And we can see a strong trend that looseness has increased over the last 200 years. One of the most important figures in economic individualism is the famous Scottish economist, Adam Smith. If . DUBNER: Where is the loosest place in America? It was there, and later on in travels in the Middle East, and working on a kibbutz, and elsewhere, that I started recognizing this really powerful force of culture that was incredibly important but really invisible. Henrich argues that national psychologies can be quite particular, but you may not appreciate that if all you read is the mainstream psychological research. Episode 470 The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. And that is a status-worthy thing. Its part of our founding D.N.A. Freakonomics Quotes. Here are some things that tend to thrive in highly individual societies: human rights, a free press, divorce, and a faster pace of life. . It was back in grad school that Michele Gelfand first asked herself this question. Gert Jan Hofstede is a Dutch culture scholar whos been walking us through these dimensions. We look at how these traits affect our daily lives and why we couldnt change them even if we wanted to. It means I did it my way.. So they might offer, say, 10 out of the 100. Always check that your browser shows a closed lock icon and . Gelfand would disagree. Think Belarus, Myanmar, Russia, China. 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. 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. International, and they were just starting international opinion surveys. And for me, its hard to divorce the toxicity of the grind from the toxicity of masculinity, when you always have to dominate. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the debut non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner.Published on April 12, 2005, by William Morrow, the book has been described as melding pop culture with economics. Well, because theyre really smart. When Americans did this experiment, a third of them conformed and gave an obviously wrong answer. DUBNER: And what would you say is maybe a political ramification of low power distance? 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 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. 1, the most individualistic country in the world, 91 out of 100 on the Hofstede scale of individualism. Freakonomics Radiois produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. Is that the case? Now that weve taken a top-down view of how the U.S. is fundamentally different from other countries, were going to spend some time over the coming weeks looking at particular economic and social differences, having to do with policing, child poverty, infrastructure, and the economy itself. Heres one of the questions they asked. 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. Why have rules if you dont use them? GELFAND: Classic things like the Mller-Lyer Illusion, which is these two lines where one looks longer than the other. Scholars in this realm have a general agreement on what culture is and what its not. 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. In our . HENRICH: We have a kind of religiosity equivalent to somewhere like Kuwait. You have to behave like a family member if you want to be one. Heres what Hofstede told us last week about culture: HOFSTEDE: If youre part of a society, youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. HOFSTEDE: And when he took the job in Lausanne, he found that the international group of pupils at his classes, if he asked them the same questions, came up with the same dimensions. This leads to less obesity, less addiction, and theres less crime in tighter cultures. GELFAND: Like during 9/11, during World Wars, we see increases in tightness. Thats the cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand. HOFSTEDE: Yes, of course. Freaknomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the book for readers who run screaming at the thought of cracking open a book with the word "economics" in the title. Because remember, threat is what can drive tightness. You may have noticed that Hofstede neglected to mention a certain country that we Americans tend to care about quite a bit. HOFSTEDE: I like this question a lot. Freakonomics Revised and Expanded Edition. Neal sees a strong connection between U.S. masculinity and our appetite for work. We also realize that were a culture in distress in many, many, many ways. Allen Lane 20, pp304. You might want to change, but if you get ostracized, its very difficult to persist. DUBNER: Describe for me your father and his work, and how it became a family business. SFU will never request our users provide or confirm their Computing ID or password via email or by going to any web site. Read the excerpt from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's Freakonomics. Greeks are very strong on that. Culture is about, if you are a part of a society, youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. 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. That is something that fundamentally many whites dont understand, right? The U.S. patent database goes back into the 18th century and what a number of studies in economics as well as work in my lab has shown is that openness to other people so, trust in strangers, an inclination towards individualism, a desire to stand out, to be the smartest guy in the room fosters more rapid innovation because people are more likely to exchange ideas, theyre more interested in distinguishing themselves. Its focus on individual behaviour also lends itself to a preoccupation with manipulating individual choices. Essentially, theyre the opposite of the loose attributes: tight cultures have more coordination and more self-control. According to the individualist, all values are human-centred, the individual is of supreme importance, and all individuals are morally equal. At the core of Freakonomics is the concept of incentives. HENRICH: Im Joe Henrich. That, again, is the American culture scholar Joe Henrich. Culture is not genetics or biology or individual characteristics. 