ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the theoretical developments of national personality in France since the late nineteenth century and in the Anglo-Saxon world, especially in the United States since the Second World War. These developments involve cultural anthropology as well as social psychology, political psychology, the psychology of peoples and ethnopsychology, political sociology and the history and sociology of international relations. Modern theories of national personality divide into two broad homogeneous categories, independent of each other: on the one hand culturalist theories, on the other hand psychological theories. The former emphasizes the decisive influence of cultural learning and modes of socialization in the life of individuals in society. The latter believe they can discern a kind of collective individuality at work in each national group which can explain, in accordance with specific processes defined by each theoretical approach, a certain similarity of behaviour in all group members.
