The Resurrection of IndividualismThe miracle of Standardization

“Individualism and Idiocentricism:

Relating Cultures to their People”

Ulrich Schimmack, Shigehiro Oishi, Ed Diener

Draft

   

History of Cross-Cultural Psychology

• 1970 - start of JCCP- Triandis’s book “Subjective Culture”

• 1980- Handbook of CCP (edited by Triandis)- Hofstede’s book “Culture’s Consequences”

• 1990- Psychological Review articles by Triandis and by Markus and Kitayama

Individualism-Collectivism

“One of the most useful and actively researched constructs to emerge from cultural social psychology has been the dimension of individualism—collectivism” (Vandello & Cohen, 1999).

“Perhaps the most important distinction cross-cultural researchers make is between individualistic and collectivistic cultures” (Burger, Personality Textbook).

Then Oyserman and colleagues published a 70-page (!) review of research on Individualism in Psychological Bulletin

Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 3-72.

The authors examined three lines of research:

- cross-cultural comparisons of nation means

- within cultural correlations with measures of IND and COL

- effects of priming of IND and COL

Conclusion:“At this time, it is impossible to tell the extent to which different cultural research methods … produce the same effects.”

Oyserman et al.’s Other Conclusions

Cultural differences in Individualism and Collectivism “were neither as large nor as systematic as often perceived. “

“What Hofstede actually measured as individualism—collectivism does not bear much resemblance to what he and other cultural psychologists generally have taken individualism, and especially collectivism, to mean.”

Oyserman et al.’s Omission

• The main meta-analysis compared mean differences in measures of IND and COL between the United State and other nations.

• For about 50 nations it was possible to compute effect sizes.

• The authors do not correlated these effect sizes with conventional measures of individualism (Hofstede’s factor scores)

• The correlations for 31 nations are .23 and -.25 (n.s.).

Conclusion

• Different measures of individualism fail to show convergent national differences.

• Lack of convergent validity undermines the value of Individualism as a useful construct for cross-cultural research.

A requiem for Individualism

Four (cross-)cultural psychologists wrote commentaries to Oyserman’s article and Oyserman et al. wrote a replied

(another 45 precious prime journal pages)

Kitayama, S. (2002). Culture and basic psychological processes--Toward a system view of culture: Comment on Oyserman et al. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 89-96.

“So far, researchers both in and out of the field of measurement of cultural values appear to be quite naive in believing what attitudinal survey items indicate at their face value.”

Translation: Scales do not show large differences between Japan and the USA, but I know that they are very different.

Bond, M. H. (2002). Reclaiming the individual from Hofstede's ecological analysis--A 20-year odyssey: Comment on Oyserman et al. (2002). Psychological Bulletin, 128, 73-77.

“The field will in fact abandon these two overfreighted constructs [Individualism & Collectivism] altogether and move toward narrower theories of culture based on more specific constructs.”

Fiske, A. P. (2002). Using individualism and collectivism to compare cultures--A critique of the validity and measurement of the constructs. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 78-88.

“We need another way to study culture”

Miller, J. G. (2002). Bringing culture to basic psychological theory--Beyond individualism and collectivism: Comment on Oyserman et al. (2002). Psychological Bulletin, 128, 97-109.

“Whereas the Oyserman et al. (2002) review argued that current limitations in cultural work may be addressed through methodological improvements of work conducted within the individualism—collectivism paradigm, I argue for the need to go beyond such a framework.”

Individualism: 1980-2002

The Miracle

• Impressive Reliability and Temporal Stability

• Spector and colleagues (inc. Phanikiran Radhakrishnan) administered Hofstede’s survey in 23 nations; 16 nations had been included in Hofstede’s seminal study in the 1970s.

• Nation means on IND correlated .80!

Cross-Cultural Measurement

• Hofstede used ipsative scores in his cross-national comparisons. [i.e., data are standardized within individuals to eliminate response styles]

• Oyserman et al.’s review was based on unadjusted responses to IND and COL measures.

• Hypothesis: The different scoring methods may explain the lack of convergent validity.

Method

• To test the hypothesis, I relied on two large cross-cultural student surveys conducted by Ed Diener and colleagues in 1996 and 2002.

• 1996: 40 nationsIND-COL Measure: Individualism-collectivism scale (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, & Gelfand, 1995)

• 2002: 48 nationsIND-COL Measure: single-item measures

Conventional Individualism

• Hofstede’s factor scores (48 nations)

• Spector’s replication study (24 nations)

• Triandis’s expert ratings (xx nations)

• Schwartz value survey (xx nations)- (Affective Autonomy, Intellectual Autonomy, reversed Conservatism)

Table 1

Convergent validity of previous individualism measures

Hofstede Spector Triandis Schwartz

Hofstede - .86 .92 .92

Spector .80 (16) - .81 .79

Triandis .90 (42) .77 (20) - .44

Schwartz .56 (23) .81 (15) .51 (31) -

Note. Below diagonal = Pairwise deletion of missing nations;

above diagonal = listwise deletion of missing nations (N = 10).

Nation Level Correlations of the ICS – Subscales

- Horizontal Individualism “I do my own thing.”

- Vertical Individualism “Winning is everything.”

- Horizontal Collectivism”“I like working in teams.”

- Vertical Collectivism“I subordinate my own goals to my parents’ wishes.”

Table 2

Correlations between ICS scales (country level, N = 40)

H-IND V-IND H-COL V-COL

H-IND - -.15 .39* .43**

V-IND .09 - .12 .32*

H-COL -.56* -.76** - .80**

V-COL -.46** -.47** .24 -

Note. Below diagonal = standardized; above diagonal =

unstandardized.

