Cultural Individualism and Collectivism in relation to Socioeconomic Inequality from the Evolutionary Social Psychology Approach
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30854/anf.v30.n55.2023.925Keywords:
cultural orientation, individualism, collectivism, socioeconomic inequality, evolutionary social psychologyAbstract
Objective: This reflection paper proposes to analyze the relationship between the individualist-collectivist orientation of culture and socioeconomic inequality from an evolutionary approach. Method: Consists of a conceptual analysis based on a review of scientific literature, both classic and current, from which a critical interpretation was made. The paper begins with an introduction that places the subject in the context of developmental social psychology. After that, the distinction between biological and
cultural evolution is raised. Results: Based on earlier conceptual references, cultural notions of individualism and colectivism are examined from an evolutionary social psychology perspective. Subsequently, an evolutionary view of inequality is presented and, finally, an overview is offered between cultural individualism-collectivism linked
to inequality in the distribution of wealth, also from the perspective of evolutionary social psychology. Conclusions: General reflections derived from the previous analyses are postulated. These argue that the individualist-collectivist cultural orientation is a byproduct of society's evolution and can affect how societies are structured, organized, and distribute wealth. This can be understood in the context of the circumstances that people have encountered and how they have responded to those circumstances
throughout their evolutionary history. The tendency for more collectivist societies to have greater inequality in the distribution of wealth could be permeated by a greater propensity to conformism, passivity, obedience and submission to social hierarchies. The previously mentioned suggests that socioeconomic inequality, more than a purely economic process, is also a political-cultural and evolutionary process.
Downloads
References
Baker L. A. (2007). The biology of relationships: what behavioral genetics tell us about interactions among family members. De Paul law review, 56(3), 837–846. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4685725/
Bandyopadhyay, D., Pammi, V. S. C., & Srinivasan, N. (2013). Role of affect in decision making. Progress in Brain Research, 202, 37-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-62604-2.00003-4
Baumard, N., & Lienard, P. (2011). Second- or third-party punishment? When self-interest hides behind apparent functional interventions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(39), E753-E753. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1112212108
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1992). Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (or anything else) in sizable groups. Ethology and Sociobiology, 13(3), 171-195. https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(92)90032-Y
Boyer, P. (2018). Minds make societies: How cognition explains the world humans create. Yale University Press.
Buss, D. M. (2019). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind (6thEdition). Routledge.
Chancel, L.; Piketty, T.; Saez, E. & Zucman, G. (2022). World Inequality Report 2022. World Inequality Lab. https://wir2022.wid.world/
Chevallier, C., Xu, J., Adachi, K., Van der Henst, J.-B., & Baumard, N. (2015).Preschoolers’ Understanding of Merit in Two Asian Societies. PLOS ONE, 10(5), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0114717
Chiao, J. Y. (2009). Cultural neuroscience: A once and future discipline. Progress in BrainResearch, 178, 287-304. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-6123(09)17821-4
Chiao, J. Y., & Blizinsky, K. D. (2010). Culture–gene coevolution of individualism–collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1681), 529-537. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2009.1650
Chisholm, J. S., & Burbank, V. K. (2001). Evolution and inequality. International
Journal of Epidemiology, 30(2), 206-211. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/30.2.206
Cuadrado, I., Gaviria Stewart, E., & López Sáez, M. (2019). Introducción a la psicología social (3a ed). Sanz y Torres.
Darwin, C. (1996). The origin of species. Oxford University Press.
De Courson, B., & Nettle, D. (2021). Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust? Scientific Reports, 11(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-80897-8
De Waal, F. B. M. (2006). Our inner ape: The best and worst of human nature. Riverhead Books.
Diener, E., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2002). Will money increase subjective well-being? Social Indicators Research, 57(2), 119–169. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014411319119
Diener, E., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2018). Beyond money: Progress on an economy of well-being. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 171-175.
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2009). The social brain hypothesis and its implications for social evolution. Annals of Human Biology, 36(5), 562-572. https://doi.org/10.1080/03014460902960289
Engelmann, J. M., & Tomasello, M. (2019). Children’s Sense of Fairness as Equal Respect. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(6), 454-463. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.03.001
Faulkner, J., Schaller, M., Park, J. H., & Duncan, L. A. (2004). Evolved DiseaseAvoidance Mechanisms and Contemporary Xenophobic Attitudes.
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 7(4), 333-353. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430204046142
Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415(6868), 137-140. https://doi.org/10.1038/415137a
Fincher, C. L., Thornhill, R., Murray, D. R., & Schaller, M. (2008). Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 275(1640),1279-1285. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2008.0094
Frank, S. (1998). Foundations of social evolution. Princeton University Press.
