DUBNER: When I look at the loosest country in the data, I see Ukraine. The Aztec, the Inca, and todays Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, are very collectivistic. GELFAND: Places in the South have tended to have more natural disasters. These are stereotypical names. 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. So he read about factor analysis, which had become a little bit fashionable at the time. The term individualism itself, and its equivalents in other languages, dateslike socialism and other ismsfrom the 19th century. Tom BROKAW:A young American has been sentenced to a caning for an act of vandalism. And in a collectivistic society, a person is like an atom in a crystal. U.S. President George H.W. 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. HOFSTEDE: And blue-collar. Our staff also includesAlison Craiglow,Greg Rippin,Joel Meyer,Tricia Bobeda, Mary Diduch, Zack Lapinski, Emma Tyrrell, Lyric Bowditch, Jasmin Klinger,andJacob Clemente. We visit the world's busiest airport to see . It was freedom from all these debilitating things because the state would be able to provide for you. This individualism has produced tremendous forward progress and entrepreneurial energy. Relatedly: Americans place a high value on being consistent across different situations. There are plenty of looser people in tight countries and vice versa. Freakonomics is a registered service mark of Renbud Radio, LLC. This carries over into many areas of society, including the labor market. Im a professor of artificial sociality at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. As a result, the needs of individuals dictate social behaviors, rather than the needs of larger groups. It was back in grad school that Michele Gelfand first asked herself this question. I do think that humanity as a whole is sort of evolving to being more reflective. The second one measures whats called power distance. (Dont worry, well explain the name later.) There is a strong desire to be more feminine. Individualism is thought to be on the rise in Western countries, but new research suggests that increasing individualism may actually be a global phenomenon. Here in the U.S., its actually a rule violation to call out people who are violating norms. 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. And how are we defining culture? Heres what Hofstede told us last week about culture: HOFSTEDE: If youre part of a society, youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. But it can make life harder for the millions of Americans who arent so entrepreneurial, or rugged, or individualistic. 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. And things worked out well for them for a bit. We will learn which countries are tight, which are loose, and why. As its been said: Everyone knows that 11 oclock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in American life. Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African and African-American studies at Duke, notes that American individualism is hardly experienced equally across the population. This does not mean that no one in a loose culture, like the U.S., is stigmatized or mistreated. Youre culturally confident. Individualism encompasses a value system, a theory of human nature, and a belief in certain political, economic, social, and religious arrangements. Today, an overview of the cultural differences. Those are the things you cant necessarily plan and account for in building models of how you expect people to react in different situations. The negotiations didnt work out. I came back to Colgate. How much time have you spent thinking about what makes America, America? Now, lets pull back and make an important point: labeling a given country tight or loose is an overall, aggregate measurement. The ancient Romans. It means you really want to know and youre not satisfied until you know. She did want to measure culture, and how it differs from place to place. BROADCASTER: The subject denies the evidence of his own eyes and yields to group influence. Michael Fay wasnt a tourist; he was living in Singapore with his family, attending an American school. So after we ran that first project, we redid the entire project, and we took concerns like the one Francisco had. The sixth and, for now, final dimension was added to the model in 2010. And in this moment, we realized that the grind is unsustainable, right? Oh say, can you see, the home run I just hit. The U.S. assembled a coalition of allies. GELFAND: The U.S. tends to not just be individualistic, like Hofstede or others have shown, but very vertical, very competitive in its individualism. But Gelfand saw an even bigger question: How can you understand culture if you dont know exactly what it is? Theyre more permissive. On a certain level, this is obvious: These are cultures that have norms and traditions that have endured for centuries. All contents Freakonomics. . HENRICH: If you go to other societies, people are much more willing to give the same wrong answer to go along with others. Subscribe for more videos like this: http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=92YplusThe Best of Freakonomics with Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, m. And she doesnt love to exercise. Freakonomics is a registered service mark of Renbud Radio, LLC. It also is related to obesity. 1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Freakonomics. HENRICH: It chafes us when we get ordered around. 470. Someone raised in an Eastern culture might focus more on the image as a whole and less on the central object. 