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    Cross-Cultural Research

    DOI: 10.1177/10693971093349562009;

    2009; 43; 230 originally published online May 19,Cross-Cultural ResearchMichael Minkov

    Life Quality Judgments and Social OpinionsNations With More Dialectical Selves Exhibit Lower Polarization in

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    232 Cross-Cultural Research

    with two contradictory arguments, they tend to accept both. If this is so,

    societies whose members tend to have dialectical selves, such as those of

    China and other East Asian countries, should be characterized by an avoid-ance of strongly expressed opinions, especially on matters that may cause

    social conflict. The reason for this is that if two parties formulate their opin-

    ions in strong terms and the opinions turn out to contradict one another, it is

    less easy to reconcile them in a dialectical way than if they were moderately

    expressed. The way in which people word their opinions is especially impor-

    tant in the public and political sphere. For example, if one has described a

    national government as very good, this position cannot be easily reconciled

    with somebody elses view that the same government is very bad. Dialecticalmindsets can be expected to avoid such polarized statements. Instead, they

    would probably prefer more moderate descriptions, such as somewhat good

    and somewhat bad, because if a public argument starts from these two plat-

    forms, it is easier to achieve some sort of reconciliation.

    Hypothesis

    People in societies that are characterized by greater personal (individual-level) dialecticism should have a greater tendency to refrain from voicing

    strong opinions. For instance, quality judgments such as very good and

    very bad should be avoided. Hence, these societies should have lower

    polarization of quality judgments about socially important issues.

    To validate this hypothesis, it is necessary to show a high negative cor-

    relation between aggregate national measurements of individual-level dia-

    lecticism and measurements of nation-level polarization in the expression

    of quality judgments.

    Importance of the Present Study

    There is substantial anecdotal evidence that when cultural differences in

    the way that people express themselves are poorly understood, the result

    can be utmost frustration. The following example is from a televised inter-

    view with Sonys late founder and president, A. Morita, led by a well-

    known Japanese commentator, S. Shiroyama:

    Shiroyama: Ive heard that one of our prime ministers was on his way to the

    US for the first time and asked you for advice, and you suggested the

    critical thing was to start right out with a yes or no, followed by a brief

    explanation.

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    234 Cross-Cultural Research

    continents. Surveying 5,886 respondents, they collected self-reported fre-

    quencies of pleasant emotions (FPE) and frequencies of unpleasant emo-

    tions (FUE) over 1 month and calculated correlations between the FPE andthe FUE. They found that these correlations tended to be negative in almost

    all nations. In other words, it is not typical for people anywhere in the

    world to have frequent experiences of mixed feelings, such as happy and

    sad, within a short period. However, the negative correlations between

    FPE and FUE were higher in some nations than in others. They were rela-

    tively high among Americans, but the highest values were those of

    Egyptians (.49). The opposite extreme of this ranking was occupied by

    Hong Kong Chinese, Japanese, Thais, Nepalese, and Mainland Chinese.They were the only ones that did not have negative correlations but weakly

    positive. The study did not demonstrate strong emotional dialecticism any-

    where in the world. It revealed the opposite: nondialecticism, which could

    also be called absolutism. Nevertheless, East Asians were least likely to be

    nondialectical or absolutist. They were the ones who exhibited the lowest

    disassociation between pleasant and unpleasant feelings. For this reason,

    Shimmack et al. considered their FPE-FUE correlations as a measurement

    of relative individual-level dialecticism.The FPE-FUE correlations correlate with Hofstedes (2001) individual-

    ism indexes at .36 (p=.049, n=30) and with Project GLOBEs in-group

    individualism practices indexes (Gelfand, Bhawuk, Nishii, & Bechtold,

    2004) at .32 (p=.096, n=29). These low correlations, the second of which

    is also statistically insignificant, mean that personal dialecticism cannot be

    satisfactorily explained as a function of cultural collectivism. Because all

    of the nations that scored high on the FPE-FUE index and have positive

    scores share a Buddhist tradition, Shimmack et al. (2002) came to the con-

    clusion that another explanation is more appropriate: The roots of dialecti-

    cism should be sought in Buddhist philosophy.

    Whatever the origin of the national differences in personal dialecticism,

    they cannot be predicted on the basis of differences in individualism versus

    collectivism and the latter dimension cannot be used as a proxy for the

    former. This leaves only Shimmack et al.s (2002) FPE-FUE correlations as

    a potential measurement of national differences in personal dialecticism.

