8.1.8 The genetic and evolutionary basis of personality.

The Big Five personality structure has been explained as a universal human adaptation developed in the common struggle for survival. The Big Five is seen from this functional perspective as a universal psychological mechanism important in solving problems between members of a culture and adapting to the sociocultural and physical environment. For example the trait “conscientiousness” may help individuals in monitoring the environment and thereby avoid punishing outcomes or alternatively help the individual to persevere toward important goals in tasks that have no intrinsic reward (McDonald, 1998). At the same time the presence of universal personality structure does not negate the importance of cultural affects. Culture can influence the mean levels of personality traits, some of the big Five traits measured high in some societies and low in others. In the final analysis it is culture that create the specific context that shapes personality and produces the behaviors that allows individuals to reach universal affective goals like satisfying the need for intimacy (McCrae, Del-Pilar, & Rolland, 1998).

8.1.9 Is national character a psychological reality?

Personality traits vary among individuals. The work on the Big Five traits shows that they vary also between countries and cultures while at the same time indicating little trait variance within the culture. The similarity within nations and cultures support the presence of what has been called national character. People have perceptions about the modal or average personality of people living in different countries and cultures also called national character. Research shows that national stereotypes are part of the discourse all over the world. Peabody (1985) sought to make a distinction between national stereotypes that he argued were often irrational or incorrect and national character that contained more valid descriptions of the population. In his research he found that nations differed on some traits, for example whether members of a culture were assertive or unassertive, lending support to the concept of national character. TerracianoAbdel-Khalek, Adam, Adamovova, Ahn and Ahn, (2005) asked thousands of respondents in 49 cultures to describe the “typical member” of that society. The results yielded a high agreement about perceptions of national character, yet these stereotypes did not correlate with the actual personality traits of members of the same cultural groups. So the question might be logically asked, why do people maintain stereotypes about themselves and others? The answer according to Terraciano et al, is that stereotypes help maintain national identity and the self-worth of the national group.

8.2 Eastern thoughts about personality.

The interest in Eastern cultural thinking of Buddhism and Confucianism has emerged in recent decades partly from the struggles in developing an indigenous psychology (Hwang, 2012). In particular the argument has been made that 96 % of samples of psychological research published in the world’s top journals from 2003-2007 were drawn from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic societies which housed just 12 % of the world’s population (p.xv). Hwang and his co-workers have tried to encourage a scientific revolution in response to this imbalance by promoting the importance of Eastern cultural traditions and in particular Confucian relationism. Confucian thought promoted morality and the importance of interpersonal relationships that are thought to contribute to distinctive psychological differences between people living in Asian as compared with Western societies. In particular it is argued (Hwang, Kim, & Kou-Shu, 2006) that Western psychological methods are promoted to the rest of the world from political, economic and military dominance, and that it is largely an ethnocentric construction. It is from that perspective that we must take Eastern indigenous psychology seriously in the search for a more universal psychology.

Students trained in the Western tradition may wonder why we consider the Eastern thought of Buddhism and the thoughts of Confucius important in a discussion of personality theory. However, Eastern ideas about the mind developed many centuries before Western culture produced personality theories in the West including those of Freud, Jung, Adler, Maslow and Rogers. Eastern thinking, like Western personality theory, also answers questions about what is personality, how does it develop, why do people suffer, how may delusionary responses intensify suffering, and what therapeutic approaches will minimize suffering on our path toward a mature and healthy personality? A key idea of Eastern thought is that we have power to develop our personalities by following the path that leads to ever increasing circles of relationships. Who we are is answered by our relative willingness to fulfill the roles related to these ever widening relationship circles starting with the family but progressing to ever widening responsibilities to others and society. These conceptions of human existence and how personality identity develops overlap with some of the conceptions of Western personality theory.

However, an important difference, at least between Western and Buddhist theory, is in the construal of the self or personality. In Western theories personality takes the form of a personal enduring identity. From the perspective of Buddhist thought the idea of enduring personal identity elevates or reifies the self as the locus of thoughts and behavior. The permanent self is perceived as a delusion in Buddhist philosophy and is seen as the cause of many negative and harmful behaviors. In the Western tradition the soul concept is created as an outcome of the evolution of Judeo-Christian thought, but probably has origins earlier in history as humans found it difficult to deal with the absurdity of impermanent life. Thomas Aquinas wrote about the soul, as did Descartes later, and the cultural discourse created a common assumption of the existence of the inner self without any empirical support or proof.