Employees who hold collectivistic values care more about the interests of their group or collective than do their individualistic counterparts. We examined the potential effects of the combination of ...individual values, nations, and job satisfaction on organizational citizenship behaviours among 308 public school teachers in China, Kuwait, and the United States. Collectivist values of employees predicted their organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). Both collectivistic values and country moderated the relationship between job satisfaction and OCB. Job satisfaction was more positively related to OCB directed at the organization for employees in China and Kuwait than for employees in the United States, but job satisfaction was more positively related to OCB directed toward individuals for employees who were lower in collectivism. This study is one of the few that has tested the potential role of individuals’ collectivism values in their performance of helping behaviours at work across multiple countries.
This paper aims to understand how young Muslims in the super-diverse city of Antwerp negotiate the tensions between their religious identification and the broader cultural framework of individualism. ...Young Muslims in Antwerp face the challenge to present themselves as autonomous, while maintaining their religious identification. Based on 26 interviews with Muslim students in two secondary schools, we describe how presenting a dignified self to both non-Muslim and Muslim audiences requires a delicate balancing act. Drawing conceptually from cultural sociology, we explore how our respondents present themselves towards various audiences by selectively employing elements from the cultural repertoire of ‘religious individualism’. In our analysis, we examine four ways in which respondents employ this repertoire to rework the potential tensions and present themselves as agentive within their religious framework. We also discuss how negotiating a contested identity requires more taxing boundary work for girls, and how they challenge gender norms without denying their religious identification. Overall, our analysis demonstrates how young Muslims in a West European context engage in complex boundary work and creatively draw on the cultural repertoire of religious individualism to negotiate their multiple identifications.
The dominant, individualistic understanding of autonomy that features in clinical practice and research is underpinned by the idea that people are, in their ideal form, independent, self-interested ...and rational gain-maximising decision-makers. In recent decades, this paradigm has been challenged from various disciplinary and intellectual directions. Proponents of ‘relational autonomy’ in particular have argued that people’s identities, needs, interests – and indeed autonomy – are always also shaped by their relations to others. Yet, despite the pronounced and nuanced critique directed at an individualistic understanding of autonomy, this critique has had very little effect on ethical and legal instruments in clinical practice and research so far. In this article, we use four case studies to explore to what extent, if at all, relational autonomy can provide solutions to ethical and practical problems in clinical practice and research. We conclude that certain forms of relational autonomy can have a tangible and positive impact on clinical practice and research. These solutions leave the ultimate decision to the person most affected, but encourage and facilitate the consideration of this person’s care and responsibility for connected others.
Loneliness in Europe Swader, Christopher S.
Social forces,
03/2019, Volume:
97, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This article explains perceived loneliness among people in Europe by accounting for cultural factors as well as social isolation. Culturally, it measures the impact of both personal and societal ...individualism-collectivism on loneliness. It accounts for social isolation by looking at the separate effects of living alone, emotional isolation, and relational isolation. Using a 2014 European Social Survey sample comprising 36,760 individuals in 21 countries, the study predicts loneliness using multilevel logistic regression modeling using both maximum likelihood and Bayesian estimation procedures. Results indicate that societal individualism may strongly reduce loneliness, even after taking into account that social isolation partially mediates this relationship. Further, the effects of living alone and relational isolation depend upon whether one is personally an individualist or collectivist. Living alone and relational isolation greatly increase loneliness, and such negative effects are somewhat reduced for individualists. However, individualists are not protected from the negative impacts of emotional isolation at all, and the above moderation effects do not hold for the most severe forms of loneliness. Based on this analysis, the best case for reduced loneliness for individualists and collectivists alike is that they maintain a strong degree of multiple forms of social integration and live in an individualist society.
Modern humanity made a deal with the devil, according to Tzvetan Todorov. We got freedom, but we also lost God and common society, and we have only a helpless and dizzying individualism to guide us. ...The central problem facing us now is how to survive the poison pill we swallowed when we tasted freedom. There are four basic responses, Todorov claims: conservatism, scientism, individualism, and humanism. As the reader soon learns from his characterizations, Todorov’s allegiance is firmly with the humanists. Imperfect Garden takes up the standard of humanism, and Todorov situates himself alongside Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Montaigne. For Todorov, as with the best of the humanists, life in the world is a garden that needs our tending. And though by its nature it is imperfect, at times bearing rotten and sour fruit, it can always be improved with our care, diligence, and love. Ultimately, Todorov proposes that humanism is a wager, à la Pascal: we will be no worse off for striving to mend the human condition, but we risk everything if we don’t. --Eric de Place
Rethinking Individualism and Collectivism Oyserman, Daphna; Coon, Heather M; Kemmelmeier, Markus
Psychological bulletin,
01/2002, Volume:
128, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Are Americans more individualistic and less collectivistic than members of other
groups? The authors summarize plausible psychological implications of
individualism-collectivism (IND-COL), ...meta-analyze cross-national and
within-United States IND-COL differences, and review evidence for effects of
IND-COL on self-concept, well-being, cognition, and relationality. European
Americans were found to be both more individualistic-valuing personal
independence more-and less collectivistic-feeling duty to
in-groups less-than others. However, European Americans were not more
individualistic than African Americans, or Latinos, and not less collectivistic
than Japanese or Koreans. Among Asians, only Chinese showed large effects, being
both less individualistic and more collectivistic. Moderate IND-COL effects were
found on self-concept and relationality, and large effects were found on
attribution and cognitive style.
Italian (
n
= 129) and American (
n
= 86) samples were evaluated with the Five Factor Inventory of personality and a measure of individualism/collectivism. Greater individualism was seen in the ...American group than the Italian group, as in the Hofstede (
2019
) data. For the Italian sample only, greater individualism was associated with greater neuroticism and greater collectivism was associated with lower neuroticism. This may reflect poor culture fit for Italians with a very individualistic orientation given that Italy falls between the United States and Asian countries in terms of the individualism/collectivism dimension. Other studies have shown better personal adjustment being associated with having a personality that fits with the culture in which one is embedded. For both Italian and American groups, higher collectivism was associated with higher extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness consistent with other reports. Additional findings included higher openness in the Italian group and higher conscientiousness in the American group.
This paper introduces the special section “Cultural differences in questionnaire responding” and discusses central topics in the research on response biases in cross‐cultural survey research. Based ...on current conceptions of acquiescent, extreme, and socially desirable responding, the author considers current data on the correlated nature of response biases and the conditions under which different response styles they emerge. Based on evidence relating different response styles to the cultural dimension of individualism‐collectivism, the paper explores how research presented as part of this special section might help resolves some tensions in this literature. The paper concludes by arguing that response styles should not be treated merely as measurement error, but as cultural behaviors in themselves.
The motive to attain a distinctive identity is sometimes thought to be stronger in, or even specific to, those socialized into individualistic cultures. Using data from 4,751 participants in 21 ...cultural groups (18 nations and 3 regions), we tested this prediction against our alternative view that culture would moderate the ways in which people achieve feelings of distinctiveness, rather than influence the strength of their motivation to do so. We measured the distinctiveness motive using an indirect technique to avoid cultural response biases. Analyses showed that the distinctiveness motive was not weaker-and, if anything, was stronger-in more collectivistic nations. However, individualism-collectivism was found to moderate the ways in which feelings of distinctiveness were constructed: Distinctiveness was associated more closely with difference and separateness in more individualistic cultures and was associated more closely with social position in more collectivistic cultures. Multilevel analysis confirmed that it is the prevailing beliefs and values in an individual's context, rather than the individual's own beliefs and values, that account for these differences.
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