What national culture dimension scores for individuals tell us about people – and countries

Abstract

Using national culture dimensions to explain differences in individual or group behavior has posed a challenge ever since Hofstede introduced the cultural dimension paradigm and stated that scores cannot be applied to individuals without committing the ecological fallacy. This limitation renders national dimension scores theoretically inapplicable for explaining cultural differences at any lower level than countries. However, people communicate, not countries. To address this issue, we calculate scores for 44,000 individuals from 54 countries for the Collectivism-Individualism and Monumentalism-Flexibility dimensions of the revised Minkov-Hofstede model. We derive a regression-based formula from the ecological level and employ it at the individual level, imposing the structure of countries on individuals. Aggregated back to the country level, they correlate with the original country-level factor scores at r = .98 and r = .92, respectively, indicating that national culture differences have been accurately preserved. Density curves of individuals\u27 scores per country show a large overlap between individuals of different countries, confirming the non-transferability of country scores to individuals. Yet, we argue national culture serves as a codebook for all individuals within a country. Further, our method provides insights into differences within countries, such as ethnic background and gender. Future work should focus on quantifying the impact of national culture on individuals