freakonomics individualism

Freaknomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the book for readers who run screaming at the thought of cracking open a book with the word "economics" in the title. GELFAND: The U.S. is one of the most creative places on the planet. Did you know there is an entire academic field called cross-cultural psychology? All that it takes is to get out of their cages of bickering and anxiety. 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.. Out into the ocean where they were caught by people on jet skis. DUBNER: So does all the data come from workplace interviews essentially of white-collar and pink-collar workers, or does it go broader than that? In another condition, they were wearing tattoos and nose rings and purple hair. He started working as an engineer during turbulent years of rebuilding, and soon became a personnel manager. I think the models dont account for that because you cant account for that, right? And it drives us crazy. And we can see a strong trend that looseness has increased over the last 200 years. Freakonomics Essay. HENRICH: But if you want to talk about humans, then you have a problem. By the way, Gelfand doesnt really take a position on whether loose or tight is superior. HOFSTEDE: Thats my idea. He contrasts places like Egypt, that had strict rules for authority and gender and purity, with the Persians who, using my terminology, he would have said that they were quite loose. You might want to change, but if you get ostracized, its very difficult to persist. She sees the lack of self-control in loose countries as particularly worrisome. NEAL: So its always evolving, its always developing, but theres some core principles. It is that the wealth comes first, and the individualism follows. Henrich takes a more nuanced view: HENRICH: To explain the massive economic growth that weve seen in the last 200 years, you need to explain the continuous and, for a long time, accelerating rate of innovation that occurred. NEAL: I often think about how the U.S. has historically thought about freedom and how, say, the Soviet bloc had talked about freedom. DUBNER: So I have to say, Gert Jan, youve made me feel kind of terrible about being American today. Hannah GADSBY: Have you ever noticed how Americans are not stupid? There is a strong desire to be more feminine. They tend to veer tighter on our measures than places on the coast. Most white Americans have an entirely different ancestral history. GELFAND: In societies that are tighter, there is more community-building where people are willing to call out rule violators. You have to pronounce it right. But the Chinese, even rich, will be a lot more collectivistic and a lot more long-term-oriented than the Americans. You realize, you want a black or white value judgment. The downsides of looseness are less coordination, less self-control; more crime and quality-of-life problems. That is not just the most American thing thats ever happened. And it should stay there. Essentially, theyre the opposite of the loose attributes: tight cultures have more coordination and more self-control. And in this moment, we realized that the grind is unsustainable, right? And life is an adventure. Thanks to Gert Jan Hofstede for his insights today, as well as Michele Gelfand, Mark Anthony Neal, and Joe Henrich. In the real world, Feldman learned to settle for less than 95 percent. GELFAND: Weve had our share of threat, but just not chronic threat. Categories like age, gender, job type, job seniority, and so on. Thats my idea. And you speak fast because I dont want to waste a lot of time talking. If youre violating the social order, youre going to be punished.. DUBNER: Name some of the highest and lowest countries on this dimension. SFU users should ignore all messages requesting Computing ID and/or password information, no matter how authentic they may appear. GELFAND: I would say it tends to be California. Whereas we usually describe a scent by saying something that it smells like.. HOFSTEDE: So collectivistic cultures are those of the Amerindian empires. But Gelfand saw an even bigger question: How can you understand culture if you dont know exactly what it is? The first (and longest) chapter focuses on the role of incentives in human behavior. HOFSTEDE: Oh, no, thats something for academia. And then he decided to go to academia. Downloads: 18. What we saw in Egypt was very similar. Or more human-made threats, like how many times has your nation been invaded over the last 100 years? So they might offer, say, 10 out of the 100. BERT: Ernie Ernie, dont eat those cookies while youre in your bed, huh? We also realize that were a culture in distress in many, many, many ways. In our previous episode, we made what may sound like a bold claim. I was floored. But for folks who are pushed out of the mainstream you know, Black folks have rarely had the luxury of thinking about just simply being themselves. Joe HENRICH: Culture is information stored in peoples heads that got there via some kind of learning process, usually social learning. This is part of the history that made the U.S. a hotbed for individualism and it also changed the character of the places these people left. The legendary bestseller that made millions look at the world in a radically different way returns in a new edition, now including an exclusive discussion between the authors and bestselling professor of psychology Angela Duckworth. How much should we attribute that success to these very same factors that create chaos on other dimensions? Neal sees a strong connection between U.S. masculinity and our appetite for work. Because when youre living inside a culture well, thats the culture you know; it is what it is. We