ABSTRACT
In 1936 Ralph Linton, contemplating the problem of studying personality cross-culturally, complained, “It is unfortunate that we have no exact, objective techniques for identifying psychological types” (p. 484). Thirty-five years later, we have a multitude of personality tests for which exactness and objectivity are claimed, but the major obstacle to a comparative psychology of human populations remains the lack of dependable instruments for diagnosing the individual case. The contemporary anthropologist seeking a method of personality assessment for comparative study finds that: reputable personality psychologists do not agree on which method is best for measuring any particular disposition; different methods of measuring the “same” disposition correlate poorly or not at all, yielding differing distributions of results for the same group of individuals; and there is doubt and disagreement about the extent to which the methods tap enduring dispositions of the person or his reactions to the immediate conditions under which behavior is sampled. In fact, social and personality psychologists are currently engaged in intense and fundamental self-criticism regarding the validity of their methods (see Rosenthal, 1966; Berg, 1967; Mischel, 1968; Yarrow, Campbell and Burton, 1968; Rosenthal and Rosnow, 1969).
