IB Psychology HLTopic 3 — Group BehaviourPaper 1 & 2Sociocultural approach~9 min read
Cultural Dimensions and How Groups Behave
Asch ran his line task in 1950s America and got 32% conformity. Other researchers ran the same task in seventeen countries. If conformity were simply human nature, the numbers should have looked similar everywhere. They did not, and the pattern that emerged is one of the most quoted findings in cross-cultural psychology.
📘 What you need to know
Between 1971 and 1973 Hofstede surveyed over 60,000 IBM employees in more than 50 countries using a questionnaire about cultural attitudes and behaviours.
He concluded that cultural dimensions could be used to describe norms for behaviour within cultures.
The most researched dimension is individualism vs collectivism.
Conformity means setting aside your true beliefs for the sake of group harmony, which aligns more closely with collectivist values.
Researchers use conformity as a variable for measuring cultural difference, because attitudes to conformity show up clearly in every culture.
Smith & Bond (1993) meta-analysed 133 studies from 17 countries and found higher conformity effect sizes in collectivist countries.
The biggest caution: a country is not the same thing as a culture.
The dimension itself
Individualistic cultures
Collectivist cultures
Emphasis on “I” and “me” rather than “we” and “us”
Emphasis on groups: family, colleagues, community, society
Prioritise independence, competitiveness and the self
Prioritise interdependence, consideration of others and group harmony
Members may enjoy freedom and choice
Members may enjoy community and belonging
Risk: feeling isolated and unsupported
Risk: reduced personal identity and autonomy
Behaviour tends to revolve around the individual
Behaviour tends to revolve around the group
Look at the risk rows. Neither column is the better place to live — each buys something and pays for it. Writing that sentence in an essay stops you sliding into the trap of treating one culture type as superior.
Research support: Smith & Bond (1993)
Aim: to investigate conformity as a product of culture.
Sample: a meta-analysis of 133 studies from 17 countries representing both collectivist and individualistic cultures, including France, Fiji, Ghana, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the USA.
Procedure: statistics were used to analyse cross-cultural replications of Asch’s original study, which itself had nothing to do with culture. The findings were combined into an overall conclusion and expressed as an effect size linked to the rate of conformity per country.
Results: see the chart. The highest effect sizes came from more collectivist countries, the lowest from individualist ones.
Conclusion: conformity may be affected by culture, with collectivist cultures showing more conformity than individualistic cultures.
The pattern is striking and the second caption line is why you should not take it at face value. Effect sizes built from two studies and from seventy-nine are not equally trustworthy.
What an effect size actually is. It is a standardised number showing how big a difference a study found, so results from studies of different sizes can be compared directly. That is what makes a meta-analysis possible — and it is also why an effect size drawn from two studies is far shakier than one drawn from seventy-nine.
Evaluation
Strengths
A huge quantitative data set gathered worldwide. A meta-analysis is time-efficient and highlights patterns and trends immediately.
Built-in reliability. Because the studies were replications of Asch, they used a standardised procedure, so the researchers were comparing genuinely similar tasks rather than loosely related ones.
It tests a real prediction. If conformity serves group harmony, collectivist cultures should show more of it. The data are consistent with that.
Limitations
Inconsistent numbers of replications per country compromises reliability. Two studies from France and Fiji against 79 from the USA is not a fair comparison.
A meta-analysis is a cold method. It is purely statistical and cannot explain why conformity might occur more in collectivist cultures — only that the numbers differ.
Hofstede’s original sample was biased: IBM employees, mostly from the USA and other developed countries, half a century ago.
The dimensions are reductionist, flattening rich and varied societies into two boxes.
Country is not culture. Any large country contains many cultures, so measuring by nationality limits the validity of the conclusions.
EXAM QUESTION
Discuss the effect of one cultural dimension on group behaviour. [22]
Step 1: define cultural dimensions and their sourceHofstede, 60,000+ IBM employees, 50+ countries, 1971–73.Step 2: set out individualism vs collectivism with the costs of eachIndependence and freedom vs interdependence and harmony; isolation vs reduced autonomy.Step 3: build the prediction, then test it with Smith & BondConformity serves group harmony, so collectivist cultures should conform more. Quote Fiji 2.48 against France 0.56.Step 4: dismantle it carefullyUnequal replications, cold statistics, Hofstede’s sample, country is not culture, globalisation merging values.Top-band move: explain what effect size means before you quote one
Link to concepts
Measurement
Culture is a multi-layered and nuanced variable, prone to fluctuation and to anomalies, which makes it genuinely hard to define and measure. An etic approach assumes some values are universal and risks bias and oversimplification; an emic approach gives culture-specific insight but is time-consuming and open to misinterpretation. Smith & Bond measured conformity across countries, and a country is not a culture — which is a real limit on the validity of their conclusions.
Change
Globalisation brings cultural change, often replacing traditional values with those of a dominant culture. That merging reduces cultural distinctiveness for dominant and indigenous groups alike, and it makes drawing meaningful conclusions about individualist and collectivist differences harder every decade. A 1993 meta-analysis of studies run over previous decades is describing a world that has since moved.
💡 Exam tip
Quote two effect sizes, one high and one low, and name the countries. Precision reads as knowledge.
Explain what an effect size is in one sentence before using it.
The unequal number of replications per country is the sharpest criticism available and it is very rarely used.
“A country is not a culture” is a one-line evaluation that works in almost every cross-cultural question.
Link back to Asch: the meta-analysis only exists because his procedure was standardised enough to replicate.
Bring in globalisation for the change concept and as a temporal validity criticism.
⚠ Common mix-up
Reading effect sizes as percentages. 2.48 is not 248% conformity.
Saying Hofstede studied conformity. He studied workplace attitudes; others applied his dimensions.
Treating a meta-analysis as a study of people. It analyses other studies, using secondary data.
Assuming collectivist cultures are more conformist in every situation. The finding is about one lab task.
Claiming the study explains why the difference exists. Statistics show the pattern, not the reason.
Forgetting that Asch’s task was never designed to test culture. That is both a strength and a limitation.
Up next: Social Identity Theory Applied to Groups — why the mere existence of another group is enough to make people start favouring their own.
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