• Standardization influences the correlations among ICS scales.

• The next analysis examines how standardization influences the correlations with conventional individualism

Table 3

Correlations between IND-COL scales and Individualism (N =

40)

Raw (r) Standardized (r)

H-IND .18 .64**

V-IND -.72** -.23

H-COL -.30 -.14

V-COL -.36* -.10

* p < .05, ** p < .01

Next we correlated the ICS scales with Oyserman et al.’s effect sizes

IND – Individualism effect sizes

COL – Collectivism effect sizes

IND-COL Difference Score (controls for response styles)

Table 4

Correlations of Oyserman’s IND and COL scores with other

measures of individualism

IND COL IND-

COL

Conventional

IND

.23 (47) -.20 (50) .40** (47)

(N = 38)

H-IND .91** .45** .22

V-IND -.23 .20 -.36*

H-COL .29 .85** -.63**

V-COL .35 .83** -.60**

(N = 38)

H-IND-S .28 -.61** .81**

V-IND-S -.57** -.60** .17

H-COL-S .20 .72** -.57**

V-COL-S .28 .53** -.32

* p < .05, ** p < .01

Unstandardized

Standardized

Conclusion

• Unstandardized ICS scores show convergent validity with Oyserman et al.’s effect sizes based on comparisons of unstandardized measures.

• Standardized Horizontal Individualism shows convergent validity with Conventional Measures of Individualism.

• Standardization produces convergent validity.

Construction Validiation

• Are standardized or unstandardized scores valid indicators of individualism?

Individualism and Wealth

• Previous research showed that wealthier nations are more individualistic.

• I used recent data on Purchasing Power Parity as a measure of wealth.

Table 5

Correlations of individualism measures with wealth

Measure Pairwise Listwise (N =

35)

Conventional

IND

.83** (74) .76**

S-H-IND .70** (37) .69**

H-IND .12 (37) .11

Meta-IND .18 (45) .20

Meta-COL -.21 (48) -.32

Meta-IND-COL .38* (45) .48**

Conclusion

Conventional measures of individualism and recent ipsative measures correlate with wealth.

Measures based on unstandardized IND and COL ratings do not correlate with wealth.

Related Measures

• Human Rights Index

• Corruption

• Quality of Life (Infrastructure, Health Care)

• These measures show the same pattern, which is partly due to the fact that they are also highly correlated with wealth.

Subjective Well-Being (Life-Satisfaction)

• In many nations subjective well-being has been assessed in representative surveys.

• Diener, Diener, and Diener (1995) demonstrated that individualistic nations are happier.

• Surveys of different samples (student, general population) and at different times (1970s, 1980s, 1990s) show convergent validity.

Table 10

Correlation of individualism measures with SWB

Measure Pairwise Listwise (N =

38)

Conventional

IND

.50** (80) .55**

S-H-IND .49** (40) .45**

H-IND .36* (40) .36*

Meta-IND .19 (47) .34*

Meta-COL -.22 (50) -.14

Meta-IND-COL .31* (47) .40*

People in individualistic cultures tend to rely more on their emotional experiences when they judge life-satisfaction.

Suh, Diener, Oishi, & Triandis (1998)

Schimmack, Radhakrishnan, Oishi, Dzokoto, & Ahadi (2002).

We created a composite measure of the correlation between hedonic balance and life satisfaction from three multinational studies (inc. Diener’s 1996, 2002 student surveys).

Table 12

Correlation of individualism measures with use of affect in life-

satisfaction judgments

Measure Pairwise Listwise (N =

37)

Conventional

IND

.48** (65) .48**

S-H-IND .54** (39) .54**

H-IND -.12 (39) -.14

Meta-IND -.11 (44) -.05

Meta-COL -.35* (46) -.35*

Meta-IND-COL .25 (44) .30

Conformity

R. Bond and Smith (1996) conducted a meta-analysis of experimental conformity studies.

They found a negative correlation between conformity and individualism.

We used Bond and Smith’s meta-analysis to reexamine the relation between conformity and different measures of conformity.

Table 13

Correlations of individualism measures with conformity

Pairwise Listwise (N = 6)

Conventional

IND

-.67* (12) -.89*

S-H-IND -.70 (7) -.58

H-IND -.55 (7) -.50

Meta-IND -.58 (8) -.93*

Meta-COL .21 (8) .77

Meta-IND-COL -.39 (8) -.93*

Next we examined whether the results for the ICS scales in the 1996 sample would replicate in the 2002 sample.

The 2002 sample included only 4 items and only 1 item for horizontal individualism.

“I am a unique individual.”

Table 14

Correlations with the horizontal individualism item “I am a

unique individual”

Unstandardized Standardized

Conventional

IND

.27 (42) .53** (42)

S-H-IND .21 (27) .40* (27)

Wealth .37** (48) .53** (48)

Rights -.36* (33) -.64** (33)

Corruption .36* (43) .57** (43)

Quality of Life .36* (42) .65** (42)

SWB .56** (48) .59** (48)

Use of Affect .24 (48) .34* (48)

Conformity -.03 (11) -.12 (11)

Conclusion

In general, even a single item – standardized across only 4 items – shows convergent validity with conventional individualism and the expected correlations with validation criteria.

General Conclusion

Individualism

Fiske Bond Miller

•We demonstrated that Individualism is a highly reliable and valid dimension of cultural differences. Abandoning this core dimension of cross-cultural research would be a huge mistake.

•However, individualism is but one dimension of cultural differences. In the future, cross-cultural psychology needs to deepen the understanding of the causes and consequences of individualism and they need to validate additional dimensions of cultural differences.