The concept of national character is contentious in the social sciences. It has been strongly rejected in the hereditarian or racist forms in which it was couched by earlier writers. Seen in modern perspective, it poses fundamental problems for social-scientific theory and research: To what extent do conditions of life in a particular society give rise to certain patterns in the personalities of members? To what extent, that is, does the sociocultural system produce distinctive forms of social character, basic personality structure, or modal personality? What are the consequences, if any, of this patterning in personality for stability or change in the social order? Until now, there have been relatively few formal definitions of national character or discussions of the proper scope and limits of this field of study.

Inkeles surveys various explicit and implicit definitions of national character, tracing developments through the twentieth century. The term national character can be defined as a way of looking at culture and the culturally patterned behavior of individuals, or as a particular way of examining the coherence of culturally defined values or behavior patterns. Inkeles's approach is to examine the regularity of certain personality patterns among individual members of a society. He asserts that modal personality may be extremely important in determining which new cultural elements are accepted in a particular culture, which institutional forms persist in a society, and changes in the character of such institutions.

Inkeles reviews previous studies done on the subject of national character. He canvasses attitudes, values systems, and psychological states of different nations, and seeks to discover a set of values in the complex, regionally diverse, and educationally stratified United States. He concludes that, despite many recent advances in the field, there is much to be done before we have a clear picture of the degree of differentiation in the personality structure of modern nations. National Character will be of great interest to psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and political theorists.