Question

In your own words describe Indigenous Personalities and a Cultural Perspective on Identities

Answer 1

Indigenous personality can be defined as the relatively permanent traits or characteristic patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour of an individual that is native, and is not transported from other regions or cultural setting. These traits are developed due to the natives’ subjective natural familial, social, cultural, and ecological setting. Indigenous psychologists understand personality as a culturally produced and influeced product. They believe that individuals employ their etic, emic as well as relational cultures to organise their thoughts and actions and construct their realities. The folkways, folklores, belief systems, religion, poetry, art, social organisation, communal conflicts and social character also influence the indigenous personality of individuals of that particular culture.

Cross cultural psychologists place culture to observe variation in behavioural phenomenon and identity with a focus on the individual.
One's cultural setting influences one's psychological events (e.g. attitudes, values, motives) as well as one's self identity. Individualism and Collectivism exemplifies this concept well. The essence of individualism is the belief that the self is a self contained independent entity (Markus & Kityama, 1991). An individual's self identity is built on a set of stable and distinctive personal beliefs, attitudes, preferences and values. Central to collective identity is the belief that the self is interdependent with some in-group (e.g: family, clan, tribe). Members of individualistic national cultures perceive themselves as more independent of others, while members of collectivistic national cultures perceive themselves as more interdependent with others. In Hofstede's (2001) cross cultural survey, Sweden, The Netherlands and the United States were identified as individualist countries, whereas India, China, Japan and West Africa were identified as collectivist countries. Individual competition is emphasized in the western countries while Eastern countries like Japan and China emphasis more on obligations to family members and group goals. Hence the identity of an individual is very much influenced by his or her own culture and society.
The cultural perspective on identity can be understood by another example power distance (Hofstede, 1973-78). Countries with large power distances such as India and Singapore tend to believe that power and authority are facts of life. These cultures teach their members that people are not equal in this world and that everybody has a rightful place, which is clearly marked by countless vertical arrangements. Social hierarchy is prevalent in such cultures. On the other hand, cultures with small power distance (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, etc) places value on equality and authority.
Hence, the cultural perspective on identity has helped the psychologists to be inclusive of significant cultural variables and re-think about the universality versus culture-specificity of personality.