What Is American Culture? Who Americans Think They Are. Tuesday's Edition

What does American culture look like to others? Series 17 #2

Every culture gives its people a story about who they are. In most of the world, that story starts with “we.” In America, it starts with “I.”

This is more than a metaphor. Geert Hofstede’s research ranks the United States as the most individualistic country in the world. Americans define themselves by personal traits, individual accomplishments, and choosing what they want out of life. Many people around the world are collectivists. They make choices heavily influenced by family, hometown, or other groups with which they associate. Roughly 70% of the world’s population lives in collectivist cultures, where individuals support the group. Americans reverse that equation entirely: the group exists to serve the individual.

This is the difference:

An American college student changes their major quickly because it is a personal choice with personal consequences. They chat with a couple of friends, meet with an academic adviser, and fill the paperwork. The decision is simple: What do I want out of life?

A Korean college student’s decsion is more comples. They talk to friends for hours to test how the choice will land in their social circle and what it will signal about their reliability. They considered whether switching would strain friendships, change how people in their hometown think about them, and if it will create tension within the community.

They discusse it in details with thier parents because the decsion has has family implications, their future income will affect their parents. They also need to consider the grandparents, because a change in major would be interpreted as an honor or as a failure, and affect the family’s standing in the community. The decision is less simple: How does this decision affect everyone else?

Individualism connects directly to a second cultural trait that Fons Trompenaars calls Internal Direction. Americans believe they control their environment and outcomes. If something goes wrong, you fix it. If you want something, you go get it. The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is not just a saying; it reflects a measurable cultural perspective. Trompenaars’ research places the United States among the strongest internally directed cultures, meaning Americans assume that willpower, effort, and strategy determine results.

Externally directed cultures, which include much of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, assume that the environment and situation shape outcomes, and the wise response is to work with and adapt to the situation rather than to force it.

Combine individualism with internal direction, and you get a cultural perspective that most of the world does not share: the belief that a single person, acting alone, can and should bend circumstances to their will. Americans treat this as common sense. Most other cultures see it as arrogant, naive, or both.

A third cultural perspective also comes into play, Trompenaars’ Achievement dimension. This measures whether a culture assigns status based on what you have done or who you are. The United States is strongly achievement-oriented. What you’ve accomplished, your income, your track record, these earn you respect. A 28-year-old who built a successful company outranks a 60-year-old with a prestigious family name. In Ascription cultures like Japan, France, or much of Latin America, age, education, family background, and social position determine status regardless of performance. A junior American walking into a Tokyo boardroom expecting their quarterly results to speak for themselves will find that nobody is listening until someone of the proper rank and title delivers the information.

M.J. Hornby's psychological archetypes map this same pattern at the individual level. The North Power-seeker drives people toward social ambition, personal authority, and idea-based decision-making. North-dominant types seek to lead organizations, reject ideas that don't serve their agenda, and measure progress by what they have achieved. Many other cultures see this as pushy and self-serving.

Novels by M.J. Hornby

These three dimensions and Hornby's North archetype create a single, reinforcing identity: I am an individual, I control what happens to me, and I prove my worth through what I accomplish. Individualism provides the unit of action (me alone). Internal direction provides the belief system (I make things happen). Achievement provides the scoreboard (results determine my worth). The North archetype bundles all three into a personality type that American culture actively produces and rewards.

This self-concept drives behaviors that Americans take for granted but that, at best, puzzle, usually frustrate, and often offend people from other cultural backgrounds. It explains why Americans change jobs frequently, why they introduce themselves by first name, why self-promotion is not embarrassing, and why failure carries less stigma than in most cultures, because an internally directed achiever can always try again.

This profile is a national composite. The pressure to achieve is different in Manhattan finance than in rural Appalachia. Black Americans and immigrant communities often balance strong collectivist family structures against the dominant individualist culture. Regional and generational variation adds another layer. Still, the pattern holds at the national level, and it is the national-level pattern that the rest of the world encounters Americans.

Wednesday’s Edition examines how this self-concept shapes the way Americans talk, do business, and deal with the rules.

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Sidebar: Hofstede’s Six Cultural Dimensions:

• Individualism vs. Collectivism (personal goals vs. group loyalty)

• Power Distance (acceptance of unequal power)

• Motivation towards Achievement and Success (competition vs. cooperation)

• Uncertainty Avoidance (tolerance for ambiguity)

• Long-term vs. Short-term Orientation (future planning vs. immediate results)

• Indulgence vs. Restraint (indulging in gratification vs. restraining gratification)

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