In a multitude of ways, large and small. The second one measures whats called power distance. (Dont worry, well explain the name later.) As advertised!. Insight, for the authors (economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner) is all about explaining behaviour in terms of the incentives and dis-incentives (rewards and penalties) that drive it. On the more feminine end of the spectrum are the Scandinavian countries and some of Western Europe. And they were finding that people in Africa were not falling victim to this illusion. And I think, Holy cow, Ukraine is surrounded by threat, including its next-door neighbor, Russia. That relationship has not been a constant, but that makes me a little suspicious. 1424 Words. GELFAND: And I had that typical New Yorker view of the world, the cartoon where theres New York, and theres New Jersey, and then, theres the rest of the world. The Neglected 95%: Why American Psychology Needs to Become Less American, Measuring Inequity Aversion in a Heterogeneous Population Using Experimental Decisions and Subjective Probabilities, Westerners and Easterners See the World Differently, Economic Man in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies, Ultimatum Game with Ethnicity Manipulation: Problems Faced Doing Field Economic Experiments and Their Solutions, Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? NEAL: As someone who specialized in the African-American experience, and is African-American myself, I often fall back on the way the late Amiri Baraka described Black culture as a changing same.. The New Yorker's Malcolm . Culturally maybe more than anything! You may have noticed that Hofstede neglected to mention a certain country that we Americans tend to care about quite a bit. You look at parents and how they treat their kids art. Im a professor of artificial sociality at Wageningen University, in the Netherlands. Freakonomics, which weighs in at just over 200 pages (plus a hefty section of bonus material for those interested in learning more), takes as its principal argument the idea that economics exist as a tool to study society. The correct answer of the given question above would be the second option. In indulgent societies, more people play sports, while in restrained societies, sports are more something you watch. And we found the full spectrum of variation. HOFSTEDE: Yes, especially by people from Anglo countries. So were all constraining one another through our collective culture. And heres one of the people who created the WEIRD designation. And she doesnt love to exercise. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that increasing socioeconomic development is an especially strong predictor of increasing individualistic practices and values . The study of culture is a family business for Hofstede. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. And things worked out well for them for a bit. And thats different than in Scandinavia and in New Zealand and Australia, which has much more horizontal individualism. Well hear about those dimensions soon enough. But some cultures strictly abide by their norms. So uncertainty avoidance is the intolerance of ambiguity. In any case, heres how Gelfand breaks down the upsides and downsides of tight cultures. In a more masculine society, men and women adhere to the gender roles you might think of as patriarchal: fathers, for instance, take care of the facts, while mothers handle the emotions. Historically, politically, and yes culturally. Both are long-term oriented, so they see a lot of context around things. And this led to this project where we did in lots of places hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, Africa, Papua New Guinea. 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. To become American and to be American is to be individual. Today, an overview of the cultural differences. This interest goes back to those negotiations between Jim Baker and Tariq Aziz. The third measures masculinity versus femininity in a given culture. 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. She did want to measure culture, and how it differs from place to place. In the real world, Feldman learned to settle for less than 95 percent. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. Theres a good side of every dimension, including uncertainty avoidance. HENRICH: My favorite explanation for this I think this has been put out most clearly by a sociologist named Rodney Stark is that with freedom of religion, you get competition amongst religious organizations. It shouldnt surprise anyone that individualism might contribute to inequality or at least, as Henrich puts it, the justification of inequality. GELFAND: My own sweet Portuguese water dog, Pepper, I mean, that dog is just gigantic. There are plenty of looser people in tight countries and vice versa. Documentary. HENRICH: Theres something called the Asch conformity test, where you have confederates of the experimenter give the same wrong answer to an objective problem. Why arent all national cultures converging by now? It was freedom from all these debilitating things because the state would be able to provide for you. It may help if youre not originally from here. He interviewed people at I.B.M. Season 10, Episode 49. GELFAND: The data suggests that those countries in Eastern