Page 311 - Cultures and Organizations

280 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

after all conceptually defendable, since everything with which it is associ-
ated seems to stem, one way or another, from national differences in wealth
versus poverty. It functions well as a catchall dimension that explains the
differences between rich and poor nations and indicates what cultural and
social changes one might expect after a particular country has achieved
economic development. However, this telescopic view leaves many salient
details unexplained. In particular, it says nothing about the important
question of why some poor nations have such high percentages of very
happy people. 8

Indulgence Versus Restraint as a
Societal Dimension

Intrigued by Inglehart’s analysis of the WVS, Misho performed his own.
He discovered that Inglehart’s well-being versus survival dimension can be
split into two, not only conceptually but also statistically. Items that have
to do with relationships between groups of people or between individuals
and groups (such as agreement that men make better leaders or that a
woman needs children) form the dimension that Misho called universalism
versus exclusionism, discussed in Chapter 4 as a variant of individualism
versus collectivism. Items primarily related to happiness form a separate
9
group and a different dimension. Across more than ninety countries, two
WVS items in particular predicted happiness better than any other survey
variables reported so far.
Misho considered these as the core of a new dimension. This is how
they—and the happiness item—were formulated in the WVS:

1. Happiness: “Taking all things together, would you say you are very

happy, quite happy, not very happy, or not at all happy.” Measured was
the percentage choosing “very happy.”
2. Life control: “Some people feel they have completely free choice over
their lives, while other people feel that what they do has no real effect
on what happens to them. Please use this scale where 1 means ‘none
at all’ and 10 means ‘a great deal’ to indicate how much freedom of
choice and control you feel you have over the way your life turns out.”
Measured were the average national scores reported by the WVS. 10
3. Importance of leisure: “For each of the following, indicate how
important it is in your life: very important, rather important, not very