Social pressure converts a people into a set of shared psychological traits

Evidence

The behavior patterns of assimilated Jews, determined by this continuous concentrated effort to distinguish themselves, created a Jewish type that is recognizable everywhere. Instead of being defined by nationality or religion, Jews were being transformed into a social group whose members shared certain psychological attributes and reactions, the sum total of which was supposed to constitute “Jewishness.” In other words, Judaism became a psychological quality and the Jewish question became an involved personal problem for every individual Jew. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 219

Categorization

• DEFINE: The key concept here — how a people/nation/religion gets recast as a psychological essence — is foundational for understanding the construction of the ‘Other’ in later Islamophobia theory.
• XREF: Directly scaffolds the later reading of racialized identity construction — resonates with how representation theory (Said’s Orientalism) and biopolitics treat identity as produced, not inherited. — connects to: Technological and social progress produces psychological regression and instinctual fixation.; Ego psychology spread because individuals mirrored society’s objective trends. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1551; Fromm and Horney diverged over whether instinct or social conditions determine human behavior. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1119 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Worth tracing: does this psychological-qualities move prefigure how Islamophobes will reduce Muslims to psychological/behavioral essence?