Europe, are extremely loose, almost normless, we might say, because after the fall of the Soviet Union, these countries did a pendulum shift. Again, its worth repeating that no culture is a monolith. But it can make life harder for the millions of Americans who arent so entrepreneurial, or rugged, or individualistic. It is that the wealth comes first, and the individualism follows. Henrich takes a more nuanced view: HENRICH: To explain the massive economic growth that weve seen in the last 200 years, you need to explain the continuous and, for a long time, accelerating rate of innovation that occurred. Still, Gelfands horizons were suddenly expanded; and her curiosity was triggered. We will learn which countries are tight, which are loose, and why. And the whole point about negotiation is you figure out what is your highest priority in the situation, what domain is so important for you in terms of your tightness or your looseness, and then negotiate accordingly. Because $1 is more than zero, so the second player would still be better off. Theyre able to make finer distinctions in terms of their olfaction. And thats going to cultivate certain tonal abilities, which could feed into certain kinds of music, and things like that. This realization is what led us to todays episode of Freakonomics Radio. Hofstede gives an example of how this plays out in a work setting, when employees are meeting with their bosses. Michele Gelfand again: GELFAND: De Tocqueville noticed this about Americans, that we are a time is money country. GELFAND: I also teach negotiation. I came back to Colgate. Shes not very disciplined. Whereas if you have a state religion, it tends to get tired and old and boring. We are acronymically WEIRD. GELFAND: Exactly. In contrast, the Freakonomics blog features the work of Levitt's friends, and SuperFreakonomics relies heavily on anecdotes, gee-whiz technology reporting and work by Levitt's friends and colleagues. Our staff also includesAlison Craiglow,Greg Rippin,Joel Meyer,Tricia Bobeda,Mary Diduch, Zack Lapinski,Emma Tyrrell, Lyric Bowditch, Jasmin Klinger,andJacob Clemente. DUBNER: When youre inclined to look at the U.S. in a positive light, do you find uncertainty avoidance to be largely a force for the good in terms of creating and building a strong society, or do you think its more ? In other places they dont think its a smart idea to be consistent. The comedians John Oliver, Hannah Gadsby, and Kumail Nanjiani all grew up outside the U.S. And that really can help explain some variation not all, but some variation in norms and values. All rights reserved. GELFAND: The U.S. is one of the most creative places on the planet. Now this is pretty rare to have such different groups of respondents and still find the same thing. We may not be the very loosest culture; but we are No. DUBNER: Are you the creator of the looseness-tightness system for looking at culture? So yeah, the U.S. has that assignment ahead of it. (That will also need some explaining.) According to the individualist, all values are human-centred, the individual is of supreme importance, and all individuals are morally equal. Listen to this episode from Freakonomics Radio on Spotify. The American model is among the most successful and envied models in the history of the world. As with most experiments like this, the research subjects were WEIRD usually they were students at the universities where the researchers worked. Most white Americans have an entirely different ancestral history. The first is that a model of anything even nearly as complex as a national culture is bound to miss a lot of nuance. The first one measures the level of individualism in a given culture, versus collectivism. DUBNER: These are the two lines that are the same. HENRICH: And the case I make is its been highly unsuccessful to just pick up institutions that evolved in Western societies and transport them to drop them in Africa or the Middle East or places like that, because there needs to be a fit between how people think about the world, their values, worldviews, motivations, and the affordances of the institution. It suggests that as in most things in life balance is desirable. And theres large differences around the world, for example, on how much cultures are exposed to chronic threat. But, lets look at the pandemic from a different angle: which country produced the most effective Covid-19 vaccines? Like, you can buy them on the internet. HOFSTEDE: You have a democracy. GELFAND: We have a whole new map of the U.S. where we can actually rank-order the U.S. 50 states in terms of how much threat they have. But the Chinese, even rich, will be a lot more collectivistic and a lot more long-term-oriented than the Americans. And this paper was basically sitting in the shelves of libraries for many years. What was in these surveys? HOFSTEDE: That could be the case, and it is also the case that you have a sort of non-overt multiculturalism in the society. We had a very tight social order. So how much would you offer? Categories like age, gender, job type, job seniority, and so on. Heres how he describes himself these days. So I have no doubt that his subjects really liked him. Heres another example: HENRICH: People from more individualistic societies tend to focus on central objects. Its trying to include all the stuff