Theyre not supposed to be the boss. This is really a conversation that pleases me a lot. In a multitude of ways, large and small. That, again, is the American culture scholar Joe Henrich. Culturally maybe more than anything! His ideas, along with others, are credited with . DUBNER: Where is the loosest place in America? Gert Jan HOFSTEDE: None of it is intentional. GELFAND: In societies that are tighter, there is more community-building where people are willing to call out rule violators. to let him focus even more on this data. There is no evidence for convergence other than if countries become equally rich, they all go to more individualistic. Download. My husband is an attorney. For instance, the rhythm of vaccination in the U.S.A. is very fast. The second player is given a choice between accepting or rejecting. So, culture is about values, beliefs, absorbed ideas and behaviors. In Germany, for instance, labor unions often have a representative on company boards, which can radically change the dynamic between companies and employees. But when you use data to measure the specific dimensions of a given culture, and compare them to other countries, you see some stark differences. Spoiler alert: This dimension is one of the six in which the U.S. is the biggest outlier in the world. Is that the case? 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. The cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand has been telling us about loose and tight cultures around the world. 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 know what it is, you know how it works, you dont necessarily have access to the people who really hold on to it. Long Island, New York, is thebirthplace of the American suburb. And yes, well talk about what makes America, America at least as seen through the eyes of Kumail Nanjiani, who was born in Pakistan. thats always there. 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. Let me give a little background. In 2016, Henrich published a book called The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Fascinated by the human in the system, he did a PhD in organizational behaviour. 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? It has to do with conformity. So why did someone succeed? The first (and longest) chapter focuses on the role of incentives in human behavior. We look at how these traits affect our daily lives and why we couldnt change them even if we wanted to. NEAL: I think thats always been a tension in Black culture, around this idea of Americas rugged individualism and the collectivity of Blackness that was born out of necessity because of segregation. Its the tiny differences in sociality. 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. Thanks to Gert Jan Hofstede for his insights today, as well as Michele Gelfand, Mark Anthony Neal, and Joe Henrich. Thats what the Ultimatum experiments set out to find. 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. The downsides of looseness are less coordination, less self-control; more crime and quality-of-life problems. The fifth cultural dimension is one that I think will resonate with everyone whos ever listened to Freakonomics Radio, since it is at the crux of problem-solving. The Ultimatum game is famous among social scientists. DUBNER: What problem was he, and later you, trying to solve by doing this work? HENRICH: One study of the journals in social psychology shows that 96 percent of all subjects in social psychology come from societies that are Western educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. This man has proof of our individualism. 493 Update) Adam Smith famously argued that specialization is the key to prosperity. 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. The New Yorker's Malcolm . Why not? "Information is a beacon, a cudgel, an olive branch, a deterrent--all depending on who wields it and how.". Its waiting to happen because people in this individualistic, indulgent society, they want to be merry. But one has arrows going out and one in? We should be nice to one another. But when push comes to shove, most of the time it doesnt go that way. Yes, other phenomena like how things smell to us. Season 10, Episode 49. They determine the boundary conditions before which we become angry or flattered or whatever. And for me, its hard to divorce the toxicity of the grind from the toxicity of masculinity, when you always have to dominate. Nevertheless, you might be able to intentionally create pockets of looseness so you can have more balance. More information on phishing. After reading Freakonomics it really opens the reader's eyes to unseen things in everyday life. Im a professor of artificial sociality at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. And I was like, This is every day in America! Freakonomics is a book about 'freaky' research and insight. HENRICH: It chafes us when we get ordered around. In contrast, the Freakonomics blog features the work of Levitt's friends, and SuperFreakonomics relies heavily on anecdotes, gee-whiz technology reporting and work by Levitt's friends and colleagues. Downloads: 18. Michele Gelfand has another example of how culture shapes perception. We can think about extraordinarily loose contexts like Tesla or Uber that probably need a little more structure. Good on you. In our . Lets flip it for a moment. And that also means that fighting is a good way to get what you want. Our theme song is Mr. HENRICH: If they accept the offer, they get the amount of the offer. And thats different than in Scandinavia and in New Zealand and Australia, which has much more horizontal individualism. Heres the dean of the National University of Singapores school of public health: YIK-YING TEO: We have a tradition of having national campaigns to galvanize people to proceed in a common direction. Whereas if you have a state religion, it tends to get tired and old and boring. 