Page 323 - Cultures and Organizations

288 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

Indulgence Versus Restraint and Subjective
Well-Being in Other Cross-National Studies

A team of researchers led by Peter Kuppens, from Belgium, studied what
they referred to as recalled frequency of emotional experience (or how well
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people remember positive and negative feelings). Their sample consisted
of 9,300 individuals from forty-eight nations. Two nation-level dimensions
emerged from the study, labeled Component 1 (positive affect) and Compo-
nent 2 (negative affect). Participants from societies with higher scores on
Component 1 were more likely to recall positive emotions, whereas those
who were higher on Component 2 remembered more negative emotions.
The two components were unrelated.
Component 1, which measures the frequency of positive feelings, is
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strongly correlated with our IVR. People from more indulgent societies
are more likely to remember positive emotions.
A similar large-scale study was reported by U.S. researchers Ulrich
Schimmack, Shigeiro Oishi, and Ed Diener. They asked 6,780 college stu-
dents from forty countries how often they had experienced pleasant and
unpleasant emotions in the previous month. The reported mean frequency of
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pleasant emotions is positively correlated with indulgence. Students in more
indulgent societies reported more often experiencing positive emotions.
IVR did not relate to LTO-CVS, but Michael Bond’s Chinese Value
Survey reported another dimension, labeled moral discipline; in Chapter
3 we found it to correlate with power distance. Its two poles were “moral
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restraint” versus “lack of a strongly disciplined stance.” The items that
defined the positive pole of this dimension were “moderation,” “keeping

oneself disinterested and pure,” and “having few desires.” As these items
are easy to associate with restraint, one would expect a negative corre-
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lation with indulgence. Indeed, such a correlation exists. Societies that

score higher on indulgence have lower scores on moral discipline. Their
members are less likely to value moderation and to have few desires.
With another group of associates, Bond later studied what he called
social axioms in the general beliefs of 7,672 students from forty-one societ-
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ies. The researchers obtained two cultural dimensions, one of which they
labeled societal cynicism. It implies agreement with statements such as “To
care about societal affairs only brings trouble to yourself,” “Kindhearted