VAID'S ICS – Best UPSC Anthropology Coaching in Delhi Since 1985

Comprehensive Classroom Course · Admissions openRegister now
+91 93113 37737
  • +91-93113 37737, +91-99999 46748
  • 73(FF), Old Rajender Nagar Market, Delhi - 110060
  • MON to SUN 9.00 am - 6.00 pm
Facebook Youtube Instagram
Menu
Enquire Now
Home/Anthropology/Mains PYQ/2020/Paper I/Anthropological Theories
UPSC MainsAnthropology Optional Paper I 2020 20 Marks Model Answer Available

Anthropological Approaches to Personality and Culture — 2020 Paper I

Question · 2020 · Paper I · 20 Marks

Discuss various anthropological approaches to the study of personality and culture.

Model Answer

VAID ICS

Approach

  • Demand of Question: Discuss the major anthropological approaches explaining the relationship between personality formation and culture.
  • Structuring the Response: Trace Culture and Personality approaches from configurationalism to basic/modal personality and national-character studies, with criticism.

Model Answer

Introduction

The Culture and Personality school emerged mainly in American anthropology under the influence of Franz Boas, psychology and psychoanalysis. It examined how culturally patterned child-rearing and socialization shape personality, while individual personalities in turn participate in reproducing culture.

Configurational approach

Ruth Benedict, in Patterns of Culture (1934), argued that cultures select particular traits from the range of human possibilities and organize them into a distinctive cultural configuration.

She contrasted:

  • Pueblo/Zuni culture as relatively restrained and cooperative or “Apollonian”.
  • Kwakiutl culture as competitive and prestige-oriented or “Dionysian”.

Thus:

Cultural configuration → Preferred behaviour → Characteristic personality

Her approach emphasized cultural integration, but was criticized for portraying whole societies as having excessively uniform personalities.

Margaret Mead: Socialization and personality

Margaret Mead demonstrated that personality and gender behaviour vary according to cultural learning.

In Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), she argued that adolescent behaviour is strongly shaped by cultural environment.

In Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), she showed that traits regarded as “masculine” or “feminine” are not universally fixed.

Her major contribution was:

Culture → Socialization → Gender/personality differences

Basic Personality Structure

Abram Kardiner, working with Ralph Linton, developed the concept of Basic Personality Structure.

Kardiner distinguished:

  1. Primary institutions: Family organization, child-rearing, subsistence and discipline.
  2. Basic personality structure: Common psychological dispositions produced through early socialization.
  3. Secondary institutions: Religion, mythology and folklore that express these dispositions.

The relationship may be represented as:

Primary institutions → Basic personality → Secondary institutions

This approach connected psychological development with social institutions.

Modal Personality

Cora DuBois, through her study The People of Alor (1944), proposed modal personality.

Instead of assuming that everyone in a culture possesses the same personality, modal personality refers to the statistically most frequent personality type within a society.

This improved upon the more rigid idea of a single basic personality.

National Character studies

During and after the Second World War, anthropologists examined characteristic personality orientations of large national populations.

Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) analysed Japanese culture through “culture at a distance”.

Such studies examined:

  • child-rearing;
  • authority;
  • shame and guilt;
  • national values;
  • culturally patterned behaviour.

However, national-character studies were often criticized for overgeneralizing internally diverse populations.

Psychoanalytic approach

Freudian ideas influenced early Culture and Personality studies by emphasizing:

  • childhood experiences;
  • repression;
  • unconscious motivations;
  • parent-child relationships.

Anthropologists modified Freud by demonstrating that psychological development occurs within specific cultural environments rather than through a universally identical psychosexual sequence.

Child-rearing and cross-cultural approach

Later researchers such as John and Beatrice Whiting used systematic cross-cultural comparison to study relationships among:

  • subsistence;
  • household organization;
  • child-training;
  • aggression;
  • dependency;
  • achievement behaviour.

This moved Culture and Personality research towards more comparative and empirical methods.

Critical assessment

Major contributions include:

  • integrating anthropology with psychology;
  • demonstrating culturally patterned personality formation;
  • highlighting childhood and socialization;
  • challenging biological determinism.

Major limitations include:

  • tendency toward cultural determinism;
  • overgeneralization of national or cultural personality;
  • inadequate attention to class, gender and internal variation;
  • methodological difficulty in inferring personality from cultural institutions.

Contemporary anthropology therefore treats personality as emerging through interaction among:

Culture + Individual agency + Socialization + Historical context

Conclusion

Anthropological approaches moved from viewing cultures as producing relatively uniform personalities towards recognizing modal tendencies, individual variation and dynamic socialization processes. Their lasting contribution lies in demonstrating that personality is simultaneously psychological and culturally constituted.

2026 How is the theory of structuralism helpful in understanding the concepts of caste and gender? 2026 Critically discuss how culture determines human behaviour in the light of Leslie White's theory. 2026 Compare Edmund Leach's structuralism with interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz. 2026 Discuss, with appropriate examples, how basic personality types may lead towards building up of national character.

Want feedback on your answer?

Join the Anthropology workshop or get structured answer-writing guidance from VAID ICS.

Join Workshop Contact VAID ICS

UPSC Anthropology Optional 2020 — Paper I

28 questions

5(d) Ethics and Genetic engineering

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > 12. Applications of Anthropology > Applied human genetics and eugenics
2020Paper IApplied & Forensic AnthropologyModel answer available

5(c) Experiential Ethnography

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > 8.1 Research Methods > Fieldwork tradition and ethnography
2020Paper IResearch Methods in AnthropologyModel answer available

5(b) Genetic drift

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > 9.3 Mendelian population and Hardy-Weinberg law > Genetic drift
2020Paper IHuman Genetics & Human BiologyModel answer available

1(a) Natufian culture

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > 1.8(b) Cultural Evolution: broad outlines of prehistoric cultures > Mesolithic > Natufian
2020Paper IPrehistoric ArchaeologyModel answer available

5(a) Racism and Eugenics

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > 9.5 Race and racism > Racial differentiation; eugenics
2020Paper IHuman Genetics & Human BiologyModel answer available

1(b) Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > 7. Culture, language and communication > Language and thought
2020Paper ICulture & SocietyModel answer available

5(e) Senescence

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > 10. Human growth and development > Ageing and senescence
2020Paper IHuman Genetics & Human BiologyModel answer available

1(d) Victor Turner and Liminality

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > 6. Anthropological Theories > Symbolic Anthropology > Turner; liminality
2020Paper IAnthropological TheoriesModel answer available