Individualism as an American Cultural Value

In Communications Between Cultures individualism and collectivism are described by researchers as “self-orientation versus collective orientation as one of the basic pattern variables that determine human action.” These differences can be found in family life, school, and workplace

Individualism and equality are two of America’s core values. These core values are the standards by which every American uses to distinguish what behavior are acceptable and what is not in the society in which we live in. It is these two values that our responsible for molding our personalities as well as our behaviors. I believe out of all the values the United States possess, individualism and equality are the two most important values to follow.

In this paper I will begin by defining personal culture and national culture. After, I will then elaborate my own personal and national culture. I will continue to talk about the subject with the person that I have chosen for my cultural group, my mother, and I will identify her personal and national culture. Lastly, I will talk about my own personality and how it has a connection with my own natural culture; knowing this is important, it lets us know who we are, and how we act with people who are from different cultures.

Page 210/chapter 6: Everyone has different values in the United States; however, most people has same values which is liberty, equality and democracy. American is called melting pot, so it happens. However, the political values that American support have not always put into practices.

Early American values shaped the United States and have set ground rules for how Americans should live. Faith, freedom, and how to live life to the fullest has been around since the seventeenth century and has had a major impact of on Americans today. Americans live by many values, but faith, freedom, and how a person should live life to the fullest are the most important. These values can be referenced back to religious puritan poetry, slave narratives leading to freedom, and romanticism. Americans way of life has greatly changed in respect to the core values of faith, freedom and living life to the fullest.

Individualism is a habit of being self- reliant. A cultural value is a persons desired and preferred way of acting. Every culture has their own cultural values and individualism but whether individualism is their cultural value is up to the person entirely. This could pose a conflict when persuading the wrong culture especially a culture as diverse as the American culture. Poranee Sponsel is a born and raised Thai who is now a professor at a university in Hawaii and gives us the outsider’s perspective of the American culture. In Sponsel’s article “The Young, the Rich, and the Famous: Individualism as an American Cultural value” Sponsel

She once again references Thailand and their family cultures by saying that in Thai families all of the members of the family stick together and take care of each other and the children of the family really aren’t given independency until they get married and move out. Ms. Sponsel tries to show the extreme differences between the two cultures to emphasize America’s individualism.

     The third and most important value, I feel in America today, is morality. This is a tough subject to say weather or not a person is correct or if society is correct on their moral values. A person will only know in their heart if they are truly moral or not. Society has a set of morals that they set to live by in the world today and the moral values may change as everyday passes. That is that one good thing, I think, that society has an advantage over a single person. If society does not accept a value then society will gradually get rid of it and just the

When asked the question, "How is Individualism as a value in the United States compared to other democracies." one can produce many answers. But, the most logical reason by far is due to the heightened opportunities for Americans to better themselves as opposed to other democracies.

Looking at the chart the first dimension of culture plotted is individualism-collectivism. This dimension addresses how people define themselves and their relationships with others. Cultures that fall on the individualism side of the continuum share four characteristics. First, such cultures consider the individual to be the most important entity in any social setting. Second, individualistic cultures stress independence rather than dependence. Third, individualistic cultures reward individual achievement. The last characteristic is; individualistic cultures value each individual’s uniqueness.

Over the past 150 years American Individualism has been changed. People have started to feel this sense of fear against one another, and even the government. The government are the individuals that are suppose to protect our values, and make us feel safe. Privacy is no longer a guarantee, and it can be taken away at any time. Throughout the pieces Society and Solitude, What to the Slave is The Fourth of July, and The Snowden Files. Many different examples of loss of privacy and the loss of the basic components of our society have taken place. In these pieces three different individuals Emerson, Douglass, and Snowden show how the effect of society, and the influence of the government has impacted American Individualism.

Moreover, Individualism is the cultural dimension that measures to what extent people to look after themselves and their immediate family members only. America’s individualism score of 91 is the highest in the world and higher than France’s score of 71. This kind of cultural reflect in American executives at Disney based on Walt Disney’s highly individualized, squeaky clean American family values to imposed a strict dress code at Euro Disneyland, such as required extremely short hair and banned beards and moustaches (Corliss, R., 1992).

Individualistic cultures tend to favor feeling free and less responsible for the members around them. In class, we discussed our own experiences of living in an individualistic culture. For example, if a parent were to become ill and more dependent, it is not uncommon for the children to send the parent to a nursing home. The ill parent would feel embarrassed if their child had to help them use a restroom or bathe themselves.Whereas, in a collectivism

| The fundamental issue addressed by this dimension is the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members. It has to do with whether people´s self-image is defined in terms of “I” or “We”. In Individualist societies people are supposed to look after themselves and their direct family only. In Collectivist societies people belong to ‘in

This essay will discuss the influence of cultural dimensions on behavior. A cultural dimension is defined as a perspective of a culture based on its values and cultural norms. In particular, Hofstede’s cultural dimension of individualism vs. collectivism will be discussed. Individualism vs collectivism is defined as the preference of a person only being concerned about oneself and looking after oneself, compared to a person who wants to remain in a closely knitted network. These are some terms with definitions which will be used in this essay: the Asch paradigm, which refers to the studies conducted by Solomon Asch, in which he showed his participants different lines and asked them to verbally judge and respond as to what the length of the