Thought I'd start a new thread on how "experts" look at type and culture--the people who are writing articles on it and getting paid to use type with teams to work with cultural and other diversity.
First, cultures have "archetypal" images of the best way to be. Heroes, values taught in school, traits that are rewarded at work, etc., are the kinds of things that are looked at to determine archetypes.
- The president of the French type association points out how Decartes is held up as the greatest French Philosopher (I think therefore I am...) and the goddess of the Revolution is Reason
- He pointed to many other characteristics of French schooling and business practices that point to Thinking being valued
Then there are the "stereotypes" other cultures hold. Most Americans, for example, when thinking of France are more likely to think "passion, amore" and come up with Feeling as the stereotype of that country.
Finally, there is the modal type--the one most frequent in the population. Solid research has only been done in a few countries--the statistically sound studies where a valid type sorter is used with random samplings of people. There isn't one yet for France, but the type association there reported at the 2005 International Conference on Psychological Type that they estimated about 65% of the population prefers Feeling. He said only half-jokingly that he believed that the archetypes developed in his country were an attempt to temper their natural temperaments...
Sometimes archetype, stereotype and modal type match up--The United States and Extraversion, for example. Sometimes they don't.