The Research Digest Blog asks, “Are children from collectivist cultures more likely to say it’s okay to lie for the group?”
The theory says that yes, they might say it’s okay to lie for your team than children from individualistic cultures, such as the US, which places more value on self-interest.
The surprising finding was that the children from China actually found lying to protect one’s team less acceptable than did the children from the US.
“This is not to suggest that Chinese children were acting in an individualistic manner,” the researchers said, “but rather that they were acting based on what they believed to be a more salient moral aspect of the situation.” Source: Research Digest Blog
Collective cooperation may explain why China has a long history of innovation.
After all, the Chinese invented the compass, paper, the printing press, gunpowder, the multistage rocket and much more. Source: The Growing Gap Between the US and China
Return to The Collective Culture versus Individualism – Part 3 or go to Collective Culture versus Individualism – Part 5
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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