Garfield, Z., Von Rueden, C., & Hagen, E.H. (2019). The evolutionary anthropology of political leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(1), 59–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.09.001
Gaviria, E., y Fernández, I. (2019). Influencia de la evolución y la cultura en los procesos psicosociales. En E. Gaviria, M, López & I, Cuadrado (Coords). Introducción a la psicología social (pp. 25-50). Sanz & Torres/UNED.
Gazzaniga, M. S., Ivry, R. B., & Mangun, G. R. (2019). Cognitive neuroscience: The biology of the mind (Fifth edition). W.W. Norton & Company.
Gelfand, M. J., Raver, J. L., Nishii, L., Leslie, L. M., Lun, J., Lim, B. C., Duan, L., Almaliach, A., Ang, S., Arnadottir, J., Aycan, Z., Boehnke, K., Boski, P., Cabecinhas, R., Chan, D., Chhokar, J., D’Amato, A., Ferrer, M., Fischlmayr, I. C., Yamaguchi, S. (2011). Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study. Science, 332(6033), 1100-1104. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1197754
Gintis, H. (2011). Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1566), 878-888. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0310
Gorodnichenko, Y., & Roland, G. (2013). Understanding the IndividualismCollectivism Cleavage and Its Effects: Lessons from Cultural Psychology. In M. Aoki, T. Kuran, & G. Roland (Eds.), Institutions and Comparative
Economic Development (pp. 213-236). Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137034014_12
Gurven, M. (2004). To give and to give not: The behavioral ecology of human food transfers. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(4), 543-559. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X04000123
Hamann, K., Warneken, F., Greenberg, J. R., & Tomasello, M. (2011). Collaboration encourages equal sharing in children but not in chimpanzees. Nature, 476(7360), 328-331. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10278
Hedden, T., Ketay, S., Aron, A., Markus, H. R., & Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2008). Cultural Influences on Neural Substrates of Attentional Control. Psychological Science, 19(1), 12-17. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02038.x
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., & McElreath, R. (2001). In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies. American Economic Review, 91(2), 73-78.https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.91.2.73
Henrich, J. P. (2016). The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton university press.
Henrich, J., & Muthukrishna, M. (2021). The Origins and Psychology of Human Cooperation. Annual Review of Psychology, 72(1), 207-240. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-081920-042106
Herrmann, E., Call, J., Hernàndez-Lloreda, M. V., Hare, B., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis. Science, 317(5843), 1360-1366.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1146282
Hofstede, G. H. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed). Sage Publications.
House, B. R., Kanngiesser, P., Barrett, H. C., Broesch, T., Cebioglu, S., Crittenden, A. N., Erut, A., Lew-Levy, S., Sebastian-Enesco, C., Smith, A. M., Yilmaz, S., & Silk, J. B. (2020). Universal norm psychology leads to societal diversity
in prosocial behaviour and development. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(1), 36-44.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0734-z
Inglehart, R. F. (2019). Cultural Evolution: People’s Motivations are Changing, and
Reshaping the World (1.a ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.
org/10.1017/9781108613880
Jacquet, J. (2016). Is shame necessary? New uses for an old tool (First vintage books
edition). Penguin Random House LLC.
Kağıtçıbaşı, C. (2005). Autonomy and Relatedness in Cultural Context: Implications
for Self and Family. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 36(4), 403-422.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022105275959
Kanngiesser, P., Schäfer, M., Herrmann, E., Zeidler, H., Haun, D., & Tomasello, M. (2022). Children across societies enforce conventional norms but in culturally variable ways. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2112521118
Katchadourian, H. A. (2010). Guilt: The Bite of Conscience. Stanford University Press.
Keller, H. (2022). Cultures of Infancy (1.a ed.). Routledge.
Kim, H. S., & Sasaki, J. Y. (2014). Cultural Neuroscience: Biology of the Mind in Cultural Contexts. Annual Review of Psychology, 65(1), 487-514. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115040
Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K., Mendoza-Denton, R., Rheinschmidt, M. L., & Keltner, D. (2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor. Psychological Review, 119(3), 546-572.
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028756
Lamm, B., Keller, H., Teiser, J., Gudi, H., Yovsi, R. D., Freitag, C., Poloczek, S., Fassbender, I., Suhrke, J., Teubert, M., Vöhringer, I., Knopf, M., Schwarzer, G., & Lohaus, A. (2018). Waiting for the Second Treat: Developing CultureSpecific Modes of Self-Regulation. Child Development, 89(3), 261-277. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12847
Markus, H. R. & Hamedani, M. G. (2007). Sociocultural psychology. The dynamic interdependence among self systems and social systems. En S. Kitayama y D. Cohen (Eds.), Handbook of Cultural Psychology (pp. 3-39). Guilford Press.
