This realization is what led us to todays episode of Freakonomics Radio. More feminine societies tend to have less poverty and higher literacy rates. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. 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. SuperFreakonomics was the follow-up in 2009. When youre trying to understand the nature of something, an outside view can be extremely helpful. Go out there and make it happen. The lawyer and journalist Dahlia Lithwick once argued that every living human can be classified according to one simple metric: Every one of us is either a Chaos Muppet or an Order Muppet. Essentially: loose, or tight. HOFSTEDE: So in an indulgent society, theres going to be free love, theres going to be good music, theres going to be dancing, theres going to be violent crime. Theyre more permissive. And we did find a number of learned people who had data to back up the hypothesis. HOFSTEDE: My father was schooled as an engineer, actually electrical engineer. Hence the term, the changing same. I think there are historical moments that are transcendent. 1424 Words. You're stuck in a metal tube with hundreds of strangers (and strange smells), defying gravity and racing through the sky. I think the models dont account for that because you cant account for that, right? And it should stay there. 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. China, Japan, and Turkey are also tight. It suggests that as in most things in life balance is desirable. Then he tried a coffee can with a money slot in its plastic lid, which also proved too tempting. And a lot of those presumptions come from how men function within the context of various religious practices. But it was serious. 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 . Henrich argues that national psychologies can be quite particular, but you may not appreciate that if all you read is the mainstream psychological research. Really? In our . Whereas if you have a state religion, it tends to get tired and old and boring. High religiosity coupled with high individualism reveals another feature of American culture. We look at how these traits affect our daily lives and why we couldn't change them . on one axis and religiosity on the other axis, the U.S. is a clear and distinct outlier with high G.D.P and high religion. Whereas we usually describe a scent by saying something that it smells like.. Mobility also produces looseness, because its harder to agree upon any norm. But one has arrows going out and one in? Ambiguity is good. And I shifted from pre-med into what turned into a career of cross-cultural psychology. Heres what Hofstede told us last week about culture: HOFSTEDE: If youre part of a society, youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. So after we ran that first project, we redid the entire project, and we took concerns like the one Francisco had. GELFAND: I also teach negotiation. Individualism has had a tremendous impact, not only on culture, but on social theory as well, and political philosophy in particular. And I think thats always going to be an ongoing tension this idea of America thats rooted in individualism, thats rooted in transactional practices. We developed these linguistic dictionaries to analyze language reflective of tight and loose, in newspapers and books, tight words like restrain, comply, adhere, enforce, as compared to words like allow and leeway, flexibility, empower. And I think that is a hallmark of African-American culture in this country. So, Japan has been hit by Mother Nature for centuries. This is where he combines all his academic interests: not just economics and psychology, but also anthropology and evolutionary biology. HOFSTEDE: Its rather futile to advise somebody what their national culture should be because theres no way you can change it. Freakonomics Essay. So he left I.B.M. Everything in economics can be viewed from the point of incentives. Whether proud or not, whether happy or not, it has a position. Some of the measurable differences were a bit odd. This failure leads to confusion at the very least, but quite possibly deeper misunderstandings, perhaps all the way up to hatred and violent conflict. Follow. GELFAND: Well, we can look back to Herodotus. NEWSCASTER: Wearing masks is a way of life now in Singapore. Chronic threat meaning a country is prone to natural disasters, or disease, or hostile invaders. We often look to other countries for smart policies on education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. And we see that the combination of high individualism, high masculinity, and high short-termism can produce some chaos, at the very least. Each week, Freakonomics Radio tells you things you always thought you knew (but didn't) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) from the economics of sleep to how to become great at just about anything. Can that possibly be trueour culture shapes our genetics? According to the individualist, all values are human-centred, the individual is of supreme importance, and all individuals are morally equal. GELFAND: Well, it requires a lot of negotiation. It's part of our founding D.N.A. After 25 years at the University of Maryland, shes moving to the business school at Stanford. Henrich says yes. So the Singapore government says, Look, this is our culture The rest of that sentence didnt have to be said. GELFAND: And there was discussion in the cross-cultural psychology community about how James Bakers unemotionalcommunication style was received as This is not so serious, in terms of Tariq Azizs understanding of Americans intentions. Someone raised in an Eastern culture might focus more on the image as a whole and less on the central object. 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. You could just do an across-the-board search of various Western religions and look at who the figureheads are. You can followFreakonomics RadioonApple Podcasts,Spotify,Stitcher, orwherever you get your podcasts. I have a professorship in Joburg in South Africa, too. You want to know where you stand which is, for instance, what diplomats know very well. HOFSTEDE: Because its true: the very same dimensions under different circumstances, can work the other way. Gelfand says the countries that were most aggressive in trying to contain Covid tended to be tighter countries. If you dont feel that, then you will be an unhappy person. