Cultural Background Personality ILS 84

Ralph Linton

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415175920
• eBook ISBN: 9781136238581
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First Published in 1998. This is Volume I of a nine volume library of Sociology on the Sociology of Culture and includes a study on the cultural background of personaility borne from five lectures given in 1943.

CHAPTER IV

PERSONALITY

Recognition of the phenomena which are the subject-matter of personality studies must be as old as our species. Even the ape man soon learned by experience that certain members of the horde were good-natured or irascible, stupid or intelligent, stolid or quick with emotional response. However, throughout most of human history such differences have been regarded as in the nature of things, requiring no explanation. The emergence of modern concepts of personality and the study of the process involved in personality formation are exceedingly recent developments. They are even newer than the studies of culture and society, some of whose results have been presented in the previous chapters. It is not surprising, therefore, that considerable confusion still exists with regard to the concepts and definitions which must be used as tools in personality studies. Even the exact meaning to be given to the term personality is still unsettled. There are innumerable definitions extant, all of which have certain elements in common, but the process of clarification through usage, already described in connection with the definition of culture, is still under way.

Actually, the main problem involved in the definition of personality is one of delimitation. The individual and his environment constitute a dynamic configuration all of whose parts are so closely interrelated and in such constant interaction that it is very hard to tell where to draw lines of demarcation. For the purpose of the present discussion, personality will be taken to mean “The organized aggregate of psychological processes and states pertaining to the individual”. This definition includes the common element in most of the definitions now current. At the same time it excludes many orders of phenomena which have been included in one or another of these definitions. Thus it rules out the overt behaviour resulting from the operation of these processes and states, although it is only from such behaviour that their nature and even existence can be deduced. It also excludes from consideration the effects of this behaviour upon the individual’s environment, even that part of it which consists of other individuals. Lastly, it excludes from the personality concept the physical structure of the individual and his physiological processes. This final limitation will appear too drastic to many students of personality, but it has a pragmatic, if not a logical, justification. We know so little about the physiological accompaniments of psychological phenomena that attempts to deal with the latter in physiological terms still lead to more confusion than clarification. In the face of a universe all of whose parts are in some degree interrelated, all sciences set arbitrary limits to their fields of research. Experience has shown that it is possible to arrive at valid conclusions about phenomena of a particular order without reference to all the phenomena of other orders with which those of the first order may be functionally interrelated. Thus the geneticists have been able to establish their laws of heredity without reference to the gene chemistry upon which the reproduction of physicál characteristics must ultimately depend. Similarly, experimental psychologists have been able to find out a great deal about the learning processes by dealing with them in purely psychological and behavioural terms, although they are still almost completely ignorant of the physiological accompaniments of these processes.

The phrase psychological processes and states is admittedly vague, and it seems wiser to leave it so. We probably know less about the actual content and structure of personality than about any other aspect of the individual. Personalities are configurations of a unique sort, one which has no close parallel at the level of physical phenomena. Moreover, they are not susceptible to direct observation. We can only deduce their qualities from the overt behaviour in which these qualities find expression. Going a step farther, the only grounds for assuming the existence of personalities as operative entities persisting through time is the consistency in the overt behaviour of individuals. The individual’s repetition of similar responses to similar stimuli, in those cases where such responses are complex and obviously not instinctual, can only be accounted for on the assumption that experience is, in some way, organized and perpetuated. Unfortunately, observed behaviour is often susceptible of more than one psychological interpretation. It follows that any one of several different formulations of personality content and structure can take care of the bulk of the known facts. To add to the confusion, most of the attempts to describe personality involve the use of terms drawn from the more familiar field of physical phenomena and scarcely applicable to psychological ones. Thus, to speak of levels within the personality evokes an image of spatial relationships which by no means corresponds to the varying degrees of integration, of susceptibility to change or of availability to introspective or logical approaches which the psychologist means by the term. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of the current chartings of personality are reminiscent of seventeenth-century maps. The coastlines are clear enough, but the blankness of the interior is masked by sketches of the hairy, ithyphallic Id, the haloed Super-ego, and the inscription :“Hereabouts there be complexes.”

