Social character is a theoretical concept in social science that relates to the shared individual psychological character structure of people in a society or in a social class. Most social scientists don't use this theoretical concept and some even dispute the existence of shared social character. Scientists who use the social character as an analytical tool can be divided into those who see the social character as an essential and sui generis feature, while others treat it as a secondary phenomenon, that is, as an adaptation to the specific way of life. 

                        Social Character in Psychology

German-American psychologist Erich Fromm formed his theoretical approach combining the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Marx. Fromm believed that neither Freud's "materialist psychology" nor Marx's historical materialism were in themselves sufficient to provide an adequate explanation of man and society. Freud's theory explains human behavior as a consequence of complicated relationships between innate biological instincts and the life experience of an individual. On the other hand, Marx studies how the material conditions of life affect the emergence of the social superstructure, which then directs individual behavior. Fromm set himself the task of making a connection between these two approaches, and he called his approach "analytical social psychology", by which he wants to explore how different socio-economic structures affect the selection and adaptation of human instincts to behave in line with the needs of the system. It is the difference between how different societies adapt the human psyche to different socio-economic structures that creates a situation in which that same type of behavior, which is considered "sick" in one society, is considered "healthy" and desirable in another society.

The emergence of capitalism is associated with the spread of Protestant ideas. Protestantism requires individuals to be committed to their work, fulfill their duties, and have strict control over their sexual urges. A person who develops under the influence of such imperatives has, in Freud's terminology, an „anal character“, which is reflected in the desire for aggression and destruction. A society shaped by such ideas has a "patricentric" structure and a patriarchal-authoritarian cultural pattern. In contrast, socialist ideology seeks to develop a "matricentric" structure, characterized by values ​​of happiness, abundance, and solidarity. Fromm connects Marxist socialism with the „oral character“. Fromm believed that people are not doomed to forever submit to the demands of a society that strives to suppress undesirable individual urges. Due to the inability to satisfy instincts, instead of transmitting dissatisfaction to other areas (sublimation process), people can change objective social conditions to create a society that will be better harmonized with innate human instincts.

In the book, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973) Fromm analyzes human aggression. Although aggression is innate in people, cruelty is not, since it is a product of society. He distinguishes between "benign" and "malignant" aggression. Benign aggression is instinctive and adaptive because it serves to defend against danger. Malignant aggression tends to injure or destroy an opponent. Malignant aggression is shaped by the "necrophilous" character of society. However, some primitive societies have a biophilic character. There exist matrifocal and matrilocal organization in these societies and they are characterized by non-violence, egalitarianism, and sexual freedoms. Fromm believes that the best qualities should be taken from both matricentric societies (love and equality) and patricentric societies (rationality and creativity), and such a synthesis would create the best social character. Fromm also wrote the book Social Character in a Mexican Village (1970).

                       Social Character in Anthropology

American anthropologist Ruth Benedict presented her approach called "culture and personality" in the book Patterns of Culture (1934). Benedict explored the interdependent relationship between individuals and cultures. Cultures are shaped by choices made by individuals, and, in turn, cultures shape individual personality, thus we end up with a dynamic synergy of personality and cultural systems and culture-personality isomorphism. The humanistic cultural potential exists in all cultures, but individual creativity and individual choices play out differently in different cultures. Possibilities for the adoption or development of various cultural patterns in every culture are almost limitless, but through individual “selection,” all those individual patterns are integrated into a consistent whole, a cultural totality. The meaning of any individual cultural pattern depends on its place within that whole, that is, on its relationship with all other patterns.

Benedict distinguishes two basic types of cultures by the way they shape individual personalities. These two types are the Apollonian and Dionysian cultural models. These two models are borrowed from Nietzsche’s distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian in his book The Birth of Tragedy. Apollonian cultural model produced a personality characterized by calm, balanced, and nondestructive behavior, which was exemplified by the Pueblo people. In contrast, the Dionysian cultural model shaped personality with a penchant for excessive, violent, bellicose, and paranoid behavior, which was evident in the Pima, the Kwakiutl, and the Dobuan peoples.

During World War II the Army Information Bureau of the War Department commissioned Benedict to examine the national character of several countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Japan, and Thailand. This endeavor's product was a monograph on Japan's national character: The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946). In studying Japanese people most crucial task was to determine whether or not the US should remove the Japanese Emperor from the throne after the allied victory in the war. The most important values in Japanese society are concepts of hierarchy and indebtedness, which are in stark contrast to the most important American values of equality and freedom.