that we acquire as a consequence of growing up in different environments, and contrast that with things like our sex drive, which doesnt seem to be acquired by observing others. Freakonomics takes the tools used in microeconomic analysis and puts them to work in novel situations, by looking at the individual decisions made by experts such as real estate agents or car salesmen, by consumers of the services these experts offer, and by other individuals like parents. The downsides of looseness are less coordination, less self-control; more crime and quality-of-life problems. This was in contrast to the economists label of Homo economicus; that version of humans is more self-interested, less reciprocal. NEAL: So its always evolving, its always developing, but theres some core principles. Freakonomics has since grown up into a media company, complete with documentary, radio show, and blog. And they pass another fish, who says, Hey, boys, hows the water? And theyre like, What the heck is water?. It has to do with conformity. GELFAND: And that suggests that minorities, women, people of different sexual orientation, when they violate the same rule, might be held to higher accountability, to more strict punishment. NEAL: Were a country that presumes male leadership. As of today, it covers six dimensions or, as the Hofstedes put it, six basic issues that society needs to organize itself. Its called the 6-D, or 6-Dimension, Model of National Culture, and it is one of the most intriguing explanations Ive ever seen for why American society is such an outlier in the world for better and worse. Its also important to recognize that even though were really connected, still people are largely in their echo chambers, interacting with people who they know. We should note that Bert and Ernie, despite their differences, are very dear friends! The negotiations didnt work out. So the scientific discipline of psychology is dominated by Americans. GELFAND: Classic things like the Mller-Lyer Illusion, which is these two lines where one looks longer than the other. 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. So if you ask people to judge the absolute lengths of two lines, people in more individualistic societies tend to get that right. Heres what Hofstede told us last week about culture: HOFSTEDE: If youre part of a society, youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. And this dynamic leads to a lot of fighting for the sake of fighting. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. The fifth cultural dimension is one that I think will resonate with everyone whos ever listened to Freakonomics Radio, since it is at the crux of problem-solving. And well see if the pandemic may have just maybe relaxed the American habit of work, work, work. HOFSTEDE: So in an indulgent society, theres going to be free love, theres going to be good music, theres going to be dancing, theres going to be violent crime. He did some work in the factory and it shaped him to a great extent because there, he could see that the world of the organization looks so differently from the floor than it does from above. (but low on "uncertainty avoidance," if that makes you feel better) Nevertheless, you might be able to intentionally create pockets of looseness so you can have more balance. Needless to say, it's had a lot of success. There is a strong desire to be more feminine. 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. But if you want to talk about humans, Homo sapiens, then you have a generalization problem. So, organizations you can think about them as the people, the practices, and the leaders. Thats the cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand. HOFSTEDE: Masculine society means that if you show power, that gives you social status. This is the dimension based on data from the World Values Survey. And we see that the combination of high individualism, high masculinity, and high short-termism can produce some chaos, at the very least. 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. More information on phishing. If basic things like visual illusions are not universal, what about other phenomena? Subscribe for more videos like this: http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=92YplusThe Best of Freakonomics with Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, m. Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics. Freakonomics the film, like the book, is entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. This does not mean that no one in a loose culture, like the U.S., is stigmatized or mistreated. This suggests that looseness and tightness can co-exist. After 25 years at the University of Maryland, shes moving to the business school at Stanford. Not necessarily better or worse but very different. NEAL: I often think about how the U.S. has historically thought about freedom and how, say, the Soviet bloc had talked about freedom. HENRICH: It chafes us when we get ordered around. It was there, and later on in travels in the Middle East, and working on a kibbutz, and elsewhere, that I started recognizing this really powerful force of culture that was incredibly important but really invisible. Contribute to inequality or at least, as Henrich puts freakonomics individualism, practices. 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