From the rough draft of my book, These Hidden Truths, page 122.

--Mark

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A Quick Review: Culture and Personality Revisited

But before reviewing the answers, it will be important for the reader to have
some basic model for understanding the underlying interactions behind traits and
culture. The reader is advised to consider the correlations discussed here and
come to his own conclusions about what direction they most naturally flow in,
and under what circumstances—do traits usually drive culture, or does culture
usually drive traits? What are the exceptions? The reasons for this will become
clear as the various answers to our Last Question are given; all are necessarily
tentative, while some are more feasible from one standpoint than from another.

Now, remember from previous sections that that factors differ in their
heritability—that is, in the degree to which genetic factors affect phenotypic
variance within a population. When considering interactions between traits and
culture, it is consistent with the evidence to say that highly solid traits are
more likely to drive culture, while less solid traits are more likely to be
influenced by culture. The high heritability of psychometric g makes it unlikely
that egalitarian (low power distance) societies boost intelligence. This is
certainly a possibility (remember the Flynn Effect), but g is strongly
heritable, and different cultures are known to differ on g for heritable
reasons. Thus, it seems more likely that intelligent societies tend to be
naturally more egalitarian to some degree.

The other relationships between culture and average personality are much more
difficult to explain. In their paper discussing the issue, Hofstede and McCrae
discuss the correlations they were able to uncover between Big Five traits and
cultural forms, Hofstede arguing for an environmentalist "culture drives traits"
view while McCrae argues for a hereditarian "traits drive culture" view. While
it is refreshing to see the hereditarian position actually considered (a great
deal of research completely ignores the possibility of genetic differences
between groups, which nullifies much of the value of their work) my personal
opinion is that Hofstede’s model is closer to the mark in most cases. To
minimize page-flipping, here is their correlation matrix once again:


PDI and...
IQ: –44%... E: –57%... C: 52%... O: –39%

UAI and...
N: 58%... A: –55%

IND and...
E: 64%

MAS and...
N: 57%... A: –36%... O: 40%


McCrae is unable to explain the trends in masculinity with hereditarian
reasoning; indeed, what possible reason could be given for neurotic, open
societies to focus on masculine pursuits such as money and work rather than
people and comfort? Men are lower on N than women, not more, and there is no
measurable difference in O between men and women. There are also historical
reasons to wonder about how trait-oriented this cultural form may be. One ethnic
group commonly brought up here is the Scandinavians—the same ethnic group which
gave us the Vikings now sports the lowest-rated masculine societies we know of.
Recall also from the discussion on changing political values that one’s personal
views on gender roles have a minimal genetic component. This seems to suggest
that some unknown environmental and cultural variables drive masculinity, which
indicates that living in a masculine society tends to make people more Neurotic,
less Agreeable, and more Open. Of course, it may be that innate disagreeableness
drives masculinity, since low-A is a classic trait differentiating men from
women, but the correlations with Openness and Neuroticism are a very poor fit
with the "genes drive culture" proposition.

How exactly this happens is unclear, but Hostede suggests that masculine
societies (which focus on work, ego, and the acquisition of things, rather than
relationships and quality of life) are poorly arranged to assuage anxieties, but
encourage conflict and self assertion. The relationship between Openness and
masculinity is difficult to explain, but he suggests that masculine societies
encourage higher self-report bias, so perhaps people in masculine societies are
not as Open as they claim to be.

Individualism is also an interesting case. Here, it seems just as feasible that
an individualist society will encourage Extroversion as it does that a society
of extroverts will naturally generate an individualistic culture. I would like
to suggest, based on a broad review of the evidence, that it is individualism
which drives Extroversion more than the reverse. It seems that wealth and
prosperity (both powerful correlates of a culture’s individualism) allow a high
focus on materialism, personal gratification, and freedom from the necessity for
strong social bonds, which simply cannot exist in poorer societies; these poorer
societies must then focus on collectivist values: expertise, security, and duty.
Furthermore, the noble classes of any given society throughout history appear to
have been rather individualistic even when surrounded by more collectivistic
lower classes—are the nobles really going to be much more innately extroverted
than their subjects? Then we also have the case of Japan, once a famously
collectivistic nation, now scoring 46 on Individualism after strong economic
successes and heavy interaction with the Western world.

It seems quite clear, then, that individualism is strongly affected by a variety
of factors which have little or nothing to do with the Extroversion of its
people. While there may indeed be some sort of feedback loop here where
Extroversion does drive individualism, the author’s opinion is that the cultural
and especially economic influence on individualism seems more important overall
(remember that individualism correlates strongly with the per capita GNP in a
society). Of course, genetics are still vital in determining the individualism
of a given society, since g drives wealth to a great degree, but I believe
wealth drives individualism and that individualism drives Extroversion more than
the reverse; the reader is invited to draw his own conclusion.

Lest this should give the idea that culture appears largely to drive national
differences in the Big Five scores, the case of uncertainty avoidance seems very
different. McCrae’s arguments seem quite lucid, so I will quote them directly:

=====

…higher neuroticism and lower agreeableness predict higher uncertainty
avoidance. Consider a group of people who are temperamentally prone to these
personality characteristics. They will, in general, be tense and irritable, and
interpersonal interactions will be difficult. Each new decision will be a
potential source of distressing conflict. Such people may find that they can
coexist only if they adopt a rigid set of rules and screen out new situations
that would require new decisions—in other words, they would develop the values
and institutions that typify high uncertainly avoidance countries. Hofstede
(2001) hypothesized that Latin countries are high in power distance because they
inherited the stress on laws that characterized the Roman Empire, but it is
possible that Latin peoples have, since antiquity, been high in neuroticism and
low in agreeableness, and these collective traits themselves necessitated the
Roman emphasis on law and order.

======

By contrast, the culture drives traits model offers no convincing explanation
for why life in an uncertainty-avoiding society will boost N and depress A. So
by this interpretation, societies with high levels of uncertainty avoidance are
likely to be innately high-N, low-A, or possibly both.

Lastly, we come to the issue of Power Distance. In this case, both the culture
drives traits model and traits drive culture model make sense. Since it is
impossible to reject either one, it seems most likely that both are in effect,
although once again, the reader is invited to draw his own conclusion.

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