But there must be, I would think, evolution across time, yes? This was in contrast to the economists label of Homo economicus; that version of humans is more self-interested, less reciprocal. On many Freakonomics Radio episodes, well hear about some idea or policy that works well elsewhere in the world but hasnt taken root in the U.S. He wrote a paper about it. In the beginning, Feldman left behind an open basket for the cash, but too often the money vanished. Its the tiny differences in sociality. Culture can be quite an offensive concept, particularly to people who project it onto an individual characteristic, as if it was about an individual. If you dont feel that, then you will be an unhappy person. (That will also need some explaining.) I must be American. And I think this community-spiritedness has been built in us since we were very young. Both are long-term oriented, so they see a lot of context around things. HENRICH: Two players divide a sum of money. Henrich is saying that the export of American ideas isnt necessarily easier. Now, lets pull back and make an important point: labeling a given country tight or loose is an overall, aggregate measurement. GELFAND: They talk about individualistic accomplishments. And yes, well talk about what makes America, America at least as seen through the eyes of Kumail Nanjiani, who was born in Pakistan. DUBNER: I remember once, years and years ago, when I was reading this research that you were doing, speaking with Francisco Gil-White, who was then at Penn, and he told me that when he was running this Ultimatum experiment, I dont remember where I want to say Mongolia. Tightness may create compliance; but looseness can drive innovation and creativity. 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 . making a claim about his individual experiences and looking for evidence. This leads to less obesity, less addiction, and theres less crime in tighter cultures. Whereas uncertainty avoidance means you have lots of etiquette and ritual. And this is what Europe has. 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. 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. 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. Im like, Were going to go to Singapore if you people dont behave.. They make sure that there is no violation of any ritual. 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. If youre an economist, you might think that offering even $1 out of the 100 would be enough. And thats different than in Scandinavia and in New Zealand and Australia, which has much more horizontal individualism. Also, he uses some very bold examples (crime rates versus abortion, drug dealership, cheating teachers, etc) to make some very simple . But theres something else to be said about American culture. Whereas in countries that are bogged down in cronyism and corruption, it doesnt happen. They made sure to include a variety of ages, occupations, religions, social and economic classes. NEAL: I often think about how the U.S. has historically thought about freedom and how, say, the Soviet bloc had talked about freedom. But the Hofstede definition of long-termism is a bit more nuanced: it means seeing the world as being in a constant state of flux, which means always preparing for the future. We see them as individuals with whom we are in competition. You could argue that Peppers owner is the one who isnt very disciplined. But Im Dutch, of course. (Ep. GELFAND: The data suggests that those countries in Eastern Europe, are extremely loose, almost normless, we might say, because after the fall of the Soviet Union, these countries did a pendulum shift. Freakonomics is therefore NOT the book that I would recommend to anyone interested in (a) learning economic theory, (b) learning about how economists think, or (c) understanding the world or thinking of ways to improve it. And how does a scholar like Neal think about culture per se? 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 as long as you dont kill somebody behind the wheel of a car, your right to do whatever you want to do to yourself is protected. And I think thats always going to be an ongoing tension this idea of America thats rooted in individualism, thats rooted in transactional practices. All rights reserved. Heres another culture metaphor another watery one from the Dutch culture scholar Gert Jan Hofstede. And it should stay there. We owe much of our freedom to that influence. Well, because theyre really smart. Tight cultures, she writes, are usually found in South and East Asia, the Middle East, and in European countries of Nordic and Germanic origin.. But its important to acknowledge that no culture is a monolith. You can see this on many dimensions: how we work and travel; how we mate and marry; how we care for our children and our elderly; how we police; how we conceive the relationship between the individual and the state; even how we manage death! And if there are crumbs in the sheets, theyll get in your pajamas. You could argue that treating your own children as if theyre special may make it harder to care as much about other peoples children. the benefits to an individual from study and engagement in a topic. The ancient Romans. So that leads to justifying more inequality. Whatd they say? (Part 1 of "Freakonomics Radio Takes to the Skies.") 58 min. When Hofstede the Elder went to work for I.B.M., he got involved with these surveys. HOFSTEDE: You are on the masculine side not at the very end, but more on the masculine side. 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). GELFAND: My own sweet Portuguese water dog, Pepper, I mean, that dog is just gigantic. Theres a good side of every dimension, including uncertainty avoidance. The first one measures the level of individualism in a given culture, versus collectivism. Needless to say, it's had a lot of success. This interest goes back to those negotiations between Jim Baker and Tariq Aziz. When it was time for college, Gelfand went all the way to upstate New York: Colgate University. And I was interested in this, and I thought maybe it would tell us something about an innate human psychology for reciprocity or something like that. 