HOFSTEDE: He did social psychological work on what it is to be a manager. And for me, its hard to divorce the toxicity of the grind from the toxicity of masculinity, when you always have to dominate. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. 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. So he left I.B.M. I asked Hofstede what he would advise if a given country did want to change its culture? Why have rules if you dont use them? HOFSTEDE: Look, guys, we can do it. As Hofstede the Younger remembers it, his father asked his bosses at I.B.M. When most readers think economics, they think advanced math, complicated models, and subjects like unemployment, the stock market, and the trade deficit. HOFSTEDE: And blue-collar. And thats because the vast majority of the research subjects are WEIRD. I must be American. HENRICH: You want to be the same self, regardless of who youre talking to or what context youre in, whereas in other places it seems to be okay to morph and shift your personality, depending on your context. DUBNER: Are you the creator of the looseness-tightness system for looking at culture? You could just do an across-the-board search of various Western religions and look at who the figureheads are. I do think that humanity as a whole is sort of evolving to being more reflective. Michael Fay wasnt a tourist; he was living in Singapore with his family, attending an American school. NEAL: So its always evolving, its always developing, but theres some core principles. Chinese, in that respect, are very like the Americans. The people that came to New York early on, in the early 1800s, they were from all sorts of different cultural backgrounds. Steven D. Levitt, the self-described "Rogue Economist" of the title, uses this tool to analyze a random assortment of . Everything in economics can be viewed from the point of incentives. If someone acts in an inappropriate way, will others strongly disapprove in this country? Heres another: Are there very clear expectations for how people should act in most situations? In 2018, Gelfand published a book of these findings called Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. But remember what Hofstede told us: HOFSTEDE: Youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. BROADCASTER: The subject denies the evidence of his own eyes and yields to group influence. GELFAND: Well, it requires a lot of negotiation. So that leads to justifying more inequality. People get less interested. Read the excerpt from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's Freakonomics. He started working as an engineer during turbulent years of rebuilding, and soon became a personnel manager. Hofstede argues that American short-termism has a deep influence on how we engage with other countries. After all, they were the data set. In our previous episode, we made what may sound like a bold claim. Australia and Brazil are also loose. Thats what we call tight-loose ambidexterity. He interviewed people at I.B.M. And you dont need them for ritual reasons. But Joe Henrich wanted to see how the Ultimatum experiments worked when it wasnt just a bunch of WEIRD college students. GELFAND: They talk about individualistic accomplishments. DUBNER: So weve done a pretty good job of beating up on the U.S. thus far. When you have teenagers, youre tight, at least for me. Then came SuperFreakonomics, a documentary film, an award-winning podcast, and more.. Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet.With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and . Its also the cleaning lady. Michele GELFAND: The people that came to New York early on, they were from all sorts of different cultural backgrounds, and thats helped produce the looseness that exists to this day. But its also a tremendous outlier. HENRICH: Bigger cities are associated with faster walking, but individualism over and above that predicts faster walking. 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. Good on you, I say. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. Theres far less stigmatization of people in terms of their race, their religion. BERT: Ernie Ernie, dont eat those cookies while youre in your bed, huh? 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 . If you wanted to reduce this to a slogan of Americanism, it might be something like: I am me, deal with it. This fits quite snugly with the fact that the U.S. has been found to be the most individualistic culture in the world. Individualistic countries tend to be richer, but as Hofstede the Elder once put it, The order of logic is not that individualism comes first. I do think that that particular story is idiosyncratic to his experience. You can followFreakonomics RadioonApple Podcasts,Spotify,Stitcher, orwherever you get your podcasts. They can freely float about. So Hofstede the Elder began to amass a huge data set about the workplace experiences and preferences of tens of thousands of I.B.M. Next on the list: what Hofstedes late father, the originator of this culture model, called power distance. Thats the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations or institutions be it society at large or just a family accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.. And in a collectivistic society, a person is like an atom in a crystal. 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. 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 . GELFAND: Apparently over 50 percent of cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese. That, again, is the American culture scholar Joe Henrich. DUBNER: What problem was he, and later you, trying to solve by doing this work? Happiness is going to be lower, but crime, too. 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. She decided that the key difference, the right place to start measuring, was whether the culture in a given country is tight or loose. Well find out what it means to be WEIRD although not weird in the way youre thinking. This realization is what led us to todays episode of Freakonomics Radio. DUBNER: Where is the loosest place in America? We can think about extraordinarily loose contexts like Tesla or Uber that probably need a little more structure. HENRICH: Im Joe Henrich. HENRICH: We dont like people telling us what to do. And that also means that fighting is a good way to get what you want. But, lets look at the pandemic from a different angle: which country produced the most effective Covid-19 vaccines? The authors argue that humans usually make decisions based on the incentives for their actions. You Arent Alone as Most Cats and Dogs in the U.S. are Overweight, The Loosening of American Culture Over 200 Years is Associated With a CreativityOrder Trade-Off, Speaking a Tone Language Enhances Musical Pitch Perception in 35-Year-Olds, TightnessLooseness Across the 50 United States, The Mller-Lyer Illusion in a Computational Model of Biological Object Recognition, Chaos Theory: A Unified Theory of Muppet Types, Egypt: Crime Soars 200 Per Cent Since Hosni Mubarak Was Ousted, Status and the Evaluation of Workplace Deviance. And what does he have to say about American culture? Thats to say that it emphasizes privacy and independence, like the U.S., but its much more egalitarian. During the Cold War. The first one measures the level of individualism in a given culture, versus collectivism. The sixth and, for now, final dimension was added to the model in 2010. HENRICH: Theres something called the Asch conformity test, where you have confederates of the experimenter give the same wrong answer to an objective problem. SuperFreakonomics was the follow-up in 2009. When they took out Mubarak, this went the opposite extreme to almost anomie, normlessness. