Are Americans more individualistic and less collectivistic than members of other groups? The authors summarize plausible psychological implications of individualism-collectivism (IND-COL), meta-analyze cross-national and within-United States IND-COL differences, and review evidence for effects of IND-COL on self-concept, well-being, cognition, and relationality. European Americans were found to be both more individualistic-valuing personal independence more-and less collectivistic-feeling duty to in-groups less-than others. However, European Americans were not more individualistic than African Americans, or Latinos, and not less collectivistic than Japanese or Koreans. Among Asians, only Chinese showed large effects, being both less individualistic and more collectivistic. Moderate IND-COL effects were found on self-concept and relationality, and large effects were found on attribution and cognitive style.

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Rethinking individualism and collectivism: evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses.

Three aspects of the self(private, public, collective) with different probabilities in different kinds of social environments were sampled. Three dimensions of cultural variation (individualism--collectivism, tightness-looseness, cultural complexity) are discussed in relation to the sampling of these three aspects of the self. The more complex the culture, the more frequent the sampling of the public and private self and the less frequent the sampling of the collective self. The more individualistic the culture, the more frequent the sampling of the private self and the less frequent the sampling of the collective self. Collectivism, external threat, competition with outgroups, and common fate increase the sampling of the collective self. Cultural homogeneity results in tightness and in the sampling of the collective self. The article outlines theoretical links among aspects of the environment, childrearing patterns, and cultural patterns, which are linked to differential sampling of aspects of the self. Such sampling has implications for social behavior. Empirical investigations of some of these links are reviewed.

The Self and Social Behavior in Differing Cultural Contexts

Geert Hofstede University of Limburg Bram Neuijen University of Groningen Denise Davat Ohayv Institute for Research on intercultural Cooperation Geert Sanders University of Groningen This paper presents the results of a study on organizational cultures in twenty units from ten different organizations in Denmark and the Netherlands. Data came from in-depth interviews of selected informants and a questionnaire survey of a stratified random sample of organizational members. Data on task, structure, and control characteristics of each unit were collected separately. Quantitative measures of the cultures of the twenty units, aggregated at the unit level, showed that a targe part of the differences among these twenty units could be explained by six factors, related to established concepts from organizational sociology, that measured the organizational cultures on six independent dimensions. The organizational culture differences found resided mainly at the levei of practices as perceived by members. Scores of the units on the six dimensions were partly explainable from organizational idiosyncrasies but were also significantly correlated with a variety of task, structural, and control-system characteristics of the units.

Measuring organizational cultures: A qualitative and quantitative study across twenty cases.

Following concepts introduced by Markus and Kitayama, this study describes the theoretical and empirical development of a scale to measure the strength of an individual's interdependent and independent self-construals. These two images of self are conceptualized as reflecting the emphasis on connectedness and relations often found in non-Western cultures (interdependent) and the separateness and uniqueness of the individual (independent) stressed in the West. It is argued that these two images of self can and do coexist in individuals and that they can be measured. A 24-item Self-Construal Scale measuring two dimensions of self-image is presented. The two distinct dimensions of the scale were supported in confirmatory factor analyses of two multiethnic samples of college students. The scale was found to have satisfactory reliability and validity. Its implications and potential applications are discussed.

The Measurement of Independent and Interdependent Self-Construals

Meanwhile, the authors' antidote to the American sicknessa quest for democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditionshas contributed to a vigorous scholarly and popular debate. Attention has been focused on forms of social organization, be it civil society, democratic communitarianism, or associative democracy, that can humanize the market and the administrative state. In their new Introduction the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.\

Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

The dimension of individualism-collectivism, as identified by Hofstede (1980), was studied using items developed both theoretically and emically in nine diverse cultures. The dimension was found to be analysable into four stable etic factors: Individualism had two aspects (Separation from Ingroups and Self-Reliance with Hedonism) and collectivism had two aspects (Family Integrity and Interdependence with Sociability). These four factors are orthogonal to each other. The location of nine cultures on these four factors was used to compute a “collectivism” score which correlated r = + · 73 with Hofstede's (1980) collectivism scores for the nine cultures. This approach enables the measurement of individualism-collectivism in each culture as well as across cultures, and shows that different methods for measuring individualism-collectivism converge.

Abelando Brenes

Papers

The measurement of the etic aspects of individualism and collectivism across cultures