Anthropology Archive

Psychocultural Model of Human Development

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Anthropological approaches to personality and ethnicity view them as mediating between two main aspects of culture: the primary institutions of society (infrastructure and social

structure) that provide formative experiences and the secondary institutions (ideological or superstructural beliefs: religion, folklore, mythology, cosmology, etc.) that manifest models for the personality processes and dynamics. Personality mediates between material experiences and expressions. Expressive culture (such as religion, myth, folklore, stories, song, drama, art, performance, literature, proverbs, poetry, music, ballads) project (or manifest) personality processes, cultural ideals, and normative patterns of behavior, constituting an expression of indigenous psychology.

The psychocultural model (Whiting and Whiting, 1975) provides a cultural-ecological systems approach for examining personality within the contexts of biological, environmental, social structural, and ideological influences. The psychocultural model emphasizes seven main influences: history, environment, the maintenance (cultural) system, child-rearing environment, innate needs, learned behaviors, and projective systems, including indigenous personalities reflected in myth and religion. LeVine's (1974) evolutionary model of population psychology emphasizes four cultural adaptations of individual personality: environmental, primary parental socialization, secondary socialization, and group adaptations to population norms. The psychocultural model, integrated with the evolutionary model of population psychology, provides a broad framework for examining the different components of cultural systems that affect cultural psychology and identity (Figure 6.1).

The diverse inputs into these models and the bases for variation across many aspects of the culture provide frameworks for assessing both intercultural (between cultures) differences and intracultural (within culture) variations (see Winkelman, 1998, 1999, 2001c, 2005, 2006a). Variations within the same culture may derive from differences in socialization experiences, environmental influences, family history and structures, economic opportunities, secondary socialization experiences (school, military, sports, religion, or prison), and immediate peer and adult models. Behavior and identity are produced within an integrated cultural system in which any aspect can impact socialization and development.

Environment Environment and its resources have many influences on development, not just physically but socially as well. Perspectives on environmental relationships are important for understanding how individuals may not have access to resources or may be affected by environments outside of their immediate setting (e.g., how the international drug trafficking and drug wars affect local communities without contact with the international level).

History Cultural history provides models for both parents and children in personality as well as relationships with other groups that play a role in the development of opportunities and identity. History includes cumulative cultural history and outside social influences that affect self and other conceptions and models for personal behavior.

Cultural System The cultural (or maintenance) system includes influences from the domestic economy of family, kinship structures, and community as well as infrastructure, resources, and the political economy. Patterns of work are considered particularly powerful influences on socialization experiences and value orientations imparted to children and have far broader influences on development and health, as detailed in Chapter Four.

History

Traditions and beliefs Intergroup relations

Environment

Ecosystem relations and adaptations Migrations and borrowings

Maintenance System/Cultural and Social System

Domestic Economy

Production

Subsistence and work patterns Means of production Division of labor

Reproduction Population size Fertility patterns

Child's Learning Environment

Settings occupied Caretaker relations and teachers Tasks assigned Mother's work

Socialization of Biological Needs

Needs, drives and capacities Emotions and attachment Sex and family roles Secondary social drives

Family organization Kinship patterns Community organization

Political Economy

Political systems

Social structure and stratification Law and social control

Learned

Behavioral styles Skills and abilities Value priorities Conflicts and defenses

Secondary Socialization

Stages of life-cycle development Social roles

Initiation and adult transition

Mesosystems, exosystems, and macrosystem relations Individual Adult

Material and social organization of behavior Social roles

Population ideals and norms

Projective/Expressive Systems

Religious beliefs and practices Ritual and ceremony

Art and recreation Games and play

Deviance, crime, and suicide rates Culture-Bound Syndromes Indigenous psychology

FIGURE 6.1. Expanded Psychocultural Model

Innate Potentials Cultures mold innate potentials in the formation of childhood personality. These involve physiological, psychological, and social functions, including bonding and personal attachment, eating, sex and reproduction, emotional relations and communication, self-representation and internalization of social others, and the direction of primary and secondary drives.

Child Rearing The child care environment and cultural customs that guide parents' interactions with children are in part adaptations to ecological pressures. Primary socialization involves parental behaviors, rewards, and punishments that shape children's behavior. These influences may be supplemented with secondary socialization influences—schools, military, peers, work, initiation—that produce a distinct self to adjust the individual to the normative expectations of adult personality, self-image, and social roles reflecting cultural ideals. Family influences are primary in the child's learning environment and transmission of cultural influences in the development of innate potentials. Although family is universal, its status, roles, and influences are variable, producing both cultural and individual influences on social roles, gender, personal identity, emotional expression, learning styles, and behavioral patterns.

Adult Personality and Projective Systems Adult personality and its characteristics and dynamics involve an indigenous psychology, a projective system expressed in religion, mythology, cosmology, ritual, art, drama, stories, proverbs, poetry, music, ballads, legends, and oral traditions. This expressive material represents cultural psychology and identity through displaying group ideals for behavior and models regarding the expression of emotions. Expressive culture reveals the cultural collective unconscious and psychocul-tural patterns. These representations of the cultural person provide indigenous psychologies. Theories of illness engage these beliefs about the self and the conditions and factors that affect it.

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