Infographic: A Better Measure of Collectivism

Scoring responsibilism: The researchers created 15 survey questions based on scenarios that contrasted feelings of obligation toward family and friends (high responsibilism) with warm and prosocial feelings toward acquaintances and strangers (low responsibilism). More than 12,000 mostly college students across 100 cultures participated in the survey. (A country or territory is considered a distinct culture if it has its own language, government, and history. For example, Puerto Rico is categorized as a separate culture from the US.) The responses were aggregated by culture and then assigned a score between 0 and 100, with higher scores indicating a more collectivistic society.

North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, culturally considered the West, produced the lowest responsibilism scores and are thus the least collectivistic in the sample. Respondents there felt the lowest sense of responsibility to close contacts.

Latin America and the Caribbean are a mixed bag. Many cultures scored above the global average in responsibilism, while those that scored below tended to be what the researchers call “sometimes Western” societies, such as Argentina.

Africa and South Asia as a region had the highest responsibilism scores and are thus the most collectivistic in the sample.

East Asia scored high on responsibilism, with all cultures—except for Japan—reporting scores higher than the global average. China had one of the highest scores in the sample.

Here are the scores for all 100 cultures in the study: