Still, Gelfands horizons were suddenly expanded; and her curiosity was triggered. Gelfand would disagree. At the core of Freakonomics is the concept of incentives. HENRICH: Because Americans and Westerners more generally are psychologically unusual from a global perspective. HOFSTEDE: Thats my idea. But oh, the places you'll go! I get these words out so I can get on to the next thing. He veers tighter. This carries over into many areas of society, including the labor market. - Lyssna p 470. DUBNER: I like those rules. After 25 years at the University of Maryland, shes moving to the business school at Stanford. Within countries, there is of course enormous variation. But then she took a semester abroad, to London. DUBNER: What does an institution like the Navy see as the upsides of more looseness? Good on you. It's part of our founding D.N.A. Stay up-to-date on all our shows. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. When most readers think economics, they think advanced math, complicated models, and subjects like unemployment, the stock market, and the trade deficit. Even Gert Jan Hofstede suggests that his model shouldnt be seen as overly deterministic. And thats different than in Scandinavia and in New Zealand and Australia, which has much more horizontal individualism. The country that ranks highest in long-term orientation is Japan; also high on this scale are China and Russia. Baker was Bushs secretary of state; Aziz was Husseins deputy prime minister. But remember what Hofstede told us: HOFSTEDE: Youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. On a certain level, this is obvious: These are cultures that have norms and traditions that have endured for centuries. Let me give a little background. DUBNER: I remember once, years and years ago, when I was reading this research that you were doing, speaking with Francisco Gil-White, who was then at Penn, and he told me that when he was running this Ultimatum experiment, I dont remember where I want to say Mongolia. So why did someone succeed? In the meantime, take care of yourself and, if you can, someone else too. For example, we asked bank managers some years ago to look through scenarios of people violating organizational rules, like coming to work late, staying on the phone too long, maybe checking their email. But relatively speaking, we have more tolerance. And you know who else had that skill set? Michele Gelfand wasnt interested in that. HOFSTEDE: In a cultural sense, no, I dont think so. By this time, Hofstede the Elder had already gotten a Ph.D. in social science. The average U.S. worker puts in nearly six more weeks a year than the typical French or British worker, and 10 weeks more than the average German worker. So $10 in this case. GELFAND: Well, it requires a lot of negotiation. So, again, if you want to talk about Americans, youre okay. And thats because the vast majority of the research subjects are WEIRD. 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 . Everybody gets tickled until they laugh. Im a professor of artificial sociality at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. But a lot of the world is much more like a family. As its been said: Everyone knows that 11 oclock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in American life. Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African and African-American studies at Duke, notes that American individualism is hardly experienced equally across the population. And: In present-day Scandinavia levels of individualism would thus have been significantly higher had emigration not occurred.. Our staff also includesAlison Craiglow,Greg Rippin,Joel Meyer,Tricia Bobeda,Mary Diduch, Zack Lapinski,Emma Tyrrell, Lyric Bowditch, Jasmin Klinger,andJacob Clemente. So you see these eye movements that are very different. Twenty states rewarded individual schools for good test scores or dramatic improvement; thirty-two states sanctioned the schools that didn't do well. And I think that America has wonderful things happening to it. Very soon, there will be an Institute of Gladwell Studies. FREAKONOMICS is the highly anticipated film version of the phenomenally bestselling book about incentives-based thinking by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.. Well go through the other five dimensions, much faster, I promise. Multilevel Research of Human Systems: Flowers, Bouquets and Gardens, The Interaction Between National and Organizational Value Systems, 11 A. M. Sunday Is Our Most Segregated Hour,, The U.S. Is Just Different So Lets Stop Pretending Were Not (Ep. And some advice from our new Dutch friend. Heres Mark Anthony Neal of Duke: NEAL: Historically, power has been obscure. Now this is pretty rare to have such different groups of respondents and still find the same thing. Individualism has had a tremendous impact, not only on culture, but on social theory as well, and political philosophy in particular. On the more feminine end of the spectrum are the Scandinavian countries and some of Western Europe. Individualism places great value on self-reliance, on . By the way, Gelfand doesnt really take a position on whether loose or tight is superior. We will leave you with a patriotic