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. I think the models dont account for that because you cant account for that, right? In a large power-distant society, you have autocracy. Youre going to be shut down. Culturally maybe more than anything! The Neglected 95%: Why American Psychology Needs to Become Less American, Measuring Inequity Aversion in a Heterogeneous Population Using Experimental Decisions and Subjective Probabilities, Westerners and Easterners See the World Differently, Economic Man in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies, Ultimatum Game with Ethnicity Manipulation: Problems Faced Doing Field Economic Experiments and Their Solutions, Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? All rights reserved. GELFAND: Ill just say that there are also other contexts where we naturally tighten. So yeah, the U.S. has that assignment ahead of it. According to a decades-long research project, the U.S. is not only the most individualistic country on earth; were also high on indulgence, short-term thinking, and masculinity (but low on uncertainty avoidance, if that makes you feel better). Its also the cleaning lady. So I have no doubt that his subjects really liked him. The future could be bright. 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. GELFAND: They talk about individualistic accomplishments. Everything in economics can be viewed from the point of incentives. Every action or every fact or every move has a system around it. Everyone knows there are differences between people in different countries, but his approach was a quantifiable approach. This would never happen in a society of large power distance. Well find out what it means to be WEIRD although not weird in the way youre thinking. Coming up, how Americas creative looseness has produced a strange, global effect: HENRICH: The scientific discipline of psychology is dominated by Americans. HOFSTEDE: In an individualistic society, a person is like an atom in a gas. So he left I.B.M. Freakonomics is a registered service mark of Renbud Radio, LLC. Im a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. For some Americans, at least, working hard is a badge of honor. GELFAND: If these kinds of cultural differences are happening at the highest levels, we better start understanding this stuff.. Feb 15, 2023. According to the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of Americans claim to believe in God, 55 percent pray at least daily, and 36 percent attend a religious service at least once a week. Those should be the new words to your national anthem. Yes, other phenomena like how things smell to us. My husband is an attorney. And I think that America has wonderful things happening to it. What is culture? Most white Americans have an entirely different ancestral history. All rights reserved. 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. employees in more than 50 countries. Within countries, there is of course enormous variation. Once you begin looking for evidence, you see an almost infinite array of examples. So keep your ears open for all that. Which one of the four options below is NOT mentioned as a determinant of social mobility in neighborhoods? Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers. Our theme song is Mr. As an Amazon Associate, Freakonomics may earn commissions from qualifying purchases made through links on this site. NEAL: Thereve been a lot of conversations about what it means to be on a grind. So he read about factor analysis, which had become a little bit fashionable at the time. Caning as in a spanking, basically, on the bare buttocks, with a half-inch-thick rattan cane. Whereas we usually describe a scent by saying something that it smells like.. Later on, fast forward, Pertti Pelto, whos an anthropologist. Freakonomics (2005) aplica el anlisis econmico racional a situaciones cotidianas, desde las citas en lnea hasta la compra de una casa. Apparently over 50 percent of cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese. And life is an adventure. In a society of small power distance, a lot. HOFSTEDE: And this is before the 60s, before the 70s. 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. HOFSTEDE: And it immediately yielded a four-dimensional model. Fascinated by the human in the system, he did a PhD in organizational behaviour. You know what it is, you know how it works, you dont necessarily have access to the people who really hold on to it. We promise no spam. HOFSTEDE: High individualism is correlated with trying new stuff. (Ep. NEAL: I often think about how the U.S. has historically thought about freedom and how, say, the Soviet bloc had talked about freedom. In indulgent societies, more people play sports, while in restrained societies, sports are more something you watch. 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 . Out into the ocean where they were caught by people on jet skis. DUBNER: So weve done a pretty good job of beating up on the U.S. thus far. GELFAND: Well, we can look back to Herodotus. Around this time, he started doing some teaching at the Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. China, Japan, and Turkey are also tight. This suggests that looseness and tightness can co-exist. HOFSTEDE: In an individualistic society, a person is like an atom in a gas. Hofstede analyzed these data at what he called the ecological level. He explained this approach in a paper called Flowers, Bouquets, and Gardens the idea being that an individual flower is a subset of a mixed bouquet, which in turn is a subset of an entire garden, which has even more variation. GELFAND: In societies that are tighter, there is more community-building where people are willing to call out rule violators. The people that came to New York early on, in the early 1800s, they were from all sorts of different cultural backgrounds. The first (and longest) chapter focuses on the role of incentives in human behavior. On a certain level, this is obvious: These are cultures that have norms and traditions that have endured for centuries. 