Individualism–collectivism is one of the best researched dimensions of culture in psychology. One frequently asked but underexamined question regards its cross-temporal changes: Are cultures becoming ...individualistic? One influential theory of cultural change, modernization theory, predicts the rise of individualism as a consequence of economic growth. Findings from past research are generally consistent with this theory, but there is also a body of evidence suggesting its limitations. To examine these issues, cross-temporal analyses of individualism–collectivism in the United States and Japan were conducted. Diverging patterns of cultural changes were found across indices: In both countries, some of the obtained indices showed rising individualism over the past several decades, supporting the modernization theory. However, other indices showed patterns that are best understood within the frameworks of a shifting focus of social relationships and a persisting cultural heritage. A comprehensive theory of cultural change requires considerations of these factors in addition to the modernization effect.
This article analyzes the relationship between methodological individualism (MI) and reductionism as understood within the contemporary literature in English. Three points are developed. First, the ...article argues that two different kinds of reductionist interpretation of MI can be distinguished: one in terms of psychological reductionism and the other in terms of semantic reductionism, the latter of which has a nominalist and an anti-nominalist variant. Second, the article explains that these different reductionist interpretations of MI are mistaken. Third, the article analyzes and criticizes the view that MI must be replaced by a new anti-reductionist approach understood as a middle ground between holism and MI.
The Matrilineal Heritage of Louisa May Alcott and Christina Rossetti is an unprecedented socio-cultural comparison that exposes and redresses critical preoccupation with the authors'male associates ...in the Transcendentalist and Pre-Raphaelite movements by re-orienting attention to the unpublished life-writing of their female relatives. The thesis unpacks the influence of the Romantic construction of "genius" on critical assessments of both women, which have often evaluated their literary outputs in light of what I call an "ideology of individualism" that privileges the vocation of the artist above all societal obligations. I demonstrate that both women resisted the ideologies of individualism promoted by their male associates, in order to affiliate themselves with "theologies of renunciation" that were developed by their female relatives. Part I, "Matches for very big adversaries", explores Alcott's and Rossetti's critical discourses surrounding the ideologies of individualism that were championed by the Transcendentalists and Pre-Raphaelites. Section I, "But a flint holds fire", stresses the authors' agency in rejecting the models of artistic identity promoted by both movements by foregrounding their debates with their male relatives in private correspondence and autobiographical writings. Section II, "Behind a Mask", considers how Alcott and Rossetti adopted ingenious strategies for challenging the movements' objectification of the female muse in their pseudonymous and posthumously published works. It compares Alcott's feminist assessment of Hawthorne's critique of the figure of the "marble woman" developed by the Transcendentalists, with Rossetti's interrogation of her brother, Dante Gabriel's, preoccupation with the dead beloved. The second part of the thesis, "That mighty maternal love which makes ... little women", recovers the matrilineal heritage of Alcott and Rossetti, tracing its presence in both unpublished and canonical works. Section I, "Left-handed societies", uncovers the literary networks of the Alcott and Rossetti women in unpublished and posthumously published lifewritings to argue that family matriarchs, Abigail Alcott and Frances Rossetti, encouraged their daughters to conceive artistic identity as formulated through identification with others. Section II, "A Loving League of Sisters", unearths the influence of the Alcott and Rossetti women in the authors' canonical works, focusing on how the values of their mothers are propagated in fictional sisterhoods that use art as a means of both combating social injustice and achieving divine communion. The thesis concludes by demonstrating that the sisterhoods of the authors' public writings promote the theologies of renunciation that were championed by their female relatives-stressing the importance of relinquishing the solipsistic pursuit of genius, in favour of achieving communion with the wider female community and a fuller revelation of God.
Awe has been theorized as a collective emotion, one that enables individuals to integrate into social collectives. In keeping with this theorizing, we propose that awe diminishes the sense of self ...and shifts attention away from individual interests and concerns. In testing this hypothesis across 6 studies (N = 2137), we first validate pictorial and verbal measures of the small self; we then document that daily, in vivo, and lab experiences of awe, but not other positive emotions, diminish the sense of the self. These findings were observed across collectivist and individualistic cultures, but also varied across cultures in magnitude and content. Evidence from the last 2 studies showed that the influence of awe upon the small self accounted for increases in collective engagement, fitting with claims that awe promotes integration into social groups. Discussion focused on how the small self might mediate the effects of awe on collective cognition and behavior, the need to study more negatively valenced varieties of awe, and other potential cultural variations of the small self.
