Steven D. Levitt, the self-described "Rogue Economist" of the title, uses this tool to analyze a random assortment of . Or if it will change at all. I must be American. GELFAND: The U.S. tends to not just be individualistic, like Hofstede or others have shown, but very vertical, very competitive in its individualism. That would be very beneficial because now you might be going down the path of civil war, really. HENRICH: Theres something called the Asch conformity test, where you have confederates of the experimenter give the same wrong answer to an objective problem. So yeah, the U.S. has that assignment ahead of it. U.S. President George H.W. The concept of incentives is a way of explaining why human beings do things. So looking decisive, muscular, active or if youre a woman, sexy that makes you more status-worthy. The term individualism itself, and its equivalents in other languages, dateslike socialism and other ismsfrom the 19th century. We will leave you with a patriotic tribute from one last transplanted U.S. comedian. Because remember, threat is what can drive tightness. So, yes, the same attributes that can be a big problem can also be a big boost. Theres not going to be violent crime. It was: And your culture, your American culture, is very different. At this point, we should probably define terms. The spirit of competition of what Michele Gelfand calls vertical individualism seems to permeate every corner of American society. The examples include: school teachers and sumo wrestlers cheating, the Ku Klux . So how much would you offer? Am I really going to tell my kid how special they are about everything?. But if you want to talk about humans, Homo sapiens, then you have a generalization problem. OLIVER: When was that moment when America became the most American America it could possibly be? 1 in individualism. And thats different than in Scandinavia and in New Zealand and Australia, which has much more horizontal individualism. Heres Mark Anthony Neal of Duke: NEAL: Historically, power has been obscure. Individualism, Modern Capitalism, and Dystopian Visions Introduction to Heritage and Multicultural American Identities: Contemporary Voices (1970-2000) Introduction to Contemporary Literature of the Twenty-First Century The Poetry of Physics RL.CCR.3 Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text. DUBNER: So does all the data come from workplace interviews essentially of white-collar and pink-collar workers, or does it go broader than that? Its focus on individual behaviour also lends itself to a preoccupation with manipulating individual choices. As Hofstede the Younger remembers it, his father asked his bosses at I.B.M. Essentially, theyre the opposite of the loose attributes: tight cultures have more coordination and more self-control. So rules for the sake of having rules are not good. And that happens a lot. Whereas looking away in a very egalitarian society is seen as a sign of deceptiveness. You always have to win. And it got the attention of President Clinton: Bill CLINTON: Its the first Ive heard of it, Ill look into it. 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. So I did the experiment there with an indigenous population called the Machiguenga. We put in a bunch of other checks and controls. HENRICH: You want to be the same self, regardless of who youre talking to or what context youre in. Its trying to include all the stuff that we acquire as a consequence of growing up in different environments, and contrast that with things like our sex drive, which doesnt seem to be acquired by observing others. Michele Gelfand has another example of how culture shapes perception. The New Yorker's Malcolm . In the beginning, Feldman left behind an open basket for the cash, but too often the money vanished. Thats Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University. The next cultural dimension is what Hofstede and his late father called masculinity. That title is a bit misleading. These are stereotypical names. And there are other inconsistencies, especially in a country as large and diverse as the U.S. For instance, where you live. And in a collectivistic society, a person is like an atom in a crystal. In a more masculine society, men and women adhere to the gender roles you might think of as patriarchal: fathers, for instance, take care of the facts, while mothers handle the emotions. We had a lot of struggles with tightening during Covid, clearly. And we found that people from minority or even women backgrounds were seen as violating something more severely and were subject to higher punishment without even people realizing this. Out into the ocean where they were caught by people on jet skis. Freakonomics the film, like the book, is entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. Our staff also includesAlison Craiglow,Greg Rippin,Joel Meyer,Tricia Bobeda,Mary Diduch, Zack Lapinski,Emma Tyrrell, Lyric Bowditch, Jasmin Klinger,andJacob Clemente. I hate to call out Michele Gelfand, but even in the loosest of cultures, dogs dont have unfettered access to food. This episode was produced by Brent Katz. Chronic threat meaning a country is prone to natural disasters, or disease, or hostile invaders. People tend to be super-creative and theres a lot of negotiation of rules. And its by no means easy. And what does he have to say about American culture? Tom BROKAW:A young American has been sentenced to a caning for an act of vandalism. Thats a crazy, creative solution to try to deal with the pandemic. Joe HENRICH: Americans and Westerners more generally are psychologically unusual from a global perspective. 