HOFSTEDE: In a cultural sense, no, I dont think so. So the scientific discipline of psychology is dominated by Americans. He came to consider a company "honest" if its payment rate was above 90 percent. Whatd they say? Hofstede gives an example of how this plays out in a work setting, when employees are meeting with their bosses. This paper focuses on the construction of racial identity online through the mediating influences of popular culture, old media, weblogs, and Internet users. And how does a scholar like Neal think about culture per se? You can never admit weakness or failure. Michele Gelfand has another example of how culture shapes perception. We developed these linguistic dictionaries to analyze language reflective of tight and loose, in newspapers and books, tight words like restrain, comply, adhere, enforce, as compared to words like allow and leeway, flexibility, empower. Gelfand says the countries that were most aggressive in trying to contain Covid tended to be tighter countries. 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. As with most experiments like this, the research subjects were WEIRD usually they were students at the universities where the researchers worked. BROADCASTER: The subject denies the evidence of his own eyes and yields to group influence. We are acronymically WEIRD. Baker was Bushs secretary of state; Aziz was Husseins deputy prime minister. The third measures masculinity versus femininity in a given culture. International, and they were just starting international opinion surveys. There is some overlap between these six dimensions and some of the ideas we talked about in last weeks episode particularly the notion that some national cultures tend to be tight and others loose. And Im particularly interested in how its shaped our psychology. If it were, Afghanistan and Venezuela, even Iran might be U.S.-style democracies by now. HENRICH: So Americans tend to be more work-obsessed than other people. data, gathered in the late 60s and early 70s. This carries over into many areas of society, including the labor market. And it drives us crazy. 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. Well call it The U.S. Is Very Different from Other Countries So Lets Stop Pretending Its Not. Its the first in a series of episodes where well look at different pieces of that difference. If you plot the U.S. on G.D.P. He grew up in England. Michele Gelfand again: GELFAND: This American teenager from Ohio, Michael Fay, was in Singapore and was arrested and charged with various counts of vandalism and other shenanigans. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. HOFSTEDE: High individualism is correlated with trying new stuff. It always was unsustainable, but was made even more acute to us during the pandemic. So the U.S. produces the sort of Wal-Mart equivalent of religions: big churches giving the people what they want, high pageantry. HENRICH: I was doing research in the Peruvian Amazon. 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. According to a decades-long research project, the U.S. is not only the most individualistic country on earth; were also high on indulgence, short-term thinking, and masculinity (but low on uncertainty avoidance, if that makes you feel better). HOFSTEDE: Thats my idea. I dont like to itch, Bert. So, what is it? Tom BROKAW:A young American has been sentenced to a caning for an act of vandalism. Q uite soon after the Freakonomics guys, Stephen J Dubner and Steven D Levitt, walk into their office on New York's Upper West Side for our interview, the scene resolves itself into the kind of . So I have no doubt that his subjects really liked him. Culture can be quite an offensive concept, particularly to people who project it onto an individual characteristic, as if it was about an individual. This really contrasts with lots of places where there are legitimate traditional authorities and people tend to defer to those authorities. Both are long-term oriented, so they see a lot of context around things. Michele GELFAND: Its a subfield of psychology that tries to understand whats universal, whats similar, and whats culture-specific. 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. Freakonomics Quotes. How much time have you spent thinking about what makes America, America? If you dont feel that, then you will be an unhappy person. Im a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. Essentially, theyre the opposite of the loose attributes: tight cultures have more coordination and more self-control. That is generated by looseness. And what does he have to say about American culture? Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Part of the Freakonomics Series) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J . GELFAND: Exactly. So its not necessarily the case that my country is better. Here in the U.S., its actually a rule violation to call out people who are violating norms. 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. Someone raised in an Eastern culture might focus more on the image as a whole and less on the central object. 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. So, again, if you want to talk about Americans, youre okay. The first player needs to offer enough money to satisfy the second player or the first player gets nothing. Is that a yes? Stay up-to-date on all our shows. Most sociologists agree that individualistic cultures value individual choice, personal freedom, and self-actualization (Kemmelmeier 2002). Groups that tend to have threat tend to develop stricter rules to coordinate. So you could over-eat and over-indulge and over-drink. Fundamentally, individualism is a belief that the individual is an end in themself. DUBNER: I like those rules. Words: 777. Freakonomics Radiois produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. Freakonomics is a collaboration of authors Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, journalists and winners of numerous awards. Relatedly: Americans place a high value on being consistent across different situations. In general, individualism can best be seen in laissez-faire capitalism and classical liberalism, which both emerged to prominence in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Well find out what it means to be WEIRD although not weird in the way youre thinking. DUBNER: Im curious for advice on how we should balance weve become an economic powerhouse, and we recognize that there is a lot of benefit to that. Historically, politically, and yes culturally. They can freely float about. She sees the lack of self-control in loose countries as particularly worrisome. GELFAND: Exactly. Every action or every fact or every move has a system around it. This is the dimension based on data from the World Values Survey. Apparently over 50 percent of cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese. Caning as in a spanking, basically, on the bare buttocks, with a half-inch-thick rattan cane. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. Neal is a professor of African and African-American studies. You can followFreakonomics RadioonApple Podcasts,Spotify,Stitcher, orwherever you get your podcasts. GELFAND: Ill just say that there are also other contexts where we naturally tighten. 