Personality and National Character R. L Y N N P E R G A M O N P R E S S OXFORD • NEW YORK • TORONTO SYDNEY • BRAUNSCHWEIG Pergamon Press Ltd., Headington Hill Hall, Oxford Pergamon Press Inc., Maxwell House, Fairview Park, Elmsford, New York 10523 Pergamon of Canada Ltd., 207 Queen's Quay West, Toronto 1 Pergamon Press (Aust.) Pty. Ltd., 19a Boundary Street, Rushcutters Bay, N.S.W. 2011, Australia Vieweg & Sohn GmbH, Burgplatz 1, Braunschweig Copyright © 1971 R. Lynn All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Pergamon Press Ltd. First edition 1971 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 71-149707 Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co., Exeter 08 016516 8 PREFACE IN THIS book I attempt to analyse the problem of national character from the point of view of contemporary psychology. The thesis presented is that among the advanced nations there are differences in the level of anxiety in the population. The anxiety level manifests itself in various ways, such as the incidence of suicide, mental illness, accidents, tobacco consumption and so forth. The thesis demands that all these supposed manifestations of the anxiety level should be associated together so that they form a pattern, and the existence of this pattern is demonstrated in the body of the book. It may be appropriate here to indicate briefly the scope of the argument. Three limitations are particularly important. First, this book does not aim to present a complete description of the national character of the people of every country, or indeed of any country. It is concerned only with the trait of anxiety. The thesis should be regarded as a simple model of one aspect of the real world. This simplification of reality is of course one of the hallmarks of scientific method, and in this respect the thesis to be presented follows the canons of scientific procedure. Secondly, neither does this book purport to present a complete explana- tion for suicide, mental illness, accidents and the other phenomena which are interpreted as indices of national anxiety level. For all these things there are no doubt many determinants. But they are irrelevant for our purpose, which is only to abstract the significance of anxiety from the complexities of reality. Thirdly, although anxiety appears to be an important determinant of a number of epidemiological and other national differences among contem- porary advanced countries, it should not be supposed that anxiety need always, in other circumstances, be equally important or significant. Where phenomena have several causes, the contribution of any particular cause depends upon its variability among the set of cases, and also upon the variability of the other causes. Thus there may well be other sets of countries where anxiety is not a significant cause of national differences in the epidemiological and other conditions discussed in this book. The vii viii PREFACE principle here can be illustrated by a simple example. Consider two pieces of metal of equal length. Now heat one and it becomes longer than the other. Why is it longer? Because it has been heated. But this does not mean to say that whenever one piece of metal is longer than another it is because it has been heated up. The same is true of the significance of anxiety as a cause of national differences among contemporary advanced nations. The thesis does not imply that anxiety is always a significant factor in national differences. It remains for me to mention my appreciation of the help I have received from others in writing this book. I am particularly indebted to Professor Sir Cyril Burt and to Professor H. J. Eysenck for their critical comments on an early draft of this book. My debt to them is also great because the thesis I present rests on the foundations of their work on factor analysis and its application to personality. Mrs. B. O'Sullivan and Miss S. Hampson have given me much assistance in the collection of data. I am indebted to my wife for her translations of the Russian psychiatric literature. Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin INTRODUCTION By SIR CYRIL BURT I GLADLY respond to the suggestion that I should write a brief psycho- logical introduction to this book. I do so all the more willingly because I believe, as Professor Lynn does, that the problems he has raised are of urgent importance, and have been unduly neglected. The wars that so unexpectedly overtook us during the first half of the century, the vastly increased facilities for travel, the waves of migration from one country to another, and the frequent racial conflicts within the same country, have all rendered us more and more aware of the wide divergences between people of different national origin. What, Professor Lynn asks, is the precise nature of these national or racial differences, how far are they innate and how far the result of cultural or educational influences? Why, to use the current phraseology, are some nations comparatively "undeveloped" and others "advanced"? What in short are the principal causes at work? It is curious that hitherto there have been so few attempts to study these questions by strictly scientific procedures. Politicians, social reformers and the writers who discuss such topics in our popular weeklies and monthlies, are ready to dogmatise and to contradict each other with supreme self- confidence. But their conclusions are manifestly based on little more than subjective impressions, armchair speculation and their own personal ideologies. During the present century almost the only British investigator who has attempted anything like an objective and systematic study is William McDougall. Yet when we turn to his book on The Group Mind, a work which claims to "apply psychological principles to the inter- pretation of national character", all we find is a purely descriptive and theoretical treatment, differing but little from that of Buckle, Bagehot, Kidd and their French contemporaries, a hundred years ago. In his later volume