Contrasting Individualism and Collectivism

Individualism-collectivism

Lukes (1973) first introduced the constructs of collectivism and individualism. Collectivism centers on the collective group and values interdependence, whilst individualism centers on the individual and values independence (Luke,1973). In a literature review, Triandis (1993) introduced the idea of collectivism and individualism as `cultural syndromes´. He identifies a cultural syndrome as the tendency of little within-group variance for cultural elements such as values, norms and beliefs within a group which also shares language and geographical location, when these elements centre on a particular theme.

There is considerable evidence for the links between Western societies and individualism and between Eastern cultures and collectivism (Heinrich, Heine & Norenzayan, 2010). Triandis, McCusker & Hui (1990) found that members of Eastern cultures perceive their in-group as more homogenous than the out-group, compared to members of Western cultures. Furthermore, they found that members of Eastern cultures value the well being of the in-group over their personal goals, whilst members of Western cultures typically value the individuals welfare and goals over the well being of their in-group. Examples of Western cultures that have been found to have high levels of individualism are Germany (Darwish & Huber, 2003), the US (Kim & Markus, 1999), Norway (Birkelund, 2000; Syverstad, 2009), Australia, Great Britain and France (Hosfstede, 1980).

Smith and Bond (1993) suggest acculturation is constantly proceeding in the direction of individualism, consequently moving away from collectivistic values. In support of this, a

longitudinal study by Hofstede (1980) found that individualism significantly increas...

... middle of paper ...

...nd collectivistic cultures for

different social phenomenons, such as attributional bias (Al-Zahrani & Kaplowitz, 1993), subject well-being (Ahuvia, 2002), entrepreneurship (Tiessen, 1997) and group creativity (Goncalo & Staw, 2006). Research has particularly focused on comparing these two types of cultures for levels of conformity (Bond & Smith, 1996; Ng, 2003), where the main finding is that members of

individualistic cultures conform to social information to a lesser extent than is observed in

collectivist cultures. Importantly, the majority of such research is restricted to the categories of

individualism and collectivism (Kim & Markus, 1999; Sistrunk, Clement and Guenther, 1971; Ng, 2003), for which a culture is either considered to belong in one or the other, thus neglecting

between-culture variance in individualism/collectivism within the categories.