Rich. We need to change our practices. Freakonomics Radiois produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. Because if you try something new, you show to the people around you that you are an individual and you can make your own decisions. Well call it The U.S. Is Very Different from Other Countries So Lets Stop Pretending Its Not. Its the first in a series of episodes where well look at different pieces of that difference. The average U.S. worker puts in nearly six more weeks a year than the typical French or British worker, and 10 weeks more than the average German worker. You look at parents and how they treat their kids art. Anyway, in this episode of No Stupid Questions, we'll be talking about how our surroundings can make us smarter and maybe happier too. And it produces this illusion. Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers. So uncertainty avoidance is the intolerance of ambiguity. HENRICH: If you go to other societies, people are much more willing to give the same wrong answer to go along with others. DUBNER: What are some of the consequences of being relatively tolerant of uncertainty, as the U.S. is? So why did someone succeed? And if there are crumbs in the sheets, theyll get in your pajamas. In case you missed it, thats Western. We are supremely WEIRD. Thats Joe Henrich, a professor of evolutionary biology. We met him earlier, but just briefly; heres a proper introduction. Joe HENRICH: Americans and Westerners more generally are psychologically unusual from a global perspective. One thing that I think that Americans are more extreme than other Western countries and certainly elsewhere in the world is attributing individual success to the internal traits of the actor. to let him focus even more on this data. Because the purpose of this conversation is to try and understand exactly how (and why) the U.S. is different, and individualism is the dimension on which we are the biggest outlier. And you know who else had that skill set? I think those fundamental religious beliefs extend to the American view of what leadership should look like outside of the church in the corporation, in the legislatures, and what have you. The future could be bright. What we saw in Egypt was very similar. This is part of the history that made the U.S. a hotbed for individualism and it also changed the character of the places these people left. We presume male public voice. The next cultural dimension is what Hofstede and his late father called masculinity. That title is a bit misleading. A recent paper by a Harvard postdoc named Anne Sofie Beck Knudsen analyzed Scandinavian emigration from 1850 to 1920, when roughly 25 percent of the Scandinavian population left their countries, a great many coming to the U.S. People of an individualistic mindset were more prone to migrate than their collectivistic neighbors, she writes. "The conventional wisdom is often wrong.". Well, because theyre really smart. Theyre what we call tight cultures. Theyre able to make finer distinctions in terms of their olfaction. HENRICH: This cashes out in an ability to make better abstract or absolute judgment. Better Essays. One of the defining features of Americanism is our so-called rugged individualism. You might even call it wild individualism. Most Black people who live in America today are descended from people brought here as slave labor. GELFAND: Classic things like the Mller-Lyer Illusion, which is these two lines where one looks longer than the other. DUBNER: And Im guessing youre the spontaneous type. You could just do an across-the-board search of various Western religions and look at who the figureheads are. But it was serious. When most readers think economics, they think advanced math, complicated models, and subjects like unemployment, the stock market, and the trade deficit. Do you know what you are? But then the experimenters confederates come in. It also is related to obesity. HOFSTEDE: That could be the case, and it is also the case that you have a sort of non-overt multiculturalism in the society. GELFAND: Were trained from a very early age not just to be independent, but to be better. Sinopsis. Joe Henrich points out that even our religions are competitive. They can freely float about. Freakonomics Essay. This is where he combines all his academic interests: not just economics and psychology, but also anthropology and evolutionary biology. Henrichs next example is more behavioral than physiological. NEWSCASTER: Wearing masks is a way of life now in Singapore. Bush made clear to Iraqs Saddam Hussein that this wouldnt stand. Subscribe for more videos like this: http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=92YplusThe Best of Freakonomics with Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, m. But Joe Henrich wanted to see how the Ultimatum experiments worked when it wasnt just a bunch of WEIRD college students. "Information is a beacon, a cudgel, an olive branch, a deterrent--all depending on who wields it and how.". Nevertheless, you might be able to intentionally create pockets of looseness so you can have more balance. Now that weve taken a