What Culture Actually Is: “I” or “We” — Identity Shapes Everything. Tuesday's Edition
All People Are the Same: They Just Do Things Differently. Series 22 #2
Individualism vs. collectivism is possibly the best-known example of cultural difference. Is life about me or everyone else? This is what it looks like in real life:
An engineer in Jakarta receives a job offer from a company in Singapore: a salary increase, a better title, and international exposure. An American colleague gets an identical offer. The American checks his savings, reads the contract, negotiates the package, and accepts within days. His life, his decision.
The Indonesian engineer talks to his wife, then her parents, then his parents. His mother asks whether he will still send money home monthly; the answer determines whether his younger sister continues her education. His father-in-law asks who else from the family could come to Singapore? A senior colleague he respects raises the question of whether leaving shows disloyalty to the team, which is in the midst of a project. He talks with his close friends to get their opinion because moving to Singapore will change the friendship and the group dynamic. After two weeks of conversations, he declines. He wants the higher salary and title, of course, but the cost, measured in obligations broken, relationships strained, and how the family's standing is affected, is too much. His life affects many people, so the decision must take them into account.
That difference is what Hofstede’s Individualism versus Collectivism dimension measures. It’s the most researched of the four dimensions covered this week. Every culture lands somewhere on the spectrum between two poles: societies that treat the individual as the primary social unit, and societies that treat the group as the primary social unit.
In individualistic cultures, the self is a separate, sovereign entity. Personal goals are more important than group goals, decisions are made independently, and for the benefit of the person making the decision. Relationships outside the immediate family are not given much consideration. The employer-employee relationship is contractual: performance for compensation, with both parties free to exit. The United States scores 91 out of 100 on this dimension, the highest of any country Hofstede measured.
In collectivistic cultures, the self is defined by the group or community they are in. A person is a son or daughter, a friend, a colleague, a neighbor, a member of a community, and those relationships carry obligations that are more important than personal preference. The employee who declined the promotion isn’t unambitious; he is responsible for more than just himself. Guatemala scores 6 on the Individual/Collective scale. That’s more than a number; it’s a different model of what a human being fundamentally is compared to the United States.
In high-individualism cultures, speaking your mind is a social virtue. Disagreement is healthy, directness is honest, and standing out is rewarded. In high-collectivism cultures, open disagreement threatens group harmony because harmony is what holds the group together and protects its members. Silence in a meeting isn’t ignorance or timidness; it's the right call in a culture where group harmony matters more than individual opinion.
Understanding this dimension changes how you read behavior. The colleague who builds consensus before every decision isn’t slow or indecisive; the one who acts unilaterally and moves fast isn’t arrogant or inconsiderate. Both are operating logically within their own cultural perspective. The friction between them isn’t a personality clash. It’s a collision between two cultural perspectives the determin what competent behavior looks like.
Which cultural perspective do you operate on, and can you operate from the other end? Not permanently, just long enough to see what they see.
Wednesday’s Edition looks at Power Distance: who gets to give orders and how much power do they have, who’s expected to follow orders and how much power do they have?
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When the government responds to its constituents that are mostly the "we" types, those few "I" types will feel like they are being robbed with a progressive tax schedule to fund people that tend to be parasites. The only thing the rich can do is hold themselves hostage and threaten to leave. If the "I" types have their way those of the "we" types feel bad because their envy is not satisfied. Both types have their feelings hurt, but one of them can point to the history of high taxes resulting in less investment and an economy that is worse for all five quintiles.
If the bicameral or multi-cameral government factions are based on location or race, or sex or merely a flip of a coin when you are born, there is a good chance that the amount of taxes will be a compromise. But to Madison's dismay, the factions ended being political parties that dominated way the society groups itself. It will swing back and forth from the "I" party and the "we" party where the animosity increases over time and rarely is there a compromise or even no action.