Since our only clues to personality are those provided by the overt behaviour of the individual and the apparent relations of this behaviour to his needs and his environment, it seems justifiable to approach the problem of formulating personality content from a functional standpoint. We may take as our first premise that the function of the personality as a whole is to enable the individual to produce forms of behaviour which will be advantageous to him under the conditions imposed by his environment. We will then take as our second premise that, other things being equal, this function is performed most effectively when the advantageous behaviour is produced with a minimum of delay and involves a minimum of effort. The conditions of the second premise are met most successfully by those automatic responses of tested effectiveness which we term habits. On the basis of these two prèmises, the operation of the personality may be summed up as :

1. The development of adequate behavioural responses to various situations.

2. The reduction of these responses to habitual terms.

3. The production of the habitual responses already established.

In all three of these operations the initial step is the registry¹ of the situation which evokes the response. I have chosen to use this term rather than recognition or perception because both of these carry connotations of consciousness. When a situation is new or unfamiliar its registry will tend to be at the conscious level, but once it has become familiar and is linked with an adequate habitual response, its registry may be quite unconscious. Thus an individual may register several situations and produce the habitual responses to them as they arise without knowing that he has done so and without interrupting the flow of his conscious psychological processes. Registry of this sort is a necessary preliminary to response, whether the situation involved derives primarily from internal or external factors. Thus most people who engage in creative work know that the physiological tensions created by hunger or fatigue may fail to register over long periods, asserting themselves only when a lull comes in the creative activity. The vigour with which they assert themselves at such times is sufficient proof that the tensions themselves have followed their normal course of development ; it is only their registry as stimuli that has been blocked. That the registry of stimuli originating outside the organism is a necessary preliminary to response is too obvious to require discussion. One does not jump out of the way of a motor-car unless one sees it coming.

In the above formulation of the first step in the development of a stimulus-response sequence, the term situation has been used deliberately and in preference to the more precise and limited term stimulus. Practically all the situations which evoke responses in human beings involve multiple factors. Psychologists who approach the study of human behaviour with a background of laboratory experimentation on animals are prone to underrate the extreme complexity of the conditions under which most of man’s behaviour is developed and carried out. The needs of the individual, which must be regarded as the ultimate motivations of behaviour, rarely function as isolated stimuli, since most of them are present most of the time. This situation is exaggerated by the human ability to foresee the recurrence of needs even when they are currently at a low level of intensity. Thus for men on a raft present hunger and anticipated hunger operate as stimuli of almost equal importance in determining the way in which their limited food supply is to be used. Even without this factor of anticipation, it is quite possible for several needs to register with the individual simultaneously. Thus any former Boy Scout knows that one can be at the same time hungry, cold, tired and anxious to make a good impression on one’s companions. The needs which are present at any given moment differ in their urgency. If the satisfaction of any one of them, especially of a need based on physiological tensions, is delayed too long, it may come to dominate the situation and to operate as the exclusive motivation of behaviour. However, this situation rarely arises under the normal conditions of human existence. What usually happens is that several needs, none of which are strongly dominant, operate together to provide the motivation for a particular behavioural response. This response, in turn, is designed to satisfy all the needs involved in greater or less degree. Thus, to revert to the Boy Scout example, the combined needs for food, warmth, rest and for maintaining the good opinion of other members of the troop will result in an attempt to persuade the whole group to head for home.

