All contents Freakonomics. HENRICH: My favorite explanation for this I think this has been put out most clearly by a sociologist named Rodney Stark is that with freedom of religion, you get competition amongst religious organizations. You may decide to go another way, but that doesnt make the river change. Individualism encompasses a value system, a theory of human nature, and a belief in certain political, economic, social, and religious arrangements. BUSH: Allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. Essentially, theyre the opposite of the loose attributes: tight cultures have more coordination and more self-control. Why Does the Most Monotonous Job in the World Pay $1 Million? And we manipulated whether their names were like Jamal or Latisha versus Brad and Lorna. So its not necessarily the case that my country is better. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. So, lets try to measure this., Gelfand and several colleagues undertook a massive research project, interviewing some 7,000 people from 33 countries on five continents. Youre going to be shut down. If youre an economist, you might think that offering even $1 out of the 100 would be enough. So after we ran that first project, we redid the entire project, and we took concerns like the one Francisco had. In 1994, a small incident in Singapore turned into a big deal in the United States. But oh, the places you'll go! And also, of course, people listening to this: Make it happen, come on. Theyre not supposed to be the boss. GELFAND: I grew up on Long Island. How much should we attribute that success to these very same factors that create chaos on other dimensions? Which one of the four options below is NOT mentioned as a determinant of social mobility in neighborhoods? So you can see that in an individualistic society, after becoming a world champion in a sport or certainly after winning a major war, people do not fight one another, but they admire one another. On the more feminine end of the spectrum are the Scandinavian countries and some of Western Europe. And in this moment, we realized that the grind is unsustainable, right? Next on the list: what Hofstedes late father, the originator of this culture model, called power distance. Thats the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations or institutions be it society at large or just a family accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.. The other point is a reminder: Its good to be humble about our ability our inability, actually to predict how a given culture will change. We visit the world's busiest airport to see how it all comes together. DUBNER: Where is the loosest place in America? Because when youre living inside a culture well, thats the culture you know; it is what it is. 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. GELFAND: And it caused a real international crisis because the Singapore government gave him what was then classic punishment, which was caning. Theyll say, The Scandinavians have great childcare and family-leave policies. Or theyll say, China has built more high-speed rail in the past few years than the U.S. has even thought about. So, naturally, the next question is: cant the U.S. just borrow these Scandinavian and Chinese and German ideas and slap them on top of the American way of doing things? We owe much of our freedom to that influence. 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). Most white Americans have an entirely different ancestral history. HOFSTEDE: Well, if you want an honest answer, I think mainly our own curiosity. When they took out Mubarak, this went the opposite extreme to almost anomie, normlessness. Freakonomics is a book about 'freaky' research and insight. And you need revolutions in order to change the government. FREAKONOMICS is the highly anticipated film version of the phenomenally bestselling book about incentives-based thinking by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.. You could argue that treating your own children as if theyre special may make it harder to care as much about other peoples children. Follow. HOFSTEDE: Thats my idea. you ask. I do think that today they are living through difficult times, but so are we. Once you begin looking for evidence, you see an almost infinite array of examples. HOFSTEDE: In a cultural sense, no, I dont think so. Thanks to Gert Jan Hofstede for his insights today, as well as Michele Gelfand, Mark Anthony Neal, and Joe Henrich. Freakonomics is a registered service mark of Renbud Radio, LLC. Steven D. Levitt, the self-described "Rogue Economist" of the title, uses this tool to analyze a random assortment of . Between 1967 and 1973, he collected data on I.B.M. 6 Pages. This is the dimension based on data from the World Values Survey. And not attending enough to contextual factorsopportunities that presented themselves, being in the right place at the right time. GELFAND: Apparently over 50 percent of cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese. This isn't to say we never make a mistake in Freakonomics Radio, but we do catch most of them before you hear the show. It means I did it my way.. Freakonomics Radiois produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. But oh, the places you'll go! That was our hypothesis, at least. And thats because the vast majority of the research subjects are WEIRD. Culture can be quite an offensive concept, particularly to people who project it onto an individual characteristic, as if it was about an individual. The snob effect occurs when an individual's demand for a specific product increases when the number of units of that product other people purchase increases. Episode 470 The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. Ultimatum Game Bargaining Among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon, U.S. Student Tells of Pain Of His Caning In Singapore, Singapores Relations With U.S. Joe Henrichs research into national psychologies led him to an even more fascinating conclusion. Like, you saw in the U.S. trying to locate Covid in sewage. . It was freedom from hunger. 