He wrote a paper about it. You had Woodstock, and youre going to have this kind of stuff happening again. What we saw in Egypt was very similar. Everyone knows there are differences between people in different countries, but his approach was a quantifiable approach. GELFAND: Weve had our share of threat, but just not chronic threat. 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. And its by no means easy. Later on, fast forward, Pertti Pelto, whos an anthropologist. People who went out to California, I would say if we gave them the tight-loose mindset quiz, they were probably on the looser mindset. You're stuck in a metal tube with hundreds of strangers (and strange smells), defying gravity and racing through the sky. And we found the full spectrum of variation. . It's part of our founding D.N.A. In a more masculine society, men and women adhere to the gender roles you might think of as patriarchal: fathers, for instance, take care of the facts, while mothers handle the emotions. After reading Freakonomics it really opens the reader's eyes to unseen things in everyday life. This is the dimension based on data from the World Values Survey. Feb 15, 2023. We may not be the very loosest culture; but we are No. GELFAND: Its like that story of two fish where theyre swimming along. Rich. But a lot of the world is much more like a family. GELFAND: When we ask people, What does honor mean to you? in the U.S., a lot of people talk about work. What was I.B.M. 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. NEAL: So its always evolving, its always developing, but theres some core principles. GELFAND: The U.S. is one of the most creative places on the planet. U.S. President George H.W. How do racial and ethnic minorities fit into the American looseness? She argues that both styles have their upsides and their downsides. And in a collectivistic society, a person is like an atom in a crystal. Its also the cleaning lady. Again, its worth repeating that no culture is a monolith. HENRICH: So Americans tend to be more work-obsessed than other people. It means you really want to know and youre not satisfied until you know. GELFAND: In societies that are tighter, people are willing to call out rule violators. HOFSTEDE: There was a Quaker at the head of I.B.M. Michele Gelfand has another example of how culture shapes perception. The New Yorker's Malcolm . GELFAND: Classic things like the Mller-Lyer Illusion, which is these two lines where one looks longer than the other. Thats a crazy, creative solution to try to deal with the pandemic. And they were finding that people in Africa were not falling victim to this illusion. Offers went up as high as 55 or 60 percent in some places and then down around 25 percent in other places. And it should stay there. Multilevel Research of Human Systems: Flowers, Bouquets and Gardens, The Interaction Between National and Organizational Value Systems, 11 A. M. Sunday Is Our Most Segregated Hour,, The U.S. Is Just Different So Lets Stop Pretending Were Not (Ep. People tend to be super-creative and theres a lot of negotiation of rules. Heres another culture metaphor another watery one from the Dutch culture scholar Gert Jan Hofstede. I dont like to itch, Bert. "Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.". The incentives of just any regular person are greatly shown because money or personal gain can take over any man or woman no matter how old. That is generated by looseness. I hate to call out Michele Gelfand, but even in the loosest of cultures, dogs dont have unfettered access to food. One of the defining features of Americanism is our so-called rugged individualism. You might even call it wild individualism. So uncertainty avoidance is the intolerance of ambiguity. 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. You can never admit weakness or failure. 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. Gelfand has spent a lot of time trying to understand how a given countrys looseness or tightness affects everyday life. But Bush also wanted to avoid going to war with Iraq. The most indulgent country in these rankings is Mexico, at 97 out of 100; the most restrained: Egypt, at four. Out into the ocean where they were caught by people on jet skis. Relatedly: Americans place a high value on being consistent across different situations. Educated. Australia and Brazil are also loose. China, Japan, and Turkey are also tight. Nevertheless, you might be able to intentionally create pockets of looseness so you can have more balance. GELFAND: I was planning to become a cross-cultural trainer to work at the State Department and train people to understand culture. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like The Freakonomics podcast "Is the American Dream really dead?", mentions five main factors that contribute to social mobility in neighborhoods. So, today on Freakonomics Radio: can we really build a model that explains why the American psyche is so unusual? In the beginning, Feldman left behind an open basket for the cash, but too often the money vanished. Caning as in a spanking, basically, on the bare buttocks, with a half-inch-thick rattan cane. Individualistic countries tend to be richer, but as Hofstede the Elder once put it, The order of logic is not that individualism comes first. Still, Gelfands horizons were suddenly expanded; and her curiosity was triggered. So looking decisive, muscular, active or if youre a woman, sexy that makes you more status-worthy. This is the flip side of the idea we started out with in this episode that is, why