The Results Support The Hypothesis That People From Individualistic Cultures

Understanding the differences and similarities inherent in other cultures may provide opportunities when working with individuals (or groups) who may have different cultural values, beliefs, and/or norms. There are multiple ways to explore different cultures. One way is through Hofstede’s (2017) cultural dimension; which are currently made up of six broad categories, including high-low power distance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long-short term orientation, and indulgence-restraint. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore all these cultural dimensions in great detail; however, it is important to understand some of the implications of these scores. The scores for both the US and China can be seen in Table 1, along with the differences between each score.

In Communications Between Cultures individualism and collectivism are described by researchers as “self-orientation versus collective orientation as one of the basic pattern variables that determine human action.” These differences can be found in family life, school, and workplace

Have you ever wondered why do we do things that we do? Why do we act in a certain way? What compels us to follow a path or formulate habits? One perspective among many others is the sociocultural perspective. A sociocultural perspective is an approach to understand why humans behave the way they do. It seeks to understand human behavior and personality development by examining the influence of rules of social groups on individuals who are members of those social groups. Sociocultural approach is an emerging topic that looks at the important contributions that society makes to an individual. The sociocultural approach is based on the assumption that our personalities, beliefs, attitudes and skills are learned from others. It refers to a point of view that is built upon the idea that society and culture are major factors that influence personalities. This approach believes that people are heavily influenced by their social environment. What makes and defines us as individuals is the application of sociocultural approach. For example, if you look outside the window and see a man talking to a tree, what conclusions will you draw? You may think the man is a lunatic and needs some kind of medication. But would your opinion change if you knew that the man was Native American and Native Americans believe in a spiritual philosophy that trees can speak if you listen to them. So you see, the context of culture makes a huge difference in how you ascertain someone’s behavior and that’s

Ruth Benedict’s anthropological book, Patterns of Culture explores the dualism of culture and personality. Benedict studies different cultures such as the Zuni tribe and the Dobu Indians. Each culture she finds is so different and distinctive in relation to the norm of our society. Each difference is what makes it unique. Benedict compares the likenesses of culture and individuality, “A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought or action” (46), but note, they are not the same by use of the word, “like.” Benedict is saying that figuratively, cultures are like personalities. Culture and individuality are intertwined and dependent upon each other for survival.

Individualism is often viewed as a positive trait in America, suggesting a certain level of personal confidence. American society tends to reward independent thinkers and those who decide autonomously. To this end, individuality has become a value in many American homes. Although individualism is widely received and respected in American culture, it is not as well respected in other cultures. One culture in particular which frowns on individualism is the Asian culture.

Individualism is a habit of being self- reliant. A cultural value is a persons desired and preferred way of acting. Every culture has their own cultural values and individualism but whether individualism is their cultural value is up to the person entirely. This could pose a conflict when persuading the wrong culture especially a culture as diverse as the American culture. Poranee Sponsel is a born and raised Thai who is now a professor at a university in Hawaii and gives us the outsider’s perspective of the American culture. In Sponsel’s article “The Young, the Rich, and the Famous: Individualism as an American Cultural value” Sponsel

Culture is defined by a construction of one's world-view, and it is transmitted by individuals and collectives through socialization and enculturation (Pederson & Ivey, 13). It contains values, beliefs, language, and perception. In studying cultural differences among members of distinct national, ethnic groups researcher have examined the concept of collectivism and individualism. People form individualistic cultures tend to view themselves as unique entities and independent form one another (Coon & Kemmelmeier, 348)

Looking at the chart the first dimension of culture plotted is individualism-collectivism. This dimension addresses how people define themselves and their relationships with others. Cultures that fall on the individualism side of the continuum share four characteristics. First, such cultures consider the individual to be the most important entity in any social setting. Second, individualistic cultures stress independence rather than dependence. Third, individualistic cultures reward individual achievement. The last characteristic is; individualistic cultures value each individual’s uniqueness.

Everyone has the disease. Everyone is infected. No one can help you. Conformity. It’s in your blood. Conformity means you change yourself to please another, change the way you speak because everyone else is doing it--- even questioning yourself about what to do next since you feel the need to have people’s opinions. Unfortunately, there is no way to escape from this disease. Everyone should get out of their shell every once in awhile, but that still won’t help you.

Places value on individualism, self-assertion, and competition. Not common in cultures that prioritize cooperation, keep others from failing, finding areas of agreement

Because individualistic cultures value self-consistency across different context more than collectivistic culture, Canadians are expected to use more accept responses and less evade and reject responses than Iranians. Therefore, the hypothesis is, there is a positive relationship between self-consistency across different context and accept compliment responses, with Canadians show more accept responses than Iranians. The criterion variable is the type of compliment responses and the predictor variable is the degree one’s value

As a baby we aren’t born with culture. The people who are responsible for our socialization are our parents and others who we might associate with…teachers, friends, etc. As a very small child we learn about the culture we were born in as well as our gender roles. Depending on some cultures women for example are taught that they will be homemakers and do a large share of work. In my culture I learned my future role which would be a daughter, friend, sister, a wife in the future possibly, and then maybe a mother. This is also the time we learn what society expects of us; the norms per say. This is also the time in our lives that our personality forms. While our personality has much to do with our upbringing and genes it also is created by the culture we are in. “Research in geographical sciences has shown regional variation on a number of indicators—including public

Individualistic cultures tend to favor feeling free and less responsible for the members around them. In class, we discussed our own experiences of living in an individualistic culture. For example, if a parent were to become ill and more dependent, it is not uncommon for the children to send the parent to a nursing home. The ill parent would feel embarrassed if their child had to help them use a restroom or bathe themselves.Whereas, in a collectivism

One of the facets of living within civilized society is that there are certain norms and social conventions that people must follow. Frequently, there is a large effort on the part of government, financial, and social institutions to keep people doing most of the same thing as others going to work, driving cars, buying homes, etc. Despite the fact that people engage in these efforts individually, the simple fact that they are all attempting to do the same thing, in much the same way, is indicative of the fact that they are engaged in collective behavior. THESIS: Those who are able to overcome collective behavior and allow for their individuality to determine their own outcomes exemplify the best of human nature.

Expanding on that, a person is immeresed in his/her culture since birth, and has no choice but to adopt the values necessary to survive. An individualistic community encourages a person to make his/her own choices; moreover, one would be less concerned about the “we” and more concerned about the “I”. This lowers conformity levels, because each person is willing to do what he/she wants and is more concerned about self-surival than harmony in the community. A strength of this study could be participant variability because it eliminates the possibility of this behavior only being limited to one type of person/community. Accordingly, a limitation could be the lack of ecological validity (one will not be asked to identify the length of a line in real life), and the multitude of confounding variables including the time and place, which could influence the results. Overall, the study demonstrates how individualism affects behavior, since a person who demonstrates indivdualistic behavior would exhibit less conformity, as seen above.