    Can this measurement be validated? Does it correlate with other meaning-

    ful constructs in a way that suggests it does reflect something associatedwith dialecticism as it is conceptualized in the academic literature?

    There are two large-scale studies that yield satisfactory and meaningful

    correlations with Shimmack et al.s (2002) FPE-FUE. The first one was car-

    ried out by the Chinese Culture Connection (1987). It describes a cultural

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    Minkov / Dialectical Selves and Life Quality 235

    dimension called Confucian work dynamism, later renamed long-term ori-

    entation(LTO) by Hofstede (2001). The country ranking produces a com-

    pact East Asian cluster at one of the dimensions poles versus an oppositepole grouping diverse nationsPakistan, Nigeria, and the Philippines

    with the Anglo countries clearly gravitating in that direction. According to

    that study, the most salient characteristic of the East Asian pole is a low

    importance of personal steadiness, which can be interpreted as having a

    flexible rather than a stable and invariant self. There is a considerable lit-

    erature showing that East Asians are characterized by lower self-stability

    and self-consistency and higher self-flexibility than North Americans. The

    latter tend to believe that they possess and describe themselves in terms ofstable personal characteristics that change little across situations, whereas

    the opposite is true of East Asians (Bond & Cheung, 1983; Choi & Choi,

    2002; Heine, 2001; Kanagawa, Cross, & Markus, 2001; Markus & Kitayama,

    1991; Suh, 2002). It should not be difficult to understand why self-flexibility

    is associated with personal dialecticism. A person with a flexible self would

    exhibit behaviors that change across situations. Also, such a person would

    not be unlikely to make statements such as I am lenient with my work

    subordinates but strict with my children. For this person, lenient and strictare not mutually exclusive but form a dialectical pair: One can be both,

    depending on the situation. Self-descriptions of this type are not atypical

    among East Asians (Choi & Choi, 2002) but are rather unnatural in a North

    American context. American culture does not encourage shifting character-

    istics, inconsistent behaviors, and ambiguous self-portrayals.

    Across 16 common cases, LTO (indexes in Hofstede, 2001) correlates

    with the FPE-FUE correlations at .68 (p=.004). Societies with higher per-

    sonal dialecticism are characterized by lower personal steadiness or stabil-

    ity. These two sets of indexesFPE-FUE and LTOare bound by a

    common factor.

    The other study is by Minkov (2007), who used data from the World

    Values Survey (WVS, 2006) to extract a cultural dimension underpinned by

    differences in pride and religiousness. The dimension was called monumen-

    talism versus flexumility, referring to the fact that the self in the highest

    scoring societiesthe Arab nationscan metaphorically be likened to a

    proud and stable monolithic monument, whereas the lowest scorersEast

    Asians and East Europeansexhibit the opposite tendency: humility andflexibility. In that study, a WVS item that measures the importance of reli-

    gion was taken as a proxy for an ecological (nation-level) measurement of

    self-stability because religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

    emphasize the importance of adhering to strong and immutable values and

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    236 Cross-Cultural Research

    beliefs. The monumentalism scores in Minkov correlate with the FPE-FUE

    correlations at .60 (p=.002, n=24) and with LTO at .68 (p=.004, n=16).

    Thus, more monumentalist (and hence more religious) societies have lowerpersonal dialecticism.

    The high correlations between FPE-FUE, LTO, and monumentalism sug-

    gest that all three measure something similar, associated with higher personal

    dialecticism and self-flexibility versus higher absolutism and self-stability.

    Of these three measurements, it is the FPE-FUE correlations that most

    closely reflect the concept of personal dialecticism as described in the aca-

    demic literature. These correlations will be used in this study as the main

    measurement of personal dialecticism aggregated at the national level.

    Measurements of Social Polarization

    in Life Quality Judgments and Social Opinions

    The Pew Research Center (PRC) is a U.S. research agency that studies

    political moods in the United States. In 2002 and in 2007 it carried out

    cross-cultural studies in 44 and 47 nations on all continents, using mostly

    nationally representative samples, especially in the second case (PRC,2007). Among other things, the PRC asks the respondents to make quality

    judgments. Quality judgments can be defined as expressions of opinions

    about the quality of situations, phenomena, individuals, or groups of peo-

    ple. They may be presented in different formats, such as:

    X is good/bad.

    I am satisfied/dissatisfied with X.

    I agree/disagree that X is good/bad.

    It is also possible to make quality judgments about hypothetical situa-

    tions, such as:

    X would be good.

    It would be good if X did Y.

