How culture affects our psychology
In a previous post (Colin on Culture: World vs. work) I talked about how our social culture has a direct impact on the way that we work. It also has a direct impact on our own psychology, leading to generational changes in the way that we think, act and communicate.
Whilst it’s true to say that we are a product of our environment (social culture), that doesn’t mean that all people from Japan are the same, for example.
When we are born our personality is agnostic of our social culture. Yet, over time our social culture changes our psychology and affects our resident personality. A great example of this is the language that we use. My children are using completely different words than I did when I was their age.
We tend to joke about these things, yet it’s important to understand them if we are to build bridges in our work between different personalities, generations and social cultures.
Our personalities typically contain a set of strengths and opportunities for improvement, such that even twins who are biologically identical in almost every way may have completely different preferences.
Personality relates to the interrelationship between emotional, cognitive and behavioural patterns brought about by environmental and biological patterns. These core traits are relatively stable, though shaped continuously by our environment.
As humans mature, we become more aware of our preferences and it’s this self-awareness that helps us to build relationships with other humans and to drive our curiosity towards the people and things that interest us.
Of course, many personality profiles attempt to categorise people: you’re an extrovert, you’re an introvert and so on; when the reality is, we have a mix of preferences that we can bring to the fore at any given moment depending on how safe or stressed we feel at any given time.
People and their personality mix have a crucial role to play not only in the continual evolution of the sociocultural environment in which they’re born, but also in the establishment of the working culture where they will collaborate with others to deliver successful outcomes.
So when you feel (or you hear others say) that they feel like they are a different person in work, than out of work, then you understand that they are reacting to their surroundings.
This isn’t (the Apple TV show) Severance where you get to leave your work-self at the front door and then pick it up again later. It’s a demonstration that if we don’t collectively build a culture with empathy at its core such that everyone can thrive, then it will affect our psychology, and rarely for the better.