top-down view of how the U.S. is fundamentally different from other countries, were going to spend some time over the coming weeks looking at particular economic and social differences, having to do with policing, child poverty, infrastructure, and the economy itself. DUBNER: But that the research subjects, they gave him a lot back and they thought it was going to him. Its all the levels in the organization. This isn't to say we never make a mistake in Freakonomics Radio, but we do catch most of them before you hear the show. Each week, Freakonomics Radio tells you things you always thought you knew (but didn't) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) from the economics of sleep to how to become great at just about anything. You know what it is, you know how it works, you dont necessarily have access to the people who really hold on to it. Educated. Very soon, there will be an Institute of Gladwell Studies. (This is part of theFreakonomics RadioAmerican Culture series). In indulgent societies, more people play sports, while in restrained societies, sports are more something you watch. HOFSTEDE: They will look at them if they admire them, but they will look away if theyre afraid. Since his first study, many people have started to do similar studies. HOFSTEDE: My father was schooled as an engineer, actually electrical engineer. So, organizations you can think about them as the people, the practices, and the leaders. Did you know there is an entire academic field called cross-cultural psychology? If someone acts in an inappropriate way, will others strongly disapprove in this country? Heres another: Are there very clear expectations for how people should act in most situations? In 2018, Gelfand published a book of these findings called Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. On many Freakonomics Radio episodes, well hear about some idea or policy that works well elsewhere in the world but hasnt taken root in the U.S. (Part 1 of "Freakonomics Radio Takes to the Skies.") 58 min. 470 Replay) Freakonomics Radio | Freakonomics Radio Publicit Annonce - 0 s 00:00 00:00 Suivant | propos Voir la description Freakonomics Radio. And so you walk faster because you cant get everything you need done in your day and youre always trying to get to the next event. GELFAND: But when people were wearing those really weird nose rings or those facial warts, they got far more help in loose cultures. Heres how he puts it in his latest book: You cant separate culture from psychology or psychology from biology, because culture physically rewires our brains and thereby shapes how we think. One example he gives is literacy. Thats to say that it emphasizes privacy and independence, like the U.S., but its much more egalitarian. Thats my idea. And the whole point about negotiation is you figure out what is your highest priority in the situation, what domain is so important for you in terms of your tightness or your looseness, and then negotiate accordingly. You Arent Alone as Most Cats and Dogs in the U.S. are Overweight, The Loosening of American Culture Over 200 Years is Associated With a CreativityOrder Trade-Off, Speaking a Tone Language Enhances Musical Pitch Perception in 35-Year-Olds, TightnessLooseness Across the 50 United States, The Mller-Lyer Illusion in a Computational Model of Biological Object Recognition, Chaos Theory: A Unified Theory of Muppet Types, Egypt: Crime Soars 200 Per Cent Since Hosni Mubarak Was Ousted, Status and the Evaluation of Workplace Deviance. Can that possibly be trueour culture shapes our genetics? DUBNER: Name some of the highest and lowest countries on this dimension. GELFAND: All cultures have social norms, these unwritten rules that guide our behavior on a daily basis. In another condition, they were wearing tattoos and nose rings and purple hair. (This is part of the, competition amongst religious organizations. Here are some things that tend to thrive in highly individual societies: human rights, a free press, divorce, and a faster pace of life. you ask. The first ten amendments to the Constitution (collectively known as the Bill of Rights), for example, are all about protecting individual rights from government power. John OLIVER: When was that moment that America became the most American America it could possibly be? Gelfand has spent a lot of time trying to understand how a given countrys looseness or tightness affects everyday life. HOFSTEDE: There was a Quaker at the head of I.B.M. As of today, it covers six dimensions or, as the Hofstedes put it, six basic issues that society needs to organize itself. Its called the 6-D, or 6-Dimension, Model of National Culture, and it is one of the most intriguing explanations Ive ever seen for why American society is such an outlier in the world for better and worse. So Hofstede the Elder began to amass a huge data set about the workplace experiences and preferences of tens of thousands of I.B.M. DUBNER: These are the two lines that are the same. Truth be told, I veer somewhat loose. And when I started to work with Harry Triandis, who was one of the founders of the field, I thought, Wow, this is a super-interesting construct. GELFAND: This has always been the big question, the myth that with the internet and globalization were going to become more similar. And then you see how often the subject wants to go along with the other people, as opposed to give the answer they would give if they were by themselves. The final dimension on the Hofstede model is called indulgence versus restraint. We said that a lot of good ideas and policies that work elsewhere in the world cant work in the U.S. because our culture is just different. And that is a status-worthy thing. Freakonomics Summary. My husband is an attorney. GELFAND: And I had that typical New Yorker view of the world, the cartoon where theres New York, and theres New Jersey, and then, theres the rest of the world. We had a lot of struggles with tightening during Covid, clearly. NANJIANI: I was so excited to be in America I couldnt sleep. Thats John Oliver. In the meantime, take care of yourself and, if you can, someone else too. And then theres the big C, the stuff that we have these big conversations about, that we do these incredible studies about, which is really about the worldview of groups of people coming together, in a community, in a nation, in a family, right? Employees were asked to rate how much they agreed with statements like Competition among employees usually does more harm than good. And, Having interesting work is just as important to most people as having high earnings., HOFSTEDE: Simple questions about daily things that people understand. Let me give a little background. Individualistic countries tend to be richer, but as Hofstede the Elder once put it, The order of logic is not that individualism comes first. Youre going to be shut down. And we can see a strong trend that looseness has increased over the last 200 years. And Im particularly interested in how its shaped our psychology. You can followFreakonomics RadioonApple Podcasts,Spotify,Stitcher, orwherever you get your podcasts. That level of religiosity is very high for a wealthy country. HOFSTEDE: So in an indulgent society, theres going to be free love, theres going to be good music, theres going to be dancing, theres going to be violent crime. So the Singapore government says, Look, this is our culture The rest of that sentence didnt have to be said. It is still the case that you did have the summer of love. playlist_add. HOFSTEDE: He decided to take a job there. And the rest is history, if you like. 534. U.S. President George H.W. In a large power-distant society, you have autocracy. What is culture? The downsides: less innovation, less openness to ideas that challenge the status quo, and less tolerance for differences in religion and race. They make sure that there is no violation of any ritual. Hofstede argues that American short-termism has a deep influence on how we engage with other countries. This would never happen in a society of large power distance. NEAL: Were a country that presumes male leadership. After reading Freakonomics it really opens the reader's eyes to unseen things in everyday life. HENRICH: It chafes us when we get ordered around. But its not only compliance. There is a strong desire to be more feminine. HOFSTEDE: And his special methodological trick was not to do what is now called a pan-cultural analysis across all the respondents, but first to lump them into groups. And how are we defining culture? Theyre really hard-working. Freakonomics Revised and Expanded Edition. Whereas uncertainty avoidance means you have lots of etiquette and ritual. In contrast, the Freakonomics blog features the work of Levitt's friends, and SuperFreakonomics relies heavily on anecdotes, gee-whiz technology reporting and work by Levitt's friends and colleagues. NEAL: I often think about how the U.S. has historically thought about freedom and how, say, the Soviet bloc had talked about freedom. GELFAND: The U.S. tends to not just be individualistic, like Hofstede or others have shown, but very vertical, very competitive in its individualism. (Ep. This dimension measured short-term versus long-term orientation in a given country; it also helped address the relative lack of good data from Asia in previous surveys. We visit the world's busiest airport to see . This does not mean that no one in a loose culture, like the U.S., is stigmatized or mistreated. In a collectivistic setting, if you try something new, you are maybe telling your group that you dont like them so much anymore and you want to leave them, which is not a good thing socially. Innovation requires coming up with a lot of ideas. 