Further complications are introduced by the fact that any behaviour which will suffice to satisfy a particular need or aggregate of needs must be organized in terms of the conditions established by the individual’s environment. Although the registry of a need may precede the individual’s appraisal of these conditions, both are necessary preliminaries to the development of effective behavioural responses. While the two may be separated analytically, it is an open question whether they can be separated functionally. Especially in the case of established behavioural responses, that is, habits, there seems to be abundant evidence that a need or aggregate of needs and the conditions under which it normally finds satisfaction function as a single stimulus unit. Moreover, in many cases recognition of the conditions seems to be enough to set in train the habitual response even when the needs involved in the configuration would not register in the absence of these conditions. Thus it is a common experience that a tempting meal will awaken appetite and lead to the habitual eating responses even when there has been no previous feeling of hunger. It seems probable that in such cases the needs involved in the stimulus situation are actually present when the conditions are recognized but are being held in abeyance. Although the needs of the individual vary in intensity from moment to moment, under the normal conditions of living it is unusual for any need to be completely satisfied. Even when the tension basic to a particular need has been reduced below the point at Which it would normally function as an initiator of behaviour, there is enough residual tension to enable the need to function as a motivator of behaviour when the familiar conditions are present. When an habitual response serves to satisfy several needs simultaneously, the sum of the residual tensions of these needs is presumably enough to set the behaviour in train.

The situations which may evoke behavioural responses are exceedingly numerous and variable. They include most of the possible permutations and combinations of the individual’s needs and of the various conditions under which these needs may be satisfied. However, there is at least one factor, which we will call the social component, which is common to the great majority of human stimulus situations. This social component derives from the conditions implicit in existence as a member of an organized group and from the individual’s thorough habituation to these conditions. As has already been said, most human patterns of behaviour are responses not to a single need but to an aggregate of needs. The need for eliciting favourable responses from others is an almost constant component of such aggregates. Indeed, it is not too much to say that there is very little organized human behaviour which is not directed towards its satisfaction in at least some degree. Although this need for response probably varies in intensity at different times, it lacks the clear-cut cyclical quality of those needs which derive directly from physiological tensions. It can thus operate as a motivation of behaviour at almost any time. It is hard to conceive of a situation in which the individual’s desire for favourable response from others is so completely satisfied that he has no desire to elicit further favourable responses or to avoid unfavourable ones.

Since other individuals are an almost constant element in the human environment, the conditions which might lead to the registry of this need are almost constantly present. Moreover, human beings are so thoroughly conditioned to the presence of others that they have a strong tendency to project this human factor even into situations where it is not present. We are prone to play to an audience even when there is no audience. Such behaviour can be rationalized, when a need for rationalization is felt, in either of two ways. It can be justified on the basis of anticipation, that is, of how other people will react if or when they discover what the individual has done, but it can also be justified in terms of an invisible audience. In the latter case the social milieu is conceived of as including beings who, no matter how they may differ from men in their other attributes, resemble them in their responses to various forms of behaviour and in their ability to affect the well-being of the individual. The primitive animist, the believer in observant ancestral spirits and the worshippers of an ever-watchful, all-powerful deity have all chosen this second type of rationalization.

The importance of this social component for the understanding of human behaviour can scarcely be overrated. As a result of its presence, behaviour patterns which are in process of formation can be rewarded or discouraged not only in terms of whether they achieve their manifest goals but also in terms of the methods by which the individual strives to achieve these goals. The individual who adheres to the socially approved forms of behaviour is assured of some reward in the form of favourable response even when his behaviour is ineffective in terms of its manifest ends. The attitude of others towards such a failure is summed up in the familiar phrase :“Well, he made a good try.” Conversely, the individual who attains his ends by unorthodox and socially disapproved forms of behaviour invokes unfavourable responses which rob these ends of much of their value. It is this social component which is primarily responsible for the transmission of complex behaviour patterns as wholes from generation to generation. It makes how goals are attained nearly as important to the individual as whether they are attained. Social pressure keeps the developing behaviours of the individual within the limits set by his society’s culture patterns and ensures that his emergent habits will be such as to make his behaviour predictable in terms of his position within the society. It also ensures that these habits will be of a sort congruous with the habits established in other members of the society through the same mechanisms. Without such a social component culture could not be transmitted nor societies perpetuated as functioning wholes.

