Title: Personality and Culture (sample research paper)
Headings: Personality and Culture: Individualism Versus Collectivism
Personality and Culture: Individualism Versus Collectivism
RUNNING HEAD: Personality and Culture
ABSTRACT
Bibliography

Content: However, these traits do not occur to exclusion within these cultures, making it unlikely that the traits are wholly attributable to the cultural context (McCrae & Allik, 2002). For example, in Japan it is a cultural norm that individuals will take care of their parents in old age, reflecting the collectivist stance on elder care; in the United States, it is a cultural norm that elders will take care of themselves, or in the worst case will hire someone to do so in an assisted living facility or nursing home. However, there are still Americans who take care of their elder parents in preference to sending them to a hired care facility, and there are also Japanese elders who prefer to continue to live on their own despite their childrens cultural requirement for offering care (Hofstede, 2001). This inconsistency between individual preference and cultural individualism-collectivism ranking highlights the potential difficulty with using the individualism-collectivism framework to explain all variances between individuals of different cultures. Instead, individual personality development and characteristics is also at play in these characteristics. Even though a culture may be described as a whole using the individualism-collectivism framework, there is some danger in applying these principles directly to the perceived personality of the individual, and it may even lead to excessive stereotyping and misunderstanding of individual personality and characteristics. Instead, understanding of the individualism-collectivism framework can be combined with theories of personality in order to allow a deeper understanding of personality development. Two such theories, those of Erikson and Jung, can be used in conjunction with the individualism-collectivism cultural-level personality framework in order to better understand the potential impacts of culture on personality. Eriksons theory of personality was built on Freuds structural model of personality, and maintains many of the characteristics of this model (Ewen, 2003).