THE SOCIOLOGICAL ROLES OF PERSONALITY TYPES IN THE TUSCARORA POPULATION

The

observed great variability in personality of the

members

of Tuscarora ^society

makes

it difficult to cover all individuals withthe

same

psychologicalformula^; noteventhe "master-trait"ofstereotypy

and

the cliche approach applies to everyone. Considerations of the relationship of culture to personality,

and

of the necessarydeficiency of the cultural-deductive technique, have led the writer to argue ⁱⁿ favor of frankly accepting the fact of variability,

and

phrasing de- scriptions of Tuscarora personality in terms of a

modal

type

and

of deviations

from

that type.

Even

the

method

of averaging fails to take account of variability. Averaging-in separate factors

from

a

Rorschach sample

of asociological

community would

be methodologi- callyanalogoustoaveragingtheEorschachsof"neurotics" (including let us say, obsessive-compulsives, conversion hysterias,

and

^anxiety

states) inordertoget acompositeprofileof "neurosis."

Although

the

modal

technique does deal with the

problem

ofintra-

group

variability, it does not automatically solve it.

There

are dangers

and

deficiencies in the

modal

technique too: perhapsits

most

serious pitfall isits

own

chiefvirtue: the

modal

type does not charac- terizeeveryone in asociety, yet thetemptation ^willbeto assumethat

Wallace]

MODAL PERSONALITY

OF

TUSCARORA

INDIANS 91

it does.

The modal

personality type is identified on the

major

criterion of frequency. Itis the

most

frequentlyapproximatedtype, but it is not necessarily the only identifiable type;

and

it

makes

no statementaboutthesociological roleof the

members

of the

modal

class.

Let us assume that

we

apply the

modal

technique to a different society

from

Tuscarora

—

a class-structured African kingdom, for instance. If

we

take a nicely proportional sample, representative of bothsexes, age^groups,commoners,priests,

members

of the royalfam-

ily, soldiers,

"Amazons,"

etc.,

we

will very probably find that the

modal

class is largely

composed

of the

common

people. If (and the writer does not

know

whether suchis thecase) notable

and

consistent psychological differencesobtainbetweennoble

and commoner,

identi- fiable

by

theRorschach,thenobility willnotappearinthe

modal

class atall

—

^theywillbestatisticallydeviant.

Yet

ifonewished topredict

Bahomeyan

foreign policy

from

a

knowledge

of culture

and

of national character,

knowledge

of the personality type of the deviant nobility

might

be

more

important than

knowing

that ofthe

modal

commoners.

Thus

anumerically

minor

group,witha special personalitytype,

may

play a disproportionately important social role as determiners of certain classesof events.

For

practical purposes, it

would seem

that

when

dealing with a

complex

society (like

Dahomey,

or theUnited States,forthatmatter) the technique here described for deriving the

modal

personality by the use of the Rorschach technique should be applied to relatively

homogeneous

elements of the population, identified by the possession of definable subcultures.

Presumably major

separation lines or iso- glosses

might

be

made

by taking into account such factors as socio- economicclass, sex,age,geographic location,occupational status,

and

perhaps others.

The

particular factors

would depend

partly

on

the natureoftheproblem. Ingeneral, this sortof analysisismeaningful only for a

group

ofpeoplein

which

there are

no

gi'oss

and

consistent cultural differences

which

affect personality formation.

For

each of these subcultures there could be defined a

modal

personality,

which would

correspond

more

or less to the "status personality" as defined

by

Linton (1936,1949).

The

problem of

polymodal

distributions cannot be avoided by averaging,

which would

merely

lump

king

and commoner

together to

form

a hybrid representative of neither,

and

probably not repre- sentative of the society as a whole either.

One

could not judge the likelihood of a nation's

making

war, for instance,

by

averaging the degree ofhostilityofall thecitizens of the country.

The modal

atti-

tude

might

be pacifist; but the social structure

might

be such as to permit a

few

militarists to initiate a sequence of events culminating inwarfare. Prediction (whichisthetestof

any

theoreticalpudding)

92 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

[Boll. 150

could only be

made by

describing the

modal

personality types of the various subsocieties,

and

stating their respective social roles in the larger structure. In dealing, not with a single attitude capable of representation

on

a linear continuum, but with a

complex

integration ofelementslikepersonality,averaging

would

beevenless useful.

Even

within a

homogeneous

society, however, there will be

found

a

wide

range of variation in personality

which

is not ascribable to statuses

which

could not be separated in the sampling. Tuscarora

is a case in point. Tuscarora is as nearly a

homogeneous

society as afield

worker

is likely to find inthe

United

States.

Such

status dif- ferencesasappeararenottheproductofcaste, class,orsemihereditary occupationalrole,butare largely theresultofindividualspecialization

made

ⁱⁿ response to factors unassociated with institutional barriers.