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. Multilevel Research of Human Systems: Flowers, Bouquets and Gardens, The Interaction Between National and Organizational Value Systems, 11 A. M. Sunday Is Our Most Segregated Hour,, The U.S. Is Just Different So Lets Stop Pretending Were Not (Ep. It turns out that Americans were among the least likely to conform. GELFAND: Well, it requires a lot of negotiation. Hence the term, the changing same. I think there are historical moments that are transcendent. 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? HENRICH: We have a kind of religiosity equivalent to somewhere like Kuwait. You always have to win. The downsides: less innovation, less openness to ideas that challenge the status quo, and less tolerance for differences in religion and race. GELFAND: Apparently over 50 percent of cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese. That was our hypothesis, at least. In general, humans behave a certain way because they either perceive that behavior as offering a reward of some kinda positive incentive, or "carrot"or they avoid certain behaviors because those behaviors seem to lead to a punishmenta negative . Read the excerpt from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's Freakonomics. GELFAND: Clinton went to negotiate to say, Hey, this is just totally inappropriate, this punishment. And the Singaporean governments reaction was, Look, this is our culture. We need to have different types of leadership. If youre violating the social order, youre going to be punished.. NEAL: We realized that the grind is unsustainable. 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. The most indulgent country in these rankings is Mexico, at 97 out of 100; the most restrained: Egypt, at four. We will learn which countries are tight, which are loose, and why. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. Were trying to buy time, save time. It was a collaboration between Hofstede the Elder, his son Gert Jan, whod begun working with him by now, and a Bulgarian linguist named Michael Minkov, who had been analyzing data from the World Values Survey. HOFSTEDE: Oh, no, thats something for academia. And then he decided to go to academia. I think the models dont account for that because you cant account for that, right? That is generated by looseness. The second one measures whats called power distance. (Dont worry, well explain the name later.) Here in the U.S., its actually a rule violation to call out people who are violating norms. HOFSTEDE: Look, guys, we can do it. In another condition, they were wearing tattoos and nose rings and purple hair. What is culture? the benefits to an individual from study and engagement in a topic. There are plenty of looser people in tight countries and vice versa. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., the boss needs to be a team player. HENRICH: You want to be the same self, regardless of who youre talking to or what context youre in. Although it is more self-help than traditional economics it shares many of the weaknesses of more serious works in the discipline. This does not mean that no one in a loose culture, like the U.S., is stigmatized or mistreated. So Hofstede the Elder began to amass a huge data set about the workplace experiences and preferences of tens of thousands of I.B.M. And a lot of those presumptions come from how men function within the context of various religious practices. 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. And in one condition, I had them wearing these fake facial warts. The study of culture is a family business for Hofstede. (This is part of the, competition amongst religious organizations. He interviewed people at I.B.M. Those are the upsides. Freakonomics is a collaboration of authors Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, journalists and winners of numerous awards. Thats John Oliver. So you can see that in an individualistic society, after becoming a world champion in a sport or certainly after winning a major war, people do not fight one another, but they admire one another. HENRICH: My favorite explanation for this I think this has been put out most clearly by a sociologist named Rodney Stark is that with freedom of religion, you get competition amongst religious organizations. But theres something else to be said about American culture. NEAL: I often think about how the U.S. has historically thought about freedom and how, say, the Soviet bloc had talked about freedom. 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. So, they would offer a mean of about 25, 26 percent. employees in more than 50 countries. Its also the cleaning lady. Also, he uses some very bold examples (crime rates versus abortion, drug dealership, cheating teachers, etc) to make some very simple . Then he tried a coffee can with a money slot in its plastic lid, which also proved too tempting. This paper focuses on the construction of racial identity online through the mediating influences of popular culture, old media, weblogs, and Internet users. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., individualism coupled with masculinity creates a society where if youre not a winner, youre a loser. Chronic threat meaning a country is prone to natural disasters, or disease, or hostile invaders. 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). We had a very tight social order. HENRICH: So places like New York and London, people are blazing down the sidewalks. Controlling for a variety of other factors, they found that looser countries the U.S., Brazil, Italy, and Spain have had roughly five times the number of Covid cases and nearly nine times as many deaths as tighter countries. But remember what Hofstede told us: HOFSTEDE: Youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. And we manipulated whether their names were like Jamal or Latisha versus Brad and Lorna. And you dont need them for ritual reasons. They were those kinds of Chaos Muppets, because they were risk-seeking. HENRICH: So, Francisco is a good pal of mine and hes also a very charming fellow. data, gathered in the late 60s and early 70s. As always, thanks for listening and again, I do hope you'll also start . I must be American. So if you base your understanding of a given culture on a body of research that fails to include them, youll likely fail to understand how that culture thinks whether were talking about another country or a group within your own country. So this is quite a while ago. The answer to that is usually: no, you cant. The U.S. is just different from other places in a variety of ways that we often dont stop to think about. And: In present-day Scandinavia levels of individualism would thus have been significantly higher had emigration not occurred.. This really contrasts with lots of places where there are legitimate traditional authorities and people tend to defer to those authorities. And then theres the big C, the stuff that we have these big conversations about, that we do these incredible studies about, which is really about the worldview of groups of people coming together, in a community, in a nation, in a family, right? 