The Development of a Theory of Social Structure and Personality

In “The Development of a Theory of Social Structure and Personality,” Melvin Kohn reexamines his 60-year inquiry––conducted across distinct cultures under radically different conditions–– into the relationship between people’s location in the social order and their personality. Over the course of his career, Kohn and his collaborators used groundbreaking empirical methodologies to understand the effect of social structure on personality. Study after study demonstrated the primacy of social class and social stratification in determining people’s values and orientations, and also revealed interesting cross-national inconsistencies in their reactions to similar social conditions. In this book, Kohn focuses on these inconsistencies and, based on insights derived from his final research in China, identifies political intervention as the force that modifies, for better or for worse, the dominant effect of class stratification and the opportunities they provide for self-direction at work on personality.