    Regardless of the different formats and wordings, all judgments are

    statements in which somethingreal or hypotheticalis evaluated aspositive or negative.

    The Pew Research Center (2007) study contains a high number of qual-

    ity judgment items. The relevant ones are reproduced in the appendix.

    There are also other quality judgment items in that PRC study. They have

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    Minkov / Dialectical Selves and Life Quality 237

    been left out of this analysis either because the questions were not asked in

    all PRC countries or because they are not scored on Likert scales.

    Polarization in the expression of quality judgments can be measuredstarting from the following logic. The highest possible degree of polariza-

    tion in a particular country is when 50% of all respondents in it have

    chosen the positive extreme position on a Likert scale, such as very good,

    and 50% have chosen the negative extreme, such as very bad. A society

    that exhibits this pattern is more polarized than one where the pattern is

    for instance 70% very bad versus 30% very good. This means that to

    measure the degree of polarization for each country and for each item, we

    should multiply the percentages of respondents who have chosen thepositive extreme of each item by the percentages of respondents who

    have chosen the negative extreme. Adding up the two values would not

    create the desired effect because a 50-50 split would yield the same sum

    as a 70-30 split or a 90-10 split, although these do not reflect the same

    degree of polarization. If the extremes are multiplied, the maximum pos-

    sible score for each item is 50 50 =250. This maximum score can be

    obtained only if the split is 50-50, that is, when the highest polarization is

    observed.In a very few cases, the percentages of respondents in some countries

    who have chosen an extreme answer is 0. Because multiplication by 0

    results in a value of 0 regardless of the number that is multiplied by 0, those

    few 0 values were replaces by a value of 1.

    The total number of PRC items that seem appropriate for this study is

    17. Before the multiplication of the percentages of respondents who have

    chosen extreme positions, it is necessary to verify how many factors the 34

    extremes of the 17 items form. A small number of factorsone or two

    would mean that there is not much real diversity across the selected items

    and the answers do not reflect broad cultural patterns of expression of qual-

    ity judgments on diverse matters but are a reaction to a limited set of cor-

    related stimuli.

    The factor analysis of the 34 extremes yielded three factors with eigen-

    values exceeding 1.00, each of them explaining at least 10% of the total

    variance. Cumulatively, these three factors explain 49.78% of the total vari-

    ance. There were also six weaker factors with eigenvalues exceeding 1.00

    but explaining less than 10% of the variance each. Nevertheless, cumula-tively they explain another 31% of the total variance. Thus, the diversity

    captured by the 34 extremes of the 17 items appears to be vast and accept-

    able for general conclusions.

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    Results

    After the multiplication products (Positive Extreme Negative Extreme)for the 17 pairs of items were obtained, they were added up for each nation.

    This resulted in indexes for quality judgment polarization (vs. moderation)

    for 47 countries and provinces, presented in Table 1.

    These polarization indexes correlate with the FPE-FUE correlations

    (Schimmack et al., 2002) at .66 (p=.003, n=18). The hypothesis of this

    study is validated: Members of nations with more dialectical selves exhibit

    greater avoidance of polarized quality judgments.

    Furthermore, the polarization indexes correlate with long-term orienta-tion (Hofstede, 2001) at .81 (p=.000, n=14) and with monumentalism

    (Minkov, 2007) at .60 (p =.002, n=27). Although these two constructs are

    neither direct nor pure measurements of dialecticism at either the individual

    or ecological level, they are partial reflections of that construct at the eco-

    logical level and provide additional validation for the polarization indexes

    by demonstrating that they reflect something real and meaningful.

    The World Values Survey Association (2008) released its latest wave of

    nationally representative surveys of values, beliefs, and perceptions acrosssome 50 nations (not all questions have been asked in all countries). Question

    v65 asks the respondents whether they seek to be themselves or prefer to fol-

    low others. The East Asian countries form a clear cluster: They have the

    lowest percentages of people who agree strongly that they prefer the first

    option. Across 29 common cases, the index in Table 1 in this study correlates

    with the percentages who agree strongly that they seek to be themselves at

    .58 (p=.001). Thus, nations with higher polarization have lower percentages

    of people who prefer to follow others. Obviously, in these nations it is more

    important to stand ones ground than adapt to other people.