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., individualism coupled with masculinity creates a society where if youre not a winner, youre a loser. 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. It is what we got fed with our mothers milk and the porridge that our dad gave us. Stay up-to-date on all our shows. So, yes, the same attributes that can be a big problem can also be a big boost. Europe has very strong gradients between very individualistic Nordic and Anglo and Germanic countries; Germanic is a little bit more collectivistic. Go out there and make it happen. One hallmark of short-term thinking: a tendency toward black and white moral distinctions versus shades of gray. Spoiler alert: This dimension is one of the six in which the U.S. is the biggest outlier in the world. So how much would you offer? The five loosest countries according to this analysis were Ukraine, Estonia, Hungary, Israel, and the Netherlands. Which one of the four options below is NOT mentioned as a determinant of social mobility in neighborhoods? Freakonomics is a registered service mark of Renbud Radio, LLC. GELFAND: In cross-cultural psychology, we study how ecological and historical factors cause the evolution of differences. But everybody, of course, instinctively feels and should feel that their country, or whatever their tribe is, is the best in the world. Thats right: we are No. 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. Its focus on individual behaviour also lends itself to a preoccupation with manipulating individual choices. GELFAND: In societies that are tighter, people are willing to call out rule violators. But yes, its all workplace. You have to behave like a family member if you want to be one. Everyone knows there are differences between people in different countries, but his approach was a quantifiable approach. GELFAND: Groups that are of lower status tend to live in tighter worlds. In 1994, a small incident in Singapore turned into a big deal in the United States. And we see that the combination of high individualism, high masculinity, and high short-termism can produce some chaos, at the very least. Henrich has written about the notion of time psychology.. GELFAND: In the U.S., various newspapers covered the story. Heres how it works. Am I really going to tell my kid how special they are about everything?. She did want to measure culture, and how it differs from place to place. 534. 1 in individualism. I get these words out so I can get on to the next thing. The U.S. is a pretty successful country, maybe the most successful country on many dimensions in the history of the world. So if you only want to talk about American psychology, youre fine. 47 min. Chronic threat meaning a country is prone to natural disasters, or disease, or hostile invaders. Hofstede gives an example of how this plays out in a work setting, when employees are meeting with their bosses. 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. HENRICH: This probably wouldnt be in a psych textbook, but something like the Ultimatum game. And then you see how often the subject wants to go along with the other people, as opposed to give the answer they would give if they were by themselves. But we tried to address that. China is also very collectivistic and so are the Southeast Asian countries, but not Japan. More feminine societies tend to have less poverty and higher literacy rates. And they often dont even realize theyre being acted upon. There, its really important to maintain that humility, to be focused on your privacy, but not trying to one-up other people. Once he saw that differences were driven by nationality, Hofstede sensed he was on to something big. Innovation requires coming up with a lot of ideas. Freakonomics has since grown up into a media company, complete with documentary, radio show, and blog. the benefits to an individual from study and engagement in a topic. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. If youre an economist, you might think that offering even $1 out of the 100 would be enough. Needless to say, it's had a lot of success. HOFSTEDE: This is not about a homogenous soup, but its about the power of the millions versus the individual and the power of ostracism. And I think thats always going to be an ongoing tension this idea of America thats rooted in individualism, thats rooted in transactional practices. Hence the term, the changing same. I think there are historical moments that are transcendent. (but low on "uncertainty avoidance," if that makes you feel better) Let me give a little background. Gert Jan Hofstede - Freakonomics. The same experiment was done in other, non-WEIRD countries, like Ghana and Zimbabwe. 702 Episodes. The correct answer of the given question above would be the second option. You might think that someone who studies cross-cultural psychology also grew up abroad, or at least in some big city with a melting-pot vibe. Michele Gelfand has another example of how culture shapes perception. HENRICH: So places like New York and London, people are blazing down the sidewalks. He grew up in England. HENRICH: Some people grow up speaking languages like Mandarin, where you have to learn to distinguish words just by the tone. Were always losing time. DUBNER: So between not having been historically a terrible recipient of viruses and also by dint of having an ocean on either side of us, etc., and being a really big and really rich country, it sounds like the U.S. must have one of the lowest inherent threat levels. And this is what Europe has. Not just regular weird. So, organizations you can think about them as the people, the practices, and the leaders. Also, he uses some very bold examples (crime rates versus abortion, drug dealership, cheating teachers, etc) to make some very simple . So keep your ears open for all that. 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? All rights reserved. Sometimes incentives will be obvious, but often they will be hidden - and . Culture is about, if you are a part of a society, youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. HOFSTEDE: Well, if you want an honest answer, I think mainly our own curiosity. Nobody can feel insulted. GELFAND: If youre in contexts where theres a lot of rules, you develop from a very early age that impulse control. To that end, the digital revolution is further shrinking the distance to power. 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, they would offer a mean of about 25, 26 percent. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like The Freakonomics podcast "Is the American Dream really dead?", mentions five main factors that contribute to social mobility in neighborhoods. GELFAND: Having more adaptability, more innovation. In restrained societies, people tend to suppress bodily gratification, and birth rates are often lower; theres also less interest in things like foreign films and music. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism (Ep. Is that the case? 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