47 min. And that also means that fighting is a good way to get what you want. Categories like age, gender, job type, job seniority, and so on. You want to know where you stand which is, for instance, what diplomats know very well. HOFSTEDE: Oh, no, thats something for academia. And then he decided to go to academia. Am I really going to tell my kid how special they are about everything?. So I would be very interested in knowing whether theres any data on the ethnic component of homicide and suicide. Europe has a strong influence from Germany, also from France. Heres another example: HENRICH: People from more individualistic societies tend to focus on central objects. That is not just the most American thing thats ever happened. (but low on "uncertainty avoidance," if that makes you feel better) Most Black people who live in America today are descended from people brought here as slave labor. Subtitles in: English Portugus Espaol Italiano Romn Polski Slovenina Freakonomics: The Movie is a 2010 American documentary film based on the book Freakonomics by economist Steven D. Levitt and writer Stephen J. Dubner. And we see that the combination of high individualism, high masculinity, and high short-termism can produce some chaos, at the very least. I must be American. We had a very tight social order. 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. There is no evidence for convergence other than if countries become equally rich, they all go to more individualistic. 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). The two players dont know each other. Not just regular weird. We can think about extraordinarily loose contexts like Tesla or Uber that probably need a little more structure. Its the tiny differences in sociality. Nevertheless, you might be able to intentionally create pockets of looseness so you can have more balance. Anyway, in this episode of No Stupid Questions, we'll be talking about how our surroundings can make us smarter and maybe happier too. This carries over into many areas of society, including the labor market. But that makes sense. And things worked out well for them for a bit. I do think that today they are living through difficult times, but so are we. We need to have different types of leadership. In another condition, they were wearing tattoos and nose rings and purple hair. 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. DUBNER: And Im guessing youre the spontaneous type. His late father was a social psychologist who devised a system to rank countries on several dimensions including their level of individualism versus collectivism. 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. But there must be, I would think, evolution across time, yes? One of the defining features of Americanism is our so-called "rugged individualism." You might even call it wild individualism. You have to pronounce it right. This is where he combines all his academic interests: not just economics and psychology, but also anthropology and evolutionary biology. 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). So, organizations you can think about them as the people, the practices, and the leaders. And then you see how often the subject wants to go along with the other people, as opposed to give the answer they would give if they were by themselves. In Brazil and Greece, youre not entirely sure what time it is. She decided that the key difference, the right place to start measuring, was whether the culture in a given country is tight or loose. And I could see there, a little bit similarly to the U.S., how the various ethnicities are trying to live together. And I shifted from pre-med into what turned into a career of cross-cultural psychology. Stay up-to-date on all our shows. GELFAND: Its like that story of two fish where theyre swimming along. Mobility also produces looseness, because its harder to agree upon any norm. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., there is little constraining. DUBNER: So between not having been historically a terrible recipient of viruses and also by dint of having an ocean on either side of us, etc., and being a really big and really rich country, it sounds like the U.S. must have one of the lowest inherent threat levels. Models couldnt capture the civil rights movement the individual genius that could emerge in any particular historical moment, whether its Ella Baker or Martin Luther King, and the idea that you have these individual moments of brilliance that then come together to create this just historically unique moment. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. Do you know what you are? The authors argue that humans usually make decisions based on the incentives for their actions. She did want to measure culture, and how it differs from place to place. 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 . Everybody gets tickled until they laugh. Thats to say that it emphasizes privacy and independence, like the U.S., but its much more egalitarian. Im like, Were going to go to Singapore if you people dont behave.. "Information is a beacon, a cudgel, an olive branch, a deterrent--all depending on who wields it and how.". GELFAND: And it caused a real international crisis because the Singapore government gave him what was then classic punishment, which was caning. So, what is it? There is a strong desire to be more feminine. . And they were finding that people in Africa were not falling victim to this illusion. So how much would you offer? after? 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 the scientific discipline of psychology is dominated by Americans. Why not? And you need revolutions in order to change the government. A. 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. Why arent all national cultures converging by now? And I think that is a hallmark of African-American culture in this country. We are acronymically WEIRD. The second one measures whats called power distance. (Dont worry, well explain the name later.) I know that wasnt your intention. thats always there. 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. Freakonomics has since grown up into a media company, complete with documentary, radio show, and blog. Nobody can feel insulted. Insight, for the authors (economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner) is all about explaining behaviour in terms of the incentives and dis-incentives (rewards and penalties) that drive it. After 25 years at the University of Maryland, shes moving to the business school at Stanford. Truth be told, I veer somewhat loose. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Read the excerpt from Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics. And in this moment, we realized that the grind is unsustainable, right? After all, they were the data set. 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. The five loosest countries according to this analysis were Ukraine, Estonia, Hungary, Israel, and the Netherlands. GELFAND: In Germany and in Japan, the clocks are really synchronized. These attacks continue as I speak. And its by no means easy. It shouldnt surprise anyone that individualism might contribute to inequality or at least, as Henrich puts it, the justification of inequality. And democratic. A dream team of directors e. In the latest issue of American Scientist, statisticians Kaiser Fung and Andrew Gelman wrote a strong critique of Levitt and Dubner's work. (This is part of theFreakonomics RadioAmerican Culture series). Joe Henrichs research into national psychologies led him to an even more fascinating conclusion. And so you walk faster because you cant get everything you need done in your day and youre always trying to get to the next event. 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. Compared to other countries including places like Japan, Singapore, Germany we can afford to be more permissive. 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. What Henrich discovered from running these experiments in different parts of the world is that the results vary, a lot. So the U.S. produces the sort of Wal-Mart equivalent of religions: big churches giving the people what they want, high pageantry. . It means you really want to know and youre not satisfied until you know. But relatively speaking, we have more tolerance. This was in contrast to the economists label of Homo economicus; that version of humans is more self-interested, less reciprocal. GELFAND: Apparently over 50 percent of cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese. HOFSTEDE: In a cultural sense, no, I dont think so. He started working as an engineer during turbulent years of rebuilding, and soon became a personnel manager. President Bush had framed these negotiations as going an extra mile for peace.. But its important to acknowledge that no culture is a monolith. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., individualism coupled with masculinity creates a society where if youre not a winner, youre a loser. And that happens a lot. The comedians John Oliver, Hannah Gadsby, and Kumail Nanjiani all grew up outside the U.S. 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. Its waiting to happen because people in this individualistic, indulgent society, they want to be merry. Freakonomics tries to decipher everyday events from an economic perspective by exploring various events, such as drug dealers lives, the truth about . HENRICH: Im a researcher who tries to apply evolutionary theory to understand human behavior and human psychology and particularly culture. HOFSTEDE: Well, if you want an honest answer, I think mainly our own curiosity. Thats right: we are No. 702 Episodes. GELFAND: So, that has a lot of other effects on debt, on alcoholism, on recreational drug use. We often look to other countries for smart policies on education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. 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, Japan has been hit by Mother Nature for centuries. She sees the lack of self-control in loose countries as particularly worrisome. But somehow, that diversity and that early celebration of permissiveness has overridden that. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers. Go out there and make it happen. The New Yorker's Malcolm . And they often dont even realize theyre being acted upon. High religiosity coupled with high individualism reveals another feature of American culture. 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. They were those kinds of Chaos Muppets, because they were risk-seeking. Michele Gelfand wasnt interested in that. GELFAND: The U.S. is one of the most creative places on the planet. Thats John Oliver. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. I dont want to be a doom thinker. 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. GELFAND: Were fiercely interdisciplinary. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. 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. He has written several books about what music and other pop culture has to say about the broader culture. Both are long-term oriented, so they see a lot of context around things. Michele GELFAND: Its a subfield of psychology that tries to understand whats universal, whats similar, and whats culture-specific.
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