AN EVALUATION OF CURRENT APPROACHES TO PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES IN FOLK AND URBAN SOCIETIES.

The article presents an evaluation of current approaches to personality differences in folk and urban societies. It focuses upon one area within the total culture-personality field; namely, upon the problem of typical differences in personality. The conception of folk homogeneity and integration has been imported, explicitly or implicitly, into the study of folk-urban personality differences; and, further, that the insistence upon such typical folk-urban personality differences is rooted in methodological inadequacies which require express formulation and documentation. The heterogeneous, complex, unintegrated urban society is conducive to the development of highly variegated and relatively unintegrated personality types; while the homogeneous, integrated folk society is characterized by relative uniformity and stability. The conclusions regarding folk-urban differences have been by-products of the researches of anthropologists, sociologists, or psychiatrists, working in the traditional isolation of these separate disciplines.