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Personality's Impact on Culture and Implications for Prejudice and Discrimination
Psychology of Personality · Chapter 13: Trait Theory, Personality Disorders, and CultureSection 13.4 · lesson 80 of 83video coming soon
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In this lesson
Separating the belief, the feeling and the behaviour so each can be addressed.
- Explain how personality shapes culture, not only the reverse
- Distinguish stereotype, prejudice and discrimination
- Say why prejudice has no single cause
- Name evidence-based ways of reducing it
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Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (875 words). Read along, or search it.
Trait Theory, Personality Disorders, and Culture
Personality's Impact on Culture, Prejudice and Discrimination
The previous section showed culture shaping personality. This one runs the arrow the other way. And then applies both directions to a specific problem. How people relate to groups different from their own. We will separate three things that usually get merged. The belief, the feeling, and the behaviour. Because separating them is what makes any of it addressable.
The Other Direction
Aggregated Dispositions Become Institutions
While culture shapes personality, the influence also runs the other way. The aggregated dispositions of individuals contribute to a culture. To its norms. Its institutions. And its shared practices. The mechanism is worth stating plainly. A tendency held privately does little. Held widely, it becomes a rule. When many members of a group share certain values, or temperamental tendencies. Those tendencies can become embedded in structures. In customs. In leadership styles. And in social expectations. At which point they outlast any particular individual who held them.
Mutual Constitution
Each Continuously Shaping the Other
So personality and culture are best understood as mutually constituting. Each continuously shaping the other, over time. Individual dispositions aggregate across a group. Those aggregates become embedded in norms, and in institutions. Those institutions socialise the next generation. Which shapes the dispositions that individuals develop. Which is why blaming either one alone explains very little. And the loop continues. Neither end of that loop is the true starting point.
Why It Matters
Dispositions and Intergroup Attitudes
This two-way relationship matters for understanding social attitudes. Certain personality dispositions have been studied. Specifically, in connection with how people relate to groups different from their own. Researchers have examined characteristics associated with rigid thinking. With a strong need for order. And with deference to authority. These have been examined as factors that can incline some individuals toward intergroup hostility. But the qualifier belongs with the finding, not after it. Situational and cultural forces remain powerful. Disposition is one contributor among several.
Three Terms
Belief, Feeling, Behaviour
Psychologists separate three things that everyday speech runs together. A stereotype is a generalised belief about a group. That is the cognitive component. Prejudice is a negative attitude toward members of a group. Based on their membership. That is the affective component. Discrimination is unjust behaviour directed at them. The behavioural component. A person can hold a stereotype without the hostility, or act without either. These are kept separate on purpose. Because they can come apart in practice. And separating belief, feeling and action is what makes it possible to address each one.
Categorization
The Cognitive Tendency Underneath
Underneath all three sits a more basic cognitive tendency. Categorization. The sorting of people into groups. An in-group is a group to which a person feels they belong. An out-group is a group seen as outside one's own. Categorization is ordinary cognition. It is not a defect. Everyone sorts. Sorting is not the harmful part. Which is precisely why it appears in this account. A universal tendency can still contribute to a harmful outcome. Given the right dispositions, and the right context.
No Single Cause
Where Prejudice Comes From
Trait and social research suggests prejudice arises from an interaction. An interaction of three things, none of which is sufficient alone. Individual dispositions. The personality factors studied earlier. Cognitive tendencies, such as categorization. And social context. The situational and cultural forces around the person. The source is explicit about what follows from that. There is no profile that settles the question in advance. No personality profile makes prejudice inevitable. Prejudice arises from interaction, rather than from any single cause. That claim does real work. It rules out looking for a prejudiced personality type.
Therefore Changeable
Learned and Context-Sensitive
Understanding the personality contributions to prejudice supports efforts to reduce it. And the reason is structural. Because intergroup attitudes are learned, and context-sensitive. They can change. That inference is the practical payoff of the whole analysis. Learned things can be unlearned, under the right conditions. If prejudice were purely dispositional, and fixed. Then none of the interventions that follow would be worth attempting.
What Works
Three Approaches With Evidence Behind Them
Three approaches have been shown to reduce prejudice. Contact between groups under supportive conditions. Perspective-taking. That is, imagining another person's viewpoint. And norms that discourage bias. Note the condition attached to the first one. Contact under supportive conditions. That qualifier is part of the finding, not a softening of it. Contact without them can entrench what it was meant to reduce. In practice this can be quite ordinary. A workplace introduces structured collaboration between previously separate teams. Supportive contact and shared goals gradually reduce mutual suspicion. Prejudice lowered through changed conditions. Not through changed personalities.
Consolidate
The Distinctions That Make Action Possible
The distinctions, laid out together. A stereotype is a generalised belief about a group. Cognitive. Prejudice is a negative attitude toward a group. Affective. Discrimination is unjust behaviour toward a group. Behavioural. Categorization is the sorting of people into groups. A cognitive tendency. And intergroup contact, under supportive conditions, reduces prejudice. The last row is the only one that names a lever. Four descriptions of a problem, and one thing that moves it.
Apply It
Target the Component You Can Move
Why do these distinctions matter? Because they separate belief, feeling and action, so each can be addressed. Rather than treating prejudice as one undifferentiated thing. And how do you apply the analysis? Target prejudice through supportive contact. Through perspective-taking. And through anti-bias norms. Each component needs its own kind of intervention. The lesson to carry away is a balanced one. While dispositions play a role, prejudice is not fixed. And discrimination can be addressed through deliberate social and educational effort.
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