Collectivist and Individualist Orientations
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Ethics and You
Whose responsibility is it to clarify communication misunderstandings that might occur among individuals from high- and low-context cultures? Do both parties have an equal responsibility? What other factors (including age, status, and so on) might influence your thoughts on this question?
Differences in the value of personal space and independence versus belonging and group loyalty illustrate our second cultural value: collectivist and individualist orientations.
Individuals from collectivist cultures perceive themselves first and foremost as members of a group—and they communicate from that perspective (Triandis, 1986, 1988, 2000). Collectivist cultures (including many Arab and Latin American cultures as well as several Asian cultures, such as found in China and Japan) emphasize cooperation and group harmony, group decision making, and long-term, stable friendships. Communication in such cultures is governed by a clear notion of status and hierarchy, and loyalty to the group and the honor of one’s family are more important than individual needs or desires (Wang & Liu, 2010). In addition, collectivist communicators are generally concerned with relational support; they avoid hurting others’ feelings, apologize, and make efforts to help others maintain the group’s reputation and position of respect (Han & Cai, 2010). For example, if an individual attending a business meeting discovers a financial error, she will not likely mention who made the error, nor will she call attention to her own success in discovering it. Instead, she will emphasize the group’s success in correcting the error before it became a problem for the company.
Culture and You
To what degree do you identify with individualist or collectivist cultures? How might the answer to this question be complicated if the family you grew up with identifies strongly with one dimension but the larger culture in which you were raised strongly identifies with the other?
Conversely, people from individualist cultures value autonomy and privacy and pay relatively little attention to status and hierarchy based on age or family connections. In such cultures, individual initiative and achievement are rewarded, and individual credit and blame are assigned. Thus, an individual who notes an error—even one by her superiors—will probably be rewarded or respected for her keen observation (as long as she presents it sensitively). The United States is a highly individualist culture—American heroes are usually those celebrated for “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” to achieve great things or change the world. Other Western cultures, such as those of Great Britain, Australia, and Germany, are also at the high end of the individualism scale.