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. Or more human-made threats, like how many times has your nation been invaded over the last 100 years? Categories like age, gender, job type, job seniority, and so on. Thats Joe Henrich, a professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard; hes also a scholar of psychology, economics, and anthropology. (This is part of theFreakonomics RadioAmerican Culture series). As a result, the needs of individuals dictate social behaviors, rather than the needs of larger groups. Kumail NANJIANI: I was so excited to be in America I couldnt sleep. But oh, the places you'll go! A dream team of directors e. As we heard, the first four dimensions originated with the I.B.M. We look at how these traits affect our daily lives and why we couldnt change them even if we wanted to. He started out as an anthropologist; but he started mixing and matching disciplines to suit his curiosity. I think those fundamental religious beliefs extend to the American view of what leadership should look like outside of the church in the corporation, in the legislatures, and what have you. But Bush also wanted to avoid going to war with Iraq. Can that possibly be trueour culture shapes our genetics? GELFAND: We have a lot of work to do, theres no question. Its all the levels in the organization. When most readers think economics, they think advanced math, complicated models, and subjects like unemployment, the stock market, and the trade deficit. DUBNER: When youre inclined to look at the U.S. in a positive light, do you find uncertainty avoidance to be largely a force for the good in terms of creating and building a strong society, or do you think its more ? The next dimension is what the Hofstedes call uncertainty avoidance.. Theyre really hard-working. A. Good on you. 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. Whatd they say? Whether proud or not, whether happy or not, it has a position. 470. This paper examines the production of race on the Internet by examining the elements that make up the weblog Freakonomics: the topic, the environment, the medium, and the users. This is the flip side of the idea we started out with in this episode that is, why its hard for the U.S. to simply import successful policies from elsewhere. Culture is about, if you are a part of a society, youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. His ideas, along with others, are credited with . Long Island, New York, is thebirthplace of the American suburb. Good on you, I say. You could argue that treating your own children as if theyre special may make it harder to care as much about other peoples children. And the rest is history, if you like. Groups that tend to have threat tend to develop stricter rules to coordinate. HOFSTEDE: In an individualistic society, a person is like an atom in a gas. Everything in economics can be viewed from the point of incentives. HENRICH: And Americans have this probably worse than anybody. Gert Jan HOFSTEDE: Culture is the ripples on the ocean of human nature. My uncles like, Hey, I have something to show you. My first day in America, he showed me the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade. HOFSTEDE: Okay, no, I was just being naughty. There, its really important to maintain that humility, to be focused on your privacy, but not trying to one-up other people. HOFSTEDE: And it immediately yielded a four-dimensional model. Thats right: we are No. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. I was on the phone with my dad, and I said, You know, its really crazy, all the differences between the U.K. and the U.S.. Macroeconomics, on the other hand, works on a larger scale. Download Print. Season 10, Episode 49. the benefits to an individual from study and engagement in a topic. Open Document. GELFAND: When we ask people, What does honor mean to you? in the U.S., a lot of people talk about work. Michele GELFAND: Its a subfield of psychology that tries to understand whats universal, whats similar, and whats culture-specific. Why Does the Most Monotonous Job in the World Pay $1 Million? This suggests that looseness and tightness can co-exist. Citation styles for Freakonomics How to cite Freakonomics for your reference list or bibliography: select your referencing style from the list below and hit 'copy' to generate a citation. HENRICH: This cashes out in an ability to make better abstract or absolute judgment. And he tried all kinds of categories and groups. employees. NANJIANI: I was so excited to be in America I couldnt sleep. 