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What Is Different Is Dangerous 195

another fixed number. The formula was developed such that (1) each of
the three questions would contribute equally to the final index and (2)

index values would range from around 0 for the country with the weakest
uncertainty avoidance to around 100 for the strongest. The latter objective
was not completely attained, because after the formula had been developed,
some more countries were added that produced scores greater than 100.
Table 6.1 shows a new grouping of countries, unlike the ones found
for any of the previous three dimensions. Even within regions we fi nd
large differences, which suggests different causes from those for power
distance and individualism. High scores occur for Latin American, Latin
European, and Mediterranean countries (from 112 for Greece to 67 for
Ecuador). Also high are the scores of Japan and South Korea (92 and 85).
Medium high are the scores of the German-speaking countries Austria,
Germany, and Switzerland (70, 65, and 58). Medium to low are the scores
of all Asian countries other than Japan and Korea (from 69 for Taiwan to
8 for Singapore), for the African countries, and for the Anglo and Nordic
countries plus the Netherlands (from 59 for Finland to 23 for Denmark).
West Germany scored 65 (rank 43–44) and Great Britain 35 (rank 68–69).

This confirms a culture gap between these otherwise similar countries
with regard to the avoidance of uncertainty, as illustrated in the story with
which this chapter opened.

Uncertainty Avoidance and Anxiety

Anxiety is a term taken from psychology and psychiatry that expresses a dif-
4
fuse “state of being uneasy or worried about what may happen.” It should not
be confused with fear, which has an object. We are afraid of something, but
anxiety has no object. The idea that levels of anxiety may differ among coun-

tries goes back to the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), who
as early as 1897 published a study on the phenomenon of suicide. It showed
that suicide rates in different countries and regions were surprisingly stable
from year to year. He used this stability as proof that a highly individual act
such as taking one’s life could neverthe less be influenced by social forces that

differed among countries and remained largely the same over time.
High suicide rates are one, but only one, possible outcome of anxiety in
a society. In the 1970s the results were published of a large study of anxiety-
related phenomena in eighteen developed countries by the Irish psychologist
Richard Lynn. Lynn used data from official health and related statistics and

showed that a number of indicators were correlated across countries: the