The Resurrection of Individualism The miracle

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The Resurrection of IndividualismThe miracle of
Standardization Individualism and
Idiocentricism Relating Cultures to their
People Ulrich Schimmack, Shigehiro Oishi, Ed
Diener Draft    
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• History of Cross-Cultural Psychology
• 1970 - start of JCCP- Triandiss book
  Subjective Culture
• 1980- Handbook of CCP (edited by Triandis)-
  Hofstedes book Cultures Consequences
• 1990- Psychological Review articles by Triandis
  and by Markus and Kitayama

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Individualism-Collectivism One of the most
useful and actively researched constructs to
emerge from cultural social psychology has been
the dimension of individualismcollectivism
(Vandello Cohen, 1999). Perhaps the most
important distinction cross-cultural researchers
make is between individualistic and
collectivistic cultures (Burger, Personality
Textbook).
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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.
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• 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
• ConclusionAt this time, it is impossible to
  tell the extent to which different cultural
  research methods produce the same effects.

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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
individualismcollectivism does not bear much
resemblance to what he and other cultural
psychologists generally have taken individualism,
and especially collectivism, to mean.
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• 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
  (Hofstedes factor scores)
• The correlations for 31 nations are .23 and -.25
  (n.s.).

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• 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.

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A requiem for Individualism Four
(cross-)cultural psychologists wrote commentaries
to Oysermans article and Oyserman et al. wrote a
replied (another 45 precious prime journal
pages)
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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.
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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.
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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
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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 individualismcollectivism
paradigm, I argue for the need to go beyond such
a framework.
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Individualism 1980-2002
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The Miracle
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• Impressive Reliability and Temporal Stability
• Spector and colleagues (inc. Phanikiran
  Radhakrishnan) administered Hofstedes survey in
  23 nations 16 nations had been included in
  Hofstedes seminal study in the 1970s.
• Nation means on IND correlated .80!

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• 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.

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• 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

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• Conventional Individualism
• Hofstedes factor scores (48 nations)
• Spectors replication study (24 nations)
• Triandiss expert ratings (xx nations)
• Schwartz value survey (xx nations)- (Affective
  Autonomy, Intellectual Autonomy, reversed
  Conservatism)

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• Nation Level Correlations of the ICS Subscales
• Horizontal Individualism I do my own thing.
• Vertical Individualism Winning is everything.
• Horizontal CollectivismI like working in
  teams.
• Vertical CollectivismI subordinate my own
  goals to my parents wishes.

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• Standardization influences the correlations
  among ICS scales.
• The next analysis examines how standardization
  influences the correlations with conventional
  individualism

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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)
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Unstandardized
Standardized
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• 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.

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• Construction Validiation
• Are standardized or unstandardized scores valid
  indicators of individualism?

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• 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.

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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.
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• 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.

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• 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.

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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. Dieners 1996, 2002
student surveys).
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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
Smiths meta-analysis to reexamine the relation
between conformity and different measures of
conformity.
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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.
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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.
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General Conclusion
Individualism
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Fiske Bond Miller
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• 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.

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