on National Welfare and National Decay he compares Morselli's maps of divorce and suicide with Ripley's map of hair-colour (as a clue to race), and refers incidentally to a few results obtained with mental ix X INTRODUCTION tests by his own research-students and by American army psychologists; but the actual data have manifestly had little to do with shaping the author's own convictions. The reader has only to glance at the first of Professor Lynn's chapters to see how very different is the treatment he has here adopted. Instead of mere personal impressions varying from one individual to another, we have tables of quantitative data based on detailed references which anyone who wishes can verify for himself. These are subjected to the same statisti- cal techniques as those already applied with such fruitful effect to the study of individual differences—the calculation of correlation coefficients and a subsequent factor analysis. No doubt there will be critics who demur to the choice of the initial data or of the factorial procedures; so much the better if it provokes other pioneers to try their hands with a different set of facts and some other statistical method. The real merit of Professor Lynn's work is to have pointed out the direction which future investi- gators must follow—the collection of objective data and the application of scientific techniques. The lists of variables set out in the graphs and tables that follow and the numerous references in the bibliography show how broadly Professor Lynn's preliminary inquiries have ranged. And for that very reason his book should have an equally wide appeal. It should interest not merely sociologists, anthropologists and economists, from whose several fields he has culled much of his data, but also educationists, physicians and psychia- trists, and indeed all who appreciate the importance of studying human progress and welfare. To appreciate the reasons for the unexpectedly disparate kinds of data that Professor Lynn has collated it will perhaps be helpful to fall back on the analogous type of inquiry that I have already mentioned. How does the psychologist proceed when he is investigating the influences that are responsible for differences—between different persons—the differences, for example, between the gifted child on the one hand and the dull or backward on the other? In compiling his case-history for a given individual the psychologist commonly starts with what seem to be the relevant environmental condi- tions. He then proceeds to examine both physical and mental characteris- tics, the latter including not only intellectual deviations, but also peculiar- ities of temperament and character. Similarly, in studying the differences between nations, we naturally think first of the geographical, geological, INTRODUCTION xi and climatic conditions under which the inhabitants live—the mineral resources, the fertile or mountainous character of the land, the presence of a sea-board with natural harbours along contemporary trade-routes, the temperature, the humidity, and the rapidity of meteorological changes. These were the causal agencies on which pre-Darwinian writers laid great stress, and which later writers held to be indirectly responsible for the adaptive variations produced by natural selection during what Bagehot called the race-making stage. They may be necessary conditions for economic growth; but they are not sufficient conditions. Human factors— the arrival or emergence of a people with adequate physical, intellectual, and motivational characteristics are essential. The physical characteristics would include not only bodily health and vigour, but also the distinctive features associated with different racial types, not forgetting one of the most significant of all—the so-called "blood group". Mental characteristics are commonly divided into cognitive (practical as well as intellectual) and motivational (temperament and character). And each of these can be subclassified into tendencies that are presumably innate and those that are acquired by tradition, education, and various cultural influences. Of the cognitive characteristics the most frequently discussed and studied is innate general ability, popularly termed "intelligence". Unfortunately, nearly all current tests of intelligence are appreciably influenced by variations in culture; they are therefore far less useful in studying racial differences than in studying individual differences. There are marked differences between the means obtained for different races; but, with few exceptions, they are relatively small as compared with the individual differences within each racial or national group. What appears to be far more important is the range of individual variation, particularly in the upper direction. During the periods of their greatest advance—the Periclean age in Athens, the Augustan age in Rome, and our own Elizabethan and Victorian eras—each nation has been exceptionally prolific of gifted individuals emerging in various walks of life. It seems highly likely that isolation makes for relative homogeneity, while the mingling of different racial stocks in consequence of migration, conquest, or the like, and the recombination of genes that ensues, makes for richer variations. Motivational characteristics are still more difficult to assess. And yet, as Professor Lynn's results reveal, they are probably much more influential. The early investigations of mine, which he cites with approval, have xii INTRODUCTION frequently been misquoted and misunderstood. So may I briefly explain what was the evidence on which I relied? I endeavoured to pick out representative individuals, children as well as adults, who exhibited most conspicuously those physical characteristics which Ripley and others had described in their classification of European races. Judged by observations, interviews and tests of personality, there appeared to be a well-marked contrast between the South European (or "Mediterranean") type and the North European (or "Nordic") type. The former seemed more sociable, loquacious, vivacious, and impulsive; their emotions were promptly and freely expressed, and as quickly subsided. The latter seemed to be more reserved, self-sufficient, self-assertive, and self-controlled; they were characterised by greater independence and individuality—eager to explore, investigate, and decide for themselves; their emotions were equally strong, but more firmly repressed and far more persistent. The mid-European (or "Alpine") type seemed on the whole more phlegmatic than either of the other two—slower and more conservative, yet at the same time shrewd and secretive, and (in many of my own cases) marked by strong aesthetic interests—a love of art and music. These differences are, of course, no more than average tendencies; and no doubt the scheme is oversimplified. But the suggestion that they are in part the effect of innate physiological and biochemical differences, surviving from an earlier race-making stage, seems in some measure confirmed by the way they will continue to reveal themselves when children of one type are adopted by foster-parents of a different type—e.g. Irish children adopted by English foster-parents, English by Welsh, and so on. However, among present-day populations the more conspicuous differences in character and daily habits would seem to be chiefly the result of differences in type of culture and traditional ideals of behaviour, transmitted by parents and older companions. Moreover, within the same nation these qualities may vary widely from one social class to another, and have often undergone con- siderable modification during the past phases of the nation's history. This means that a favourable social environment is even more important than the physical. The exceptionally able and enterprising members of the nation who should form its more effective leaders can exercise their powers to the full only in periods of peace and security and within a community that is free, tolerant and politically well organised. Extremes of individual- ism and of self-assertive motivation in the general mass of the population, coupled with an unwillingness to accept the authority of competent leaders, INTRODUCTION xiii ultimately issue, as history all too plainly testifies, not in progress but in chaos. In the field of individual psychology what is so remarkable is the fact that, as numerous correlational studies have shown, favourable conditions under each of these widely divergent headings—mental and physical, cognitive and motivational, environmental and hereditary—tend to go together; and now as Professor Lynn's results show the same holds true of national characteristics. "The aim of a genuinely scientific generalisa- tion", so Eddington has assured us, "is not just to produce a plausible hypothesis and confirm it by collecting relevant facts, but rather to reduce to a single, relatively simple, and comprehensive formulation the widest possible variety of observations, and at the same time suggest further inferences and fresh problems which may provide starting-points for future research." This has been the bold and far-reaching aim which Professor Lynn has set out to fulfil; and, if we can accept his conclusions as they stand, we must agree that he has gone far towards accomplishing it. He has compiled from the scattered literature a vast array of quanti- tative data from seemingly unrelated areas, symptomatic of the various aspects I have just enumerated; and on applying the methods of factorial analysis used in individual psychology, has shown that "one common underlying factor" pervades almost all of them. This he identifies with an emotional drive which he tentatively labels "anxiety". "Anxiety", as he defines the concept, is in his view one of the most powerful incentives for prolonged and purposeful activity. Perhaps the most interesting of Professor Lynn's chapters are those in which he adduces evidence to show that the basic factor which he has thus demonstrated forms the main agent making for rapid economic growth. From Weber onwards several economists and sociologists have attacked this problem. Professor McClelland, for example, who has also used correlational techniques, concludes that the distinctive quality character- ising "achieving societies" is the "achievement motive". This conclusion has been criticised as "an example of the old faculty fallacy, long ago pilloried by Moliere". But in point of fact Professor McClelland endeav- oured to estimate the achievement motive by independent tests. Professor Lynn has gone one better—he has devised a questionnaire for directly assessing the achievement motive, and finds that it is apparently un- corrected with the more general factor that he names "anxiety". Certain critics no doubt may reject both the specification and the simplification; xiv INTRODUCTION others may argue that some of the items in his table (e.g. "car-deaths" and "suicide") indicate the effects of economic growth rather than its causes. But once again let us remember Eddington's description of a scientific generalisation as one which not only professes to solve old problems, but also provokes new ones for further research. For the most part Professor Lynn's data relate to conditions obtaining in his selected set of countries during the post-war period—the period which for us is of greatest importance in view of the practical issues with which we are confronted at the present time. Let us hope he will extend his studies to earlier stages in world-history, so that his theory may be tested by the light thrown on economic development and the progress of civilisation in the past. His conclusions, as he himself has emphasised, are tentative and provisional. What I should like chiefly to commend are the methods he has adopted. Only by the collection of objective and quanti- tative data and the application of modern statistical techniques can the illuminating theories he has advanced be verified, amplified, criticised, or amended.