HOW CULTURE AFFECTS PERSONALITY
How Culture Affects Personality
How Culture Affects Personality
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HOW CULTURE AFFECTS PERSONALITY
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When the personality of a person is questioned, many tend to forget that there are
a variety of factors that affect it. There is an unseen factor that is overlooked, culture. Loosely
defined, culture refers to the shared values, beliefs and norms of a specific group of people.
Culture is transmitted through language, media messages, cultural practices and institutions,
values and artifacts, and through the modeling of behavior (Markus & Kitayama, 1994). While
personality is often defined as the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an
individual's distinctive character.When people fail to understand influence of culture on
personality, they often attribute someones irritating actions to the actual individual. What they
don't understand is that these actions are often due to cultural norms that they were grown up
with. Culture can have an impact on the“Big Five” and how they are shown in the individual.
The “Big Five” are : extroversion versus introversion, neuroticism (negative emotionality)
versus emotional stability, agreeableness versus antagonism, conscientiousness versus
impulsiveness , and openness to experience versus resistance to new experience. Although
numerous believe that culture does not have an impact on personality, it does have an indirect
effect.
Culture provides countless rules that determine the actions of people in life and
their beliefs. It is said that there are two types of cultures, indiculaist and collectivist.
Individualist cultures are defined as cultures in which the self is regarded as autonomous, and
individual goals and wishes are prized above duty and relations with others. Collectivist cultures
are defined as cultures in which the self is regarded as embedded in relationships, and harmony
with one’s group is prized above individual goals and...