    McCrae, Terraciano, Realo, and Allik (2007) reported respondents

    descriptions of the mean personality traits (the 30 main facets of the five

    personality dimensions in the five factor model) of their own fellow citi-

    zens. Results are available for 49 nations and ethnic groups. The authors

    believed that these descriptions do not contain any truth, but there are

    diverging opinions on the matter (Heine, Buchtel, & Norenzayan, 2008;

    Minkov, 2009). There is no doubt that laypeoples descriptions of the pre-

    vailing personality or culture in their own country can sometimes begrossly inaccurate, but that does not mean that it is always so.

    The indexes in Table 1 correlate significantly and meaningfully with the

    following personality facets in McCrae et al. (2007):

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    Table 1

    Social Polarization: Indexes for 47 Countries and Provinces

    Eastern

    Middle Europe Europe

    East and and

    Sub and English- Former

    Latin Saharan North Speaking Soviet

    Rank America Africa Africa World Union Asia Index

    1 Kuwait 6,264

    2 Palestine 5,558

    territory 3 Tanzania 4,785

    4 Egypt 4,475

    5 Jordan 4,402

    6 Pakistan 4,222

    7 South 4,198

    Africa

    8 United 3,923

    States

    9 Mali 3,921

    10 Nigeria 3,84511 France 3,754

    12 Lebanon 3,600

    13 Uganda 3,576

    14 Sweden 3,579

    15 Ivory 3,525

    Coast

    16 Germany 3,262

    17 Turkey 3,140

    18 Senegal 2,301

    19 India 3,04520 Canada 2,953

    21 Kenya 2,990

    22-23 Ethiopia Bangladesh 2,940

    24 Venezuela 2,888

    25 Argentina 2,716

    26 Morocco 2,707

    27 United 2,685

    Kingdom

    28 Ukraine 2,668

    29 Ghana 2,66330 Israel 2,631

    31 Peru 2,487

    32 Slovakia 2,330

    33 Russia 2,278

    (continued)

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    assertiveness: r=.51,p

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    Minkov / Dialectical Selves and Life Quality 241

    methods, they all yield correlations with the indexes in Table 1 that are

    close to 0. The conclusion is that the indexes in Table 1 are not associated

    with national wealth in any way.

    Discussion

    This study showed that societies whose members are more likely to have

    dialectical selves are also more likely to suppress the expression of strongly

    formulated quality judgments that are likely to cause social polarization.

    This finding is important because it demonstrates that when personalitycharacteristics are aggregated at the national level, the resulting differences

    in the national scores can predict societal differences. The finding supports

    Hofstede and McCrae (2004), who arrived at the same conclusion.

    This study has shown that Latin Americans are not characterized by strong

    polarization in quality judgments. In the case of most PRC items, the percent-

    ages of Latin Americans who have chosen an extreme are similar to those of

    East Europeans and lower than the percentages of West Europeans, let alone

    Arabs. Even if the extremes were not multiplied, Latin Americans would nothave a high polarization score, meaning that no extreme response style would

    be observed in their answers. A previous PRC study, done in 2002, evidences

    the same pattern. This is an interesting finding. Latin Americans are tradition-

    ally viewed as prone to extreme response style when presented with Likert

    scales. They are said to prefer extremes, especially when the scale range is

    narrow: 4 of 5 points rather than 10 (Hanges & Dickson, 2004; Hofstede,

    2001; Hui & Triandis, 1989). However, it has not been demonstrated that this

    effect occurs in all circumstances. The conclusion is that different cultures

    may generate different response styles but these may vary according to the

    context. Latin Americans may state their values in a strong way, but they

    are quite moderate when they have to make quality judgments. On the other

    hand, East Asians do seem to avoid extremes in most circumstances.

    Studies that discuss cultural dimensions should address the issue of their

    origins. At first glance, the most absolutist and polarized nations appear to

    be Muslim, whereas the most dialectical and least polarized ones have a

    Buddhist tradition. However, this dichotomy cannot provide a good expla-

    nation because Indonesia and Malaysia have been Muslim countries forcenturies, yet they are characterized by relatively dialectical feelings and

    low polarization in quality judgments. The highest and lowest scoring

    countries are differentiated by something that probably has little to do with

    the type of religion.

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    The most dialectical and least polarized cultures share a millennia-old tra-

    dition of wet rice cultivation. This type of agriculture is described as follows:

    Historically, rice cultivation has been a collective enterprise. The investment

    and shaping of the landscape that are needed for the ponding system (ter-

    races) require collective organization within the community. Water manage-

    ment also relies on collective interest: crop and water calendars must be

    organized for large blocks of fields in order to manage water efficiently and

    organize such work as land preparation, transportation and drying for har-

    vesting. (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2004)

    The irrigation system was typically considered common property andthe members of the community, which often included several villages, were

    obliged to provide labor and materials for its maintenance (Cohen &

    Pearson, 1998). In addition, a labor exchange system was practiced in peri-

    ods of rice transplantation and rice harvesting: Work parties, consisting of

    several households, worked on the rice fields of each of the households

    (Tatsuro, 2006).

