Dimensions of social functioning:

Individualism-Collectivism &Independence-Interdependence

of the Self Ype H. Poortinga

Tilburg University, Netherlands &

University of Leuven, Belgium

Hofstede (1980) administered over 116,000 questionnaires (in 1968 and in 1972) to IBM employees in 50 different countries and of 66 different nationalities. He found three factors at country level with a small set of items. Splitting one factor he calculated "country scores" by aggregating the individual scores within each country. The four dimensions were the following  1. Power distance: the extent to which there is inequality (a pecking order) between supervisors and subordinates in an organization.2. Uncertainty avoidance: the lack of tolerance for ambiguity, and the need for formal rules.3. Individualism: a concern for oneself as opposed to concern for the collectivity to which one belongs.4. Masculinity: the extent of emphasis on work goals (earnings, advancement) and assertiveness, as opposed to interpersonal goals (friendly atmosphere, getting along with the boss) and nurturance

Individualism and collectivism individualism as a focus on rightsabove duties, a concern for oneself and immediate family, anemphasis on personal autonomy and self-fulfillment, and the basingof one’s identity on one’s personal accomplishments. The core element of collectivism is the assumption that groupsbind and mutually obligate individuals. Most often conceptualised as a single dimension: Concern for oneself versus concern for the group(s) to which one belongs Sometimes seen as two independent dimensions

cont: One conception distinguishes four dimensions- Horizontal Individualism (e.g., "I'd rather depend on myself than on others"),- Vertical Individualism (e.g., "It is important that I do my job better than others"),- Horizontal Collectivism (e.g., "If a coworker gets a prize, I would feel proud), and- Vertical Collectivism (e.g., "It is important that I respect the decisions made by my group") NB Correlation with GNP was substantial in Hofstede data (+.82 )

Problematic issues Are the differences at cultural level or at individual level? I-C cannot be treated anymore as a single dimension Is I-C an index of value differences or a correlate of GNP (such as response styles (tendencies such as social desirability [socially favorable and normatively required answers], acquiescence [agreeing rather than disagreeing with statements] or extremity set [more extreme answers]?  "European Americans were not more individualistic than African Americans, or Latinos, and not less collectivistic than Japanese or Koreans" (Oyserman et al. 2002, p. 3) 

Self in social context If self and personhood are being seen as social constructions differences across cultures can be expected. Well-known is a distinction (reminiscent of I-C) between "independent" and "interdependent" self-construals, characteristic for USA and Japan/Asia respectively (Markus & Kitayama, 1991); also relational self vs separated self (Kagitcibasi)

Cousins, 1989, p. 129) argues: “Lacking contextual cues the TST format – as interpreted from an individualistic perspective – connotes situation-freedom, and lends itself to ego-autonomy. [.…] From a sociometric perspective, however, the question 'Who am I?' standing alone, represents an unnatural sundering of person from social matrix and must therefore be supplemented with context”

cont:  Thus, Cousins freely interprets the differences in frequencies of trait descriptive answers in I-C terms, ignoring that the effects are obtained with a subtle shift in instructions in a rather open task that can be interpreted by respondents in multiple ways. In the meantime, the results with the TST or similar techniques have been inconsistent, both for comparisons including European Americans (Oyserman et al, 2002), and for comparisons involving other cultural contrasts (Watkins et al., 1998; Van den Heuvel & Poortinga, 1999). Moreover, Levine et al. (2003, 2005) have disputed the convergent and the discriminant validity of the TST, as well as of two other instruments, the Singelis Self-Construal Scale and RISC of Cross, Bacon and Morris