mentality

From mental +‎ -ity. Doublet of mentalité.

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ælɪti
• IPA^(key): /mɛnˈtæləti/, /mənˈtæləti/, /-ɪti/

mentality (plural mentalities)

1. A mindset; a way of thinking; a set of beliefs.

   Before he can succeed, he will have to shed the mentality that he can get by without hard work.

   • 1999, Nicholas Walker, “The Reorientation of Critical Theory: Habermas”, in Simon Glemdinning, editor, The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy‎, Routledge, →ISBN, page 489:

     […] with a mentality anchored in a profoundly influential and persistent hostility to central features of the Enlightment faith in the theoretical and practical autonomy of the human subject.

2. The characteristics of a mind described as a system of distinctive structures and processes based in biology, language, or culture, etc.; a mental system.
   • 1978, Edward Proffitt, "Romanticism, Bicamerality, and the Evolution of the Brain", The Wordsworth Circle, Vol. 9, No.1, reprinted in Kuijsten, 2016, page 129.

     […] the new mentality [of Romantic poetry]...is a mentality of self-authorization.

   • 2016, Scott Greer, A Knowing Noos and a Slippery Psyche:Jaynes's Recipe for an Unnatural Theory of Consciousness, Kuijsten, page 239:

     Our mentality — whether bicameral or conscious — is thus more a function of social context, language, and forms of communication than a hard-wired neurologically-based system.

• Kuijsten, Marcel (ed.). Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes, Julian Jaynes Society, 2016 (312 pgs). →ISBN