In Defense of National Character

Abstract

The concept of national character has a long and disputed history, serving at one time as a meeting point for anthropology and psychology, later as a signpost for the parting of the ways. Cultural anthropology has traditionally given ontological priority to culture over the individual and to values as relative over universal; psychology has increasingly pursued the reverse. Current trends in cross-cultural psychology—employing a biological trait ontology assessed via English language constructs at the individual level, and aggregated questionnaire responses at the cultural level—have furthered this universalist tradition, unlike research linking national character with sociocultural conditions. These data sources remain frozen in their respective tracks, related only by `undynamic' correlations. Their (premature) message has heralded the demise of national character, inadvertently paving the way for international character, mirroring methods, models, concepts, and values overwhelmingly Western in orientation, and nicely paralleling on-going economic globalization.