tribute from one last transplanted U.S. comedian. Were always losing time. Thats Joe Henrich, a professor of evolutionary biology. The next cultural dimension is what Hofstede and his late father called masculinity. That title is a bit misleading. NEAL: We realized that the grind is unsustainable. HENRICH: We have a kind of religiosity equivalent to somewhere like Kuwait. Its like, Oh, my gosh, that is so amazing. I was feeling like I have to tell that to my kids as a good parent, training my kids to be vertical and individualistic. The U.S. is a pretty successful country, maybe the most successful country on many dimensions in the history of the world. But somehow, that diversity and that early celebration of permissiveness has overridden that. NEWSCASTER: Wearing masks is a way of life now in Singapore. 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. A. Joe HENRICH: Americans and Westerners more generally are psychologically unusual from a global perspective. When theyre by themselves, the vast majority of people who do this experiment get the right answer, like in this archival tape of an Asch conformity test. This individualism has produced tremendous forward progress and entrepreneurial energy. DUBNER: Although the U.S. is relatively high on suicide and homicide, so are we an outlier in that regard as well? BERT: Ernie Ernie, dont eat those cookies while youre in your bed, huh? And how are we defining culture? So, today on Freakonomics Radio: can we really build a model that explains why the American psyche is so unusual? GELFAND: And I thought, If these kinds of cultural differences are happening at the highest levels, we better start understanding this stuff.. GELFAND: Exactly. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism (Replay) 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). DUBNER: So weve done a pretty good job of beating up on the U.S. thus far. So you could over-eat and over-indulge and over-drink. GELFAND: But when people were wearing those really weird nose rings or those facial warts, they got far more help in loose cultures. And so individualism, trust in others, leads to more rapid innovation. Its more about how individuals are acted upon by the people and institutions around them. It means I did it my way.. GELFAND: So, that has a lot of other effects on debt, on alcoholism, on recreational drug use. 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. This dimension measured short-term versus long-term orientation in a given country; it also helped address the relative lack of good data from Asia in previous surveys. Gelfand has spent a lot of time trying to understand how a given countrys looseness or tightness affects everyday life. There were a number of low offers of 15 percent, which didnt get rejected. You look at parents and how they treat their kids art. GELFAND: We analyzed shifts in tightness over 200 years. Theyre able to make finer distinctions in terms of their olfaction. It turns out that Americans were among the least likely to conform. The best thing you can become is yourself. Although the concept of an individual may seem straightforward, there are many ways of understanding it, both in theory and in practice. And I think that is a hallmark of African-American culture in this country. So the U.S. produces the sort of Wal-Mart equivalent of religions: big churches giving the people what they want, high pageantry. Documentary. Innovation requires coming up with a lot of ideas. He takes on questions like: Why do kids with summer birthdays get the flu more often? The U.S., according to this analysis, is comparatively a short-term country. 6 Pages. HENRICH: Im a researcher who tries to apply evolutionary theory to understand human behavior and human psychology and particularly culture. But the Hofstede definition of long-termism is a bit more nuanced: it means seeing the world as being in a constant state of flux, which means always preparing for the future. We visit the world's busiest airport to see . DUBNER: What problem was he, and later you, trying to solve by doing this work? Everyone knows there are differences between people in different countries, but his approach was a quantifiable approach. Gert Jan Hofstede - Freakonomics. You realize, you want a black or white value judgment. Some researchers looked at these results and came up with a new label for humans in this context: Homo reciprocans. We even walk faster. We promise no spam. He interviewed people at I.B.M. we're looking out for the best interest of our individual pursuits. So, lets try to measure this., Gelfand and several colleagues undertook a massive research project, interviewing some 7,000 people from 33 countries on five continents. But yes, its all workplace. Hofstede gives an example of how this plays out in a work setting, when employees are meeting with their bosses. You're stuck in a metal tube with hundreds of strangers (and strange smells), defying gravity and racing through the sky. HENRICH: You want to be the same self, regardless of who youre talking to or what context youre in. Freakonomics Radiois produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism: With Stephen Dubner. Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics. The snob effect occurs when an individual's demand for a specific product increases when the number of units of that product other people purchase increases. employees spread across the globe. But maybe thats part of living in a loose culture too: We ascribe agency even to our pets. And in culture, uncertainty means not knowing the ritual, not knowing how status-worthy or blameworthy some action is. Theyre not supposed to be the boss. They can freely float about. The next dimension is what the Hofstedes call uncertainty avoidance.. But it was serious. The first (and longest) chapter focuses on the role of incentives in human behavior. They dont even see each other and this is a one-time interaction, so there wont be another round of the game where the second player can punish or reward the first player. So keep your ears open for all that. He started out as an anthropologist; but he started mixing and matching disciplines to suit his curiosity. HOFSTEDE: This is actually a little bit of an unfortunate name. HENRICH: Theres something called the Asch conformity test, where you have confederates of the experimenter give the same wrong answer to an objective problem. The New Yorker's Malcolm . Both are long-term oriented, so they see a lot of context around things. We had a lot of struggles with tightening during Covid, clearly. And thats going to cultivate certain tonal abilities, which could feed into certain kinds of music, and things like that. The five tightest countries are Pakistan, Malaysia, India, South Korea, and our old friend Singapore. A loose country, like the U.S., tends to do well in creativity and innovation; in tolerance and openness; in free speech and a free press. The Hofstede scale puts the U.S. at 62 out of 100 on masculinity relatively high but substantially less masculine than China, Mexico, and much of Eastern Europe. DUBNER: Can you give me a good example of an idea or a theory that I might come across in a Psych 101 textbook that would just be so American that it wouldnt really be useful if you actually care about humans? Why not? That was our hypothesis, at least. We promise no spam. So that leads to justifying more inequality. Every action or every fact or every move has a system around it. We should note that Bert and Ernie, despite their differences, are very dear friends! Subscribe for more videos like this: http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=92YplusThe Best of Freakonomics with Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, m. It was back in grad school that Michele Gelfand first asked herself this question. GELFAND: Well, we can look back to Herodotus. Kumail NANJIANI: I was so excited to be in America I couldnt sleep. No difference, that is, between tight and loose cultures. 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. You could argue that treating your own children as if theyre special may make it harder to care as much about other peoples children. The Aztec, the Inca, and todays Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, are very collectivistic. You want to know where you stand which is, for instance, what diplomats know very well. And theres large differences around the world, for example, on how much cultures are exposed to chronic threat. And they were finding that people in Africa were not falling victim to this illusion. Its waiting to happen because people in this individualistic, indulgent society, they want to be merry. Its focus on individual behaviour also lends itself to a preoccupation with manipulating individual choices. So, yeah, that is WEIRD. 470. One hallmark of short-term thinking: a tendency toward black and white moral distinctions versus shades of gray. And its another dimension on which the U.S. is a substantial outlier. Culture can be quite an offensive concept, particularly to people who project it onto an individual characteristic, as if it was about an individual. . Thats my idea. GELFAND: In the U.S., various newspapers covered the story. These were surveys of I.B.M.s own employees around the world. I think I would have been perfectly content there because its also still a country of such huge opportunity. We may not be the very loosest culture; but we are No. And then theres the big C, the stuff that we have these big conversations about, that we do these incredible studies about, which is really about the worldview of groups of people coming together, in a community, in a nation, in a family, right? So uncertainty avoidance is the intolerance of ambiguity. But if you look 100 years ago and you look at the cultural map of the world, you can read writers from different countries, you will see that there is astonishing continuity. But its important to acknowledge that no culture is a monolith. HOFSTEDE: My name is Gert Jan Hofstede. So the general rules of a loose or tight culture may not be consistently applied to all populations. Episode 470 The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. Yes, other phenomena like how things smell to us. My uncles like, Hey, I have something to show you. My first day in America, he showed me the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade. Then