Today, I’m going to mention about Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance.
<Individualism>
Japan scores 46 on the Individualism dimension. Certainly Japanese society shows many of the characteristics of a collectivistic society. However, it is not as collectivistic as most of the Asian countries for example China. In fact, This graph shows Chinese tend to Collectivism. The most popular explanation for this is that Japanese society does not have extended family system which forms a base of more collectivistic societies such as China and Korea. In more collectivistic culture such as Indonesia(This graph shows that Indonesia has the lowest rate of individualism), people are loyal to their inner group by birth, such as their extended family and their local community. Japanese are experienced as collectivistic by Western standards and experienced as Individualist by Asian standards.
<Uncertainty Avoidance>
Japan is one of the most uncertainty avoiding countries in the world. This is often attributed to the fact that Japan is constantly threatened by natural disasters. Under these circumstances Japanese learned to prepare themselves for any uncertain situation. This goes not only for the emergency plan and precautions for sudden natural disasters but also for every other aspects of society. You could say that in Japan anything you do is prescribed for maximum predictability. For example, at weddings, funerals and other important social events, what people wear and how people should behave are prescribed in great detail in etiquette books. This high need for Uncertainty Avoidance is one of the reasons why changes are so difficult to realize in Japan. China, on the other hand, is not uncertainty avoiding country. They change something old to something new easily if they think that change would be needed.
I summarized words on Hofstede date in my own words and I added my thought.
Next, I’m going to research correspondence with covid-19 in these countries.
In China where first happened covid-19, government authority is strong and Chinese have strong unity.(not individualism) So, almost of them fellow the rule government enforced.
On the contrary, in Japan, the government value freedom of individual. But, the rate of uncertainty avoidance in Japan is high and many Japanese people avoided the risk of the covid-19 without being forced by government.
Q Do you think that Japanese uncertainty avoidance is good for society? Why? or why not?
Q Can you say that you are now taking measures to cope with covid-19 with confidence?
サイトのタイトル 