Social Identity, Personality, and Gender

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Chapter 6

• Social Identity, Personality, and Gender

2
Nature vs. Nurture

• Tabula rasa (Latin blank slate) refers to the
  epistemological thesis that individual human
  beings are born with no built-in mental content,
  in a word, "blank", and that their entire
  resource of knowledge is built up gradually from
  their experiences and sensory perceptions of the
  outside world.
• Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates
  the improvement of human hereditary traits
  through various forms of intervention. Older
  means of achieving these goals focused on
  selective breeding, while modern ones focus on
  prenatal testing, genetic counseling, birth
  control, in vitro fertilization, and genetic
  engineering.

3
Feral Children

• Kamala Amala rescued from a wolf den in India
  in 1920 She moved about on all fours and could
  not feed herself.
• Saturday Mthiyane raised by monkeys in South
  Africa Captured and sent to a school for the
  disabled. Very violent didnt play with others
  wouldnt eat cooked meat didnt like cloths.
  10 years later, still couldnt speak refused to
  eat cooked meat.
• Victor Wild Boy of Aveyron sited in 1800 in
  France. Lived alone, but not raised by animal
  vegetarian diet. Considered an incurable idiot.

4
Twin Studies

• A way to study individual differences by
  highlighting the role of environmental and
  genetic causes on behavior.
• Twin studies compare the similarity of identical
  twins who share 100 of their genes, to that of
  dizygotic or fraternal twins, who share only 50
  of their genes. By studying many hundreds of
  families of twins, researchers can learn more
  about the role of genetic effects, and the
  effects of shared and unique environment effects.
  
• With regard to intelligence and specific
  personality traits, identical twins tend to be
  more similar than fraternal twins.
• Results form Twin Adoption studies suggest that
  both heredity environment have an influence on
  personality and intelligence.

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What Is Enculturation?

• Enculturation is the process whereby an
  individual learns the accepted norms values of
  an established culture.
• It is the process where the culture that is
  currently established teaches an individual the
  accepted norms values of the culture in which
  the individual lives.
• Enculturation establishes a context of boundaries
  correctness that dictates what is is not
  permissible.
• Enculturation is not Acculturation, which is the
  exchange of cultural features that results when
  foreign cultures come into first-hand contact.

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Why is Enculturation Important?

• Enculturation teaches individuals how to become
  accepted members of the culture.
• Enculturation teaches individuals how they can
  fulfill the needed functions roles of the
  culture.
• Enculturation teaches what is accepted behavior
  within that society and lifestyle.
• Enculturation unifies people to a similar
  lifestyle.
• Enculturation teaches individuals how to pass on
  the Culture to successive generations.

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How is Enculturation accomplished?

• 1. Direct teaching mostly by parents when a
  child is told to do something because it is right
  or not to do something that is bad.
• what do you say? (please)
• 2. Observational learning watching others,
  emulating behavior (Attention, Retention,
  Reproduction Motivation).
• Learning different slang in different situations.
• Mirror neurons fire both when an animal acts
  when an animal observes the same action.
• 3. Enculturation also happens unconsciously.
• All happen simultaneously all the time.

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Six parts of culture that are learned

• 1. Technological what it is how to use it
• 2. Economic what is the system of trade
• 3. Political How is it structure function
• 4. Interactive How do you interact
• 5. Ideological Views of morals, etc
• 6. World View Religion Nationalism
• Enculturation begins soon after birth with the
  development of self-awareness.

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Self Awareness

• The ability to
• Identify oneself as an object.
• React to oneself.
• Appraise or evaluate oneself.
• Self awareness is the concept that one exists as
  an individual, separate from other people, with
  private thoughts. It may include the
  understanding that other people are similarly
  self-aware.

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Types of Self (Identity)

• 3 types of Self (Rogers, 2003)
• 1. Personal Self the me that is conscious
  of my own thoughts and feelings.
• 2. Social Self the me defined by whichever
  social context I am in.
• 3. Relational Self the me that comes from
  interconnected relationships with others around
  me.

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Functions of the Self

• The self is an interpersonal tool
• Having some form of identity is a prerequisite
  for social life human interaction.
• The self organizes feedback from others and also
  buffers us against negative feedback.
• We are particularly concerned with how other
  people will perceive ourselves.
• The self allows us to make choices
• The self typically comes to have a collection of
  values, preferences priorities.

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Development of Self

• 3-4 years describe themselves in terms of their
  favorite activity.
• 8-9 years describe who they are in terms of
  their age, name, what they like and dislike.
• 11 years describe themselves in terms of their
  relationships with others.
• Adolescence describe themselves based on their
  ethnic national identity.

13
Visual Counterpoint

• Self-awareness is not restricted to humans. This
  chimpanzee knows that the individual in the
  mirror is himself and not some other chimp, just
  as the girl recognizes herself.

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Theory of Mind (ToM)

• Theory of Mind is the ability to attribute
  mental states beliefs, intents, desires,
  pretending, knowledge, etc to oneself others
  and to understand that others have beliefs,
  desires intentions that are different from
  ones own.
• Theory of mind appears to be an innate potential
  ability in humans, but one requiring social and
  other experience over many years to bring
  successfully to adult fruition (Sally-Ann test).

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Development of ToM

• Gaze following follow anothers gaze with ones
  own 6 months of age.
• Joint attention pointing to another stimulus
  9-12 months of age.
• Intentional agents understanding certain agents
  act in rational ways and have intention 18
  months of age.
• False/belief recognize others can have beliefs
  about the world that are wrong (Sally-Anne task).

