Civic society vs. community; Contractual vs. communal cultures; Ideocentrism vs. allocentrism; Independence vs. interdependence; Individualism vs. collectivism; Gesellschaft vs. Gemeinschaft
Definition
In most fundamental terms, individualism refers to a tendency to preferentially focus on the individual. In cross-cultural research, the notion of individualism is often contrasted with collectivism – i.e., the orientation toward one’s social community. Other terms to describe the cross-cultural dimension of individualism vs. collectivism are independence vs. interdependence [Markus and Kitayama 1991], Gesellschaft vs. Gemeinschaft [i.e., civic society vs. community; Greenfield 2009; Tönnies 1887], contractual vs. communal cultures [Schwartz 1990], and idiocentrism vs. allocentrism [Triandis et al. 1985]. When describing cultural differences, the terms individualism and collectivism are often viewed as diametrically opposite ends of the same dimension [Grossmann and Na 2014;...
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Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Igor Grossmann & Henri Carlo Santos
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Todd K. Shackelford
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Grossmann, I., Santos, H.C. [2020]. Individualistic Cultures. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. [eds] Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. //doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_2024