470 Replay) Freakonomics Radio | Freakonomics Radio Publicit Annonce - 0 s 00:00 00:00 Suivant | propos Voir la description Freakonomics Radio. They were those kinds of Chaos Muppets, because they were risk-seeking. Think Belarus, Myanmar, Russia, China. High religiosity coupled with high individualism reveals another feature of American culture. So I would be very interested in knowing whether theres any data on the ethnic component of homicide and suicide. HOFSTEDE: And blue-collar. In a future episode, well look at why the U.S., for all its wealth, has such a high rate of child poverty, and whats being done to address that. Then you can have something very good happening. There is a strong desire to be more feminine. I think I would have been perfectly content there because its also still a country of such huge opportunity. So, what is it? That is one of the main guests in todays episode. The first: individualism versus collectivism. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. We met him earlier, but just briefly; heres a proper introduction. In our . Also, the people who settled in different areas in the U.S. brought with them their own cultural norms and values, and set the stage for different levels of tight-loose within the nation. NEAL: We think about improvisation in the context, obviously, of creative and musical terms, but its also a way of always having to adapt to the changing political, social, and cultural realities. You can see this on many dimensions: how we work and travel; how we mate and marry; how we care for our children and our elderly; how we police; how we conceive the relationship between the individual and the state; even how we manage death! We just need to do it. In restrained societies, people tend to suppress bodily gratification, and birth rates are often lower; theres also less interest in things like foreign films and music. Freakonomics Radio . It's an unnatural activity that has become normal. And this dynamic leads to a lot of fighting for the sake of fighting. It shouldnt surprise anyone that individualism might contribute to inequality or at least, as Henrich puts it, the justification of inequality. Today, an overview of the cultural differences. This failure leads to confusion at the very least, but quite possibly deeper misunderstandings, perhaps all the way up to hatred and violent conflict. HENRICH: But if you want to talk about humans, then you have a problem. But Im Dutch, of course. As for the U.S., Gelfand says the U.S. is not only loose but getting progressively looser. Employees were asked to rate how much they agreed with statements like Competition among employees usually does more harm than good. And, Having interesting work is just as important to most people as having high earnings., HOFSTEDE: Simple questions about daily things that people understand. If youre violating the social order, youre going to be punished.. In the end, he resorted to making small plywood boxes with a slot cut into . HENRICH: It chafes us when we get ordered around. We will leave you with a patriotic tribute from one last transplanted U.S. comedian. And in a collectivistic society, a person is like an atom in a crystal. 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. Very soon, there will be an Institute of Gladwell Studies. Whereas in other contexts, like in the Middle East, when you think about honor, you think about your family, you think about your purity, your dutifulness, and so forth much less so about accomplishments. GELFAND: I also teach negotiation. So $10 in this case. BROADCASTER: The subject denies the evidence of his own eyes and yields to group influence. Gert Jan HOFSTEDE: Culture is the ripples on the ocean of human nature. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism Freakonomics Radio. Compared to other countries including places like Japan, Singapore, Germany we can afford to be more permissive. GELFAND: I was planning to become a cross-cultural trainer to work at the State Department and train people to understand culture. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the debut non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner.Published on April 12, 2005, by William Morrow, the book has been described as melding pop culture with economics. Oh say, can you see, the home run I just hit. HOFSTEDE: High individualism is correlated with trying new stuff. Go out there and make it happen. Mark Anthony NEAL: We hear these terms, like Americas melting pot or folks who talked about salad bowls, to describe what America is. Better Essays. GELFAND: Well, it requires a lot of negotiation. GELFAND: They talk about individualistic accomplishments. HOFSTEDE: They will look at them if they admire them, but they will look away if theyre afraid. NEAL: As someone who specialized in the African-American experience, and is African-American myself, I often fall back on the way the late Amiri Baraka described Black culture as a changing same.. Gelfand says the countries that were most aggressive in trying to contain Covid tended to be tighter countries. Download Print. Lets flip it for a moment. Freakonomics is therefore NOT the book that I would recommend to anyone interested in (a) learning economic theory, (b) learning about how economists think, or (c) understanding the world or thinking of ways to improve it. GELFAND: The next day, I booked a trip to Egypt. Gert Jan Hofstede is a Dutch culture scholar whos been walking us through these dimensions. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Part of the Freakonomics Series) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J . 1, the most individualistic country in the world, 91 out of 100 on the Hofstede scale of individualism. Yes, other phenomena like how things smell to us. This is the ripples on the more feminine end of the four options below is not mentioned as determinant! The State Department and train people to understand culture high-speed rail in the U.S. trying to locate in. 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