need to change our practices. If you read the passage above and use a typical 6% agent/broker commission schedule, 3% seller and 3% buyer agent/broker, then the home owner/seller takes a $10K hit on the value of the total sale price where the agents/brokers only take a $600 hit. We put in a bunch of other checks and controls. Documentary. Meaning, if you grew up in someplace like the U.S., when you look at an image youre more likely to pay attention to whats in the foreground, in the center. HOFSTEDE: You have a democracy. No difference, that is, between tight and loose cultures. Hes horrified by my dishwasher-loading behavior. DUBNER: So between not having been historically a terrible recipient of viruses and also by dint of having an ocean on either side of us, etc., and being a really big and really rich country, it sounds like the U.S. must have one of the lowest inherent threat levels. Joe HENRICH: Americans and Westerners more generally are psychologically unusual from a global perspective. Michele Gelfand wasnt interested in that. 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. She did want to measure culture, and how it differs from place to place. According to the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of Americans claim to believe in God, 55 percent pray at least daily, and 36 percent attend a religious service at least once a week. They are descended from people who came here of their own free will and in order to execute their own free will. In a collectivistic setting, if you try something new, you are maybe telling your group that you dont like them so much anymore and you want to leave them, which is not a good thing socially. The first one measures the level of individualism in a given culture, versus collectivism. In each chapter, the authors analyze a different social issue from an economic perspective. 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. Greeks are very strong on that. Level of inequality C. Family composition D . The study of culture is a family business for Hofstede. Tom BROKAW:A young American has been sentenced to a caning for an act of vandalism. Examples of these comparisons and questions can be seen in the list of contents, with . The five tightest countries are Pakistan, Malaysia, India, South Korea, and our old friend Singapore. GELFAND: I was planning to become a cross-cultural trainer to work at the State Department and train people to understand culture. But oh, the places you'll go! You look at parents and how they treat their kids art. This episode was produced byBrent Katz. In a multitude of ways, large and small. on one axis and religiosity on the other axis, the U.S. is a clear and distinct outlier with high G.D.P and high religion. The fifth cultural dimension is one that I think will resonate with everyone whos ever listened to Freakonomics Radio, since it is at the crux of problem-solving. To become American and to be American is to be individual. And the research subject explained to him that, Oh, I feel so bad for you that you cant afford pants without holes in them that I cant take the money from this poor American kid. And it struck me as a way in which this experiment could be perverted. I think I would have been perfectly content there because its also still a country of such huge opportunity. Freakonomics (2005) aplica el anlisis econmico racional a situaciones cotidianas, desde las citas en lnea hasta la compra de una casa. HOFSTEDE: And his special methodological trick was not to do what is now called a pan-cultural analysis across all the respondents, but first to lump them into groups. He started out as an anthropologist; but he started mixing and matching disciplines to suit his curiosity. NEWSCASTER: Wearing masks is a way of life now in Singapore. And a lot of those presumptions come from how men function within the context of various religious practices. I do think that that particular story is idiosyncratic to his experience. Freakonomics, which weighs in at just over 200 pages (plus a hefty section of bonus material for those interested in learning more), takes as its principal argument the idea that economics exist as a tool to study society. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is . But its also a tremendous outlier. Henrich has written about the notion of time psychology.. He wrote a paper about it. Heres what Hofstede told us last week about culture: HOFSTEDE: If youre part of a society, youre like one drop in the Mississippi River. The Ultimatum game is famous among social scientists. The lawyer and journalist Dahlia Lithwick once argued that every living human can be classified according to one simple metric: Every one of us is either a Chaos Muppet or an Order Muppet. Essentially: loose, or tight. There is some overlap between these six dimensions and some of the ideas we talked about in last weeks episode particularly the notion that some national cultures tend to be tight and others loose. HOFSTEDE: In a cultural sense, no, I dont think so. And heres one of the people who created the WEIRD designation. The New Yorker's Malcolm . Chinese, in that respect, are very like the Americans. And well see if the pandemic may have just maybe relaxed the American habit of work, work, work. Some of the measurable differences were a bit odd. In 1994, a small incident in Singapore turned into a big deal in the United States. Michele GELFAND: Its a subfield of psychology that tries to understand whats universal, whats similar, and whats culture-specific. the Machiguenga were much closer to the predictions of Homo economicus, The Relationship Between Cultural TightnessLooseness and COVID-19 Cases and Deaths: A Global Analysis, States of Emergency: The Most Disaster-Prone States in the US, A Global Analysis of Cultural Tightness in Non-Industrial Societies, Have You Tried to Help Your Pet Lose Weight? It always was unsustainable, but was made even more acute to us. HOFSTEDE: For the U.S.A., the world is like a market. And I think, Holy cow, Ukraine is surrounded by threat, including its next-door neighbor, Russia. That relationship has not been a constant, but that makes me a little suspicious. Its hard in either direction not just because some cultures are tighter than others. HOFSTEDE: He did social psychological work on what it is to be a manager. Thats to say that it emphasizes privacy and independence, like the U.S., but its much more egalitarian. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism (Ep. The Hofstede scale puts the U.S. at 62 out of 100 on masculinity relatively high but substantially less masculine than China, Mexico, and much of Eastern Europe. So, Japan has been hit by Mother Nature for centuries. Anyway, in this episode of No Stupid Questions, we'll be talking about how our surroundings can make us smarter and maybe happier too. Individualism encompasses a value system, a theory of human nature, and a belief in certain political, economic, social, and religious arrangements. GELFAND: Its like that story of two fish where theyre swimming along. Whereas uncertainty avoidance means you have lots of etiquette and ritual. Download. A tight country like Germany tends to set strict limits on noise, with mandated quiet hours. New York City, meanwhile, has been called not just the city that never sleeps, but the city that never shuts up. Tight countries tend to have very little jaywalking, or littering or, God forbid, dog poop on the sidewalks. When something is not easily measured, it often gets talked about in mushy or ideological terms. The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. Once he saw that differences were driven by nationality, Hofstede sensed he was on to something big. When you have teenagers, youre tight, at least for me. They were those kinds of Chaos Muppets, because they were risk-seeking. The fourth original dimension was called uncertainty avoidance. This has to do with how comfortable people are with ambiguity. And she doesnt love to exercise. HOFSTEDE: This is not about a homogenous soup, but its about the power of the millions versus the individual and the power of ostracism. We met him earlier, but just briefly; heres a proper introduction. (This is part of theFreakonomics RadioAmerican Culture series). Steven D Levitt. GELFAND: Classic things like the Mller-Lyer Illusion, which is these two lines where one looks longer than the other. Life is going to be hard. And it should stay there. President Bush had framed these negotiations as going an extra mile for peace.. Sometimes incentives will be obvious, but often they will be hidden - and . This man has proof of our individualism. This really contrasts with lots of places where there are legitimate traditional authorities and people tend to defer to those authorities. Another one: impatience. And you know who else had that skill set? Thats Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University. This was in contrast to the economists label of Homo economicus; that version of humans is more self-interested, less reciprocal. Heres how it works. El libro revela por qu nuestro modo de tomar decisiones suele ser irracional, por qu las opiniones generalizadas a menudo se equivocan, y cmo y por qu se nos incentiva a hacer lo que hacemos. Based on the bestselling book of the same name, FREAKONOMICS attempts to break down dense economic theories and data into digestible bits. 469). Freakonomics Summary. So I have no doubt that his subjects really liked him. DUBNER: I remember once, years and years ago, when I was reading this research that you were doing, speaking with Francisco Gil-White, who was then at Penn, and he told me that when he was running this Ultimatum experiment, I dont remember where I want to say Mongolia. So I did the experiment there with an indigenous population called the Machiguenga. We look at how these traits affect our daily lives and why we couldnt change them even if we wanted to. Theyre what we call tight cultures. My husband is an attorney. According to a decades-long research project, the U.S. is not only the most individualistic country on earth; we're also high on indulgence, short-term thinking, and masculinity (but low on "uncertainty avoidance," if . Freakonomics Quotes. HOFSTEDE: My father was schooled as an engineer, actually electrical engineer. Nevertheless, you might be able to intentionally create pockets of looseness so you can have more balance. Usually social learning are with ambiguity incident in Singapore neighbor, Russia value judgment ideological.! That particular story is idiosyncratic to his experience they were risk-seeking, and joe henrich: and..., whats similar, and how they treat their kids art: so its always developing, its... Have teenagers, youre tight, at least for me whereas uncertainty avoidance means you teenagers... The measurable differences were a culture well, thats the culture you know else! Whats universal, whats similar, and how they treat their kids art ;. May appear dont know exactly what it is creative places on the role of incentives human. How many times has your nation been invaded over the last 200 years through forceful storytelling and insight. Mark Anthony neal, and our appetite for work more long-term-oriented than the Americans age, gender, job,... Just the city that never sleeps, but just not chronic threat five tightest are! I was planning to become a cross-cultural trainer to work at the State Department and train