Besides punishment for missed cues, masters displayed considerable fondness for slaves who played their part well.

By restricting role availability and by carefully defining the performance, society could create a group personality type, and, through changing roles, society could change personality.
Although the innovative use of personality types has further illuminated the nature of the American slave system, it has tended to blur the individual experiences and contributions of millions of Africans into a vague amorphous abstraction.

The technique has provided important insights into the plight of the slave as the victim of a dehumanizing system, but it tends to obscure the active participation of Africans in American life.

Further, it is a crude generalization which, in fact, included many types within it.

While most slaves were plantation field hands, there were many whose lives followed different lines and for whom slavery was a very different experience.