Personality, Values, Culture
An Evolutionary Approach

Fischer uses evolutionary psychology to explain why people's personality and values are both similar and different across cultures worldwide.

Ronald Fischer (Author)

9781107087156, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 December 2017

270 pages, 22 b/w illus. 8 tables
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.52 kg

'This is a rich and erudite work that covers key concepts in the history of psychological thought and supports the author's arguments regarding a model of gene-culture coevolution. Psychologists, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in personality, culture, and evolutionary psychology will want to read this book.' D. S. Dunn, Choice

Humans are complex social beings. To understand human behaviour, an integrated perspective is required - one which considers both what we regularly do (our personality traits) and what motivates us (our values). Personality, Values, Culture uses an evolutionary perspective to look at the similarities and differences in personality and values across modern societies. Integrating research on personality and human values into a functional framework that highlights their underlying compatibilities (driven by shared genetic and brain mechanisms), Fischer describes how personality is shaped by the complex interplay between genes and the environment, both over the course of human evolution and within the lifespan of individuals. He proposes a gene-culture coevolution model of personality and values to explain how and why people differ around the world and how genes, economics, social conditions, and climate jointly shape personality.

1. Introduction: the quest to understand the person
2. Everything is change: a primer to evolution
3. The big five personality traits and human values
4. Examining the common structure of traits and values
5. Explaining personality structures: the relative importance of genetic
6. Searching for the underlying mechanisms in the brain and the situation and cultural differences in values and traits
7. Is the personality world two-dimensional? The (in)stability of the trait-value structure across cultures
8. Understanding structural variation: resources, threats and the power of the situation
9. Values and traits as adaptive strategies
10. Traits and values across the lifespan
11. Evolutionary genetics of personality
12. Why should we care about personality, culture and evolution?

Subject Areas: Evolution [PSAJ], Behavioural theory [Behaviourism JMAL], Psychology [JM], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Sociology & anthropology [JH], Society & culture: general [JF]