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.

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   […]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.

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

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.

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   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.

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