What is it about?
Individualism-collectivism is by far the most prominent concept for understanding cultural differences between modern societies. The country scores published by Hofstede in 1980 place the US and other Anglophone countries at the individualistic scale end, while they have been used to portray Confucianism-influenced countries as collectivistic. However, these scores foster the demonstrably mistaken stereotype that individualism-collectivism is an East vs. West cultural dimension—with individualism indicating selfishness, lack of social order, and unbridled competition, in contrast to altruism and harmony under collectivism. Using more recent and higher-quality data, we demonstrate that these stereotypes are untenable. Individualism-collectivism is not an East-West dimension but rather one distinguishing developed and developing societies regardless of their geography and historical legacies. Instead of the US, the most individualistic cultures in the world are the Nordic countries, while affluent East Asian countries also score high on individualism as their advanced economic development suggests. We also show that individualism should not be conflated with selfishness, anomie or unbridled competition, nor should collectivism be equated with harmony or altruism. If anything, individualist cultures tend to exhibit higher levels of cooperative and prosocial behavior beyond the ingroup.
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Why is it important?
Ideas about culture do not stay in textbooks. When the United States and Japan continue to be treated as fixed reference points for “individualism” and “collectivism,” cultural differences are frozen in time, even though societies have changed profoundly over the past half century. This encourages outdated stereotypes and misinformed expectations in research, education, and practice, from cross-cultural communication to international business and policy. By showing that cultural patterns evolve with social and economic conditions and can be more precisely measured using contemporary survey methods, this study highlights the importance of updating how we understand cultures in a rapidly changing world.
Perspectives
The biases in Hofstede’s popular dimension scores entail deeply entrenched cultural stereotypes, influencing thousands of academic studies and global perceptions of cultural differences. As a scholar who has lived in several Western and Asian cultures, I often felt that our scientific understanding of cultural differences lagged far behind reality. We have been using decades-old data to describe today’s world—this is no longer appropriate. By replacing a demonstrably outdated indicator with a new, empirically validated index, our research aims to set a new standard for this field of research.
Plamen Akaliyski
Lingnan University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Individualism–collectivism: Reconstructing Hofstede’s dimension of cultural differences., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000580.
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