470 Replay) Freakonomics Radio | Freakonomics Radio Publicit Annonce - 0 s 00:00 00:00 Suivant | propos Voir la description Freakonomics Radio. Public school quality B. GELFAND: But when people were wearing those really weird nose rings or those facial warts, they got far more help in loose cultures. Needless to say, it's had a lot of success. They make sure that there is no violation of any ritual. Its the tiny differences in sociality. Its very, very hard to do. It is a small price to pay to punish the first player for being so stingy. 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. People get less interested. The country that ranks highest in long-term orientation is Japan; also high on this scale are China and Russia. GELFAND: Groups that are of lower status tend to live in tighter worlds. A. . But yes, its all workplace. But that makes sense. And I could see there, a little bit similarly to the U.S., how the various ethnicities are trying to live together. Since his first study, many people have started to do similar studies. These attacks continue as I speak. 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. NEAL: The Soviet bloc, when they talked about freedom, it was freedom from poverty. HOFSTEDE: Its rather futile to advise somebody what their national culture should be because theres no way you can change it. That level of religiosity is very high for a wealthy country. Because for all the so-called globalization of the past half-century or so, the U.S. still differs from other countries in many ways. Each week, Freakonomics Radio tells you things you always thought you knew (but didn't) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) from the economics of sleep to how to become great at just about anything. GELFAND: In societies that are tighter, people are willing to call out rule violators. You could argue that treating your own children as if theyre special may make it harder to care as much about other peoples children. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Read the excerpt from Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics. This man has proof of our individualism. China, Japan, and Turkey are also tight. (Ep. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. Geert Hofstede ( 2 October 1928 - 12 February 2020) was born in a peaceful country, but his teenage years saw the second World War rage across Europe. Yes, other phenomena like how things smell to us. The reason we reached out to Michele Gelfand is that I want to understand this stuff better, too. (Part 1 of " Freakonomics Radio Takes to the Skies .") GELFAND: Well, we can look back to Herodotus. It shouldnt surprise anyone that individualism might contribute to inequality or at least, as Henrich puts it, the justification of inequality. 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. Also, he uses some very bold examples (crime rates versus abortion, drug dealership, cheating teachers, etc) to make some very simple . People in the less-literate society, meanwhile, would have better facial-recognition skills. Sinopsis. You could just do an across-the-board search of various Western religions and look at who the figureheads are. HOFSTEDE: It means that you only need rules when youre going to use them. 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. Part of it is that when you live in a world that has carpented environments like right angles, where we live in houses in the States makes us focus on those right angles. 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. Industrialized. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the debut non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner.Published on April 12, 2005, by William Morrow, the book has been described as melding pop culture with economics. Europe has a strong influence from Germany, also from France. GELFAND: This has always been the big question, the myth that with the internet and globalization were going to become more similar. Let's now consider the following statistic, which represents the hundreds of matches in which a 7-7 wrestler faced an 8-6 wrestler on a tournament's final day: 7-7 WRESTLER'S PREDICTED WIN PERCENTAGE AGAINST 8-6 OPPONENT: 48.77-7 WRESTLER'S ACTUAL WIN PERCENTAGE AGAINST 8-6 OPPONENT: 79.6So the 7-7 wrestler, based on . You can see this on many dimensions: how we work and travel; how we mate and marry; how we care for our children and our elderly; how we police; how we conceive the relationship between the individual and the state; even how we manage death! In the meantime, take care of yourself and, if you can, someone else too. To become American and to be American is to be individual. All rights reserved. It was a collaboration between Hofstede the Elder, his son Gert Jan, whod begun working with him by now, and a Bulgarian linguist named Michael Minkov, who had been analyzing data from the World Values Survey. But first, Hofstede had to make sure that the differences he was seeing in the data werent specific to I.B.M. BUSH: Allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. In each chapter, the authors analyze a different social issue from an economic perspective. Wed rather think about solutions temporarily rather than as, this might take some time. It means that we need to attract different types of people to an organization. 1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Freakonomics. 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? Fortune, by the Hitchhikers; the rest of the music this week was composed byLuis Guerra. But Gelfand saw an even bigger question: How can you understand culture if you dont know exactly what it is? HOFSTEDE: Oh, no, thats something for academia. And then he decided to go to academia. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. Pages: 4 Words: 1807. HOFSTEDE: They will look at them if they admire them, but they will look away if theyre afraid. We will learn which countries are tight, which are loose, and why. We just need to do it. And you could have a perfect storm in that direction. HENRICH: We dont like people telling us what to do. 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). Mobility also produces looseness, because its harder to agree upon any norm. The final dimension on the Hofstede model is called indulgence versus restraint. 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. But if you want to talk about humans, Homo sapiens, then you have a generalization problem. Now, California is a real interesting exception because it has a lot of threat. In a large power-distant society, you have autocracy. GELFAND: Its like that story of two fish where theyre swimming along. HOFSTEDE: For the U.S.A., the world is like a market. Gert Jan Hofstede is a Dutch culture scholar whos been walking us through these dimensions. One of the most important figures in economic individualism is the famous Scottish economist, Adam Smith. In a collectivistic setting, if you try something new, you are maybe telling your group that you dont like them so much anymore and you want to leave them, which is not a good thing socially. HENRICH: Two players divide a sum of money. 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. Groups that tend to live together makes me a little suspicious live together professor of African and studies! Venezuela, even Iran might be U.S.-style democracies by now: Americans place high. This plays out in a work setting, when employees are meeting their! Think so but they will look at them if they admire them, but they look. People have started to do decide to go another way, but doesnt! 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