    In cultures where the whole communitys welfare is dependent on the

    complex management of common property and the achievement of sharedgoals, harmony and cooperation are essential. Expression of strong opin-

    ions is undesirable because they may clash with somebody elses dissenting

    strong opinion, eventually resulting in factions, coalitions, social polariza-

    tion, and conflict. The best strategy to maintain harmony and cooperation

    is to avoid extreme statements and to concur with others, at least partly,

    even if that means accepting seemingly contradictory views.

    The societies with the highest polarization in Table 1those whose index

    exceeds 4,000share a pastoralist past. That way of life has a strong tradi-

    tion in East Africa and the region that extends from North Africa through the

    Middle East, Iran, and Afghanistan to Central Asia and Pakistan (Haviland,

    1990; Oswalt, 1986). In 1860, Tunisia had about 600,000 nomadic pastoral-

    ists versus 500,000 settled people (some of whom may also have practiced

    pastoralism), whereas their estimated number in Saudi Arabia on the eve of

    the Second World War was 3 million (Findlay, 1994). Pastoralism still rep-

    resents a strong sector of the economies of the Saharan countries and those

    of East Africa (Hatfield & Davies, 2006). It accounts for more than 80% of

    agricultural GDP in countries such as Niger and Sudan (Hatfield & Davies,2006). As late as 1970, the percentages of nomadic pastoralists in Mauritania

    and Sudan were substantial: 45% and 13%, respectively (Findlay, 1994).

    Pastoralism was practiced also by some subSaharan African tribes outside

    East Africa, such as the South African Zulu (Chanaiwa, 1980).

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    The political organization of pastoralist societies is nearly always a hier-

    archical chiefdom rather than egalitarian villages (Encyclopedia Britannica,

    2008). Unlike intensive agriculture, animal husbandry creates a good basisfor individual competition: Individuals and families with more animals

    enjoy higher prestige. Pastoralism is also associated with higher polygyny

    rates (Marlowe, 2000) than intensive agriculture, and polygyny fosters

    competition for women. In sum, compared to societies of intensive agricul-

    turalists, those of pastoralists are more oriented toward competition and

    have a lower emphasis on harmony and cooperation. The biblical story of

    Jacob and Esau attests that strong competition in a pastoralist society is

    possible even between brothers.Besides, most nomadic pastoralists tend to form strongly oppositional

    identities with respect to most out-groups and consider them unclean or

    unhealthy (Phillips, 2001, p. 46). For instance, the Tahtacipastoralist

    nomads in modern Turkeywill wash their cups 40 times if Turks have

    drunk from them (Phillips, 2001). Thus, nomadic pastoralists seem used to

    opposition and polarization with respect to out-groups.

    Furthermore, Nisbett (1996) has shown that animal herders all over the

    world tend to be characterized by greater verbal and physical assertivenessthan agriculturalists because they need to protect their animals from

    thefta common phenomenon among herders. As a result, pastoralists

    quarrel and fight more often. Nisbett quoted ethnographic studies according

    to which in some pastoralist societies a young shepherds first public quar-

    rel is a critical moment in the development of his reputation. Tension

    between nomads and surrounding populations is also very common

    (Phillips, 2001), which explains why the former have felt a need to be out-

    spoken and stand their ground, not only as individuals but also as a group.

    Nomadic pastoralists can be a politically volatile force (Findlay, 1994),

    capable of strong action. The history of Morocco provides many examples

    of sultans being replaced by rebellious tribal leaders of nomads, whereas

    uprisings by sedentary agriculturalists in that country have usually been far

    less successful (Findlay, 1994).

    Edgerton (1974) provided compelling evidence for a number of differ-

    ences between pastoralists and farmers that are relevant to this discussion.

    He studied four tribes in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, each of which

    consisted of both pastoralists and farmers. In this way, the ethnic variablewas controlled for. Edgerton found that pastoralists were more conflict

    oriented. Also, farmers were more likely to recall insults but they defined

    these as oblique acts: an act of omission, an overheard remark, or an inter-

    preted intention to insult somebody. When pastoralists recalled insults, they

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    typically referred to a direct verbal affront in a face-to-face situation.