In summary, the situations which evoke responses from the individual are, with very few exceptions, configurations which include both a particular aggregate of needs and a particular set of conditions under which they have to be satisfied. With this in mind, we may proceed to a consideration of the responses themselves. It is possible to classify these responses in many different ways, depending upon the criteria chosen, and the problem becomes one not of the validity of a particular system of classification but rather of its utility in connection with a particular set of problems. As an aid to the understanding of the interrelations of personality and culture we may divide responses into two main groups :

1. Emergent responses.

2. Established responses.

To phrase this in another way, responses may be divided into those which are in process of development and organization and those which have become fully organized and automatized. While the former grade into the latter, the polar positions in the series are clear enough. At the emergent end of the scale we have those behaviours which are evoked by new and unfamiliar situations. Such behaviours are normally tentative and experimental, without consistent organization or patterning. At the established end of the scale we have those behaviours which are evoked by familiar situations. Such behaviours are thoroughly organized and patterned. While the emergent responses always involve some degree of consciousness of the situation and of effort to solve the problem which it presents, established responses are automatic and can be produced without either the registry of the situation or the associated behaviour attaining a conscious level.

The responses which any individual is capable of making extend over the full range represented by this scale, but their distribution in the scale is far from uniform. The bulk of such responses always cluster about the established response pole, with an abrupt drop in frequency as one moves towards the emergent response pole. Most of the situations which the individual encounters in the ordinary business of living have become familiar through long repetition and are taken care of by automatized responses ; in ordinary parlance, habits. Such habits may involve a good deal of waste motion and often could be made much more effective in terms of their manifest ends. Nevertheless, they are superior to non-habitual responses in terms of the conservation of the individual’s nervous energy and diminution of emotional strain. It is easier to live by habit than by conscious intent, and most of us do live by habit most of the time. The discomforts produced by the necessity of developing a large number of new behaviours to meet new situations are abundantly illustrated by the plight of the current group of European refugees. These individuals have been deprived of their familiar milieus and find most of their habits no longer effective. That this results in serious personality derangements in a large number of cases is obvious to anyone who has had to deal with such refugees. Under normal conditions the individual is rarely called upon to meet new situations, and when such situations do arise they present themselves only a few at a time. The fact that we can carry on most of our activities at the habitual level serves to conserve energy and to provide the surplus vigour required to develop new forms of behaviour as the need for them arises.

The position of a particular behavioural response in the scale extending from newly emergent to fully established will correspond in general to its position in a developmental sequence by which experimental, more or less conscious responses are transformed into habits. There must always be a first occasion on which a particular situation registers with the individual and a first attempt to meet it. As the situation is repeated, the behavioural responses to it become increasingly organized and are produced with less and less conscious effort. Finally these responses emerge as a single integrated pattern of behaviour which is automatically set in train by the registry of the situation. The organized aggregate of habits which have been established in the individual constitute the bulk of his personality and give it form, structure and continuity. In fact we may picture the personality as consisting of an organized, relatively persistent core of habits surrounded by a fluid zone of behavioural responses which are in process of reduction to habitual terms. It follows that the processes involved in the development of new behaviours derive their main functional significance from the contribution which they are able to make to the establishment of new and effective habits. We are prone to think of the intellectual processes as the highest manifestations of individual psychology. Certainly they represent the culmination of the trends discernible in the evolution of psychological potentialities through animals to man. However, we must admit that in most cases their operation is merely a preliminary to habit formation. They assist in and expedite the development of overt behavioural responses, but these responses become of maximum utility only after they have been reduced to automatic, habitual terms.

Since the development of every habit begins with an attempt to meet a new situation, the processes involved in this attempt are of great importance for the understanding of personality formation. It is obvious that processes of various sorts may be invoked, but the relative importance of these various approaches for the development of human behaviour is not always recognized. There seems to be a strong tendency on the part of many writers on the subject to accord first place to the intellectual processes and second to those of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• I. The Individual, Culture and Society
• II. The Concept of Culture
• III. Social Structure and Culture Participation
• IV. Personality
• V. The Rôle of Culture in Personality Formation
• Index