ABSTRACT
In the behavioral sciences as in biology, the Darwinian model remains our most plausible means of conceptualizing the interaction between organisms and environments. Much of the theorizing relevant to culture and personality has been based on the assumption that individual behavior is adaptive to the social and physical environments of the individual and that socialization of the child is preadaptation of growing individuals to their future environments by incorporating into their early learning the fruits of experience of earlier generations of adapting adults. In one form or another, this view is taken as axiomatic by psychologically-minded anthropologists and sociologists and socially-minded psychologists and psychoanalysts. It was as characteristic of theoretical statements of 40 years ago as it is today. For example, W. I. Thomas, one of the originators of the culture and personality field, asserted, “The human personality is both a continually producing factor and a continually produced result of social evolution,” and he went on to state:
The whole process of development of the personality . . . includes the following parallel and interdependent process:
(1) Determination of the character on the ground of temperament;
(2) Constitution of a life-organization which permits a more or less complete objective expression of the various attitudes included in the character;
(3) Adaptation of the character to social demands put upon the personality;
(4) Adaptation of individual life-organization to social organization (Thomas and Znaniecki, 1927, Vol. II: 1863).
