And they often dont even realize theyre being acted upon. HOFSTEDE: They will look at them if they admire them, but they will look away if theyre afraid. Long Island, New York, is thebirthplace of the American suburb. So if you ask people to judge the absolute lengths of two lines, people in more individualistic societies tend to get that right. GELFAND: Apparently over 50 percent of cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese. This individualism has produced tremendous forward progress and entrepreneurial energy. And it drives us crazy. They are descended from people who came here of their own free will and in order to execute their own free will. Let me give a little background. And how does a scholar like Neal think about culture per se? Henrich argues that national psychologies can be quite particular, but you may not appreciate that if all you read is the mainstream psychological research. It shouldnt surprise anyone that individualism might contribute to inequality or at least, as Henrich puts it, the justification of inequality. GELFAND: I grew up on Long Island. GELFAND: Exactly. But even a loose country will tighten up when a threat arises. Thats to say that it emphasizes privacy and independence, like the U.S., but its much more egalitarian. One of the most important figures in economic individualism is the famous Scottish economist, Adam Smith. Which is more dangerous, a gun or a . HOFSTEDE: You have a democracy. GELFAND: I was planning to become a cross-cultural trainer to work at the State Department and train people to understand culture. We put in a bunch of other checks and controls. But if you want to talk about humans, Homo sapiens, then you have a generalization problem. The second one measures what's called "power distance." (Don't worry, we'll explain the name . Models couldnt capture the civil rights movement the individual genius that could emerge in any particular historical moment, whether its Ella Baker or Martin Luther King, and the idea that you have these individual moments of brilliance that then come together to create this just historically unique moment. And we did find a number of learned people who had data to back up the hypothesis. Fascinated by the human in the system, he did a PhD in organizational behaviour. Gelfand has spent a lot of time trying to understand how a given countrys looseness or tightness affects everyday life. You can even see the evidence in the clocks that appear on city streets. The United States, you may not be surprised to learn, is on the loose end of the spectrum although not in the top five. Stay up-to-date on all our shows. HOFSTEDE: But it turned out that lumping them by nationality was the best thing to do. Gert Jan Hofstede is a Dutch culture scholar whos been walking us through these dimensions. My husband is an attorney. That is not just the most American thing thats ever happened. When you have teenagers, youre tight, at least for me. But thats only the first study. Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers. People who went out to California, I would say if we gave them the tight-loose mindset quiz, they were probably on the looser mindset. Feb 15, 2023. The U.S. assembled a coalition of allies. Hence the term, the changing same. I think there are historical moments that are transcendent. And we found the full spectrum of variation. HOFSTEDE: He did social psychological work on what it is to be a manager. So I would be very interested in knowing whether theres any data on the ethnic component of homicide and suicide. Why arent all national cultures converging by now? Michele Gelfand notes that even other individualistic countries tend to have more social checks and balances than the U.S. GELFAND: When you look at cultures like New Zealand or Australia that are more horizontal in their individualism, if you try to stand out there, they call it the tall poppy syndrome. Heres how he puts it in his latest book: You cant separate culture from psychology or psychology from biology, because culture physically rewires our brains and thereby shapes how we think. One example he gives is literacy. This is the dimension based on data from the World Values Survey. They tend to veer tighter on our measures than places on the coast. We had a lot of struggles with tightening during Covid, clearly. Here in the U.S., its actually a rule violation to call out people who are violating norms. For instance: According to the 6-D Model of National Culture that weve been talking about, the U.S. is the most individualistic nation on earth. In our previous episode, we made what may sound like a bold claim. Scholars in this realm have a general agreement on what culture is and what its not. To become American and to be American is to be individual. So, they would offer a mean of about 25, 26 percent. And you know who else had that skill set? His ideas, along with others, are credited with . Joe Henrich again: HENRICH: In some societies, people really attend to scent, and they have a complex set of language terms that have the equivalent of basic color categories for scents. DUBNER: Name some of the highest and lowest countries on this dimension. The same experiment was done in other, non-WEIRD countries, like Ghana and Zimbabwe. NEAL: You have no real other example of a country that has brought together so many different national and ethnic and racial backgrounds. Thats Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University. HENRICH: They are self-enhancing, which means they try to promote their attributes. NEAL: We think about improvisation in the context, obviously, of creative and musical terms, but its also a way of always having to adapt to the changing political, social, and cultural realities. This is a pretty interesting result: one stranger giving away roughly half their money to another stranger when, theoretically, 10 or 20 percent would keep the second player from rejecting the offer. BROADCASTER: On the third trial, something happens. He grew up in England. Its hard in either direction not just because some cultures are tighter than others. The American model is among the most successful and envied models in the history of the world. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. DUBNER: Although the U.S. is relatively high on suicide and homicide, so are we an outlier in that regard as well? Where would you think the U.S. ranks among all the countries measured on this dimension? DUBNER: So does all the data come from workplace interviews essentially of white-collar and pink-collar workers, or does it go broader than that? This really contrasts with lots of places where there are legitimate traditional authorities and people tend to defer to those authorities. So the picture that emerges from these findings is that Americans are less likely to conform in the name of social harmony; and we also treasure being consistent, expressing our true selves, regardless of the context. Heres another example: HENRICH: People from more individualistic societies tend to focus on central objects. These were surveys of I.B.M.s own employees around the world. Freakonomics Radio . The future could be bright. I asked Hofstede what he would advise if a given country did want to change its culture? She says these are merely visible indicators of a countrys tightness or looseness and its what you dont necessarily see that shapes a given countrys culture. Then you can have something very good happening. Share. We should be nice to one another. But when push comes to shove, most of the time it doesnt go that way. So if you only want to talk about American psychology, youre fine. GELFAND: Having more adaptability, more innovation. If you wanted to reduce this to a slogan of Americanism, it might be something like: I am me, deal with it. This fits quite snugly with the fact that the U.S. has been found to be the most individualistic culture in the world. Because $1 is more than zero, so the second player would still be better off. GELFAND: I was watching this negotiation between Tariq Aziz and James Baker. So why did someone succeed? According to a decades-long research project, the U.S. is not only the most individualistic country on earth; we're also high on indulgence, short-term thinking, and masculinity (but low on "uncertainty avoidance," if that makes you feel better). This would never happen in a society of large power distance. So, yes, the same attributes that can be a big problem can also be a big boost. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism: With Stephen Dubner. And I think this community-spiritedness has been built in us since we were very young. HOFSTEDE: So youre asking about cultural convergence. Good on you. In our . And it produces this illusion. Self-centered so if you give them tasks and have them list traits about themselves, theyll tend to list their attributes and characteristics rather than their relationships. Europe has a strong influence from Germany, also from France. Loose cultures tend to be found in English-speaking countries as well as Latin-American, Latin-European, and formerly Communist cultures. Individualistic countries tend to be richer, but as Hofstede the Elder once put it, The order of logic is not that individualism comes first. Potentially offensive or not, Hofstede really believes in the power of culture so much so that he remains the steward of a massive research project begun more than 50 years ago by his late father. And Im particularly interested in how its shaped our psychology. Latin countries tend to be more collectivistic, especially Spain and Portugal not so much Italy and France. So, culture is about values, beliefs, absorbed ideas and behaviors. I get these words out so I can get on to the next thing. The strongest parts of the original Freakonomics book revolved around Levitt's own peer-reviewed research. GELFAND: My own sweet Portuguese water dog, Pepper, I mean, that dog is just gigantic. All that it takes is to get out of their cages of bickering and anxiety. So after we ran that first project, we redid the entire project, and we took concerns like the one Francisco had. And the research subject explained to him that, Oh, I feel so bad for you that you cant afford pants without holes in them that I cant take the money from this poor American kid. And it struck me as a way in which this experiment could be perverted. What was in these surveys? (but low on "uncertainty avoidance," if that makes you feel better) A recent paper by a Harvard postdoc named Anne Sofie Beck Knudsen analyzed Scandinavian emigration from 1850 to 1920, when roughly 25 percent of the Scandinavian population left their countries, a great many coming to the U.S. People of an individualistic mindset were more prone to migrate than their collectivistic neighbors, she writes. The second player is given a choice between accepting or rejecting. Later on, fast forward, Pertti