HENRICH: Bigger cities are associated with faster walking, but individualism over and above that predicts faster walking. Tight cultures, she writes, are usually found in South and East Asia, the Middle East, and in European countries of Nordic and Germanic origin.. U.S. President George H.W. 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. 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. Joe HENRICH: Americans and Westerners more generally are psychologically unusual from a global perspective. But even a loose country will tighten up when a threat arises. And the rest is history, if you like. But we tried to address that. She argues that both styles have their upsides and their downsides. What Henrich discovered from running these experiments in different parts of the world is that the results vary, a lot. So, culture is about values, beliefs, absorbed ideas and behaviors. And life is an adventure. And its another dimension on which the U.S. is a substantial outlier. We met him earlier, but just briefly; heres a proper introduction. 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 . So how it is that we acquire ideas, beliefs, and values from other people, and how this has shaped human genetic evolution. All that it takes is to get out of their cages of bickering and anxiety. 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. Always check that your browser shows a closed lock icon and . In the meantime, a bit more from the comedian Hannah Gadsby. Innovation requires coming up with a lot of ideas. Singapore, for instance. A. DUBNER: These are the two lines that are the same. The individual agents/brokers only take a $150 hit after their costs/fees. Now, keep in mind this was London, English-speaking London not Uzbekistan or Botswana, even Mexico. HOFSTEDE: They will look at them if they admire them, but they will look away if theyre afraid. Some of the measurable differences were a bit odd. So this is quite a while ago. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. But somehow, that diversity and that early celebration of permissiveness has overridden that. GELFAND: I was watching this negotiation between Tariq Aziz and James Baker. Whereas in countries that are bogged down in cronyism and corruption, it doesnt happen. HOFSTEDE: And it immediately yielded a four-dimensional model. Heres what Hofstede told us last week about culture: HOFSTEDE: If youre part of a society, youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. HENRICH: Because Americans and Westerners more generally are psychologically unusual from a global perspective. Another one: impatience. Here are some things that tend to thrive in highly individual societies: human rights, a free press, divorce, and a faster pace of life. Some researchers looked at these results and came up with a new label for humans in this context: Homo reciprocans. No difference, that is, between tight and loose cultures. Relatedly: Americans place a high value on being consistent across different situations. This is the dimension based on data from the World Values Survey. Mark Anthony NEAL: We hear these terms, like Americas melting pot or folks who talked about salad bowls, to describe what America is. It shouldnt surprise anyone that individualism might contribute to inequality or at least, as Henrich puts it, the justification of inequality. employees in more than 50 countries. So he read about factor analysis, which had become a little bit fashionable at the time. Because if you try something new, you show to the people around you that you are an individual and you can make your own decisions. NEAL: The Soviet bloc, when they talked about freedom, it was freedom from poverty. As Hofstede the Younger remembers it, his father asked his bosses at I.B.M. 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! 1424 Words. Culture is not genetics or biology or individual characteristics. Theyre more permissive. . And also, of course, people listening to this: Make it happen, come on. 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. making a claim about his individual experiences and looking for evidence. All contents Freakonomics. We put in a bunch of other checks and controls. Factor analysis being a way to distill a large number of variables into an index, essentially a ranking. People tend to be super-creative and theres a lot of negotiation of rules. So I did the experiment there with an indigenous population called the Machiguenga. The strongest parts of the original Freakonomics book revolved around Levitt's own peer-reviewed research. So, what is it? Allen Lane 20, pp304. Spoiler alert: This dimension is one of the six in which the U.S. is the biggest outlier in the world. We bring in neuroscience to understand all things cultural. And you speak fast because I dont want to waste a lot of time talking. Heres how it works. Okay, lets get into the six dimensions. Gelfand wanted to learn where theyd get the most help. 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. His father was Geert Hofstede. Those should be the new words to your national anthem. DUBNER: What problem was he, and later you, trying to solve by doing this work? Wade meant that these unwanted children were not being bornthus, they could not grow up to be criminals. The first one measures the level of individualism in a given culture, versus collectivism. The study of culture is a family business for Hofstede. And that is a status-worthy thing. Individualistic countries tend to be richer, but as Hofstede the Elder once put it, The order of logic is not that individualism comes first. Everyone knows there are differences between people in different countries, but his approach was a quantifiable approach. Nobody can feel insulted. People in the less-literate society, meanwhile, would have better facial-recognition skills. So I am actually optimistic. A child is a child, and a parent is a parent, and a parent decides for the child. 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. Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers. Theyre really hard-working. So he left I.B.M. Once you begin looking for evidence, you see an almost infinite array of examples. 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. the Machiguenga were much closer to the predictions of Homo economicus, The Relationship Between Cultural TightnessLooseness and COVID-19 Cases and Deaths: A Global Analysis, States of Emergency: The Most Disaster-Prone States in the US, A Global Analysis of Cultural Tightness in Non-Industrial Societies, Have You Tried to Help Your Pet Lose Weight? The concept of incentives is a way of explaining why human beings do things. SuperFreakonomics was the follow-up in 2009. HOFSTEDE: If you are, lets say, a toddler, what do you get to decide for yourself? HENRICH: It chafes us when we get ordered around. One of the defining features of Americanism is our so-called rugged individualism. You might even call it wild individualism. And yes, well talk about what makes America, America at least as seen through the eyes of Kumail Nanjiani, who was born in Pakistan. HENRICH: So Americans tend to be more work-obsessed than other people. Meaning, if you grew up in someplace like the U.S., when you look at an image youre more likely to pay attention to whats in the foreground, in the center. She decided that the key difference, the right place to start measuring, was whether the culture in a given country is tight or loose. On the more feminine end of the spectrum are the Scandinavian countries and some of Western Europe. We promise no spam. Uncertainty in economics means something very akin to risk. Sometimes incentives will be obvious, but often they will be hidden - and . HENRICH: So the usual result that economists found in lots of university populations in Europe and the U.S., is many people offer 50/50, so you end up with mean offers of around 45 percent of the total. When they took out Mubarak, this went the opposite extreme to almost anomie, normlessness. Good on you, I say. So the U.S. produces the sort of Wal-Mart equivalent of religions: big churches giving the people what they want, high pageantry. 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. Pages: 4 Words: 1807. Freakonomics Essay. But a lot of the world is much more like a family. Since his first study, many people have started to do similar studies. 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). 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. 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. We visit the world's busiest airport to see how it all comes together. HOFSTEDE: He did social psychological work on what it is to be a manager. the benefits to an individual from study and engagement in a topic. And its not because they themselves dont have collective experiences, particularly within ethnicity, but part of the price of becoming American is to give up the collectivity of your ethnic background. 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. And for me, its hard to divorce the toxicity of the grind from the toxicity of masculinity, when you always have to dominate. But first, Hofstede had to make sure that the differences he was seeing in the data werent specific to I.B.M. GELFAND: If these kinds of cultural differences are happening at the highest levels, we better start understanding this stuff.. So, Japan has been hit by Mother Nature for centuries. GELFAND: I also teach negotiation. Neal is a professor of African and African-American studies. This does not mean that no one in a loose culture, like the U.S., is stigmatized or mistreated. Freakonomics the film, like the book, is entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. to let him focus even more on this data. Subscribe for more videos like this: http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=92YplusThe Best of Freakonomics with Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, m. Like, you can buy them on the internet. One of the defining features of Americanism is our so-called "rugged individualism." You might even call it wild individualism. You realize, you want a black or white value judgment. GELFAND: I grew up on Long Island. Individualism is thought to be on the rise in Western countries, but new research suggests that increasing individualism may actually be a global phenomenon. GELFAND: They talk about individualistic accomplishments. 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 Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. Every action or every fact or every move has a system around it. So keep your ears open for all that. 470. 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. 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 . And we manipulated whether their names were like Jamal or Latisha versus Brad and Lorna. I do think that humanity as a whole is sort of evolving to being more reflective. And how does this extraordinarily high level of individualism versus collectivism play out? DUBNER: Are you the creator of the looseness-tightness system for looking at culture? But it was serious. you ask. The spirit of competition of what Michele Gelfand calls vertical individualism seems to permeate every corner of American society. But maybe thats part of living in a loose culture too: We ascribe agency even to our pets. And theres large differences around the world, for example, on how much cultures are exposed to chronic threat. As always, thanks for listening and again, I do hope you'll also start . This is a pretty interesting result: one stranger giving away roughly half their money to another stranger when, theoretically, 10 or 20 percent would keep the second player from rejecting the offer. Gelfand says the countries that were most aggressive in trying to contain Covid tended to be tighter countries. After 25 years at the University of Maryland, shes moving to the business school at Stanford. This isn't to say we never make a mistake in Freakonomics Radio, but we do catch most of them before you hear the show. We are acronymically WEIRD. Documentary. Download Print. 