    Edgertons study shows that farmers are more prudent in their communica-

    tion style, whereas pastoralists are more likely to express themselves instrong terms, even at the risk of clashing with somebody.

    In sum, pastoralism encourages the expression of a strong stance in

    unambiguous terms and an us versus them philosophy, coupled with

    forceful action. Along with other factors, this may have contributed to the

    fact that attempts to implement political freedom and a democracy of sorts

    in Arab countries, such as Lebanon, Algeria, Palestine, and Iraq, have

    invariably resulted in large-scale armed conflicts and civil war.

    It is important to reiterate that the cultural differences created by the twodifferent economieswet rice cultivation versus pastoralismshould not be

    misinterpreted as differences in collectivism versus individualism in the sense

    of the dimension that clearly differentiates today the cultures of the poor

    nations from those of the West. The cultures of the poor nations are invariably

    characterized by close-knit in-groups and treatment of people on the basis

    of their group membership, whereas the members of Western nations tend

    to emphasize the importance of treating people as individuals without privi-

    leges for any particular group (Minkov, 2007). If collectivism versus indi-vidualism is conceptualized in this way on the basis of the overwhelming

    evidence from the WVS and other sources (Minkov, 2007), only todays rich

    Western nations are strongly individualist, although some other rich nations,

    such as Japan, are beginning to gravitate in the same direction. Pastoralist

    societies are strongly collectivist. This explains why the polarization indexes

    in Table 1 and the WVS item that measures ones willingness to be ones self

    versus following others do not correlate significantly with any reported

    nation-level measurements of individualism versus collectivism.

    This analysis suggests that the effect of subsistence economies that were

    practiced for millennia can still be detected today in respondents who are

    overwhelmingly urban residents and are not involved in subsistence economy,

    such as the populations of Japan or Kuwait. The idea that aggregate national

    personality traits and cultural traits can be extremely durable (Hofstede &

    McCrae, 2004) is supported by this study. Switching to a new type of

    economy does not immediately delete what has been imprinted in the

    human psyche over millennia.

    The pastoralism versus rice cultivation split accounts for the differencesbetween the extremes in the country ranking in Table 1 but leaves the other

    cases unexplained. The ranking of the Anglo and European nations points

    to another factor in that region. Societies that experienced an early shift

    from agriculture to industry have more polarized cultures. Industry breeds

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    East Asia to follow more than one religion and philosophy at the same time.

    Today, China and Vietnam demonstrate another striking example of dialec-

    tic reconciliation of seemingly incompatible phenomena: communist gov-ernments that are busily building capitalist economies.

    In contrast, the three Middle Eastern religions are strongly absolutist. It

    is not possible to follow any of them in conjunction with another one. They

    emphasize self-stability: an eternal and immutable individual self that

    adheres to strong values and beliefs and rejects anything that is not in

    agreement with them. The self also maintains consistency in this life and in

    the hereafter, avoids dialectical opposites, and is not afraid of expressing its

    position in strong and unambiguous terms.

    Appendix

    The following items from Pew Research Center (2007) were used in this study.

    Judgments About the Quality

    of Various Aspects of the Respondents LivesAs I read each of the following, please tell me whether you are very satisfied,

    somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied with this aspect of

    your life:

    q. 6a: your household income

    q. 6b: your family life

    q. 6c: your job

    Judgments About the Acceptability of Societal Phenomena

    Please tell me whether you completely agree, mostly agree, mostly disagree, or

    completely disagree with the following statements:

    q. 18a: Most people are better off in a free market economy even though some

    people are rich and some are poor.1

    q. 18c: Protecting the environment should be given priority even if it causes

    slower economic growth and some loss of jobs.q. 22a: The (state or government) controls too much of our daily lives.

    q. 22b: It is the responsibility of the (state or government) to take care of very

    poor people who cant take care of themselves.2

    (continued)

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    250 Cross-Cultural Research

    Michael Minkov is an associate professor of cross-cultural awareness and organizational

    behavior, teaching on the University of Portsmouth (UK) programs delivered through its fran-

    chisee, International University College, Sofia, Bulgaria. He graduated from Sofia StateUniversity St Kliment Ohridski with a masters degree in linguistics, culture, and literature and

    is currently finishing his PhD at the Department of Scandinavian Studies of the same institu-

    tion. He is a coauthor, together with Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Henk Vinken, of

    the 2008 version of the Values Survey Modulea cross-cultural research instrument based on

    Hofstedes classical five-dimensional model, enriched with two new dimensions recently pro-

    posed by Minkov.