Title: Culture and Personality – Anthropology
Headings: Culture and Personality
Culture and Personality
Basic Premises
Points of Reaction
Leading Figures
Key Works
Principal Concepts
Methodologies
Accomplishments
Criticisms
Sources and Bibliography
Relevant Web Links

Content: It was viewed as being unscholarly, and the few remaining practitioners changed the name of their approach to psychological anthropology to avoid the stigma (LeVine 2001), but also to widen its scope. Modern psychological anthropology, among other pursuits, attempts to bridge the gap between anthropology and psychology by examining the “cross-cultural study of social, political, and cultural-historical constitution of the self” (Lindholm 2001). Points of Reaction
In accounting for the lack of uniformity in the study of Culture and Personality, Robert LeVine, in Culture, Behavior and Personality (1982) argues that there are five different perspectives characterizing the field. Perhaps the most recognizable view was used by Ruth Benedict, Margret Mead, and Geoffrey Gore. It was known as the configuration approach and combined the Boasian idea of cultural relativism with psychological ideas (LeVine 1982:53). It took the stance that the culture and personality were so interconnected that they could not be viewed separately. Often this view is criticized as exaggerating the consistency of the culture and avoiding intra-cultural variation. Benedict specifically was criticized as being too humanistic and not using enough quantitative data. A second view was that anti-culture-personality relationship. This view held that there was no need to discuss an individual’s psyche.