Hence, it is beneficial to construct a system which facilitates shared goals. Individualism is a value or political view which focuses on human independence and freedom.
Societies with individualist cultures view people as autonomous and prioritize uniqueness. It contradicts the views of collectivism which gives prime importance to interdependence and conventionality. It was observed that there is an increasing pattern of individualism across the globe and that it is likely associated with a similarly increasing socioeconomic development which is evidenced by higher household income, education levels, and proportion of white-collar occupations.
However, it was noted that China is an exception to the pattern since their individualistic culture was found out to decrease despite their economic growth. This may be due to their complex socioeconomic history Association for Psychological Science, On the other hand, individualism is a value or political view which focuses on human independence and freedom. On the other hand, those of individualism are uniqueness and autonomy. Collectivism is against individual pursuits as it advocates sacrifice for the greater good.
However, it was observed that there is an increasing pattern of individualism across the globe and that it is likely associated with a similarly increasing socioeconomic development.
In comparison, individualism is associated with liberalism which places importance on individual freedom which was recognized specially since the Enlightenment.
Individualist characteristics are often associated with men and people in urban settings. The survival and success of the group ensures the well-being of the individual, so that by considering the needs and feelings of others, one protects oneself. Harmony and the interdependence of group members are stressed and valued.
Group members are relatively close psychologically and emotionally, but distant toward nongroup members. Collectivist characteristics are often associated with women and people in rural settings. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance.
Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Culture is one factor that can have an influence on how people think and behave.
One factor that cross-cultural psychologists often study involves the differences and similarities between individualistic cultures and collectivist cultures. Individualistic cultures are those that stress the needs of the individual over the needs of the group as a whole. In this type of culture, people are seen as independent and autonomous.
Social behavior tends to be dictated by the attitudes and preferences of individuals. Cultures in North America and Western Europe tend to be individualistic. Chances are you have probably heard the terms individualistic and collectivist cultures before, often in the context of noting behavior and attitude differences between the two types of societies.
So what exactly makes individualistic cultures different from collectivist ones? Moreover, participants in the experimental group were more likely than those in the control group to exhibit climate change inaction, i. Taken together, these results support our second hypothesis, which postulated that those who were reminded of the intractability of climate change would be less likely to take climate change action than those in the control condition.
In short, Study 2 provided preliminary evidence for the causal effect of perceived intractability on climate change inaction. This finding further ruled out the possibility that perceived intractability may be used as self-justification by individuals to defend their inaction on climate change.
The initial sample included freshmen women, men; age ranging from 17 to 23 from Zhejiang Ocean University. Participants were initially recruited for the Chinese Values Changing Survey CVCS conducted in August , which was planned to trace changes in values annually from to among Chinese adolescents. All participants were instructed to finish a battery of questionnaires online at the time of the survey, including an individualism—collectivism measure.
Specifically, individualism—collectivism was assessed by a item scale. This version of the scale was derived from the Individualism—Collectivism Scale Singelis et al. The participants responded to 16 items on a 9-point Likert scale ranging from 1 strongly disagree to 9 strongly agree.
Chinese Values Changing Survey provided a starting point for the Study 3, which was conducted in October Because of our conceptualization of individualism—collectivism as an individual-difference variable, we only selected participants with extreme individualist or collectivist orientations for Study 3.
In addition to the variables assessed in Study 2, the identical measure of individualism—collectivism was also included. Therefore, the final sample of Study 3 consisted of freshmen 43 women, men , with a mean age of Participants received an honorarium of 30 CNY for participating in the study. The means, standard deviations, and Pearson correlations of the variables are presented in Table 4. An independent-samples t- test was performed on the various measurements between the individualist and collectivist groups see Table 5.
Table 4. Descriptive statistics and correlations for major variables of Study 3. Table 5. Means SDs and independent samples T- test for major variables of Study 3. For this, M-plus 7. The results of Study 3 indicate that individuals with a more individualist orientation rated climate change more intractable and reported a greater incidence of climate change inaction than did individuals with more collectivist orientation.
The findings were consistent with our hypothesis. Therefore, we infer that there are individualist—collectivist differences in climate change inaction, which may contribute to the level of perceived intractability of climate change. A central focus of the present article was to examine whether individualists would report a greater incidence of climate change inaction due to higher perceived intractability than collectivists. For this purpose, three studies were conducted.
The main findings can be readily summarized. In other words, the more intractable participants felt climate change to be, the more demotivated they were to take climate change action. This result was supported in Study 2, which suggested that participants exposed to information concerning the intractability of climate change showed a significantly greater perceived intractability of climate change and lower intentions to assume a low-carbon lifestyle than those presented with neutral information.
Based on the first two studies, participants with a collectivist or individualist orientation were recruited from a pool of Chinese undergraduate students in Study 3. We found that participants with more individualist orientations were more subject to perceived intractability and more likely to demonstrate climate change inaction than those with more collectivist orientations.
The present findings may contribute to increasing our understanding of climate change inaction. The critical role of psychological barriers in climate change has been underlined by the recent researches Gifford, Existing theories and empirical studies have proposed a wide variety of psychological barriers that trigger climate change inaction Frantz and Mayer, ; Aitken et al. However, the literature is still limited on how the latent psychological barriers incur climate change inaction.