you can have something very good happening. El libro revela por qu nuestro modo de tomar decisiones suele ser irracional, por qu las opiniones generalizadas a menudo se equivocan, y cmo y por qu se nos incentiva a hacer lo que hacemos. And when I started to work with Harry Triandis, who was one of the founders of the field, I thought, Wow, this is a super-interesting construct. GELFAND: Like during 9/11, during World Wars, we see increases in tightness. Our theme song is Mr. Singapore, for instance. Bush made clear to Iraqs Saddam Hussein that this wouldnt stand. employees in more than 50 countries. In an individualistic society, depending on how the mood is, you can get very different developments. In 1990, when Gelfand was a graduate student, she followed the news as Iraq invaded Kuwait. The Coronavirus Shutdown Is Revealing Americas Troubling Obsession With Work, Those Who Stayed: Individualism, Self-Selection and Cultural Change During the Age of Mass Migration, A Rising Share of the U.S. Black Population Is Foreign Born, 10 Minutes with Geert Hofstede on Indulgence versus Restraint, 10 Minutes withGeert Hofstede on Masculinity versus Femininity, 10 Minutes with Geert Hofstede on Individualisme versus Collectivisme, Dimensionalizing Cultures: The Hofstede Model in Context, A Re-Inquiry of Hofstedes Cultural Dimensions: A Call for 21st Century Cross-Cultural Research, The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Achievement Values: A Multimethod Examination of Denmark and the United States, Hofstedes Model of National Cultural Differences and Their Consequences: A Triumph of Faith A Failure of Analysis. 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. So its not necessarily the case that my country is better. The downsides of looseness are less coordination, less self-control; more crime and quality-of-life problems. Whether this means something brings you financial, emotional, or even community benefit. GELFAND: Having more adaptability, more innovation. HOFSTEDE: There was a Quaker at the head of I.B.M. Heres how it works. You know, the thing that rap artists were talking about 25 years ago, Im on my grind. Its rooted in this ethos of always working, always pushing forward, always being on the top of your game. The most indulgent country in these rankings is Mexico, at 97 out of 100; the most restrained: Egypt, at four. Okay, it took half of this episode to go through just the first of the six dimensions of national culture individualism versus collectivism. But Im Dutch, of course. Thats what the Ultimatum experiments set out to find. In a future episode, well look at why the U.S., for all its wealth, has such a high rate of child poverty, and whats being done to address that. That is not just the most American thing thats ever happened. But oh, the places you'll go! HENRICH: One study of the journals in social psychology shows that 96 percent of all subjects in social psychology come from societies that are Western educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. But when you use data to measure the specific dimensions of a given culture, and compare them to other countries, you see some stark differences. People tend to be super-creative and theres a lot of negotiation of rules. So, Japan has been hit by Mother Nature for centuries. Am I really going to tell my kid how special they are about everything?. HENRICH: We dont like people telling us what to do. Like, the military should be tighter than tech. The final dimension on the Hofstede model is called indulgence versus restraint. So the Singapore government says, Look, this is our culture The rest of that sentence didnt have to be said. There are plenty of looser people in tight countries and vice versa. HOFSTEDE: Okay, no, I was just being naughty. And you speak fast because I dont want to waste a lot of time talking. HOFSTEDE: Masculine society means that if you show power, that gives you social status. So its hard to simply transplant another countrys model for education or healthcare, no matter how well it might seem to fit. Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers. GELFAND: Weve had our share of threat, but just not chronic threat. NANJIANI: I was so excited to be in America I couldnt sleep. You can never admit weakness or failure. When they took out Mubarak, this went the opposite extreme to almost anomie, normlessness. Freakonomics Radio . Hannah GADSBY: Have you ever noticed how Americans are not stupid? Culturally maybe more than anything! The other point is a reminder: Its good to be humble about our ability our inability, actually to predict how a given culture will change. Fascinated by the human in the system, he did a PhD in organizational behaviour. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. But can a smart policy be simply transplanted into a country as culturally unusual (and as supremely WEIRD) as America? China, Japan, and Turkey are also tight. By the same cue, you could vastly admire somebody for their strength and their intrepidity. (That will also need some explaining.) He contrasts places like Egypt, that had strict rules for authority and gender and purity, with the Persians who, using my terminology, he would have said that they were quite loose. Long Island, New York, is thebirthplace of the American suburb. But if you want to talk about humans, Homo sapiens, then you have a generalization problem. And they pass another fish, who says, Hey, boys, hows the water? And theyre like, What the heck is water?. It was freedom from all these debilitating things because the state would be able to provide for you. Whatd they say? Tight cultures, she writes, are usually found in South and East Asia, the Middle East, and in European countries of Nordic and Germanic origin.. HOFSTEDE: In an individualistic society, a person is like an atom in a gas. And I could see there, a little bit similarly to the U.S., how the various ethnicities are trying to live together. Everything in economics can be viewed from the point of incentives. Freaknomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the book for readers who run screaming at the thought of cracking open a book with the word "economics" in the title. Like, you can buy them on the internet. Investing, for instance: GELFAND: Theres some research coming from the University of Georgia that found that buying and selling of stocks was more synchronized in tighter cultures as compared to looser cultures. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism (Ep. The converse, which is what Anglo societies are high on, means you dont care about ambiguity. Because remember, threat is what can drive tightness. The third measures masculinity versus femininity in a given culture. The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. And this dynamic leads to a lot of fighting for the sake of fighting. She sees the lack of self-control in loose countries as particularly worrisome. In other words, Americans dont just see other people as individuals. BROADCASTER: The subject denies the evidence of his own eyes and yields to group influence. For instance, the rhythm of vaccination in the U.S.A. is very fast. The cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand has been telling us about loose and tight cultures around the world. I know that wasnt your intention. If you no longer even pretend to be one people and to be fair to all the citizens of your country, then youre not going down a road that leads to a great future. 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. Well hear about those dimensions soon enough. HOFSTEDE: And it immediately yielded a four-dimensional model. So he left I.B.M. Now that weve taken a top-down view of how the U.S. is fundamentally different from other countries, were going to spend some time over the coming weeks looking at particular economic and social differences, having to do with policing, child poverty, infrastructure, and the economy itself. But for folks who are pushed out of the mainstream you know, Black folks have rarely had the luxury of thinking about just simply being themselves. Ambiguity is good. All rights reserved. If you just look at Americans, its 70 percent American. Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers. 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. The first ten amendments to the Constitution (collectively known as the Bill of Rights), for example, are all about protecting individual rights from government power. Thats what we call tight-loose ambidexterity. In general, humans behave a certain way because they either perceive that behavior as offering a reward of some kinda positive incentive, or "carrot"or they avoid certain behaviors because those behaviors seem to lead to a punishmenta negative . Weve interviewed dozens of academic researchers about lowering healthcare costs or improving access to childcare or building smarter infrastructure or creating a more equitable economy. GELFAND: I was planning to become a cross-cultural trainer to work at the State Department and train people to understand culture. Thats Joe Henrich, a professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard; hes also a scholar of psychology, economics, and anthropology. who thought, This is important, and having answers about what the workers value will make us better bosses and its going to be good for the company. So there was quite an enlightened atmosphere, and there was a lot of money in those times. Based on the bestselling book of the same name, FREAKONOMICS attempts to break down dense economic theories and data into digestible bits. Why have rules if you dont use them? China is also very collectivistic and so are the Southeast Asian countries, but not Japan. You can followFreakonomics RadioonApple Podcasts,Spotify,Stitcher, orwherever you get your podcasts. The Ultimatum game is famous among social scientists. One thing that I think that Americans are more extreme than other Western countries and certainly elsewhere in the world is attributing individual success to the internal traits of the actor. This is really a conversation that pleases me a lot. And we found the full spectrum of variation. You know what it is, you know how it works, you dont necessarily have access to the people who really hold on to it. Gert Jan HOFSTEDE: None of it is intentional. 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