Two Key Studies of Cultural Dimensions: Levine & Norenzayan (1999) & Smith & Bond (1996) (HL IB Psychology)

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Claire Neeson

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You can also use both of these studies to answer a question on Culture & Its Influence on Behaviour

Key Study: Levine & Norenzayan (1999)

Aim: To investigate the cultural dimension of individualism/collectivism on pace of life i.e. how quickly/slowly people and organisations move, in a sample of large cities across the world. There were four hypotheses:

Cities with a higher level of economic vitality and wealth will have a faster pace of life
The hotter the city, the slower the pace of life will be
Individualistic cultures will be faster than collectivist cultures
The larger the city, the faster the pace of life

Participants: Cities from a sample of 31 countries across the world, both individualistic e.g. USA and collectivist e.g. Japan

Procedure: The researchers recruited students travelling abroad or returning home and other psychologists in the field of cross-cultural research to observe and collect data for the study. There were three specific categories of behaviour to be observed:

Walking speed of pedestrians
Speed of service at the post office
Accuracy of clocks in banks, selected at random

Results:

The fastest pace of life was observed in Switzerland with countries in Western Europe and Japan also having high scores
The countries with scores from the middle of the list included the USA, Eastern European countries, and more recently industrialised Asian countries
The slowest pace of life was seen in Latin American counties, the Middle East, and non-industrialised Asian countries
Therefore, the four hypotheses were supported by the results, for example the hotter countries were slower; economic vitality and affluence predicted pace of life, with the wealthier countries being faster

Conclusion: The individualistic/collectivist cultural dimension does appear to be a good predictor of pace of life in cities.

Evaluation of Levine & Norenzayan (1999)

Strengths

A huge amount of quantitative data was collected which increases the robustness of the data, meaning that it should in turn be reliable
There were some clear differences between individualistic and collectivist cultures in the findings which means that the study has internal validity

Limitations

There are myriad extraneous variables that could affect the validity of the findings e.g. people may walk slowly if they are tired or have a disability; some post officer workers might simply wish to finish their shift on time and so may hurry more than at the start of their shift
There may simply have been too many observers, spread too far across the globe e.g. one observer’s estimation of ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ is unlikely to have been identical to every other observer which would mean a lack of inter-rater reliability

Key terms:

Pace of life
Economic vitality
Inter-rater reliability

Key Study: Smith & Bond (1996)

Aim:To investigate conformity as a product of the cultural dimension of individualism/collectivism

Participants: The study was a meta-analysis which in total comprised 133 studies, from 17 countries which represented both collectivist and individualistic cultures. The countries included France, Fiji, Ghana, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK, the USA

Procedure:

A meta-analysis is a quantitative research method which uses the data from previously published studies on the same topic, in this case conformity rates as measured via the Asch paradigm (1951)
This meta-analysis used statistics to analyse the findings of cross-cultural replications of Asch’s original study (which in itself had nothing to do with culture)
Smith & Bond combined the findings of these studies to draw an overall conclusion about rates of conformity in collectivist cultures compared to individualistic cultures
The findings are expressed as an effect size, in the case of this study this was linked to overall rate of conformity per country

Asch (1951) is a classic study of conformity; the procedure is as follows:

A naïve participant is asked to state which of three lines to the right of a card is the same length as the line on the left of the card, for example:

The participant is tested individually in a room with seven confederates and is always seated towards the end of the group
The experimenter then asks each participant in turn to state which of the three lines on the right of the card are the same length as the target line on the left of the card
In the critical trials the confederates always give the same wrong answer, so the dependent variable is measured as the number of conforming answers to the wrong answer
Giving the wrong answer is evidence of normative social influence as, Asch concluded, the participants give the wrong answer to an easy task in order to be accepted and liked by the majority

Results: The highest rates of conformity were seen in more collectivist countries: the effect size from studies in Fiji was the highest at 2.48; Hong Kong scored 1.93 and Japan scored 1.42. The lowest rates of conformity were found in individualist countries: the effect size from studies in France was 0.56; The Netherlands scored 0.74; the USA scored 0.90.

Conclusion: Conformity may be affected by culture with collectivist cultures showing more conformity than individualistic cultures.

Evaluation of Smith & Bond (1996)