Which of the following is a difference between individualist and collectivist?

1.3.4 - Individualist or Collectivist

Individualist or Collectivist

The way you responded to the Sharing the Rewards exercise tells you something about how you feel regarding individual achievement and reward. Most Americans choose to divide the available pool in a disproportionate way; they do not generally divide the money equally. This tendency to stress either individuality or a more collective response is one of the most widely distributed traits around the world. Not every culture is at one end or the other of the spectrum, but the majority tend to favor one over the other in everyday life. Knowing about the basis of this Collectivism versus Individualism construct will help you to recognize, understand, and anticipate attitudes in different types of cultures.

The individual identifies primarily with self, with the needs of the individual being satisfied before those of the group. Looking after and taking care of oneself, being self-sufficient, guarantees the well-being of the group. Independence and self-reliance are greatly stressed and valued. In general, people tend to distance themselves psychologically and emotionally from each other. One may choose to join groups, but group membership is not essential to one�s identity or success. Individualist characteristics are often associated with men and people in urban settings.

Collectivist�

Look at the list of characteristics and behaviors given below. If you decide the statement is more likely to apply to people living in an individualist culture, write "I" in the underlined blank space; if you think it is characteristic of a collectivist culture, write "C."

Characteristics and Behaviors

Suggested answers

One of the most distinctive and remarkable cultural characteristics of human cultures are the so-called cultural dimensions, commonly known as “individualism” and “collectivism”.[1]

In general, this dimension, because it is only one dimension, not two, and because it is an abstraction, it should be understood in a form of a spectrum ranging between 0 and 100. If a country scores closer to a hundred, that means that the culture is, on average, more individualistic. On the contrary, the closer to zero, the more collectivist is the culture.

And what does this mean?

First, it means that human cultures tend to move towards individualism, i.e. the starting point of all cultures are the practices associated with the so-called collectivism, probably due to evolutionary reasons as the social tribal instinct.

Second, it also means that most of the so-called "national" cultures are still dominantly collectivists in terms of cultural values and practices, and not "individualists".

In fact, many people, and common sense in general, wrongly associate, individualism to selfishness and that’s why people usually confuse both concepts.

This is not only wrong. This is deeply wrong. I will give some examples of the difference between values, beliefs and practices in individualist and collectivist cultures.

In the first ones, which can be also called Universalists, people believe that all individuals, in general, are important. In the lasts ones, the importance of individuals is especially dependent on the group to which they belong.

In individualistic cultures, people treat other people primarily based on what they are as individuals, while in collectivist cultures there is a cultural tendency to treat people based on their group of belonging, or other groups with whom they identify themselves. Therefore, in collectivist cultures, people exclude the others from the circle which the people in it deserve preferential treatment. Individualistic cultures are more inclusive and collectivist cultures more exclusive.

Now we can understand why common sense has difficulties in believing that “selfishness behaviors” has much more to do with what happens very frequently in collectivist cultures such as, for example, parking at second row or in the walkways, etc. The same happens with concern about public spaces. In an individualistic culture, what is public belongs to everyone. In a collectivist culture, what is public belongs to no one.

But how do cultures become more individualistic?

Scientific research about this topic and the longitudinal compared studies suggest that the answer will be in the increase of income and widespread wealth in a society. This is something that 'pushes' and promotes the so-called individualistic values. In short, “more wealth” tends to generate more “individualism”.

The rationale behind this is that as individuals ' enrich ', this allows them to ' cut out ' ties of dependence and submission in relation to groups, increasing their autonomy and independence in relation to its restricted groups.

Moreover, several researchers have suggested that the ease of interaction with strangers is one of the most characteristic aspects of individualistic cultures, which is why citizens in these societies tend to consider most people as “trustworthy”. In individualistic cultures, the type of common interaction between individuals tends to vary less, because the “others”' are generally seen in a less categorized type, we can say.

On the contrary, in collectivist cultures, the behavior tends to be clearly warmer when the interaction is between members of the group itself, and more suspicious and far with those who belong to other groups.

That’s why in “individualistic cultures”, the indexes of social trust are regular and usually as high or, at least, much higher than in collectivist cultures. Now we already know!

QED ;)

[1] It's wise to remember that we, humans, are unable to experience the true nature of the universe unfiltered including the true reality of our collective action. Therefore, the dimensions (cultural or any other), in fact, don't exist. Given that our brain can only process a very small fraction of the world we live in, we should use concepts such as the concept of «cultural dimensions», to grasp the true nature of reality, in this case, the cultural one.

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