Miyamoto, Y., Yoo, J., Levine, C. S., Park, J., Boylan, J. M., Sims, T., Markus, H. R., Kitayama, S., Kawakami, N., Karasawa, M., Coe, C. L., Love, G. D., & Ryff, C. D. (2018). Culture and social hierarchy: Self- and other-oriented correlates of socioeconomic status across cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(3), 427–445. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000133
Moll, H., Pueschel, E., Ni, Q., & Little, A. (2021). Sharing Experiences in Infancy: From Primary Intersubjectivity to Shared Intentionality. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.667679
Navarrete, C. D., & Fessler, D. M. T. (2006). Disease avoidance and ethnocentrism: The effects of disease vulnerability and disgust sensitivity on intergroup attitudes. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(4), 270-282.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.12.001
Nikolaev, B., Boudreaux, C., & Salahodjaev, R. (2017). Are individualistic societies less equal? Evidence from the parasite stress theory of values. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 138, 30-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2017.04.001
Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001). Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review, 108(2), 291-310. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.108.2.291
Perret, C., Hart, E., & Powers, S. T. (2020). From disorganized equality to efficient hierarchy: How group size drives the evolution of hierarchy in human societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1928),
-10. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0693
Pinker, S. (2009). How the mind works (Norton pbk). Norton.
Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2008). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution (Paperback ed., [Nachdr.]). University of Chicago Press.
Sanfey, A. G. (2003). The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game. Science, 300(5626), 1755-1758. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1082976
Sapolsky, R. M. (2018). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin.
Shimizu, H. (2016). Cognitive anthropology and education: foundational models of self and cultural models of teaching and learning in Japan and United States. Kronenfeld, D. B. (Ed.). A companion to cognitive anthropology.
Wiley-Blackwell.
Tomasello, M. (2019). Becoming human: A theory of ontogeny. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Triandis, H. C., Leung, K., Villareal, M. J., & Clack, F. I. (1985). Allocentric versus idiocentric tendencies: Convergent and discriminant validation. Journal of Research in Personality, 19(4), 395-415. https://doi.org/10.1016/00926566(85)90008-X
Triandis, H. C. (1993). Collectivism and Individualism as Cultural Syndromes. Cross-Cultural Research, 27(3-4), 155-180. https://doi.org/10.1177/106939719302700301
Triandis, H. C., & Gelfand, M. J. (2012). A theory of individualism and collectivism. En P. A. M. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 498–520). Sage Publications Ltd.
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446249222.n51
Whiten, A., McGuigan, N., Marshall-Pescini, S., & Hopper, L. M. (2009). Emulation, imitation, over-imitation and the scope of culture for child and chimpanzee. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological
Sciences, 364(1528), 2417-2428. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0069
Wilson, E. O. (2000). Sociobiology: The new synthesis (25th anniversary ed). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Singelis,T. M.,Triandis, H. C., Bhawuk, D. S.,& Gelfand,M. (1995). Horizontal and vertical dimensions of individualism and collectivism: A theoretical and measurement refinement. Cross-Cultural Research, 29(3), 240-275.
https://doi.org/10.1177/106939719502900302
Thornhill, R., & Fincher, C. L. (2014). The Parasite-Stress Theory of Values and Sociality: Infectious Disease, History and Human Values Worldwide. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08040-6
Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard University Press.
Tomasello, M. (2015). A natural history of human morality. Harvard University Press.
Triandis, H. C., Leung, K., Villareal, M. J., & Clack, F. I. (1985). Allocentric versus idiocentric tendencies: Convergent and discriminant validation. Journal of Research in Personality, 19(4), 395-415. https://doi.org/10.1016/00926566(85)90008-X
Triandis, H. C. (1993). Collectivism and Individualism as CulturalSyndromes. Cross-Cultural Research, 27(3-4), 155-180. https://doi.org/10.1177/106939719302700301
Triandis, H. C., & Gelfand, M. J. (2012). A theory of individualism and collectivism. En P. A. M. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 498–520). Sage Publications Ltd.
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446249222.n51
Whiten, A., McGuigan, N., Marshall-Pescini, S., & Hopper, L. M. (2009). Emulation, imitation, over-imitation and the scope of culture for child and chimpanzee. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological
Sciences, 364(1528), 2417-2428. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0069
Wilson, E. O. (2000). Sociobiology: The new synthesis (25th anniversary ed). Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Pablo Chaverri Chaves, Itziar Fernández Sedano
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Once the manuscript is approved, the authors should file and sign the Right Transfer Format.