Representatives of Asian and Western countries often differ in terms of both their social orientation (e.g., collectivism vs. individualism) and their thinking style (holistic vs. analytic). The ...disposition to think of oneself in relation to others or to the collective to which one belongs appears similar to a more general holistic thinking style (the disposition to think of elements of a stimulus in relation to one another or their context), suggesting that they may have similar roots. Nevertheless, the low correlations among measures of these characteristics (e.g., Na et al., 2010) indicate that holistic thinking might be multidimensional. To obtain a clearer picture of this multidimensionality, we constructed a procedure that could be used both to assess and to induce three different styles of cognitive processing that reflect different aspects of holistic thinking: specifically, the tendencies (a) to respond to the configuration of a stimulus as a whole without regard to the elements that compose it, (b) to think about stimulus elements in relation to their context, and (c) to think about stimulus elements in relation to one another. Indian, Hong Kong Chinese, North American, and British participants differed in their tendency to use these types of thinking. Moreover, priming these different styles of holistic thinking experimentally affected the performance of only those cognitive tasks that required these thinking styles. Finally, although cultural groups differed spontaneously in their performance of tasks to which different types of holistic thinking were relevant, experimentally inducing these thinking styles eliminated these between-culture differences in performance. Such differences were generally unrelated to measures of social orientation typically used to distinguish representatives of Western and Asian countries.
International relationships are increasingly critical to business performance. Yet despite a recent surge in international research on relationship marketing (RM), it is unclear whether or how RM ...should be adapted across cultures. The authors adopt Hofstede's dimensions of culture to conduct a comprehensive, multivariate, metaregression analysis of 47,864 relationships across 170 studies, 36 countries, and six continents. To guide theory, they propose four tenets that parsimoniously capture the essence of culture's effects on RM. Study 1 affirms these tenets and emphasizes the importance of taking a fine-grained perspective to understand the role of culture in RM because of the high degree of heterogeneity across different cultural dimensions and RM linkages. For example, the magnitude of individualism's effect is 71% greater on RM than other cultural dimensions, whereas masculinity has almost no effect; however, accounting only for individualism ignores significant moderating effects of power distance and uncertainty avoidance dimensions. To guide managers, Study 2 adopts a country-level approach and reveals that RM is much more effective outside the United States such that relationships are 55% more effective, on average, for increasing business performance in Brazil, Russia, India, and China.
The pathogen stress hypothesis posits that pathogen-related threats influence regional and individual differences in collectivism since behavioral practices associated with collectivism limit the ...spread of infectious diseases. In support of the hypothesis, previous research demonstrates the association between individualism/collectivism and pathogen stress based on historical records or experimental manipulation. However, it is still unclear whether individuals would indeed value collectivism during the outbreak of infectious diseases. Thus, we investigated the concurrent effects of pathogen-related stress on the endorsement of individualism/collectivism by examining 9322 Koreans for 14 weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results revealed that the level of collectivism among respondents were higher after than before the COVID-19 outbreak. Moreover, the average level of collectivism on a given day showed a significant association with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the same day during the outbreak. Interestingly, individualism did not significantly change for the same period.
•We examined individualism/collectivism during the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea.•The level of collectivism was higher during the outbreak than before the outbreak.•Collectivism was associated with the daily number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Communicating visions inspires followers' efforts by imbuing collective objectives with meaning, but it is not clear how leaders achieve this motivating effect. We argue that central to motivational ...influences of leaders' vision communication is a match between the motivational appeal in communication and followers' values. We test this proposition by focusing on followers' individualism-collectivism as moderators of the effectiveness of motivational appeals that are anchored in either personal interests (a match with individualistic values) or obligations to the collective (a match with collectivistic values) to inspire creativity in pursuing vision. From a vision-values match principle, we predict that communicating visions with a personal interest appeal inspires more creativity among individuals with stronger individualistic values by engendering followers' meaningfulness, and more so for vertical than for horizontal individualism whereas communicating visions relying on an obligation appeal is more effective for individuals with stronger collectivistic values, and more so for horizontal than for vertical collectivism. Results of an experiment (N = 115) and a field study (N = 304) were largely consistent with these propositions. We discuss broader implications of the vision-values match principle.
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