Page 137 - Cultures and Organizations

116 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

better than national wealth. They all suggest a lifestyle in which the person
tries to be self-supporting and not dependent on others.
In matters of information, persons in high-IDV countries read more
books, and they were more likely to own a personal computer and a tele-
phone with voice mail. High-IDV country residents more often rated TV
advertising useful for information about new products. They relied more
on media and less on their social networks.
There is no indication that inhabitants of countries with individual-
ist cultures are healthier or unhealthier than those from countries with
collectivist ones, but the fact that people in high-IDV cultures are more
focused on the self is visible in a greater concern for their own health than
is found in low-IDV cultures. If we limit our analysis to the higher- income
countries, where full medical provisions can be assumed to be available,
people in countries with a more individualist culture spend a larger share
of their private income on their health. Governments of the same countries
also spend a larger share of public budgets on health care. 43
Individualist and collectivist cultures deal differently with disability. A
survey among Australian health-care workers showed different reactions to
becoming disabled among the Anglo, Arabic-speaking, Chinese, German-
speaking, Greek, and Italian immigrant communities. In the individual-
ist communities (Anglo and German), people with disabilities tended to
remain cheerful and optimistic, to resent dependency and being helped, and
to plan for a future life as normal as possible. In the collectivist communities
(Greek, Chinese, Arabic), there would be more expression of grief, shame,
and pessimism; family members would be asked for advice and assistance,
and they would make the main decisions about the person’s future. The
Italians tended to be in the middle; northern Italy is more individualist, but
a large share of Italian immigrants in Australia are from the collectivist

southern region. Another study described the answers of the same panel of
health-care workers to questions about the way the different groups dealt
with children with disabilities. Again in the individualist communities, the
dominant philosophy was to treat these children as much as possible like
other children, letting them participate in all activities when this was feasi-
ble. In the collectivist communities, the disability would be seen as a shame
on the family and a stigma on its members—especially if the child was a
son—and the child would more often be kept out of sight. 44
Table 4.3 summarizes the key differences between collectivist and
individualist societies from this section.