Old Religion, New Spirituality: Implications of Secularisation and Individualisation in Estonia, edited by Riho Altnurme, discusses the link between the secularity of Estonia and the image of ...individualised religiosity in this country today.
Culture-gene coevolutionary theory posits that cultural values have evolved, are adaptive and influence the social and physical environments under which genetic selection operates. Here, we examined ...the association between cultural values of individualism-collectivism and allelic frequency of the serotonin transporter functional polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) as well as the role this culture-gene association may play in explaining global variability in prevalence of pathogens and affective disorders. We found evidence that collectivistic cultures were significantly more likely to comprise individuals carrying the short (S) allele of the 5-HTTLPR across 29 nations. Results further show that historical pathogen prevalence predicts cultural variability in individualism-collectivism owing to genetic selection of the S allele. Additionally, cultural values and frequency of S allele carriers negatively predict global prevalence of anxiety and mood disorder. Finally, mediation analyses further indicate that increased frequency of S allele carriers predicted decreased anxiety and mood disorder prevalence owing to increased collectivistic cultural values. Taken together, our findings suggest culture-gene coevolution between allelic frequency of 5-HTTLPR and cultural values of individualism-collectivism and support the notion that cultural values buffer genetically susceptible populations from increased prevalence of affective disorders. Implications of the current findings for understanding culture-gene coevolution of human brain and behaviour as well as how this coevolutionary process may contribute to global variation in pathogen prevalence and epidemiology of affective disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are discussed.
It is generally assumed that there is greater pressure to conform to social norms in collectivist cultures than in individualist cultures. However, most research on cultural differences in social ...norms has examined norms for behaviors. Here, we examine cultural differences in norms for emotions. Relative to members of collectivist cultures, members of individualist cultures are more attuned to internal states and value them more. Therefore, we predicted that adherence to emotion norms would be greater in individualist than in collectivist cultures. In four studies with 119 samples from 69 distinct countries and over 200,000 participants, we estimated adherence to emotion norms in different cultures, and how deviation from emotion norms is associated with life satisfaction. As predicted, in countries higher in individualism, emotional experiences of individuals were more homogenous and more concordant with the emotions of others in their culture. Furthermore, in more individualist countries, deviation from the mean emotional experience was linked to lower life satisfaction. We discuss two complementary mechanisms that may underlie such differences.
Average levels of loneliness have been suggested to differ between collectivistic and individualistic countries. However, we know little about how individual-level collectivism (i.e., perceiving the ...self or one’s social environment as collectivistic) is related to loneliness. As individualism and collectivism imply different ideals about how individuals should be embedded in social relationships, they may imply distinct risks for loneliness. Specifically, less demanding ideals in individualism should imply the risk of lower actual social embeddedness; more demanding ideals in collectivism should imply the risk of higher perceived discrepancies from such ideals. Two cross-sectional survey studies in five European countries (Study 1: Austria, N = 239; Study 2: Italy, Portugal, Sweden, The Netherlands, total N = 860) revealed that higher collectivism was related to lower loneliness. Individualism indeed implied lower social embeddedness, but collectivism did not imply higher discrepancies from ideal embeddedness. We discuss implications for reducing loneliness in different cultural contexts.
Why do cultures change? The present work examined cultural change in eight cultural-level markers, or correlates, of individualism in the United States, all of which increased over the course of the ...20th century: frequency of individualist themes in books, preference for uniqueness in baby naming, frequency of single-child relative to multichild families, frequency of single-generation relative to multigeneration households, percentage of adults and percentage of older adults living alone, small family size, and divorce rates (relative to marriage rates). We tested five key hypotheses regarding cultural change in individualism-collectivism. As predicted by previous theories, changes in socioeconomic structure, pathogen prevalence, and secularism accompanied changes in individualism averaged across all measures. The relationship with changes in individualism was less robust for urbanization. Contrary to previous theories, changes in individualism were positively (as opposed to negatively) related to the frequency of disasters. Time-lagged analyses suggested that only socioeconomic structure had a robust effect on individualism; changes in socioeconomic structure preceded changes in individualism. Implications for anthropology, psychology, and sociology are discussed.
Website localization plays an important role in guiding firms on how to customize websites across countries in which they have a local presence. However, few studies on website localization have ...systematically examined this topic from a theoretically grounded perspective. Drawing upon the theoretically driven consumer-company identification perspective, we propose that three website localization strategies (web similarity strategy, web distinctiveness strategy, and web prestige strategy) have positive effects on local users’ perceived website localization, which, in turn, is related to local users’ website loyalty. We further investigate the effects of these website localization strategies in a cross-cultural setting, focusing on the individualism-collectivism dimension of culture. Based on our online experiments in both the United States and China, we find that these website localization strategies have significant impacts on consumers’ perceived website localization, which is related to consumers’ website loyalty. We also find that web distinctiveness and web prestige strategies are more effective for people from collectivistic societies than for those from individualistic societies, whereas web similarity strategies do not differ across societal types. These findings highlight the importance of website localization strategies for customizing websites for global e-commerce.
