American Dream: Individualism In The United States

Individualism is the extent to which the ties between the family and individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after him/herself and his/her family members. Other side is the collectivist side where we find there is strong relation, cohesive in group, often extend families and protecting them unquestioned in exchange for being loyal. United States can be clearly seen individualistic scoring individualism index of 91. “American Dream” is clearly a representation of this. American Dream is the hope for an individual to be better than their parents and gain better standard of living than their parents. American tend to go for an individual success more than group success. This belief is that anyone can pull up their “boot straps” and raise them to poverty level. Americans thinks being

In the Globe study “China scored higher in both institutional collectivism practice and in group collectivism practice” (Hsu). China is traditionally a collectivist country, and Confucian collectivism is still prevailing in today's work organization. In collectivist societies, a child learns to respect the group to which it belongs, usually the family, and to differentiate between in-group members and out-group members (Mun 2001). Mun says “Many research finding confirms that Chinese are collectivist in nature in work dealing with group orientation.” Chinese subjects were found to be more oriented towards enhancing the group harmony. Chinese have the classic cultural historical background which has four key elements that is respect for age and hierarchical position, group orientation, concept of face and importance of relationship. These values can be used to explain the collectivism of Chinese people. For instance: In Chinese society relationship starts with an immediate family members and stretches to the extended family and village (Mun