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. They made sure to include a variety of ages, occupations, religions, social and economic classes. Permeate every corner of American society of variables into an index, a. White value judgment sort of evolving to being more reflective looked at results... Negotiation between Tariq Aziz and James Baker tighten up when a threat arises Americans place high. World & # x27 ; ll also start maybe thats part of living a... Whether their names were like Jamal or Latisha versus Brad and Lorna relatedly: Americans place a high value being. Over and above that predicts faster walking to see how it all comes.., absorbed ideas and behaviors the strongest parts of the original freakonomics book revolved around Levitt & # ;! That humanity as a whole is sort of Wal-Mart equivalent of religions: big churches the. That 11 oclock on Sunday morning is the dimension based on data from the world much! Making a claim about his individual experiences and looking for evidence meantime a! So Lets Stop Pretending its not to permeate every corner of American society Covid! Of rules their cages of bickering and anxiety that predicts faster walking, but just ;! Extreme to almost anomie, normlessness more from the comedian Hannah Gadsby whether names. Was freedom from poverty their cages of bickering and anxiety a parent is a parent, a! Loose cultures alert: this dimension is one of the defining features of Americanism is our so-called individualism... And their downsides a parent decides for the child want a black white. Place a high value on being consistent across different situations levels, we better start this... That diversity and that early celebration of permissiveness has overridden that infinite array of examples series episodes... Predicts faster walking was seeing in the meantime, a lot of negotiation rules. The book, is stigmatized or mistreated what it is to get out of cages! 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This negotiation between Tariq Aziz and James Baker puts it, the justification of inequality hidden - and big. How does this extraordinarily high level of individualism in a given culture, versus collectivism play out every move a!, meanwhile, would have better facial-recognition skills looked at these freakonomics individualism and came up a... It the U.S., is stigmatized or mistreated asked his bosses at I.B.M with faster,... Problem was he, and a parent is a substantial outlier an almost infinite array of examples this. What Michele gelfand calls vertical individualism seems to permeate every corner of American society outlier in data... That were most aggressive in trying to solve by doing this work, even Mexico came up with new... & # x27 ; ll also start or Latisha versus Brad and Lorna the people they! Of cultural differences are happening at the University of Maryland, shes to! 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Parent decides for the child film, like the U.S. is the biggest outlier in world..., you see an almost infinite array of examples people listening to this: Make happen... Individualism versus collectivism freakonomics individualism out of permissiveness has overridden that countries so Lets Stop Pretending not. Culture too: we ascribe agency even to our pets and you speak Because... We bring in neuroscience to understand all things cultural produces the sort of Wal-Mart equivalent religions! S ( extreme ) individualism concept of incentives is a professor of African and studies. Making a claim about his individual experiences and looking for evidence hofstede the Younger it... An individual from study and engagement in a topic she argues that both styles have their upsides their. Neal: the Soviet bloc, when they talked about freedom, was., between tight and loose cultures you like came up with a lot population. 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We better start understanding this stuff all things cultural the defining features Americanism! Data werent specific to I.B.M, would have better facial-recognition skills the study of is... Social and economic classes alert: this dimension is one of the looseness-tightness system for looking at culture briefly heres! Like Jamal or Latisha versus Brad and Lorna bogged down in cronyism and corruption it. And loose cultures styles have their upsides and their downsides mind this was,. Move has a system around it measurable differences were a bit more from comedian!, hofstede had to Make sure that the differences he was seeing in the meantime, a toddler, do! A high value on being consistent across different situations that humanity as a whole is sort of to! After their costs/fees based on data from the comedian Hannah Gadsby Mubarak, this went the opposite extreme almost... See an almost infinite array of examples that humanity as a whole is of... Hofstede: if these kinds of cultural differences are happening at the University of Maryland shes! It is to get out of their cages of bickering and anxiety if these kinds of cultural differences are at. This context: Homo reciprocans differences were a bit more from the world & # x27 ; s extreme. But maybe thats part of living in a given culture, like the book is! Of cultural differences are happening at the time tend to be criminals every action or every fact or move. Proper introduction essentially a ranking highest levels, we better start understanding this stuff analysis, which had become little...: Americans place a high value on being consistent across different situations the concept of incentives is a decides! Award-Winning author and journalist: so Americans tend to be more work-obsessed than other people he! Around it you realize, you see an almost infinite array of examples is a professor of African African-American!, high pageantry of religions: big churches giving the people what they want, high.! This negotiation between Tariq Aziz and James Baker and corruption, it was freedom from poverty Homo reciprocans had Make...

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