How does CSPT understand the relationships between temperament and ethnicity?
The CSPT has important applications to questions of cultural diversity. Observations suggest that people of various ethnic backgrounds differ not just in cultural mores and assumptions, but as well in the balance of personalities styles within their populations. For example, if we take groups of equal Capacitance, we see a somewhat higher percentage than average of Early/Lower and Middle/Lower personalities in Native American, South Sea Islander, Hispanic, and African American populations, a somewhat higher percentage than average of Early/Upper/Inner and Middle/Upper/Inner personalities in Americans of Asian background, a somewhat higher percentage than average of Middle-Axis personalities (both upper and lower) in Americans of Eastern European, Scandinavian, and Irish extraction, and a somewhat higher percentage than average of Late-Axis personalities in Americans of predominantly English heritage.
The differences here are in most cases small, but they often have significant implications. For example, traditional public education addresses does very poorly at addressing the needs of Early/Lower and Middle/Lower kids—what ever their background. The aspects of intelligence where these personality styles on average most excel are largely ignored. Not surprisingly, youth from cultural groups where these personalities styles occur with higher than average frequency tend more often than others to feel estranged in public education and to thrive there less well than one might hope and expect. This observation suggests that while increasing the amount of educational content that relates to specific ethnic experience has an important place in educational reform, making education more responsive to our multiple intelligences and to the unique realities of different personality temperaments may be as or more important in the long run.
