HOFSTEDE: That’s my idea. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism 2021-07-22 | 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 is part of the history that made the U.S. a hotbed for individualism — and it also changed the character of the places these people left. I do think that today they are living through difficult times, but so are we. Or if it will change at all. Like other chapters in Freakonomics, it employs an unusual, counterintuitive, and decidedly non-economic story—in this case, the effect on life outcomes of individuals with black-sounding names—as a framing device for economic principles. So that can be very beneficial. Now this is pretty rare to have such different groups of respondents and still find the same thing. Employees were asked to rate how much they agreed with statements like “Competition among employees usually does more harm than good.” And: “Having interesting work … is just as important to most people as having high earnings.”, HOFSTEDE: Simple questions about daily things that people understand. So Hofstede the Elder began to amass a huge data set about the workplace experiences and preferences of tens of thousands of I.B.M. HENRICH: It chafes us when we get ordered around. His father was Geert Hofstede. This carries over into many areas of society, including the labor market. Ambiguity is good. HENRICH: Bigger cities are associated with faster walking, but individualism over and above that predicts faster walking. I think Joe Biden, for instance, he’s trying to play the card of, “We’re all Americans. And we see that the combination of high individualism, high masculinity, and high short-termism can produce some chaos, at the very least. We need to have different types of leadership. The third measures masculinity versus femininity in a given culture. Everybody gets tickled until they laugh. - Why the food police hypocritically believe an iPad is a technological marvel but food technology is an industrial evil So before Big Brother and Animal Farm merge into a socialist nightmare, read The Food Police and let us as Americans ... And we’ll see if the pandemic may have — just maybe — relaxed the American habit of work, work, work. Am I really going to tell my kid how special they are about everything?”. That, again, is Mark Anthony Neal, from Duke. HENRICH: So Americans tend to be more work-obsessed than other people. Freakonomics ® is a registered service mark of Freakonomics, LLC. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. And I think that America has wonderful things happening to it. HOFSTEDE: Okay, no, I was just being naughty. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism (Ep. The focus of that episode was American culture. Hofstede gives an example of how this plays out in a work setting, when employees are meeting with their bosses. One was black, and grew up with an abusive father in Florida. In The Hispanic Republican, historian and political commentator Geraldo Cadava illuminates the history of the millions of Hispanic Republicans who, since the 1960s, have had a significant impact on national politics. There is a strong desire to be more feminine. When reading the book, it can be easy to get lost in the minutiae of the individual stories, so we . Go out there and make it happen. If you’re a constrained sort of person, you won’t go far in the U.S. Stephen DUBNER: I’m curious whether you’ve ever been accused of political incorrectness in your study of national cultures. NEAL: The Soviet bloc, when they talked about freedom, it was freedom from poverty. That’s to say that it emphasizes privacy and independence, like the U.S., but it’s much more egalitarian. Then you can have something very good happening. 470. Joe HENRICH: Americans and Westerners more generally are psychologically unusual from a global perspective. The U.S. comes in on the indulgent side, at 68. The U.S., according to this analysis, is comparatively a short-term country. At the core of Freakonomics is the concept of incentives. Found insideCould a science that cannot answer its own core questions really be used to explain the logic of everyday life? This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Economic Methodology. People get less interested. Call us exceptional, call us WEIRD.However you want to say it, our hypothesis here at Freakonomics Radio is that the United States is just different from the rest of the world. For some Americans, at least, working hard is a badge of honor. Why aren’t all national cultures converging by now? The first: individualism versus collectivism. “Uncertainty” in economics means something very akin to risk. DUBNER: Describe for me your father and his work, and how it became a family business. DUBNER: You sound very grateful that you were not born an American. International, and they were just starting international opinion surveys. Introduction by Mary Oliver Commentary by Henry James, Robert Frost, Matthew Arnold, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry David Thoreau The definitive collection of Emerson’s major speeches, essays, and poetry, The Essential Writings of Ralph ... So this is quite a while ago. Life is going to be hard. But the Chinese, even rich, will be a lot more collectivistic and a lot more long-term-oriented than the Americans. I do think that humanity as a whole is sort of evolving to being more reflective. You may decide to go another way, but that doesn’t make the river change. As of today, it covers six dimensions — or, as the Hofstedes put it, “six basic issues that society needs to organize itself.” It’s called the 6-D, or 6-Dimension, Model of National Culture, and it is one of the most intriguing explanations I’ve ever seen for why American society is such an outlier in the world — for better and worse. All contents © 2021 Freakonomics, LLC. Pack your cutlass and blunderbuss--it's time to go a-pirating! The Invisible Hook takes readers inside the wily world of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century pirates. Freakonomics Radio The podcast Freakonomics Radio has been added to your home screen. This is the question that Sophie Egan, food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director, addresses in her provocative, eye-opening book, Devoured. There are 2,000 different kinds of snack bars on the market. There’s some D.N.A. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism, an episode of Freakonomics Radio, easily on Podbay - the best podcast player on the web. that’s always there. DUBNER: And what would you say is maybe a political ramification of low power distance? You have to behave like a family member if you want to be one. And I think that’s always going to be an ongoing tension — this idea of America that’s rooted in individualism, that’s rooted in transactional practices. to let him focus even more on this data. And also, of course, people listening to this: Make it happen, come on. Here are some things that tend to thrive in highly individual societies: human rights, a free press, divorce, and a faster pace of life. Listen now: 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 . The authors now return to the two hypothetical children they discussed in Chapter Five. In other words, Americans don’t just see other people as individuals. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism (Ep. It’s waiting to happen because people in this individualistic, indulgent society, they want to be merry. The sixth and, for now, final dimension was added to the model in 2010. At school in the Netherlands, I’ve seen a mother ask her two-year-old, “Shall I change your nappy?” And then the child gets to decide whether its nappy gets changed. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; the rest of the music this week was composed by Luis Guerra. For instance: According to the 6-D Model of National Culture that we’ve been talking about, the U.S. is the most individualistic nation on earth. We just need to do it. HOFSTEDE: If you are, let’s say, a toddler, what do you get to decide for yourself? The fifth dimension in the Hofstede universe came in the early 1980s, in collaboration with a Canadian social psychologist named Michael Bond, who was working in Hong Kong. Examining the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, and often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone, Gang Leader for a Day also tells the story of the complicated friendship that develops between Venkatesh and JT--two young and ... It was freedom from hunger. He interviewed people at I.B.M. In a conversation fresh from the Freakonomics Radio Network's podcast laboratory, Michèle Flournoy (one of the highest-ranking women in Defense Department history) speaks with Cecil Haney (one of the U.S. Navy's first Black four-star admirals) about . So then he really knew this is not an artifact of this particular company — this is real. And by the way, in that sense, the U.S.A. is also a huge laboratory of society formation, hopefully, which is by no means finished. The U.S. also has a small power distance — 40 on a scale of 100, which puts it among the lowest in the world. In the Germanic world, we have systems, which means that nothing stands alone. Once he saw that differences were driven by nationality, Hofstede sensed he was on to something big. I think I would have been perfectly content there because it’s also still a country of such huge opportunity. 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. And we did find a number of learned people who had data to back up the hypothesis. 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 . It was a collaboration between Hofstede the Elder, his son Gert Jan, who’d begun working with him by now, and a Bulgarian linguist named Michael Minkov, who had been analyzing data from the World Values Survey. Found insideThe Calculus of Consent, the second volume of Liberty Fund's The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, is a reprint edition of the ground-breaking economic classic written by two of the world's preeminent economists--Gordon Tullock and Nobel ... 470) 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). And that also means that fighting is a good way to get what you want. And it’s another dimension on which the U.S. is a substantial outlier. The U.S. patent database goes back into the 18th century and what a number of studies in economics as well as work in my lab has shown is that openness to other people — so, trust in strangers, an inclination towards individualism, a desire to stand out, to be the smartest guy in the room — fosters more rapid innovation because people are more likely to exchange ideas, they’re more interested in distinguishing themselves. Between 1967 and 1973, he collected data on I.B.M. Individualistic countries tend to be richer, but as Hofstede the Elder once put it, “The order of logic is not that individualism comes first. Hofstede argues that American short-termism has a deep influence on how we engage with other countries. by Stephen J. Dubner. The first is that a model of anything even nearly as complex as a national culture is bound to miss a lot of nuance. I get these words out so I can get on to the next thing. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. The country that ranks highest in long-term orientation is Japan; also high on this scale are China and Russia. Is that a yes? This report is intended to assist Congress as it considers options for consequence management legislation. HOFSTEDE: And when he took the job in Lausanne he found that the international group of pupils at his classes, if he asked them the same questions, came up with the same dimensions. All rights reserved. 