The essential idea in "Patterns of Culture" is, according to the foreword by Margaret Mead, "her view that human cultures are 'personality writ large. As Benedict wrote in that book, "A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action" (46). Each culture, she held, chooses from "the great arc of human potentialities" only a few characteristics which become the leading personality traits of the persons living in that culture. These traits comprise an interdependent constellation of aesthetics and values in each culture which together add up to a unique .