ABSTRACT
The “Culture and Personality” approach formed a remarkable research program within cultural anthropology and cultural psychology of the twentieth century. Inspired by the Freudian hypotheses that the development of personality is decisively coined by experiences in early childhood, early field studies like those of Margaret Mead and Abram Kardiner aimed at finding relations between culture-bound child-rearing practices and predominant personality characteristics within the respective cultures. Due to some problematic projects in the wake of World War II, the reputation of the “Culture and Personality” movement diminished, in particular among anthropologists.
In the 1970s and 1980s Robert A. LeVine tried to revitalize the traditional culture and personality paradigm by broadening the interdisciplinary base and by reinterpreting it within an evolutionary context. Recent reviews show a clear predominance of cross-cultural studies based on the Big Five model and on constructs like Hofstede’s dimensions collectivism vs. individualism, using designs that are very similar to those of mainstream cross-cultural research. Hence it may be questioned whether the “culture and personality” approach still represents a particular research paradigm and in which respect it could form a particular research tradition in the future.