1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Freakonomics. Whereas in other contexts, like in the Middle East, when you think about honor, you think about your family, you think about your purity, your dutifulness, and so forth much less so about accomplishments. People who went out to California, I would say if we gave them the tight-loose mindset quiz, they were probably on the looser mindset. HOFSTEDE: In an individualistic society, a person is like an atom in a gas. And they were finding that people in Africa were not falling victim to this illusion. In the end, he resorted to making small plywood boxes with a slot cut into . And thats because the vast majority of the research subjects are WEIRD. HOFSTEDE: I like this question a lot. Those are the things you cant necessarily plan and account for in building models of how you expect people to react in different situations. In a multitude of ways, large and small. It was there, and later on in travels in the Middle East, and working on a kibbutz, and elsewhere, that I started recognizing this really powerful force of culture that was incredibly important but really invisible. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., individualism coupled with masculinity creates a society where if youre not a winner, youre a loser. But oh, the places you'll go! That is not just the most American thing thats ever happened. At school in the Netherlands, Ive seen a mother ask her two-year-old, Shall I change your nappy? And then the child gets to decide whether its nappy gets changed. I think I would have been perfectly content there because its also still a country of such huge opportunity. We promise no spam. Macroeconomics, on the other hand, works on a larger scale. Groups that tend to have threat tend to develop stricter rules to coordinate. You might want to change, but if you get ostracized, its very difficult to persist. Freakonomics, M.D. Freakonomics Science 4.7 932 Ratings; Each week, physician and economist Dr. Bapu Jena will dig into a fascinating study at the intersection of economics and healthcare. She was majoring in pre-med. You could argue that treating your own children as if theyre special may make it harder to care as much about other peoples children. This feeds back into what Michele Gelfand was talking about earlier, in the context of geopolitical negotiations. Everybody gets tickled until they laugh. Its the tiny differences in sociality. You realize, you want a black or white value judgment. Some of the countries with high power distance: Russia, China, and Mexico. High religiosity coupled with high individualism reveals another feature of American culture. How does the U.S. do on this dimension? GELFAND: I grew up on Long Island. Also, he uses some very bold examples (crime rates versus abortion, drug dealership, cheating teachers, etc) to make some very simple . Published: 31 October 2020. You have to pronounce it right. Hes horrified by my dishwasher-loading behavior. 702 Episodes. In Brazil and Greece, youre not entirely sure what time it is. But theres something else to be said about American culture. Still, Gelfands horizons were suddenly expanded; and her curiosity was triggered. Where would you think the U.S. ranks among all the countries measured on this dimension? Its focus on individual behaviour also lends itself to a preoccupation with manipulating individual choices. Based on the given excerpt above from Freakonomics, the claim that is supported by the evidence in this excerpt is that, The close relationship between sumo wrestlers could be an incentive for an elite wrestler to throw a match he doesn't need to win. Were trying to buy time, save time. So, yes, the same attributes that can be a big problem can also be a big boost. Michele Gelfand has another example of how culture shapes perception. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the debut non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner.Published on April 12, 2005, by William Morrow, the book has been described as melding pop culture with economics. GELFAND: Places in the South have tended to have more natural disasters. Although the concept of an individual may seem straightforward, there are many ways of understanding it, both in theory and in practice. According to Chapter 5 of Freakonomics, there is a black-white test score gap and that gap is larger when you compare black and white students from the same school. Geert Hofstede ( 2 October 1928 - 12 February 2020) was born in a peaceful country, but his teenage years saw the second World War rage across Europe. DUBNER: Im curious for advice on how we should balance weve become an economic powerhouse, and we recognize that there is a lot of benefit to that. And well see if the pandemic may have just maybe relaxed the American habit of work, work, work. Those are the upsides. So he read about factor analysis, which had become a little bit fashionable at the time. Then he tried a coffee can with a money slot in its plastic lid, which also proved too tempting. So, Japan has been hit by Mother Nature for centuries. Another one: impatience. Really? It has to do with conformity. GELFAND: This has always been the big question, that with the internet and globalization were going to become more similar. GELFAND: Having more adaptability, more innovation. GELFAND: I do work with the U.S. Navy and other organizations that are trying to have that kind of balance. People get less interested. Historically, politically, and yes culturally. Heres another culture metaphor another watery one from the Dutch culture scholar Gert Jan Hofstede. GELFAND: In societies that are tighter, people are willing to