Page 257 - Cultures and Organizations

230 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

ent broad conclusions unsupported by data. Manuscripts by British and
American writers present extensive data analysis but shy away from bold
conclusions. The Germans and French tend to reason by deduction, British
and Americans by induction. 69
Scientific disputes sometimes hide cultural assumptions. A famous

example is the discussion between the German physicist Albert Einstein
(1879–1955) and his Danish colleague Niels Bohr (1885–1962) on whether
certain processes inside the atom are governed by laws or random. “I can-
not imagine God playing dice,” Einstein is supposed to have said. Bohr
could; recent research has proved him right, not Einstein. Denmark scores
very low on uncertainty avoidance (rank 74, score 23).
A society’s level of uncertainty avoidance has practical consequences
regarding the ability of people who hold different convictions to be per-
sonal friends. Stories of scientists who separated their ties of friendship

after a scientific disagreement tend to come from high-UAI countries. The
conflict between psychiatrists Sigmund Freud (Austria) and Carl Gustav

Jung (Switzerland) is one example. In weak uncertainty- avoidance coun-
tries, different scientific opinions do not necessarily bar friendships.

Before and during World War II many German and Austrian sci-
entists of Jewish descent or who were otherwise anti-Nazi fl ed their
countries, mostly to Britain and the United States. Examples are Albert
Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Karl Popper, Kurt Lewin, and Theodor Adorno.
This “brain injection” has been highly beneficial to the host countries. The

younger among the refugees have made substantial contributions to their

scientifi c fields in the new country. They brought synergy between the
Middle European taste for theory (rooted in strong uncertainty avoidance)
and the Anglo-American sense of empiricism fostered by weak uncertainty
avoidance.
Some of the refugees experienced scientific culture shock. Former

Frankfurt sociologist Herbert Marcuse, when preaching his critique of
modern society in California, met with what he labeled repressive tolerance.
This is a nonsensical term, because repression and tolerance are mutually

exclusive. However, the term reflects Marcuse’s embarrassment at trying to
provoke—and expecting—heated debate in the German style, but instead
meeting with intellectual tolerance American style.
Marieke de Mooij has pointed out that cultural values can be recog-

nized in both the subjects and the style of literary fiction produced in a