In this article, we argue that the construct of perceived intractability provides a useful perspective from which to examine this matter. Without doubt, climate change is intractable in itself because greenhouse gas emission cannot be drastically reduced by the efforts of scattered individuals. This perceived intractability of climate change may further induce individuals to remain inactive against climate change.
Our work is the first to show that the incidence of climate change inaction is indeed related to perceived intractability even when other related variables were controlled for. This result is in line with findings reported by previous literature. Aitken et al. Likewise, Salomon et al. In this sense, perceived intractability offers another avenue of insight to help us to understand why we are so reluctant to take action against climate change. Clearly, climate change inaction is not a homogeneous phenomenon, and hence investigating individual differences in climate change inaction should contribute to a better understanding of why and how this phenomenon occurs.
Individualism—collectivism-based differences in pro-environmental behavior have been reported in earlier studies Mccarty and Shrum, ; Cho et al. Consistent with existing findings, our results demonstrated that collectivist orientations may be more related to climate-friendly behaviors than are individualist orientations. Not only this, we further showed that these differences could be attribute to the perceived intractability of climate change. Extensive evidence indicates that our responses to climate change could be shaped by cultural orientations Heyd and Brooks, ; Hoffman, at both the attitudinal and behavioral levels.
The significance of our results lies in the fact that they make a unique contribution to the existing knowledge about climate change inaction by showing that individualism—collectivism shapes barriers to perform climate-friendly behaviors.
The present findings may shed some light on nudging public engagement in climate change. Public engagement, as one critical aspect in addressing climate change, has been repeatedly emphasized in public policy agendas worldwide. From an instrumental perspective, climate change is in no small part due to human activity, or more accurately, innumerable individual activities. Thus, any policy or action aimed at climate change mitigation and adaptation will largely depend on public support and participation.
However, the resounding calls for public engagement raises one challenge for academics and practitioners, namely, how to promote public engagement in climate change Whitmarsh et al.
In line with Campbell , climate change is not intractable in itself given the potential efforts of every member of human society. Nevertheless, the results of the present paper suggest that perceived intractability may induce climate change inaction.
Thus, it is inadvisable to rush to calls for public engagement in fighting climate change; instead, policymakers should encourage the public to believe that their individual actions are necessary as well as efficacious. More importantly, risk communication in the context of climate change should inform the public that climate change is not just potentially catastrophic, but solvable. This promising tactic is specific to special groups with individualist orientations, as they are more inclined to view climate change as intractable.
The present findings may also be of special significance to climate change mitigation in Chinese cultural context. What is more, conspicuous consumption and materialism are emerging in contemporary China Podoshen et al. In this case, policymakers and researchers will be confronted with a tough issue of promoting public engagement in climate change. On the other hand, there is enough evidence to indicate that individualism is increasing and collectivism is decreasing in contemporary China Yang, ; Yi and Takeshi, ; Cai et al.
As indicated by our findings, the rise of individualism may further pose a challenge for public engagement in climate change, because individualism is more related with climate change inaction. The above-mentioned fact should not be interpreted with pessimism. Instead, it reminds us that public engagement in climate change is possible only when psychological barriers of climate change inaction are overcome.
Nevertheless, some aspects of the current research require further consideration. First, the measures of belief in climate change used in the present study have face validity, but the internal consistency was lower than optimal. Although belief in climate change was treated as an irrelevant variable, study results may still be swayed by this flaw, suggesting that our findings should be interpreted cautiously. Second, the individualism—collectivism orientation was examined only within Chinese cultural background.
To generate more conclusive support for the individualist—collectivist differences in climate change inaction, research conducted in other cultural backgrounds or using a cross-cultural comparative approach is necessary. Third, another limitation of the present studies is that we used self-report measures rather than measures of actual climate change in action.
For future research, it is worthwhile to examine climate change inaction with objective measurements related to a low-carbon lifestyle.
Fourth, given that examining individualist—collectivist differences in climate change inaction was the original goal of the present research, an intervention study was not conducted. Meleady and Crisp redefined climate change inaction as temporal intergroup bias, and found that temporally adapted interventions for reducing prejudice may help elicit environmental protection. Similarly, future studies are expected to investigate how to encourage climate change action by overcoming the perceived intractability of climate change.
Fifth, future studies could explore the boundary conditions of climate change inaction. Although, we distinguished intractability from helplessness, with an emphasis on the view that climate change is inherently intractable whereas helplessness may be a subjective experience concerning climate change, it is possible that perceived intractability make people feel helpless, which in turn results in climate change inaction. Therefore, it will be important to further explore the mediating role of helplessness in the relation between perceived intractability and climate change inaction.
Moreover, the effect of perceived intractability on climate change inaction may be moderated by collective efficiency.
All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. PX designed the study and drafted the manuscript. PX and HZ did the majority of the work on data collection and data analysis.
LG contributed to the conception and design of the work. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Aitken, C. Change 21, — Bain, P.
Co-benefits of addressing climate change can motivate action around the world. Change 6, — Boucher, J. Culture, carbon, and climate change: a class analysis of climate change belief, lifestyle lock-in, and personal carbon footprint.
Cai, H.
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