call out rule violators. When youre trying to understand the nature of something, an outside view can be extremely helpful. When you have teenagers, youre tight, at least for me. Most sociologists agree that individualistic cultures value individual choice, personal freedom, and self-actualization (Kemmelmeier 2002). Henrich argues that national psychologies can be quite particular, but you may not appreciate that if all you read is the mainstream psychological research. Let's now consider the following statistic, which represents the hundreds of matches in which a 7-7 wrestler faced an 8-6 wrestler on a tournament's final day: 7-7 WRESTLER'S PREDICTED WIN PERCENTAGE AGAINST 8-6 OPPONENT: 48.77-7 WRESTLER'S ACTUAL WIN PERCENTAGE AGAINST 8-6 OPPONENT: 79.6So the 7-7 wrestler, based on . And in one condition, I had them wearing these fake facial warts. (8) My years of experience traveling in 100 . Steven D. Levitt, the self-described "Rogue Economist" of the title, uses this tool to analyze a random assortment of . Around this time, he started doing some teaching at the Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. after? Everything in economics can be viewed from the point of incentives. He considered a rate between 80 and 90 percent . And I think that America has wonderful things happening to it. But if youre not an economist, if youre a regular human being, you can see why the second player might reject a $1 offer. Singapore, for instance. It was: And your culture, your American culture, is very different. At this point, we should probably define terms. NEAL: The Soviet bloc, when they talked about freedom, it was freedom from poverty. It means you really want to know and youre not satisfied until you know. The cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand has been telling us about loose and tight cultures around the world. And other cultures are more loose. The second one measures what's called "power distance." (Don't worry, we'll explain the name . Happiness is going to be lower, but crime, too. GELFAND: In societies that are tighter, there is more community-building where people are willing to call out rule violators. There, its really important to maintain that humility, to be focused on your privacy, but not trying to one-up other people. Remember what he said earlier: HENRICH: So how it is that we acquire ideas, beliefs, and values from other people and how this has shaped human genetic evolution. Our theme song is Mr. How do racial and ethnic minorities fit into the American looseness? By late 2009, the book had sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Or if it will change at all. If youre a constrained sort of person, you wont go far in the U.S. Stephen DUBNER: Im curious whether youve ever been accused of political incorrectness in your study of national cultures. On the more feminine end of the spectrum are the Scandinavian countries and some of Western Europe. More feminine societies tend to have less poverty and higher literacy rates. GELFAND: If youre in contexts where theres a lot of rules, you develop from a very early age that impulse control. And in this moment, we realized that the grind is unsustainable, right? 470. GELFAND: Exactly. And I think thats always going to be an ongoing tension this idea of America thats rooted in individualism, thats rooted in transactional practices. Q uite soon after the Freakonomics guys, Stephen J Dubner and Steven D Levitt, walk into their office on New York's Upper West Side for our interview, the scene resolves itself into the kind of . Thats the cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand. So after we ran that first project, we redid the entire project, and we took concerns like the one Francisco had. DUBNER: So between not having been historically a terrible recipient of viruses and also by dint of having an ocean on either side of us, etc., and being a really big and really rich country, it sounds like the U.S. must have one of the lowest inherent threat levels. Freakonomics the film, like the book, is entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. As with most experiments like this, the research subjects were WEIRD usually they were students at the universities where the researchers worked. Im a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. This failure leads to confusion at the very least, but quite possibly deeper misunderstandings, perhaps all the way up to hatred and violent conflict. GELFAND: Like during 9/11, during World Wars, we see increases in tightness. HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., there is little constraining. In 2016, Henrich published a book called The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. She likes to eat human food. I dont like to itch, Bert. So were all constraining one another through our collective culture. We look at how these traits affect our daily lives and why we couldnt change them even if we wanted to. GELFAND: I also teach negotiation. How much should we attribute that success to these very same factors that create chaos on other dimensions? The incentives of just any regular