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. He considered a rate between 80 and 90 percent . Everyone knows there are differences between people in different countries, but his approach was a quantifiable approach. (8) My years of experience traveling in 100 . More information on phishing. ERNIE: Oh, gee. We look at how these traits affect our daily lives and why we couldn . In a society in which 95 percent of adults are highly literate, he writes, people have a thicker corpus callosum than a society in which only 5 percent of people are highly literate. The corpus callosum is the bunch of nerve fibers that unites the two brain hemispheres. There is a strong desire to be more feminine. They determine the boundary conditions before which we become angry or flattered or whatever. 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? Hence the term, the changing same. I think there are historical moments that are transcendent. But for folks who are pushed out of the mainstream you know, Black folks have rarely had the luxury of thinking about just simply being themselves. According to the individualist, all values are human-centred, the individual is of supreme importance, and all individuals are morally equal. So the picture that emerges from these findings is that Americans are less likely to conform in the name of social harmony; and we also treasure being consistent, expressing our true selves, regardless of the context. DUBNER: That implies to me that 100 years from now, all these countries will all have the same characteristics. Employees were asked to rate how much they agreed with statements like Competition among employees usually does more harm than good. And, Having interesting work is just as important to most people as having high earnings., HOFSTEDE: Simple questions about daily things that people understand. Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers. (That will also need some explaining.) A loose country, like the U.S., tends to do well in creativity and innovation; in tolerance and openness; in free speech and a free press. HOFSTEDE: Its rather futile to advise somebody what their national culture should be because theres no way you can change it. Here are some things that tend to thrive in highly individual societies: human rights, a free press, divorce, and a faster pace of life. HOFSTEDE: Thats my idea. The sixth dimension is called indulgence vs. restraint.. Like, the military should be tighter than tech. Although the concept of an individual may seem straightforward, there are many ways of understanding it, both in theory and in practice. Those are the upsides. In each chapter, the authors analyze a different social issue from an economic perspective. But if you look 100 years ago and you look at the cultural map of the world, you can read writers from different countries, you will see that there is astonishing continuity. Weve interviewed dozens of academic researchers about lowering healthcare costs or improving access to childcare or building smarter infrastructure or creating a more equitable economy. The Neglected 95%: Why American Psychology Needs to Become Less American, Measuring Inequity Aversion in a Heterogeneous Population Using Experimental Decisions and Subjective Probabilities, Westerners and Easterners See the World Differently, Economic Man in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies, Ultimatum Game with Ethnicity Manipulation: Problems Faced Doing Field Economic Experiments and Their Solutions, Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? I do think that that particular story is idiosyncratic to his experience. Well go through the other five dimensions, much faster, I promise. 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; we're also high on indulgence, short-term thinking, and masculinity (but low on "uncertainty avoidance," if . Henrich argues that national psychologies can be quite particular, but you may not appreciate that if all you read is the mainstream psychological research. 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. Another one: impatience. Freakonomics tries to decipher everyday events from an economic perspective by exploring various events, such as drug dealers lives, the truth about . (Part 1 of " Freakonomics Radio Takes to the Skies .") And Im particularly interested in how its shaped our psychology. I came back to Colgate. This leads to less obesity, less addiction, and theres less crime in tighter cultures. You know, the thing that rap artists were talking about 25 years ago, Im on my grind. Its rooted in this ethos of always working, always pushing forward, always being on the top of your game. You can think about it at the household level. OLIVER: Baseballs were hit from the deck of a warship from a needlessly inflatable batting cage. 470. What Henrich discovered from running these experiments in different parts of the world is that the results vary, a lot. China is also very collectivistic and so are the Southeast Asian countries, but not Japan. Well, because theyre really smart. HOFSTEDE: Yes. The five loosest countries according to this analysis were Ukraine, Estonia, Hungary, Israel, and the Netherlands. what do you moisturize your vag with after shaving, , Hungary, Israel, and theres less crime in tighter cultures where they were caught by on. Argue that humans usually make decisions based on the incentives for their actions just being naughty practice! Clinton: its rather futile to advise somebody what their national culture should be tighter than tech strong! 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