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). And so individualism, trust in others, leads to more rapid innovation. Since his first study, many people have started to do similar studies. The notion of the American Dream has long been that prosperity is just sitting out there, waiting for anyone to grab it — as long as you’re willing to work hard enough. By this time, Hofstede the Elder had already gotten a Ph.D. in social science. Found inside – Page i"Clear, concise, informative, witty and, believe it or not, entertaining." —Chicago Tribune Finally! And in a collectivistic society, a person is like an atom in a crystal. data, gathered in the late 60s and early 70s. In other places they don’t think it’s a smart idea to be consistent. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. Found insideThis book unveils a “brand new” China that is under the sway of the ideology of global partnership while struggling not to become a mirror image of the United States. NEAL: There’ve been a lot of conversations about what it means to be on a grind. HENRICH: We have a kind of religiosity equivalent to somewhere like Kuwait. The U.S. is just different from other places in a variety of ways that we often don’t stop to think about. So you can see that in an individualistic society, after becoming a world champion in a sport or certainly after winning a major war, people do not fight one another, but they admire one another. Is that the case? The other was white, and grew up with loving parents who . And it’s by no means easy. What was I.B.M. Found insideIn some ways, the themes feel very unified in Steven Levitt's Generation X disillusionment and Stephen Dubner's individualist rejection of his parents' faith and wasted youth as a genrebending North Carolinian punk rocker. That, again, is the American culture scholar Joe Henrich. GELFAND: This has always been the big question, that with the internet and globalization we’re going to become more similar. They are descended from people who came here of their own free will and in order to execute their own free will. 470) 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 . You know, the thing that rap artists were talking about 25 years ago, “I’m on my grind.” It is rooted in this ethos of always working, always pushing forward, always being on the top of your game. There is no evidence for convergence other than if countries become equally rich, they all go to more individualistic. HOFSTEDE: “Oh, no, that’s something for academia.” And then he decided to go to academia. So he left I.B.M. GELFAND: When we ask people, “What does honor mean to you?” in the U.S., a lot of people talk about work. Nobody can feel insulted. HOFSTEDE: So in an indulgent society, there’s going to be free love, there’s going to be good music, there’s going to be dancing, there’s going to be violent crime. If you plot the U.S. on G.D.P. Listen to 470. Okay, it took half of this episode to go through just the first of the six dimensions of national culture — individualism versus collectivism. So uncertainty avoidance is the intolerance of ambiguity. Both are long-term oriented, so they see a lot of context around things. Think Belarus, Myanmar, Russia, China. The sixth dimension is called “indulgence vs. restraint.”. In our previous episode, we made what may sound like a bold claim. I’m a professor of artificial sociality at Wageningen University, in the Netherlands. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that individualism might contribute to inequality — or at least, as Henrich puts it, the justification of inequality. This is the dimension based on data from the World Values Survey. HOFSTEDE: Well, if you want an honest answer, I think mainly our own curiosity. You could ask people, “What do you like to eat?” The more collectivistic they are, the more likely they are to talk about their grandmother and what she made, and they’re less likely to start entirely on their own diet. Members. And you don’t need them for ritual reasons. I must be American. Next on the list: what Hofstede’s late father, the originator of this culture model, called “power distance.” That’s “the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations or institutions” — be it society at large or just a family — “accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.”. And in culture, uncertainty means not knowing the ritual, not knowing how status-worthy or blameworthy some action is. They’re not supposed to be the boss. r/Freakonomics. HOFSTEDE: So collectivistic cultures are those of the Amerindian empires. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. This book examines the different conceptions of the individual that have emerged in recent new approaches in economics, including behavioral economics, experimental economics, social preferences approaches, game theory, neuroeconomics, ... (Freakonomics, M.D. And I could see there, a little bit similarly to the U.S., how the various ethnicities are trying to live together. So, yes, the same attributes that can be a big problem can also be a big boost. HOFSTEDE: This is actually a little bit of an unfortunate name. Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or elsewhere. 1, the most individualistic country in the world, 91 out of 100 on the Hofstede scale of individualism. Examines the effects of television culture on how we conduct our public affairs and how "entertainment values" corrupt the way we think. And it’s not because they themselves don’t have collective experiences, particularly within ethnicity, but part of the price of becoming American is to give up the collectivity of your ethnic background. 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? They’re threatened by that interdependence, and they want to assert their cultural identities. Freakonomics Radio. DUBNER: So we’ve done a pretty good job of beating up on the U.S. thus far. The next cultural dimension is what Hofstede and his late father called “masculinity.” That title is a bit misleading. 66), Edward Glaeser Explains Why Some Cities Thrive While Others Fade Away (People I (Mostly) Admire Ep. That’s Joe Henrich, a professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard; he’s also a scholar of psychology, economics, and anthropology. 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