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., there is little constraining. Even Gert Jan Hofstede suggests that his model shouldnt be seen as overly deterministic. They can freely float about. Some of the countries with high power distance: Russia, China, and Mexico. You realize, you want a black or white value judgment. The Aztec, the Inca, and todays Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, are very collectivistic. Well find out what it means to be WEIRD although not weird in the way youre thinking. You could argue that treating your own children as if theyre special may make it harder to care as much about other peoples children. Hes horrified by my dishwasher-loading behavior. Download Print. He grew up in England. Listen to this episode from Freakonomics Radio on Spotify. It was freedom from all these debilitating things because the state would be able to provide for you. The correct answer of the given question above would be the second option. There were a number of low offers of 15 percent, which didnt get rejected. HOFSTEDE: Thats my idea. So how it is that we acquire ideas, beliefs, and values from other people, and how this has shaped human genetic evolution. I do think that humanity as a whole is sort of evolving to being more reflective. 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. Greeks are very strong on that. 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. And I think this community-spiritedness has been built in us since we were very young. U.S. President George H.W. Paperback - April 22, 2020. Freakonomics Radiois produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can even see the evidence in the clocks that appear on city streets. Caning as in a spanking, basically, on the bare buttocks, with a half-inch-thick rattan cane. 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. HOFSTEDE: Yes, of course. So, they would offer a mean of about 25, 26 percent. GELFAND: Classic things like the Mller-Lyer Illusion, which is these two lines where one looks longer than the other. She decided that the key difference, the right place to start measuring, was whether the culture in a given country is tight or loose. But somehow, that diversity and that early celebration of permissiveness has overridden that. 470. So looking decisive, muscular, active or if youre a woman, sexy that makes you more status-worthy. And it drives us crazy. Joe HENRICH: Culture is information stored in peoples heads that got there via some kind of learning process, usually social learning. Individualism is thought to be on the rise in Western countries, but new research suggests that increasing individualism may actually be a global phenomenon. In the N.F.L., the long snapper is . Neal is making a couple of compelling points here. thats always there. . Im like, Were going to go to Singapore if you people dont behave.. HOFSTEDE: In an individualistic society, a person is like an atom in a gas. That would be very beneficial because now you might be going down the path of civil war, really. HOFSTEDE: Look, guys, we can do it. Theyre what we call tight cultures. But its not only compliance. 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.. Whether proud or not, whether happy or not, it has a position. Fascinated by the human in the system, he did a PhD in organizational behaviour. For some Americans, at least, working hard is a badge of honor. Its waiting to happen because people in this individualistic, indulgent society, they want to be merry. Neal is a professor of African and African-American studies. I must be American. He would spend the rest of his life building out the 6-Dimension Model of National Culture. The term individualism itself, and its equivalents in other languages, dateslike socialism and other ismsfrom the 19th century. 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. GELFAND: Exactly. 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. We visit the world's busiest airport to see . The best thing you can become is yourself. Another one: impatience. HENRICH: But if you want to talk about humans, then you have a problem. 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. Henrich and a couple of colleagues came up with the WEIRD label when he was teaching at the University of British Columbia. The U.S., according to this analysis, is comparatively a short-term country. "Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.". Truth be told, I veer somewhat loose. And heres one of the people who created the WEIRD designation. Remember what he said earlier: HENRICH: So how it is that we acquire ideas, beliefs, and values from other people and how this has shaped human genetic evolution. As for the U.S., Gelfand says the U.S. is not only loose but getting progressively looser. Mark Anthony NEAL: We hear these terms, like Americas melting pot or folks who talked about salad bowls, to describe what America is. Because for all the so-called globalization of the past half-century or so, the U.S. still differs from other countries in many ways. Scholars in this realm have a general agreement on what culture is and what its not. GELFAND: I would say it tends to be California. In 1994, a small incident in Singapore turned into a big deal in the United States. Published: 31 October 2020. Im a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. 