Psychology and culture

A review of literature (148 titles). (1) Anthropologists have called into serious question those interpretations of psychological testing that make much of racial differences; and in general they have tended to emphasize the cultural factors as against the biological in the analysis of human behavior. (2) Wissler has gone farthest in analyzing the morphology of culture into its component "traits;" and many investigators have made analyses of certain cultures in the Americas and elsewhere along this line; but along with this "pattern" description there has been a "functional" emphasis upon the interrelation between culture traits and between traits and individuals. (3) In studies of the dynamics of culture points of sharp disagreement have emerged. "To be sure, culture grows only through man, but in culture itself, and not in man, is the causative factor that conditions the rate of growth:" such a statement has both its defenders and its opponents. A wider divergence is found between most American anthropologists, on the one hand, who treat the cultures of different sections "inductively," and are content to note their particular diffusions from many focal points, as affected by distances, ecological conditions, etc., and the German and English anthropologists, on the other, who adhere to the doctrine of diffusion of all cultures from a single origin, as the Egyptian. (4) The evolutionist mode of interpreting cultural change has given place to theories emphasizing the geographical, the individual psychological, and the racial contributions.