its hard for the U.S. to simply import successful policies from elsewhere. Scholars in this realm have a general agreement on what culture is and what its not. In 1990, when Gelfand was a graduate student, she followed the news as Iraq invaded Kuwait. In general, humans behave a certain way because they either perceive that behavior as offering a reward of some kinda positive incentive, or "carrot"or they avoid certain behaviors because those behaviors seem to lead to a punishmenta negative . HOFSTEDE: I like this question a lot. Then you can have something very good happening. To become American and to be American is to be individual. Share. He contrasts places like Egypt, that had strict rules for authority and gender and purity, with the Persians who, using my terminology, he would have said that they were quite loose. And not attending enough to contextual factorsopportunities that presented themselves, being in the right place at the right time. Our staff also includesAlison Craiglow,Greg Rippin,Joel Meyer,Tricia Bobeda,Mary Diduch, Zack Lapinski,Emma Tyrrell, Lyric Bowditch, Jasmin Klinger,andJacob Clemente. In the end, he resorted to making small plywood boxes with a slot cut into . Everything in economics can be viewed from the point of incentives. HOFSTEDE: You have a democracy. Theres not going to be violent crime. Chronic threat meaning a country is prone to natural disasters, or disease, or hostile invaders. Based on the bestselling book of the same name, FREAKONOMICS attempts to break down dense economic theories and data into digestible bits. On a certain level, this is obvious: These are cultures that have norms and traditions that have endured for centuries. I think I would have been perfectly content there because its also still a country of such huge opportunity. It is that the wealth comes first, and the individualism follows. Henrich takes a more nuanced view: HENRICH: To explain the massive economic growth that weve seen in the last 200 years, you need to explain the continuous and, for a long time, accelerating rate of innovation that occurred. But if youre not an economist, if youre a regular human being, you can see why the second player might reject a $1 offer. HENRICH: Because Americans and Westerners more generally are psychologically unusual from a global perspective. We said that a lot of good ideas and policies that work elsewhere in the world cant work in the U.S. because our culture is just different. Like, you saw in the U.S. trying to locate Covid in sewage. 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. She did want to measure culture, and how it differs from place to place. 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). 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 . Really? And I could see there, a little bit similarly to the U.S., how the various ethnicities are trying to live together. HOFSTEDE: This is actually a little bit of an unfortunate name. Yes, other phenomena like how things smell to us. Why not? I know that wasnt your intention. Just like good science, good . HENRICH: It chafes us when we get ordered around. This interest goes back to those negotiations between Jim Baker and Tariq Aziz. Well, because theyre really smart. 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. That, again, is the cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand. And life is an adventure. Nobody can feel insulted. employees spread across the globe. He takes on questions like: Why do kids with summer birthdays get the flu more often? HOFSTEDE: And this is before the 60s, before the 70s. And the research subject explained to him that, Oh, I feel so bad for you that you cant afford pants without holes in them that I cant take the money from this poor American kid. And it struck me as a way in which this experiment could be perverted. BERT: Because: you get crumbs in the sheets, thats why. It is a small price to pay to punish the first player for being so stingy. 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. These attacks continue as I speak. By this time, Hofstede the Elder had already gotten a Ph.D. in social science. During the Cold War. And in a restrained society, theres going to be suicide. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., there is little constraining. HENRICH: You want to be the same self, regardless of who youre talking to or what context youre in. Its very, very hard to do. And it should stay there. Hes horrified by my dishwasher-loading behavior. A. So after we ran that first project, we redid the entire project, and we took concerns like the one Francisco had. HOFSTEDE: Yes, especially by people from Anglo countries. At the core of Freakonomics is the concept of incentives. But yes, its all workplace. The answer to that is usually: no, you cant. High religiosity coupled with high individualism reveals another feature of American culture. 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. You get crumbs in the U.S.A., there is little constraining longer than the other a monolith the! Ethnicities are trying to understand how a given countrys looseness or tightness affects everyday life high on... Countries, but just not chronic threat sheets, thats why an atom in crystal! The same name, Freakonomics attempts to break down dense economic theories and data into digestible.... Honor mean to you gelfand has spent a lot of the same name Freakonomics! So unusual thats a crazy, creative solution to try to deal with the pandemic Quaker at the State and... 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