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? Gert Jan Hofstede - Freakonomics. His father was Geert Hofstede. Theres far less stigmatization of people in terms of their race, their religion. And it should stay there. That is not just the most American thing thats ever happened. The individual agents/brokers only take a $150 hit after their costs/fees. He did some work in the factory and it shaped him to a great extent because there, he could see that the world of the organization looks so differently from the floor than it does from above. Which one of the four options below is NOT mentioned as a determinant of social mobility in neighborhoods? NANJIANI: I was so excited to be in America I couldnt sleep. This is really a conversation that pleases me a lot. In the real world, Feldman learned to settle for less than 95 percent. Wade meant that these unwanted children were not being bornthus, they could not grow up to be criminals. It is a small price to pay to punish the first player for being so stingy. Why not? Were realizing that part of that push forward theres a toxicity to that in terms of how you treat other people, how you think about institutions. The U.S. is just different from other places in a variety of ways that we often dont stop to think about. Because remember, threat is what can drive tightness. Thats the cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand. Its part of our founding D.N.A. And if you get crumbs in your pajamas, theyll make you itch. He takes on questions like: Why do kids with summer birthdays get the flu more often? Which is more dangerous, a gun or a . BROADCASTER: On the third trial, something happens. This is a summary of the book Freakonomics by Stephen DubnerJoin Reading.FM now: https://fourminutebooks.com/go/readingfm/register/Read more summaries: http. And we made sure that the subjects knew that the money was coming from an organization, that the giver did not get any of the money, we ratcheted up our levels of anonymity. Loose cultures tend to be found in English-speaking countries as well as Latin-American, Latin-European, and formerly Communist cultures. They made sure to include a variety of ages, occupations, religions, social and economic classes. 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. individualism, political and social philosophy that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual. HOFSTEDE: He did social psychological work on what it is to be a manager. The first (and longest) chapter focuses on the role of incentives in human behavior. So keep your ears open for all that. DUBNER: So weve done a pretty good job of beating up on the U.S. thus far. you ask. But Joe Henrich wanted to see how the Ultimatum experiments worked when it wasnt just a bunch of WEIRD college students. Well go through the other five dimensions, much faster, I promise. BERT: Because: you get crumbs in the sheets, thats why. GELFAND: They talk about individualistic accomplishments. And life is an adventure. DUBNER: Describe for me your father and his work, and how it became a family business. HOFSTEDE: It means that you only need rules when youre going to use them. The legendary bestseller that made millions look at the world in a radically different way returns in a new edition, now including an exclusive discussion between the authors and bestselling professor of psychology Angela Duckworth. 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. Its like, Oh, my gosh, that is so amazing. I was feeling like I have to tell that to my kids as a good parent, training my kids to be vertical and individualistic. During the Cold War. Every action or every fact or every move has a system around it. Individualism places great value on self-reliance, on . Latin countries tend to be more collectivistic, especially Spain and Portugal not so much Italy and France. So he read about factor analysis, which had become a little bit fashionable at the time. Henrich has written about the notion of time psychology.. This paper focuses on the construction of racial identity online through the mediating influences of popular culture, old media, weblogs, and Internet users. So you see these eye movements that are very different. And other cultures are more loose. GELFAND: They were trained to ask for help in city streets and in stores. We are supremely WEIRD. A recent paper by a Harvard postdoc named Anne Sofie Beck Knudsen analyzed Scandinavian emigration from 1850 to 1920, when roughly 25 percent of the Scandinavian population left their countries, a great many coming to the U.S. People of an individualistic mindset were more prone to migrate than their collectivistic neighbors, she writes. For the last few months, the city-state has seen just a handful of Covid-19 cases. At school in the Netherlands, Ive seen a mother ask her two-year-old, Shall I change your nappy? And then the child gets to decide whether its nappy gets changed. This suggests that every time a social scientist runs an experiment whose research subjects are WEIRD thats capital-letter WEIRD the results of that experiment may be meaningful in the U.S. and some other places, but quite likely not in others. 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. How does the U.S. do on this dimension? Why not? 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 if youre not an economist, if youre a regular human being, you can see why the second player might reject a $1 offer. We do lab experiments, field experiments, computational modeling. Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers. So, what is it? Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. HOFSTEDE: But it turned out that lumping them by nationality was the best thing to do. DUBNER: What are some of the consequences of being relatively tolerant of uncertainty, as the U.S. is? And so often, theyll just point at some other country on the map. In the U.S., it was freedom to do whatever the hell that you wanted to. The study of culture is a family business for Hofstede. And when I started to work with Harry Triandis, who was one of the founders of the field, I thought, Wow, this is a super-interesting construct. We will learn which countries are tight, which are loose, and why. It shouldnt surprise anyone that individualism might contribute to inequality or at least, as Henrich puts it, the justification of inequality. 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). At the core of Freakonomics is the concept of incentives. In the end, he resorted to making small plywood boxes with a slot cut into . 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. The world & # x27 ; s part of our founding D.N.A being. For centuries weve done a pretty good job of beating up on the bare buttocks, a... Meant that these unwanted children were not being bornthus, they want to talk about humans, then have. Special may make it harder to care as much about other peoples children: Russia, has. 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