Sex

indeed is a criterion of

major

status difference,

and we have

al-

ready noted that there are slight personality differences identifiable inthe Korschach ascribable to it; ideally thereshould be

computed

a separate

modal

personality forboth

men and women. But

the range of variation is

wide

for both

men and women

^: only 29.4 percent of the

women, and

44.4percent of the

men,

37.2percent of

men and women

combined, fall into the

modal

class.

Age

groups likewise arewidely distributed.

In

theTuscarorasample, becauseonly 70adults are represented, sex

and

agecategorieswere

mixed

together.

The

writerhas alreadysug- gested that

women

probably tend

more

frequently tobe introverted,

and

lessoftentoexpress overt aggressivefeelings; ifa separate

modal

profile were

composed

for each sex, the

modal women would

appear tobeslightly different

from

the males. This

presumably

isareflection of differences in formative experience

and

in adult status, with the

men

being able to express their hostilities

more

freely

and

to find a wider scope for their lives outside of the clearing, whilethe

women,

relatively fixed to

home and

hearth, are forced in

upon

themselves.

Age

grades do not

seem

to have

any

correlation at all with per- sonality structure abovethe age of 16. (Seetable 6.)

The

propor- tion ofthevarious age classes in the

modal

classarenotsignificantly different

from

thoseinthesample.

The

deviantgroupslikewiseeach contain a wide rangeof age classes.

There

isnot,

among

adults,

any

noticeable associationbetween age

and

personalitytype^;

and

certainly the

modal

class

was

not selected because it

was

the

most

populous age group.

Are

there

any

elements of social role

more common

in the

modal

class than in theother deviant classes,

beyond

the already noted sex- role difference?

From an

admittedly sketchy

knowledge

of the

com-

munity

(and, actually, to his

own

surprise), the writer can find

no

Wallace]

MODAL PERSONALITY

OF

TUSCARORA

INDIANS

93

one thing

which

especially distinguishes the

modal

class sociologi- cally

from

the various deviant classes (excepting perhaps the

group

of high-/^ percent males). In correspondence with the gradation of ages,

among

the

men

there are 2 high-school students;4

mature

family

men who work

regularly,2 of

them on

high steel,1 in

an

office,

and

1 as acarpenter;9

unmarried men

ofvaryingages

who

dovariouskinds of

manual

labor, but are not regularly employed;

and

one semi- invalid, aged 66 (the oldest

man

in the

modal

group),

who

has been a chief.

The

10

modal women

include 6 married

women who do housework and

4

unmarried women,

2 of

whom

do housework, 1 of

whom

is a nurse,

and

another a college student; 1 of the married

women

is a clan mother.

Two

of the

unmarried men

are notorious alcoholics; one of the

unmarried women

is considered "peculiar"

by

the

community. Each

of the 26 stands out in the writer's

mind

as a distinct personality,withhis

own way

of relatingtopeople, his

own

home, job, mannerisms, style of talk,

and

personal problems.

The

description of the

modal

personality type is, of course, not

aimed

at distinguishing them; their Rorschachs, separately interpreted,

mark them

outas different.

The modal

type, asdefinedearlier, does define a certain

norm which

theyall do recognizablyapproximateinvarious

ways and

in variousdegrees.

Table 6.

—

Thecomparative distribution ofTuscarora agegroupsin themodalclass

andinthetotalsample

,Agegroup

94 BUREAU

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AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

[Bdll. 150 circumstances,

and

tlieimperfectdiscrimination possiblein this kind of quantitative treatment.

The

only deviant

group

(high

F

percent, indicating a rigid, con- stricted, Ojibwa-like personality)

which

seems to correlate to

some

degree with sociological distinctions, includes eight men.

The

2 herb doctors inthesampleof 70 fall into thisgroup, as doesalsothe hospitalized case of paranoid schizophrenia; an aged hermit

who

is

regarded as an

anomaly by

the

community

; one

man who came

spon- taneously to the house to take a Rorschach while he

was

drunk; a

young man

with reputed mechanical genius

who

has joinedthe

army;

and

2

men —

¹

^an

automobile mechanic,the other a boiler-tender

— who

are

more

shy

and

retiring,

and

also

more

mechanically inclined, than

most

other Tuscarora.

While

all (except the hospital case) are well

enough

adjusted to life in Tuscarora society, they (like perhaps the

modal Ojibwa)

avoid too-close

and

continuous relationships with people,

and

relatethemselves rather to

nonhuman

objects (plants

and

machinery). Their social roles are, however, highly individualized, ratherthanfunctions of adefinable

common

status.

The

^reason for the absence of

any

very noticeable correlation between the

modal and

deviant types,

and

social status, probably lies in the fact that Tuscarora is not a class-stratified society,

and

has

no

racial or regional subsocieties.

With

a relatively homogeneous, equalitarian culture,

and

a

low

degree of predictability of thestatus of

any

individual at birth, the variations in personality (other than sex-differences) are probably functions of "accidental" differences inthe formative experiences of individuals.

That

there is a central tendencyat all,

and

the point at

which

it falls, is

no

doubt a function of theculture.