Individualism, Collectivism, and Authoritarianism in Seven Societies

Abstract

Building on Hofstede's finding that individualism and social hierarchy are incompatible at the societal level, the authors examined the relationship between individualism-collectivism and orientations toward authority at the individual level. In Study 1, authoritarianism was related to three measures of collectivism but unrelated to three measures of individualism in a U.S. sample (N = 382). Study 2 used Triandis's horizontal-vertical individualism-collectivism framework in samples from Bulgaria, Japan, New Zealand, Germany, Poland, Canada, and the United States (total N = 1,018). Both at the individual level and the societal level of analysis, authoritarianism was correlated with vertical individualism and vertical collectivism but unrelated to horizontal collectivism. Horizontal individualism was unrelated to authoritarianism except in post-Communist societies whose recent history presumably made salient the incompatibility between state authority and self-determination.