.

Spatial orientation - the ability to get from one object, or place, to another.

Requirements for Self-awareness

Temporal orientation - able to connect past actions with those in the present and future.

Normative orientation - understanding of cultural values, ideals, and standards.

Personality

Refers to the distinctive ways a person thinks, feels, and behaves.

Most anthropologists believe adult personality is shaped by early childhood experiences.

The economy helps structure the way children are raised and this influences their adult personalities.

Oedipus Complex

Oedipus complex, a concept used in psychoanalysis, is a child's unconscious desire for the exclusive love of the parent of the opposite sex. This desire includes jealousy toward the parent of the same sex and the unconscious wish for that parent's death. 

The term Oedipus complex was first used by the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. It comes from the myth of Oedipus, a Greek hero who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. Freud used the term to describe the unconscious feelings of children of both sexes toward their parents. However, later researchers used the term Electra complex for the complex in girls. According to Greek legend, a woman named Electra helped plan the murder of her mother. 

Freud believed that the Oedipus complex is a normal part of human psychological growth. The Oedipal phase of development is commonly considered to last from the age of 2 to 6. During this period, children experience intense feelings - love and hate, yearning and jealousy, fear and anger - that produce emotional conflicts. Most people outgrow the Oedipal phase, but some mentally ill individuals have a strong Oedipus complex as adults. According to Freud, the principal reason for the weakening of the complex in boys is the fear of punishment from the father. 

Freud thought that all peoples experience the Oedipus complex. But many anthropologists and researchers in psychoanalysis doubt that the complex exists in certain non-Western societies. They believe it develops as a result of a person's social environment and does not occur in everyone.

What Are Your World-view Beliefs? (complex of motivations, perceptions, and beliefs that we internalize and that strongly affect how we interact with other people

and things in nature.) 

1.    Do you believe that things are interrelated in complex ways and that there are degrees of difference?  In contrast, do you see things in terms of sharp distinctions?  To put it another way, are issues usually black and white for you or do you see them as having gray areas?  For example, is lying to a friend always wrong?  Are some lies less bad because they are intended to prevent your friend from feeling bad about something or being disillusioned?

2. Do you prefer things to be unchanging and stable?  Do you like to do things the same traditional way every time?  In contrast, do you prefer to do things in new ways, and do you enjoy having a changing and unpredictable life?  For example, when you go out to dinner, do you like to go to the same restaurant every time and order the same sort of food or do you like to take a risk and try new restaurants and foods that are unknown to you?

3. Do you like to take unnecessary personal physical risks or are you content with the safe path through life?  For example, do you enjoy rock climbing, surfing big waves, or other sports that inherently involve a high risk for your safety?  Do you get bored when you are not looking forward to such risky activities?  When mentally calculating the risk potential of an activity, you probably compare it subconsciously to your own personal internal anxiety-security scale.  High risk activities move you in the direction of anxiety.  Low risk ones move you toward security.  At which end of this scale are you the happiest?  Does security mean boredom for you or comfort?

4.Do you prefer competition or cooperation?  For example, do you like games in which there are clear winners and losers or would you rather spend your time in non-competitive activities in which winning is not a goal?  It is worth noting that businesses in the Western World run on the basis of competition with each other.  The winners make more money and the losers go broke.  Likewise, most sports are highly competitive.  Basketball, football, hockey, and track events are all designed to result in winners and losers.  Are you comfortable with this?

Two Patterns of Child Rearing

Dependence training - promotes compliance in and favors keeping individuals within the group.

Independence training - emphasizes individual independence, self-reliance, and personal achievement.

National Character Studies

Focused on the modal characteristics of modern countries.

Many anthropologists believe national character theories are based on unscientific and overgeneralized data.

Francis Hsu - Core valuesEg. Chinese – value kin ties and cooperation North Americans of European descent – „rugged

individualism” (competition, rise of unmarried couples)

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are very different from legitimate cultural generalizations that are based on careful scientific study or positive personal experience.

Stereotypes are social constructs they originate in & reflect the power relations in society

because they are part of a culture's ideology

they foster values that reinforce group and individual subordination

they marginalize people, treating them as "the other„ they categorize people into groups whose members

supposedly share inevitable characteristics, most typically, negative ones

Characteristics of stereotypes stereotypes are categorical & general,

suggesting the traits apply to all group members

they are inflexible or rigid, thus not easily corrected

they are simplistic they are prejudgements not based on

experience (They could be reinforced by negative personal experience.)

can be conscious or unconscious

Logical form of sentence asserting a stereotype: All x's are y.

For example, complete the blank with an adjective:

All women are _____________. Black men are ______________. White women are ___________. Athletes are _______________. Lesbians are ________________.

GenderGender role – refers to the degree to which a

person adopts the gender-specific bahaviours ascribed by his/her culture

Gender identity – refers to the degree to which a person has awareness or recognition that he/she adopts a particular role

Gender sterotypes- refer to the psychological or behavioral characteristics typically associated with men and women

IntersexualsTransgenders

- people who crossover or occupy a culturally acceptable intermediate position in the binary male-female gender construction:

Lacota – winkte – third-gender individuals, a male”who wants to be a woman”

Tagolag-speaking people of the Philipines – bakla – „a male with a female heart”

„two-spirit”

Normal Behavior

What defines normal behavior in any culture is determined by the culture itself.

What may be acceptable in one culture may not be in another.

Abnormality involves the development of a delusional system of which the culture does not approve.

People are considered insane when they fail to conform to a culturally defined range of normal behaviour.