Читать книгу Multicultural Psychology - Jennifer T. Pedrotti - Страница 48

Whether a country is more individualistic in nature versus more collectivistic may make a difference in terms of how the world looks. Individualism, as denoted by Triandis (1995), is a system adhered to by many Western cultural groups that value the individual above the group in most cases. Competition and focus on the self is common, with a high value for independence as a behavioral and personality trait. This system differs sharply from collectivism, which is focused on the group as a whole, and encourages cooperation and dependence. In collectivist cultures, the group is valued above the individual. The United States is probably the best example of an individualist nation with our focus on moving forward as individuals and our culture’s rewarding of jobs that value this ideology (see Figure 3.3).

For example, jobs such as those of stockbrokers, CEOs, and hedge fund managers are focused on competition and personal gain and garner some of the highest salaries in this country. Compare that to more group-focused jobs such as those in the fields of social work, teaching, or nursing, and you find some of the lowest salaries. This is not to say that everyone in the United States has an individualist focus, but the value as a culture is clearly there for those who value this ideology.

Collectivist countries are myriad, as collectivism is a much more common ideology in the world. Often Asian countries such as Japan or China are used as examples for this type of value system. In these countries, a focus on the group often trumps the desires of the individual. Consider many years ago in 1980 when China began to regulate the number of children a couple might be allowed to produce. Many individuals in China may have wanted to have more than one child, but these laws were put into place to decrease population size to protect the resources for the group (Berensen, 2015). At the time many people in the United States were outraged by these laws (Hvistendahl, 2017), but it may be that many in China were as outraged by the lack of care for population overload the United States appeared to have in not adopting a law such as this.

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Figure 3.3 Norms and Individual Differences for Individualistic and Collectivistic Societies

Source: Lopez, Pedrotti, & Snyder (2019, p. 29).

Again, it is likely that not all in China agreed with this policy, especially in light of the fact that it is no longer a national policy, but the culture at the time dictated the most strongly valued worldview. People whose personal value systems do not mesh with their culture’s value system are often called countercultural. An allocentric (or collectivist-oriented) person living in an individualist culture, or an idiocentric (or individualist-oriented) person living in a collectivist culture, may experience some discomfort or lack of value for their views and behaviors (Jung, McCormick, & Gross, 2012; Triandis, 2006). Finally, it is also important to note that racial groups within a country may be more or less countercultural depending on the dominant group. In the United States, for example, White Americans are the majority and dominant in terms of societal power, and the individualist nature of the European cultures their ancestors came from is strong within this cultural group. Asian Americans, however, may retain some of their ancestors’ collectivist values, but as they are a minority group, these values are not given the same cultural weight as the dominant culture’s values.