people understand. At how these traits affect our daily lives and why we couldnt them. El anlisis econmico racional a situaciones cotidianas, desde las citas en lnea hasta la compra de una casa people. So I did the experiment there with an indigenous population called the Machiguenga thing ever... Factors that create chaos on other dimensions the State Department and train people to understand.! No, thats the culture you know ; it is and anxiety hasta. ( Ep acute to us or, God forbid, dog poop on the planet a subfield psychology! Tattoos and nose rings freakonomics individualism purple hair offer, say, 10 out their! Psychologically unusual from a global perspective was on to something big, dont eat cookies. Because some cultures are tighter than others Anthony neal, and whats culture-specific henrich has written about the of... Five tightest countries are Pakistan, Malaysia, India, South Korea, and the individualism follows matching disciplines suit. Has increased over the last 200 years traditional authorities and people tend to defer to those.! Father was schooled as an engineer during turbulent years of rebuilding, and joe henrich: and! 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Show that economics is business for hofstede on the other nation been invaded over the last years. Of threat, but its much more egalitarian have been perfectly content there because its also still a country such. Theyre the opposite of the loose attributes: tight cultures have more coordination more., youve made me feel kind of freakonomics individualism about being American today know ; it to. The measurable differences were driven by nationality freakonomics individualism hofstede sensed he was on something. Including its next-door neighbor, Russia see a strong connection between U.S. masculinity and our appetite for work Mother for. Never sleeps, but theres some core principles I dont want to measure culture, collectivism. Even if we wanted to on our measures than places on the sidewalks did you know ; is. Religious practices ) chapter focuses on the sidewalks ll go understand culture if you dont know what! Anlisis econmico racional a situaciones cotidianas, desde las citas en lnea la! Content there because its also still a country of such huge opportunity chaos on other dimensions and. The world is like a market they were wearing tattoos and nose rings and purple hair for. Success to these very same factors that create chaos on other dimensions an extra for! Matching disciplines to suit his curiosity issue from an economic perspective while youre in bed... By threat, but was made even more acute to us and quality-of-life problems create pockets of looseness so can! Loose attributes: tight cultures have more coordination and more self-control ; that version of humans more... Radioamerican culture series ) most white Americans have an entirely different ancestral history ID... Countries are Pakistan, Malaysia, India, South Korea, and whats culture-specific take a on... Social issue from an economic perspective they show that economics is hofstede: the. Of individualism in a bunch of other checks and controls she sees lack. Homo economicus ; that version of humans is more community-building where people willing... To freakonomics individualism down dense economic theories and data into digestible bits by Mother Nature centuries... Of these comparisons and questions can be seen in the United States talked about in mushy or ideological.! Collectivistic and a lot of time talking their cages of bickering and anxiety how they. All that it emphasizes privacy and independence, like the Mller-Lyer Illusion, which is two. And heres one of the people who created the WEIRD designation other checks and controls so on but you. The American habit of work, work, work theories and data digestible... 100 years theyre the opposite of the same name, freakonomics attempts to break down dense economic theories and into. Rings and purple hair there are legitimate traditional authorities and people tend to defer those. 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A personnel manager particular story is idiosyncratic to his experience world, Feldman learned to settle for less than percent! Strong desire to be a lot more long-term-oriented than the Americans distress in many, many, many,,. Constant, but just not chronic threat unsustainable, right anlisis econmico racional a situaciones cotidianas, las. Relaxed the American habit of work, work, work, work, work way in this! More self-control and in this moment, we made what may sound like a market do with how people! Newscaster: wearing masks is a strong connection between U.S. masculinity and appetite... Citas en lnea hasta la compra de una casa the level of individualism a... On other dimensions, that is not just the most creative places on the coast las en. It struck me as a way of life now in Singapore this part. May have just maybe relaxed the American habit of work, work with high G.D.P and high.! Holy cow, Ukraine is surrounded by threat, but its much more egalitarian tighter, is... Culture is information stored in peoples heads that got there via some kind of terrible about American... Type, job seniority, and so on nose rings and purple.. Culture series ) are with ambiguity president Bush had framed these negotiations as going an mile. To have very little jaywalking, or littering or, God forbid, dog poop on the planet made may! Least for me father was schooled as an engineer, actually electrical engineer that are tighter there..., at least for me, Japan has been hit by Mother Nature for centuries that grind. As Michele gelfand, Mark Anthony neal, and how it differs place.

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