Page 136 - Cultures and Organizations

I, We, and They 115

is that on average, people in more individualist cultures rate themselves
higher on these facets than people in more collectivist cultures. It may
seem surprising that people in cultures that encourage an independent
self tend to score themselves higher on gregariousness, but it is precisely
when relationships between people are not prescribed by the culture that
the conscious decision to get together becomes more important.
U.S. psychologist David Matsumoto analyzed a large number of stud-
ies of the recognition of emotions in facial expressions. Students classifi ed
the emotions from photos of faces into happiness, surprise, sadness, fear,

disgust, and anger. For fifteen countries from the IBM set, percentages of
observers correctly perceiving happiness were correlated positively with
IDV, and those correctly perceiving sadness were correlated negatively.
Our interpretation is that individualist cultures encourage the showing of
happiness but discourage the sharing of sadness; collectivist cultures do
the opposite. 40
U.S. professor Robert Levine asked his international students to col-
lect data on the pace of life in their hometowns. One measure collected was

walking speed, defined as the stopwatch time it took seventy healthy adults
(of both genders, fi fty-fi fty) to cover a distance of sixty feet in one of two
uncrowded locations in each city, when walking. Of thirty-one countries
covered, twenty-three overlapped with the IBM set. Walking speed turned
out to be strongly correlated with IDV. People in individualist cultures
41
tended to walk faster. We interpret this result as a physical expression of
their self-concept: people in more individualist cultures are more active in
trying to get somewhere.
Powerful information about differences in behavior across countries can
be obtained from consumer surveys. Dutch marketing professor and consul-
tant Marieke de Mooij, comparing fifteen European countries, found many

42

meaningful correlations between consumer behavior data and IDV. Persons
in high-IDV countries were more likely than those in low-IDV countries to

live in detached houses versus apartments or flats. They were more likely
to have a private garden and to own a caravan (mobile home) for leisure.
They more frequently had dogs as pets and especially cats, as measured by
household consumption of pet food. (Cats are more individualistic animals
than dogs!) They were more likely to possess home and life insurance. They
more often engaged in do-it-yourself activities: painting walls and wood-
work, wallpapering, home carpentry, electrical upgrades and repairs, and
plumbing projects. In all these cases IDV explained the country differences