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. Potentially offensive or not, Hofstede really believes in the power of culture so much so that he remains the steward of a massive research project begun more than 50 years ago by his late father. The fourth original dimension was called uncertainty avoidance. This has to do with how comfortable people are with ambiguity. A. Why not? "The typical parenting expert, like experts in other fields, is prone to sound exceedingly sure of himself. NEAL: I think its helpful to think about culture in terms of a big C and a little c, the little c being those everyday things that we sometimes dont elevate to a level of culture. Later on, fast forward, Pertti Pelto, whos an anthropologist. Here are some things that tend to thrive in highly individual societies: human rights, a free press, divorce, and a faster pace of life. As of today, it covers six dimensions or, as the Hofstedes put it, six basic issues that society needs to organize itself. Its called the 6-D, or 6-Dimension, Model of National Culture, and it is one of the most intriguing explanations Ive ever seen for why American society is such an outlier in the world for better and worse. How does the U.S. do on this dimension? But some cultures strictly abide by their norms. HENRICH: We have a kind of religiosity equivalent to somewhere like Kuwait. The first: individualism versus collectivism. Freakonomics Revised and Expanded Edition. Go out there and make it happen. And by the way, in that sense, the U.S.A. is also a huge laboratory of society formation, hopefully, which is by no means finished. And so often, theyll just point at some other country on the map. And Im particularly interested in how its shaped our psychology. But even a loose country will tighten up when a threat arises. HOFSTEDE: So collectivistic cultures are those of the Amerindian empires. Really? Because remember, threat is what can drive tightness. Although it is more self-help than traditional economics it shares many of the weaknesses of more serious works in the discipline. Why not? Were trying to buy time, save time. It always was unsustainable, but was made even more acute to us. Chinese, in that respect, are very like the Americans. And she doesnt love to exercise. These are stereotypical names. Downloads: 18. Neal sees a strong connection between U.S. masculinity and our appetite for work. But Im Dutch, of course. Although the concept of an individual may seem straightforward, there are many ways of understanding it, both in theory and in practice. Thats the cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand. Innovation requires coming up with a lot of ideas. All contents Freakonomics. DUBNER: What problem was he, and later you, trying to solve by doing this work? In each chapter, the authors analyze a different social issue from an economic perspective. 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. Freakonomics Radiois produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. And there are other inconsistencies, especially in a country as large and diverse as the U.S. For instance, where you live. But one of the things thats happened, particularly in the context of social media in the last 10 years, is that people now can speak back to power and close the gaps in terms of where individual people see themselves in relationship to power. But relatively speaking, we have more tolerance. To that end, the digital revolution is further shrinking the distance to power. We need to change our practices. Im a professor of artificial sociality at Wageningen University, in the Netherlands. And you dont need them for ritual reasons. And how does this extraordinarily high level of individualism versus collectivism play out? Find ratings and reviews for the newest movie and TV shows. 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. So, culture is about values, beliefs, absorbed ideas and behaviors. By late 2009, the book had sold over 4 million copies worldwide. We do lab experiments, field experiments, computational modeling. The cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand has been telling us about loose and tight cultures around the world. HOFSTEDE: So youre asking about cultural convergence. So this is quite a while ago. 470. 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. The U.S. also has a small power distance 40 on a scale of 100, which puts it among the lowest in the world. BROADCASTER: The subject denies the evidence of his own eyes and yields to group influence. This does not mean that no one in a loose culture, like the U.S., is stigmatized or mistreated. Q uite soon after the Freakonomics guys, Stephen J Dubner and Steven D Levitt, walk into their office on New York's Upper West Side for our interview, the scene resolves itself into the kind of . Theyll say, The Scandinavians have great childcare and family-leave policies. Or theyll say, China has built more high-speed rail in the past few years than the U.S. has even thought about. So, naturally, the next question is: cant the U.S. just borrow these Scandinavian and Chinese and German ideas and slap them on top of the American way of doing things? But then the experimenters confederates come in. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism (Replay) 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). You have to behave like a family member if you want to be one. That, again, is the American culture scholar Joe Henrich. HENRICH: This probably wouldnt be in a psych textbook, but something like the Ultimatum game. Sinopsis. 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