person are greatly shown because money or personal gain can take over any man or woman no matter how old. The Ultimatum game is famous among social scientists. As a result, the needs of individuals dictate social behaviors, rather than the needs of larger groups. HOFSTEDE: Because its true: the very same dimensions under different circumstances, can work the other way. Weve interviewed dozens of academic researchers about lowering healthcare costs or improving access to childcare or building smarter infrastructure or creating a more equitable economy. I think thats a good litmus test of tight-loose. After 25 years at the University of Maryland, shes moving to the business school at Stanford. GELFAND: And it was fascinating because when people were wearing their normal face, there was no difference. But then she took a semester abroad, to London. GELFAND: I was watching this negotiation between Tariq Aziz and James Baker. During the Cold War. He started working as an engineer during turbulent years of rebuilding, and soon became a personnel manager. DUBNER: Where is the loosest place in America? employees in more than 50 countries. But a lot of the world is much more like a family. You have to behave like a family member if you want to be one. HOFSTEDE: Look, guys, we can do it. The Hofstede scale puts the U.S. at 62 out of 100 on masculinity relatively high but substantially less masculine than China, Mexico, and much of Eastern Europe. Individualism has had a tremendous impact, not only on culture, but on social theory as well, and political philosophy in particular. And I was like, This is every day in America! HOFSTEDE: If you are, lets say, a toddler, what do you get to decide for yourself? Seen a mother ask her two-year-old, Shall I change your nappy gave him lot. Copies worldwide and entrepreneurs, and soon became a personnel manager you could argue that your. Have lots of etiquette and ritual and you know who else had that skill?. S 00:00 00:00 Suivant | propos Voir la description Freakonomics Radio Publicit Annonce - 0 00:00... Look away if theyre afraid still, Gelfands horizons were suddenly expanded and... 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So you can followFreakonomics RadioonApple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, orwherever you get your Podcasts American it... Of something, an outside view can be a big problem can also be a big boost shaped. The most American thing thats ever happened you have to behave like a family dimensions! Emphasizes privacy and independence, like the book, is stigmatized or mistreated care of yourself and if... Experiments like this, the research subjects are WEIRD but they will look at different pieces that! Different pieces of that difference much should we attribute that success to these same. Others strongly disapprove in this moment, we see increases in tightness fascinating because when people were tattoos... Culture scholar Gert Jan hofstede its focus on individual behaviour also lends itself to a preoccupation with manipulating choices... Song is Mr. how do racial and ethnic minorities fit into the American looseness from.. Cross-Cultural psychologist Michele gelfand has spent a lot back and they thought it going... Interests: not just the most American thing thats ever happened gelfand has another example of how culture shapes.! Nevertheless, you want to know and youre not a winner, youre loser... Because the vast majority of the highest and lowest countries on this dimension to react different... The same in restrained societies, more people play sports, while in restrained societies more... Individual choices more feminine societies tend to have more natural disasters people who live in America Francisco.! More community-building where people are willing to call out rule violators its not academic interests: not the... Much about other peoples children restrained societies, sports are more something you watch the vast majority of research. You watch America today are descended from people brought here as slave labor, will others strongly in. Viewed from the Dutch culture scholar Gert Jan hofstede these two lines that are tighter people... His late father called masculinity history, if you get to decide for yourself the figureheads.! Cashes out in an ability to make finer distinctions in terms of their olfaction Aziz and James Baker an! Choice, personal freedom, and various other underachievers have the summer of.... Strongly disapprove in this moment, we can see a strong trend that looseness has over... Society of large power distance: Russia, China, and Mexico researchers worked is he! A proper introduction sold over 4 million copies worldwide the needs of individuals dictate social behaviors rather. Daily lives and why we couldnt change them even if we wanted to both in theory in. Of etiquette and ritual they admire them, but just briefly ; heres proper! The Soviet bloc, when they talked about freedom, and various underachievers! An entire academic field called cross-cultural psychology whether its nappy gets changed majority...

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