Culture and R2 Eun, Cheol S.; Wang, Lingling; Xiao, Steven C.
Journal of financial economics,
February 2015, 2015-02-00, Volume:
115, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Consistent with predictions from the psychology literature, we find that stock prices co-move more (less) in culturally tight (loose) and collectivistic (individualistic) countries. Culture ...influences stock price synchronicity by affecting correlations in investors׳ trading activities and a country׳s information environment. Both market-wide and firm-specific variations are lower in tighter cultures. Individualism is mostly associated with higher firm-specific variations. Trade and financial openness weakens the effect of domestic culture on stock price comovements. These results hold for various robustness checks. Our study suggests that culture is an important omitted variable in the literature that investigates cross-country differences in stock price comovements.
Creativity is vital in the contemporary business world. Drawing on the culture-as-situated-cognition theory, we investigate how language affects divergent thinking. We study multicultural bilinguals ...(Arabs in Israel) whose two languages reflect contrasting cultural mindsets: individualism (Hebrew) versus collectivism (Arabic). Theoretically, individualism is associated with novel thinking as it encourages autonomy of thought and action, whereas collectivism encourages compliance to social norms. We investigate the impact of language as a factor that may affect performance in divergent thinking tasks through its associated cultural mindset, distinguishing this from the effects of the speaker's proficiency in the language. We expected that individualism induced by language (in this case, Hebrew) would promote greater originality in tasks demanding high, but not moderate, levels of ingenuity. Study 1 (N = 163) induced competing cultural mindsets using two cultural primes-language and task instructions-in a divergent thinking task. As hypothesized, Hebrew was associated with greater originality (uniqueness of ideas) but not fluency (number of ideas); and this pattern is specific to language, not the cultural prime induced by task instructions. Study 2 (N = 137) confirmed that the effect is stronger in tasks calling for greater ingenuity. Implications for language management in organizations are discussed.
Public Significance Statement
Creativity is an important skill for individuals and organizations. Many external factors impact creativity, among them cultural individualism. We expect individualism to amplify novel and original thinking. Using language as a cultural cue, we study Arab students proficient in Arabic and Hebrew and show that, despite being more fluent in Arabic (their mother tongue), they display greater originality in Hebrew (a language associated with individualistic values). This research shows that language is much more than words and sentences; it carries the essence of a culture and impacts performance.
Although research has demonstrated a grey divide where older adults are less involved and skilled with digital media than younger adults, by treating them as a homogenous group, it has overlooked ...differences in their digital skills and media use. Based on 41 in-depth interviews with older adults (aged 65+ years) in East York, Toronto, we developed a typology that moves beyond seeing older adults as Non-Users to include Reluctants, Apprehensives, Basic Users, Go-Getters, and Savvy Users. We find a nonlinear association between older adults’ skill levels and online engagement, as many East York older adults are not letting their skill levels dictate their online involvement. They engage in a wide range of online activities despite having limited skills, and some are eager to learn as they go. Older adults often compared their digital media use with their peers and to more tech-adept younger generations, and these comparisons influenced their attitudes toward digital media. Their narratives of mastery included both a positive sense that they can stay connected and learn new skills and a negative sense that digital media might overwhelm them or waste their time. We draw conclusions for public policy based on our findings on how digital media intersect with the lives of East York older adults.
This project examined cultural changes in terms of individualism-collectivism in China between 1950 and 1999 focusing on cultural associations that are discernible through analysis of language use. ...Drawing on algorithms in natural language processing (NLP) that numerically represent word meanings in a high-dimensional space, we examined patterns of word similarity for words indicating individualism and collectivism in Chinese. This methodology enables researchers of cultural change to investigate questions that were difficult to examine before. We examined four such questions pertaining to individualism-collectivism cultural change in China. The data spanning five decades found no evidence of Chinese culture becoming more positively disposed to individualism over time. Another finding suggested a continuing cultural association between collectivism and some life domains, work in particular. These findings suggest that rising individualism is not a universal consequence of societal modernization and that collectivism in China may be self-sustaining. The data also indicate that the Chinese language might have become more differentiated and complex in its discourse on individualism and collectivism.
Public Significance StatementThis study examines individualism-collectivism cultural change in China between 1950 to 1999. It suggests that rising individualism is not a universal consequence of societal modernization.
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