Japanese people see family and social relationships as grounded in indebtedness and hierarchy, and the greatest imperative for any Japanese individual is to fulfill their familial and social duties, as a form of repayment of debt to the supreme authority, whether in the family or the society. A sense of self-respect is tied to the execution of these duties and subjugation to authority. Because every culture is an integrated cohesive whole people from one culture tend to judge cultural patterns from other cultures, not by the standards of that other culture, but by standards of their own culture. This leads to cross-cultural misunderstandings. For example, Americans find Japanese culture to be without freedom, while Japanese people find American culture to be lawless. Benedict believed that anthropology would give people the tools to see their own, but also other cultures in a new way, so people can be more accepting of other cultures and change useless and inhumane customs in their own cultures.  

American anthropologist Margaret Mead continued to develop the approach of culture and personality pioneered by Ruth Benedict. Mead and Gregory Bateson co-authored the book, Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis (1942). Mead and Ruth Benedict started working on a project studying non-native cultures of the world titled Research in Contemporary Cultures, also known as National Character Studies. Mead took over as director of the project when Benedict died in 1948, and concluded the project in 1952. Using the information gathered from the eight cultures where she had done fieldwork, Mead published Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World In 1949.

Mead's book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies  (1935) studied the social character and culture of three societies in New Guinea - the Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli. Mead resided with each tribe for six months to immerse herself in the cultural practices of each society. In Arapesh society all members (of both sex) had feminine traits – sensitivity, nurture, and harmony; while masculine traits like aggression and violence were discouraged for all members. Arapesch mothers and their children had a prolonged relationship and men helped with childrearing duties. Mundugumor society had more masculine traits and all members were encouraged to display them, while pregnancies were associated with strong taboos. Tchambuli society exhibits duality of gender roles, but they were reversed to traditional gender roles in the US – men were nominally in charge of each collective, but were passive, gentle, and submissive, while women were truly in charge, breadwinners, aggressive and violent.  

         The Influence of the Social Character on the Economy

German economic historian Werner Sombart combined Marx's theory of the origin and development of capitalism with a socio-psychological and socio-cultural theory of ethnic characters. Sombart emphasizes the influence of religion, especially Judaism, on the development of capitalism, because the Jews were the first to engage in trade and borrowing money. Sombart believes that Jews practiced these occupations because of their racial origins. He views the Jews as a lower race and believes that they are characterized by the power of will, egoism, and abstract mentality.

After the First World War, Sombart moved away from Marxism and began to propagate nationalist ideas, which caused him to draw a parallel between the English, a nation of merchants, and a German nation characterized by heroes, soldiers, and philosophers, ready to sacrifice for higher ideals. He used racial categories to explain the propensity of different populations for capitalism. Sombart introduces a distinction between two types of capitalists - entrepreneurs have fast intellect and good moral reasoning, and that is how the Germans contributed to the development of capitalism, while, on the other hand, there are merchants who are completely intellectually and emotionally subservient to money and profit, which is characteristic of the Jews.

                           Social Character in Sociology

French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville researches the American social character in the two-volume work, Democracy in America (1835, 1840). He takes the notion of national character from Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu) and uses it in his analysis of the functioning of democracy in America. The United States represents a society without an aristocratic history, and its national character is characterized by a commitment to the ideas of personal and political freedoms and legal equality. Individuals are motivated by the desire to achieve personal success, social cohesion is maintained by local self-government, and there is no need for a rigid social hierarchy or a strong centralized state. America is characterized by a spontaneous form of people's sovereignty, and it is nurtured and strengthened by the effects of lifestyle, upbringing, religion, and law.

French anthropologist and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, in the books On collective memory (1925) and The Collective Memory (1950), presents the theory of collective consciousness and collective memory. It brings the collective consciousness (mentality, needs, behaviors) in connection with production relations. In industrial societies, the hierarchical relationship of social classes becomes stable as different classes adopt different values ​​and ideals. These different group consciousnesses ensure the cohesion of the group and its continuity. The values ​​of the working class differ the most from the average values ​​in society. He shifts the focus of working-class study from the relationship of production to the study of living standards and consumer habits. Collective memory is determined by social determinants. Collective memory is a social construct that changes throughout history, with social changes. Collective memory takes precedence over individual memory. He believes that collective memory differs between different classes and that the nobility knew best how to preserve memories of real events, the bourgeoisie subjected memory to utilitarian values, while the working class is indifferent to the past because it has inert behavior and changing composition. 