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. Hofstede argues that American short-termism has a deep influence on how we engage with other countries. He takes on questions like: Why do kids with summer birthdays get the flu more often? We may not be the very loosest culture; but we are No. GELFAND: And that suggests that minorities, women, people of different sexual orientation, when they violate the same rule, might be held to higher accountability, to more strict punishment. 1424 Words. This suggests that looseness and tightness can co-exist. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. HOFSTEDE: It means that you only need rules when youre going to use them. And life is an adventure. When theyre by themselves, the vast majority of people who do this experiment get the right answer, like in this archival tape of an Asch conformity test. 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. And its by no means easy. GELFAND: Ill just say that there are also other contexts where we naturally tighten. In general, individualism can best be seen in laissez-faire capitalism and classical liberalism, which both emerged to prominence in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. So they might offer, say, 10 out of the 100. And all those things need to be realigned when you really have a true culture change. Share. We see them as individuals with whom we are in competition. 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. When it was time for college, Gelfand went all the way to upstate New York: Colgate University. Freakonomics Radiois produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. GELFAND: Sometimes people actually revert back into their cultural chambers. DUBNER: I find that people who dont load dishwashers carefully are usually pretty loose with the planning. 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. Gert Jan HOFSTEDE: None of it is intentional. And so individualism, trust in others, leads to more rapid innovation. You might think that someone who studies cross-cultural psychology also grew up abroad, or at least in some big city with a melting-pot vibe. She argues that both styles have their upsides and their downsides. We had a very tight social order. And heres one of the people who created the WEIRD designation. Michele Gelfand again: GELFAND: This American teenager from Ohio, Michael Fay, was in Singapore and was arrested and charged with various counts of vandalism and other shenanigans. That would be very beneficial because now you might be going down the path of civil war, really. They can freely float about. Apparently over 50 percent of cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese. Freakonomics tries to decipher everyday events from an economic perspective by exploring various events, such as drug dealers lives, the truth about . And I think thats always going to be an ongoing tension this idea of America thats rooted in individualism, thats rooted in transactional practices. I think the models dont account for that because you cant account for that, right? She sees the lack of self-control in loose countries as particularly worrisome. Between 1967 and 1973, he collected data on I.B.M. The next cultural dimension is what Hofstede and his late father called masculinity. That title is a bit misleading. All rights reserved. Most white Americans have an entirely different ancestral history. The Hofstede scale puts the U.S. at 62 out of 100 on masculinity relatively high but substantially less masculine than China, Mexico, and much of Eastern Europe. Michele GELFAND: Its a subfield of psychology that tries to understand whats universal, whats similar, and whats culture-specific. Everything in economics can be viewed from the point of incentives. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is . HOFSTEDE: You have a democracy. You have to pronounce it right. The individual agents/brokers only take a $150 hit after their costs/fees. Fortune, by the Hitchhikers; the rest of the music this week was composed byLuis Guerra. GADSBY: Have you ever noticed how Americans are not stupid? That is not just the most American thing thats ever happened. The strongest parts of the original Freakonomics book revolved around Levitt's own peer-reviewed research. Lets flip it for a moment. Allen Lane 20, pp304. The first (and longest) chapter focuses on the role of incentives in human behavior. 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. Freakonomics is a collaboration of authors Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, journalists and winners of numerous awards. They make sure that there is no violation of any ritual. Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers. Theres not going to be violent crime. And life is an adventure. Also, he uses some very bold examples (crime rates versus abortion, drug dealership, cheating teachers, etc) to make some very simple . And this dynamic leads to a lot of fighting for the sake of fighting. 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. Heres how it works. If it were, Afghanistan and Venezuela, even Iran might be U.S.-style democracies by now. In a society in which 95 percent of adults are highly literate, he writes, people have a thicker corpus callosum than a society in which only 5 percent of people are highly literate. The corpus callosum is the bunch of nerve fibers that unites the two brain hemispheres. Anyway, in this episode of No Stupid Questions, we'll be talking about how our surroundings can make us smarter and maybe happier too. 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. But some cultures strictly abide by their norms. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., there is little constraining. Gelfand wanted to learn where theyd get the most help. 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. 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