. The individual agents/brokers only take a $150 hit after their costs/fees. Although it is more self-help than traditional economics it shares many of the weaknesses of more serious works in the discipline. Bush made clear to Iraqs Saddam Hussein that this wouldnt stand. Its also important to recognize that even though were really connected, still people are largely in their echo chambers, interacting with people who they know. 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. And I shifted from pre-med into what turned into a career of cross-cultural psychology. Nobody can feel insulted. Which is probably why we dont hear all that much about the science of culture. I think Joe Biden, for instance, hes trying to play the card of, Were all Americans. NEAL: As someone who specialized in the African-American experience, and is African-American myself, I often fall back on the way the late Amiri Baraka described Black culture as a changing same.. But Im Dutch, of course. In other places they dont think its a smart idea to be consistent. The book takes the form of six chapters. Shes not very disciplined. The answer to that is usually: no, you cant. And that really can help explain some variation not all, but some variation in norms and values. There is some overlap between these six dimensions and some of the ideas we talked about in last weeks episode particularly the notion that some national cultures tend to be tight and others loose. (That will also need some explaining.) People who went out to California, I would say if we gave them the tight-loose mindset quiz, they were probably on the looser mindset. Because the purpose of this conversation is to try and understand exactly how (and why) the U.S. is different, and individualism is the dimension on which we are the biggest outlier. So, Japan has been hit by Mother Nature for centuries. Thats the cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand. the benefits to an individual from study and engagement in a topic. We do lab experiments, field experiments, computational modeling. NEAL: We think about improvisation in the context, obviously, of creative and musical terms, but its also a way of always having to adapt to the changing political, social, and cultural realities. HENRICH: We have a kind of religiosity equivalent to somewhere like Kuwait. Heres another culture metaphor another watery one from the Dutch culture scholar Gert Jan Hofstede. Okay, lets get into the six dimensions. Heres how it works. 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 . So uncertainty avoidance is the intolerance of ambiguity. I personally expect at some point in the not very far future to have another wave of youthful optimism and find a way to say, Look, guys, we can do it, the future could be bright. Once you begin looking for evidence, you see an almost infinite array of examples. Whereas in countries that are bogged down in cronyism and corruption, it doesnt happen. If it were, Afghanistan and Venezuela, even Iran might be U.S.-style democracies by now. And other cultures are more loose. It may help if youre not originally from here. 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 better). We often look to other countries for smart policies on education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. Why not? So how it is that we acquire ideas, beliefs, and values from other people, and how this has shaped human genetic evolution. Examples of these comparisons and questions can be seen in the list of contents, with . But oh, the places you'll go! Feb 15, 2023. In the latest issue of American Scientist, statisticians Kaiser Fung and Andrew Gelman wrote a strong critique of Levitt and Dubner's work. And the rest is history, if you like. The fifth dimension in the Hofstede universe came in the early 1980s, in collaboration with a Canadian social psychologist named Michael Bond, who was working in Hong Kong. GELFAND: I would say it tends to be California. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. 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. In a society of small power distance, a lot. GELFAND: I do work with the U.S. Navy and other organizations that are trying to have that kind of balance. But there must be, I would think, evolution across time, yes? Joe HENRICH: Americans and Westerners more generally are psychologically unusual from a global perspective. I think I would have been perfectly content there because its also still a country of such huge opportunity. And in culture, uncertainty means not knowing the ritual, not knowing how status-worthy or blameworthy some action is. International, and they were just starting international opinion surveys. The first one measures the level of individualism in a given culture, versus collectivism. NANJIANI: I was so excited to be in America I couldnt sleep. SFU users should ignore all messages requesting Computing ID and/or password information, no matter how authentic they may appear. That, again, is the American culture scholar Joe Henrich. HENRICH: And this can include motivations, heuristics, biases, beliefs. And you need revolutions in order to change the government. Its part of our founding D.N.A. HOFSTEDE: You could say these six dimensions of culture, they are perimeters to our sociality. HOFSTEDE: And his special methodological trick was not to do what is now called a pan-cultural analysis across all the respondents, but first to lump them into groups. 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. GELFAND: I grew up on Long Island. Around this time, he started doing some teaching at the Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. 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. This feeds back into what Michele Gelfand was talking about earlier, in the context of geopolitical negotiations. In indulgent societies, more people play sports, while in restrained societies, sports are more something you watch. (Ep. making a claim about his individual experiences and looking for evidence. Mark Anthony Neal of Duke is not surprised that the U.S. scores relatively high on the masculinity scale. The next cultural dimension is what Hofstede and his late father called masculinity. That title is a bit misleading. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., the boss needs to be a team player. GELFAND: Classic things like the Mller-Lyer Illusion, which is these two lines where one looks longer than the other. He wrote a paper about it. For the last few months, the city-state has seen just a handful of Covid-19 cases. So how much would you offer? Public school quality B. Apparently over 50 percent of cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese. GELFAND: My own sweet Portuguese water dog, Pepper, I mean, that dog is just gigantic. HOFSTEDE: It means that you only need rules when youre going to use them. Our staff also includesAlison Craiglow,Greg Rippin,Joel Meyer,Tricia Bobeda,Mary Diduch, Zack Lapinski,Emma Tyrrell, Lyric Bowditch, Jasmin Klinger,andJacob Clemente. 1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Freakonomics. This really contrasts with lots of places where there are legitimate traditional authorities and people tend to defer to those authorities. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more. She did want to measure culture, and how it differs from place to place. I do this for you and you do this for me. Folks who come from a collective standpoint where, I do this for you, but youre doing this for us thats a very, very different way of seeing the world. Once he saw that differences were driven by nationality, Hofstede sensed he was on to something big. Whereas in other contexts, like in the Middle East, when you think about honor, you think about your family, you think about your purity, your dutifulness, and so forth much less so about accomplishments. OLIVER: Baseballs were hit from the deck of a warship from a needlessly inflatable batting cage. If you plot the U.S. on G.D.P. The focus of that episode was American culture. Michele Gelfand again: GELFAND: De Tocqueville noticed this about Americans, that we are a time is money country. HOFSTEDE: You are on the masculine side not at the very end, but more on the masculine side. In the meantime, take care of yourself and, if you can, someone else too. 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? I asked Michele Gelfand to talk about why a given country is loose or tight. And this dynamic leads to a lot of fighting for the sake of fighting. If youre an economist, you might think that offering even $1 out of the 100 would be enough. Freakonomics Quotes. HENRICH: So, Francisco is a good pal of mine and hes also a very charming fellow. It is still the case that you did have the summer of love. Gert Jan Hofstede - Freakonomics. Also, the people who settled in different areas in the U.S. brought with them their own cultural norms and values, and set the stage for different levels of tight-loose within the nation. But thats only the first study. 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. HOFSTEDE: This is not about a homogenous soup, but its about the power of the millions versus the individual and the power of ostracism. Sinopsis. Our theme song is Mr. Sometimes incentives will be obvious, but often they will be hidden - and . The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism (Ep. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. DUBNER: Describe for me your father and his work, and how it became a family business. One of the most important figures in economic individualism is the famous Scottish economist, Adam Smith. Fundamentally, individualism is a belief that the individual is an end in themself. 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. 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. . We look at how these traits affect our daily lives and why we couldnt change them even if we wanted to. What we saw in Egypt was very similar. When Hofstede the Elder went to work for I.B.M., he got involved with these surveys. ERNIE: Oh, gee. Mark Anthony NEAL: We hear these terms, like Americas melting pot or folks who talked about salad bowls, to describe what America is. His father was Geert Hofstede. This episode was produced by Brent Katz. Oh say, can you see, the home run I just hit. Thats Joe Henrich, a professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard; hes also a scholar of psychology, economics, and anthropology. Heres Mark Anthony Neal of Duke: NEAL: Historically, power has been obscure. China, Japan, and Turkey are also tight. So, yeah, that is WEIRD. Mobility also produces looseness, because its harder to agree upon any norm. Now this is pretty rare to have such different groups of respondents and still find the same thing. Like, you saw in the U.S. trying to locate Covid in sewage. So this is not about, Is world peace important?, HOFSTEDE: For instance, Is it important for you to have a good working relationship with your boss? Or Is it a good idea for people to maybe have more than one boss?. The sixth and, for now, final dimension was added to the model in 2010. And I think that is a hallmark of African-American culture in this country. GELFAND: I also teach negotiation. HENRICH: But if you want to talk about humans, then you have a problem. Heres what Hofstede told us last week about culture: HOFSTEDE: If youre part of a society, youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. China is also very collectivistic and so are the Southeast Asian countries, but not Japan. But it can make life harder for the millions of Americans who arent so entrepreneurial, or rugged, or individualistic. Some of the countries with high power distance: Russia, China, and Mexico. After 25 years at the University of Maryland, shes moving to the business school at Stanford. If youre a constrained sort of person, you wont go far in the U.S. Stephen DUBNER: Im curious whether youve ever been accused of political incorrectness in your study of national cultures. Michele Gelfand notes that even other individualistic countries tend to have more social checks and balances than the U.S. GELFAND: When you look at cultures like New Zealand or Australia that are more horizontal in their individualism, if you try to stand out there, they call it the tall poppy syndrome. What is culture? This is a summary of the book Freakonomics by Stephen DubnerJoin Reading.FM now: https://fourminutebooks.com/go/readingfm/register/Read more summaries: http. Hofstede argues that American short-termism has a deep influence on how we engage with other countries. And how does a scholar like Neal think about culture per se? And I think thats always going to be an ongoing tension this idea of America thats rooted in individualism, thats rooted in transactional practices. GELFAND: If youre in contexts where theres a lot of rules, you develop from a very early age that impulse control. Why Does the Most Monotonous Job in the World Pay $1 Million? 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