470. HOFSTEDE: This is not about a homogenous soup, but its about the power of the millions versus the individual and the power of ostracism. Our theme song is Mr. So I am actually optimistic. Groups that tend to have threat tend to develop stricter rules to coordinate. That, again, is Mark Anthony Neal, from Duke. The incentives of just any regular person are greatly shown because money or personal gain can take over any man or woman no matter how old. And how are we defining culture? In each chapter, the authors analyze a different social issue from an economic perspective. But yes, its all workplace. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is . I hate to call out Michele Gelfand, but even in the loosest of cultures, dogs dont have unfettered access to food. Download Print. The book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, is designed to pose fundamental questions concerning economics using a variety of imaginative comparisons and questions. 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. HOFSTEDE: Thats my idea. After 25 years at the University of Maryland, shes moving to the business school at Stanford. 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. HENRICH: And the case I make is its been highly unsuccessful to just pick up institutions that evolved in Western societies and transport them to drop them in Africa or the Middle East or places like that, because there needs to be a fit between how people think about the world, their values, worldviews, motivations, and the affordances of the institution. Oh say, can you see, the home run I just hit. The next dimension is what the Hofstedes call uncertainty avoidance.. The individual agents/brokers only take a $150 hit after their costs/fees. 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. Individualism once . So how it is that we acquire ideas, beliefs, and values from other people, and how this has shaped human genetic evolution. So, lets try to measure this., Gelfand and several colleagues undertook a massive research project, interviewing some 7,000 people from 33 countries on five continents. Latin countries tend to be more collectivistic, especially Spain and Portugal not so much Italy and France. We should note that Bert and Ernie, despite their differences, are very dear friends! 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. 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. HENRICH: I was doing research in the Peruvian Amazon. Whereas people from less individualistic societies tend to be better at making relative-size judgments. I think thats a good litmus test of tight-loose. Anyway, in this episode of No Stupid Questions, we'll be talking about how our surroundings can make us smarter and maybe happier too. But Bush also wanted to avoid going to war with Iraq. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. making a claim about his individual experiences and looking for evidence. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that increasing socioeconomic development is an especially strong predictor of increasing individualistic practices and values . 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 ? 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 Joe Henrich wanted to see how the Ultimatum experiments worked when it wasnt just a bunch of WEIRD college students. HENRICH: We dont like people telling us what to do. employees spread across the globe. GELFAND: We have a whole new map of the U.S. where we can actually rank-order the U.S. 50 states in terms of how much threat they have. GELFAND: In Germany and in Japan, the clocks are really synchronized. 534. HOFSTEDE: My name is Gert Jan Hofstede. - Lyssna p 470. NEAL: You have no real other example of a country that has brought together so many different national and ethnic and racial backgrounds. 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. In any case, heres how Gelfand breaks down the upsides and downsides of tight cultures. 470. And this paper was basically sitting in the shelves of libraries for many years. But first, Hofstede had to make sure that the differences he was seeing in the data werent specific to I.B.M. Stay up-to-date on all our shows. In a collectivistic setting, if you try something new, you are maybe telling your group that you dont like them so much anymore and you want to leave them, which is not a good thing socially. Around this time, he started doing some teaching at the Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. So its not necessarily the case that my country is better. Truth be told, I veer somewhat loose. It's part of our founding D.N.A. In one experiment, Gelfand sent a bunch of research assistants to different places around the world. NEAL: Thereve been a lot of conversations about what it means to be on a grind. 