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Self Schema

• Organizes memories about the self controls
  processing of self-relevant information.
• Factors contributing to our self
• 1. Socialization group membership
• - reflected appraisal the process where we
  imagine how other people see us.
• - We also have a tendency to view the groups
  we belong to move positively than those
  groups we do not.
• - This is called Social Identity theory (Tajfel
  
• Turner, 1986)

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Social Self

• Social identity is that aspect of identity that
  pertains to membership in groups. Social identity
  stems from our personality, our self-concept and
  the roles we undertake.
• Social identities are plural because we all
  belong to many groups or categories, each
  supplying information about who we are, and how
  we should act (e.g., in a socially sanctioned
  way).
• According to Self-Categorization Theory (Turner
  (et al., 1987) identity does not belong to an
  individual, but is produced out of an interaction
  between the person situation. Different
  aspects of identity become salient in different
  situations, adapting behavior to situations and
  other people.

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4-elements of Social Identity

• Categorization We often put others (and
  ourselves) into categories. Labeling someone a
  Muslim, a Turk, a Gimp or a soccer player are
  ways of saying other things about these people.
• Identification We also associate with certain
  groups (our ingroups), which serves to bolster
  our self-esteem.
• Comparison We compare our groups with other
  groups, seeing a favorable bias toward the group
  to which we belong.
• Psychological Distinctiveness We desire our
  identity to be both distinct from and positively
  compared with other groups.

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Culture Social Identity

• Culture also influences what we hold as the most
  positive information about ourselves (Tashakkori,
  1993).
• One major difference in world culture is that of
  the collectivist identity versus individualist
  identity.
• Individualist cultures tend to promote the
  individual.
• Collectivist gives priority to the aims of the
  group.

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The Role of Social Norms

• Our societies and cultures also help shape our
  self concept with the production of social norms.
• A norm is an understood, but not legally binding,
  rule for determining which behavior is acceptable
  and expected. Norms provide guides for proper
  and appropriate behavior (tipping a waiter, gift
  giving on birthdays, not farting in public,
  saying please thank you, wearing hats inside,
  etc).
• Each cultural group will evolve its own norms for
  behavior among its group members.
• These unwritten rules are absorbed by our
  self-concept and become part of our self.

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How Does Enculturation Influence Personality?

• Each individual begins with certain broad
  potentials and limitations that are genetically
  inherited.
• Personality is the dynamic organized set of
  characteristics possessed by a person that
  uniquely influences his or her cognitions,
  motivations and behaviors in various situations.
• Personality type refers to the psychological
  classification of different types of people.
• In all cultures certain factors promote the
  development of specific traits such as compliance
  or independence.

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Why does the mode of personality types differ
cross culturally

• Ecology
• Subsistence-related behaviors
• Cultural Values (individual/collective)
• Childhood socialization
• Habitual, Learned Behaviors
• Personality, Self-concept
• Etc

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Are Different Personalities Characteristic of
Different Cultures?

• Every culture emphasizes certain personality
  traits as good and others as bad.
• The concept of modal personality recognizes that
  any human society has a range of individual
  personalities, but some will be more typical than
  others.
• Since modal personalities may differ from one
  culture to another and since cultures may differ
  in the range of variation they will accept, it is
  clear that abnormal personality is a relative
  concept.

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Question

• Enculturation is the process of transmitting
• society from one generation to the next.
• society norms from one adult to another.
• culture from one child to another.
• culture from one generation to the next.
• personality from parent to child.

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Answer D

• Enculturation is the process of transmitting
  culture from one generation to the next.

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Question

• The agents of enculturation
• are persons involved in transmitting culture to
  the next generation.
• are at first the members of the family into which
  the child is born.
• vary, depending on the structure of the family
  into which a child is born.
• include peer groups and school teachers.
• all of these choices

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Answer E

• The agents of enculturation are persons involved
  in transmitting culture to the next generation,
  are at first the members of the family into which
  the child is born, vary, depending on the
  structure of the family into which a child is
  born and include peer groups and school teachers.

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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.

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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.

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Ju/hoansi Society

• In traditional Ju/hoansi society, fathers as
  well as mothers show great indulgence to
  children, who do not fear or respect men more
  than women.

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Modal Personality

• The modal personality of a group is defined as
  the body of character traits that occur with the
  highest frequency in a culturally bounded
  population.
• Modal personality is a statistical concept.
• It opens up for investigation the questions of
  how societies organize diversity and how
  diversity relates to culture change.

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Core Values

• The collectively shared core values of Chinese
  culture promote integration of the individual
  into a larger group, as we see in this gathering
  of Hong Kong residents doing Tai Chi together.

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Cohabitation
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Question

• The standards that define normal behavior for any
  culture
• are determined by that culture itself.
• result from a combination of cultural mores and
  neurological hardwiring.
• are a function of child rearing practices and
  religion.
• are similar from culture-to-culture, and are thus
  fairly standard across the spectrum.
• are easily codifiable.

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Answer A

• The standards that define normal behavior for any
  culture are determined by that culture itself.

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Ethnic Psychoses

• Mental disorders specific to particular ethnic
  groups.

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Ethnic Psychoses And Other Culture-bound Syndromes
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Ethnic Psychoses And Other Culture-bound Syndromes
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Ethnic Psychoses And Other Culture-bound Syndromes
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Ethnic Psychoses And Other Culture-bound Syndromes
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Question

• Ethnic psychoses are
• biological mental disorders which are classified
  in clinical studies of mental health disorders.
• are mental disorders specific to particular
  ethnic groups.
• used to define differences between sane and
  insane behaviors consistently.
• invalid as classification systems.
• often revealed on daytime televisions shows.

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Answer B

• Ethnic psychoses are mental disorders specific to
  particular ethnic groups.