In his first book, Authority and the Family (in German, 1936), German sociologist Max Horkheimer deals with the way society reproduces itself. He explores how the relationship between authority and cultural values ​​leads to subordinate strata of society accepting their own subordinate position. The main role in reproducing these values ​​and maintaining the status quo is not physical force, but social institutions such as the family, church, and school. These institutions, which work together, strengthening each other, are accepted by the people, and then they shape the character traits of the people, the most important of which is submission to authority. Authority is the one that plays a key role in the process in which people passively accept their destiny as a given. Horkheimer believes that the family is the basic unit of society, not the class. The authority that family and marriage have continues to enable a man to dominate a woman and demand her obedience. In culture, too, there are relations of authority.

American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin is best known for his four-volume book Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937-1941) in which he studies social change and cultural types.  In his typology of cultural types, there are three basic cultural types, which are classified based on ideological aspects of cultures, while other cultural elements and physical products of cultures are interpreted as products of these ideological types. The level of integration of cultures is what makes diverse cultures different because the integration of culture depends on the logical consistency, interconnectedness, and interdependence of different elements of culture. The ideological aspects of culture provide answers to four main questions: the nature of reality; the needs and goals that need to be met; the level to which they need to be met, and the methods by which those needs and goals are met. The cultural type that is present in some society shapes the social character of individuals in that society. 

There are two opposing cultural types: „ideational“ and „sensate“. All cultures are on a continuum between these two extreme ideal types. In ideational cultures, the nature of reality is viewed in supra-empirical and supra-rational terms, and all knowledge is drawn from religious or similar sources. Needs and goals are also viewed in a spiritual and otherworldly context, meeting these needs should be complete, and the basic method of meeting needs and goals is by adapting oneself to religious or transcendental rules. Sensate cultures experience reality in the context of physical forces and material things. Goals and needs are material and are met to the maximum, and the main method of meeting these needs is through the manipulation of the physical environment. The third ideal cultural type is located in the middle between the two previous extremes. Sorokin calls it an „idealistic“ or integral type, and it represents a harmonious synthesis of the previous two extremes, although, in this type, ethical rules are also derived from transcendental (religious) sources. Differences between the ideational and sensate types of cultures are visible in different aspects of culture, such as philosophy, law, art, etc.

American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset is known for studying "Americanism", that is, the essence of the American socio-psychological character. in the book American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (1996); he singles out five main elements of Americanism: commitment to political freedoms, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and faith in the free market. Lipset is also known for his examination of the famous work of David Riesman The Lonely Crowd in the book Culture and Social Character: The Work of David Riesman Reviewed (1961).

Serbian geographer and ethnologist Jovan Cvijić is considered one of the founders of the anthropogeographic school and the founder of ethnopsychology, a scientific discipline that deals with the study of the psychology of peoples, cultural and social groups. He developed his classification of different ethnopsychological types and varieties of Balkan people. Cvijić considered that the primary factor for the formation of ethnopsychological characteristics of the population and their types was the geographical environment and that secondary factors were historical processes and social structure, i.e. occupations, patterns of endogamy and exogamy, as well as migrations. Results of his theoretical work and fieldwork were represented in the books Anthropogeographical Problems of the Balkan Peninsula (1902), and its significantly expanded version Balkan Peninsula and South Slavic Countries (1931).

Books and articles:

Cvijić. Studies in Jugoslav Psychology (1931);

Durkheim. Division Of Labor In Society (2014, in French 1893);

Elias. On the Process of Civilisation (2012, in French 1839); 

Fromm. Escape from Freedom (1941);

     -     The Sane Society (1955);

Gans. Popular Culture and High Culture (1974); 

Halbwachs. On Collective Memory (1992, in French 1950);    

Horkheimer and Marcuse. Studien über Autorität und Familie (1936);

Inglehart. Value Change in Global Perspective (1995);  

     -     Human Beliefs and Values: A Cross-Cultural Sourcebook based on the 1999-2002 values Surveys (2004);

Inkeles, Alex. „National Character: the Study of Modal Personality and Sociocultural Systems“, in Foundations of Cross Cultural management (2008);

Kardiner, Abram. The Individual and his Society (1939);

Linz. „Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes”, in Greenstein, F. i Polsby, N. (ur.) Macropolitical Theory: Handbook of Political Science, Vol. 3 (1975);

Lipset. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (1967);

Mills. Character and Social Structure (1953);

Riesman. A Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (1950);  

Sombart. Luxus and Capitalismus (1912);

     -     Deutscher Sozialismus (1934);

Sorokin. Social and Cultural Dynamics, 4 vols. (1937-1941);

Spencer. Principles of Sociology, 3 vols. (1876-1896);

Thomas W. and Znaniecki. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 5 vol. (1918-1919);

Tocqueville. Democracy in America (2021, in French 1935, 1940);

     -     The Old Regime and the French Revolution (2014, in French 1856).