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 . We had a lot of struggles with tightening during Covid, clearly. The country that ranks highest in long-term orientation is Japan; also high on this scale are China and Russia. And she doesnt love to exercise. Public school quality B. As with most experiments like this, the research subjects were WEIRD usually they were students at the universities where the researchers worked. Thats the cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand. So, say its $100, and the first player can offer a portion of the $100 to a second player. HOFSTEDE: Well, if you want an honest answer, I think mainly our own curiosity. Meaning, if you grew up in someplace like the U.S., when you look at an image youre more likely to pay attention to whats in the foreground, in the center. And we found the full spectrum of variation. Most white Americans have an entirely different ancestral history. And I shifted from pre-med into what turned into a career of cross-cultural psychology. In the meantime, a bit more from the comedian Hannah Gadsby. She says these are merely visible indicators of a countrys tightness or looseness and its what you dont necessarily see that shapes a given countrys culture. Chinese, in that respect, are very like the Americans. DUBNER: And Im guessing youre the spontaneous type. In the meantime, take care of yourself and, if you can, someone else too. Is that a yes? Yes, the United States of America. But if youre not an economist, if youre a regular human being, you can see why the second player might reject a $1 offer. People tend to be super-creative and theres a lot of negotiation of rules. He has written several books about what music and other pop culture has to say about the broader culture. People get less interested. Joe Henrich points out that even our religions are competitive. And they pass another fish, who says, Hey, boys, hows the water? And theyre like, What the heck is water?. And life is an adventure. We put in a bunch of other checks and controls. I had been led to believe, by you, that you are as dumb as bricks. DUBNER: So I have to say, Gert Jan, youve made me feel kind of terrible about being American today. Words: 777. The third measures masculinity versus femininity in a given culture. Whereas in countries that are bogged down in cronyism and corruption, it doesnt happen. FREAKONOMICS is the highly anticipated film version of the phenomenally bestselling book about incentives-based thinking by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.. 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. We do this on vacations with my siblings. Here are some things that tend to thrive in highly individual societies: human rights, a free press, divorce, and a faster pace of life. International, and they were just starting international opinion surveys. Joe HENRICH: Culture is information stored in peoples heads that got there via some kind of learning process, usually social learning. 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. Thats my idea. But we tried to address that. Macroeconomics, on the other hand, works on a larger scale. 702 Episodes. So its hard to simply transplant another countrys model for education or healthcare, no matter how well it might seem to fit. So $10 in this case. But can a smart policy be simply transplanted into a country as culturally unusual (and as supremely WEIRD) as America? HENRICH: Theres something called the Asch conformity test, where you have confederates of the experimenter give the same wrong answer to an objective problem. That, again, is the cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand. GADSBY: Have you ever noticed how Americans are not stupid? We also realize that were a culture in distress in many, many, many ways. Allen Lane 20, pp304. Freakonomics, M.D. Freakonomics Science 4.7 932 Ratings; Each week, physician and economist Dr. Bapu Jena will dig into a fascinating study at the intersection of economics and healthcare. Equating individualism with selfishness may be a mistake: Some of the world's wealthiest and most individualistic countries are some of the most altruistic, says 13.7 guest commentator Abigail Marsh. The first is that a model of anything even nearly as complex as a national culture is bound to miss a lot of nuance. A. They tend to veer tighter on our measures than places on the coast. If . Individualism has had a tremendous impact, not only on culture, but on social theory as well, and political philosophy in particular. The American model is among the most successful and envied models in the history of the world. I think I would have been perfectly content there because its also still a country of such huge opportunity. We promise no spam. Relatedly: Americans place a high value on being consistent across different situations. Whereas uncertainty avoidance means you have lots of etiquette and ritual. The five tightest countries are Pakistan, Malaysia, India, South Korea, and our old friend Singapore. Again, its worth repeating that no culture is a monolith. Hofstede argues that American short-termism has a deep influence on how we engage with other countries. I mean, youve got your quota, as have we all, but youre not. And some advice from our new Dutch friend. But there must be, I would think, evolution across time, yes? 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 . I asked Hofstede what he would advise if a given country did want to change its culture? 470. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Part of the Freakonomics Series) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J . And it got the attention of President Clinton: Bill CLINTON: Its the first Ive heard of it, Ill look into it. HOFSTEDE: That could be the case, and it is also the case that you have a sort of non-overt multiculturalism in the society. Just like good science, good . HENRICH: Im a researcher who tries to apply evolutionary theory to understand human behavior and human psychology and particularly culture. 6 Pages. In the beginning, Feldman left behind an open basket for the cash, but too often the money vanished. And it should stay there. And it should stay there. Those are the things you cant necessarily plan and account for in building models of how you expect people to react in different situations. And that really can help explain some variation not all, but some variation in norms and values. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., there is little constraining. Freakonomics Radio . 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