Pelto, whos an anthropologist. According to a decades-long research project, the U.S. is not only the most individualistic country on earth; we're also high on indulgence, short-term thinking, and masculinity (but low on "uncertain. This does not mean that no one in a loose culture, like the U.S., is stigmatized or mistreated. DUBNER: I like those rules. Mark Anthony Neal of Duke is not surprised that the U.S. scores relatively high on the masculinity scale. As always, thanks for listening and again, I do hope you'll also start . That level of religiosity is very high for a wealthy country. Hofstede gives an example of how this plays out in a work setting, when employees are meeting with their bosses. HOFSTEDE: This is a very American question, Stephen. GELFAND: Were trained from a very early age not just to be independent, but to be better. Not necessarily better or worse but very different. Those should be the new words to your national anthem. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. According to Chapter 5 of Freakonomics, there is a black-white test score gap and that gap is larger when you compare black and white students from the same school. You want to know where you stand which is, for instance, what diplomats know very well. Its also the cleaning lady. HOFSTEDE: Well, if you want an honest answer, I think mainly our own curiosity. His late father was a social psychologist who devised a system to rank countries on several dimensions including their level of individualism versus collectivism. The authors seek to find simple answers to complicated world problems. GELFAND: They were trained to ask for help in city streets and in stores. How do racial and ethnic minorities fit into the American looseness? Our staff also includesAlison Craiglow,Greg Rippin,Joel Meyer,Tricia Bobeda, Mary Diduch, Zack Lapinski, Emma Tyrrell, Lyric Bowditch, Jasmin Klinger,andJacob Clemente. Fortune, by the Hitchhikers; the rest of the music this week was composed byLuis Guerra. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more. During the Cold War. A. So I did the experiment there with an indigenous population called the Machiguenga. Everyone knows there are differences between people in different countries, but his approach was a quantifiable approach. The New Yorker's Malcolm . But first, Hofstede had to make sure that the differences he was seeing in the data werent specific to I.B.M. . GELFAND: Like during 9/11, during World Wars, we see increases in tightness. So, again, if you want to talk about Americans, youre okay. We look at how these traits affect . Can that possibly be trueour culture shapes our genetics? So they might offer, say, 10 out of the 100. It may help if youre not originally from here. Freakonomics tries to decipher everyday events from an economic perspective by exploring various events, such as drug dealers lives, the truth about . (That will also need some explaining.) HOFSTEDE: Thats my idea. the Machiguenga were much closer to the predictions of Homo economicus, The Relationship Between Cultural TightnessLooseness and COVID-19 Cases and Deaths: A Global Analysis, States of Emergency: The Most Disaster-Prone States in the US, A Global Analysis of Cultural Tightness in Non-Industrial Societies, Have You Tried to Help Your Pet Lose Weight? The focus of that episode was American culture. employees spread across the globe. And things worked out well for them for a bit. According to a decades-long research project, the U.S. is not only the most individualistic country on earth; we're also high on indulgence, short-term thinking, and masculinity (but low on "uncertainty avoidance," if that makes you feel better). The legendary bestseller that made millions look at the world in a radically different way returns in a new edition, now including an exclusive discussion between the authors and bestselling professor of psychology Angela Duckworth. HENRICH: Im Joe Henrich. And she doesnt love to exercise. 1, the most individualistic country in the world, 91 out of 100 on the Hofstede scale of individualism. If you just look at Americans, its 70 percent American. The Ultimatum game is famous among social scientists. And: In present-day Scandinavia levels of individualism would thus have been significantly higher had emigration not occurred.. And then you see how often the subject wants to go along with the other people, as opposed to give the answer they would give if they were by themselves. They make sure that there is no violation of any ritual. Culturally maybe more than anything! In the real world, Feldman learned to settle for less than 95 percent. But Bush also wanted to avoid going to war with Iraq. In 2016, Henrich published a book called The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. That is generated by looseness. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. In Brazil and Greece, youre not entirely sure what time it is. Okay, it took half of this episode to go through just the first of the six dimensions of national culture individualism versus collectivism. GELFAND: But when people were wearing those really weird nose rings or those facial warts, they got far more help in loose cultures. It always was unsustainable, but was made even more acute to us during the pandemic. Everybody gets tickled until they laugh. The two players dont know each other. BERT: Because: you get crumbs in the sheets, thats why. 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