National Characteristics

Professor Peabody examines how different nationalities have different psychological characteristics in this 1985 study.

Dean Peabody (Author)

9780521154994, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 21 July 2011

268 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.4 kg

Do different nationalities have different psychological characteristics? This question is often avoided as being too controversial, but it is squarely faced in this illuminating comparative study, first published in 1985. Dean Peabody focuses principally on six nations: Britain, Germany, France, Italy and the two world powers, Russia and America, where extensive empirical studies have been conducted to ascertain what ordinary people judge to be national characteristics (often dismissed as 'national stereotypes'). These results are compared and contrasted with those from social scientific accounts of 'national character', and there is a perhaps surprising level of agreement between the two. Moreover, as Professor Peabody's systematic cross-national survey demonstrates, the psychological characteristics of different nationalities do differ in fundamental ways.

Preface
Acknowledgements
introduction
Part I. Judgements about National Characteristics: 1. National characteristics and group judgements
2. Characteristics of persons
3. Judgement principles
4. The empirical study: design and method of analysis
5. Overall results
Part II. National Character and Results for Separate Nationalities: 6. National character
7. The English
8. The Germans
9. The French
10. The Italians
11. The Russians
12. The Americans
13. North and south Italians: a regional substudy
14. Northern Europeans
15. Southern and eastern Europeans
16. The Phillippines results revisited
Part III. Conclusions: 17. Conclusions: national characteristics
18. Conclusions: judgements about national characteristics
Appendices
References
Subject index
Index of names.

Subject Areas: Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]