Berry and Katz (Study for Individualism VS Collectivism)

berry ~ 🍓

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• Berry conducted this study to see how the cultural dimension of individualism vs collectivism would affect conformity in certain cultural communities
• Originally inspired by Barry, Child, and Bacon’s study on how hunting and fishing societies were more individualistic, and agricultural societies were collectivistic
• Berry conducted a QUASI-EXPERIMENT, in which she selected three very different cultures: The Temne, The Inuit to study and the Scots as a reference group.
• For this study: “Transitional” or “In transition” refers to people of the culture who have western education and / or employment.
• The groups were taken as follows and had approx 120 participants in each group :

Temne (Agricultural) : 90 Traditional and 32 Transitional

Inuit(Hunting and Fishing, like the Inuit DOGS): 91 Traditional and 31 Transitional

Scots (Reference Group): 62 Rural Scots and 60 Urban Scots

• Each participant was given a set of nine lines - and were asked to select which of the lines below the top line (HA SKZ) matched the one on top. Berry conducted two practice tests to make sure they understood, and involved the help of a native language translator to translate for them.
• After the two trial rounds, Berry conducted this experiment with each individual 2 more times - A total of 4 trials including the 2 trial rounds for the FIRST VARIATION.
• The second variation involved the test of conformity: On the third trial after the two trial tests (the 5th trial), they heard the following directions from the team, presented as a hint: “Here’s a sheet with nine lines on it, one on top and eight below it - Your hint is that Most Temne (Or inuit or scottish, the individual was told their group) People said this line was equal to the Top line - Which one do you select?
• Berry conducted THIS variation 4 more times: On the third trial (where they were first given the instruction), Berry manipulated the hint to give the correct answer. The three trials after that were all wrong answers, with each line being exactly five lines away from the actual answer.
• This made the Dependent Variable the number of lines away from the correct line.
• The results found that the Temne , who were an agricultural society in nature, had a higher rate of conformity than the Inuits or the scots.
• The Inuits on the other hand turned out to be (stubborn lil bitches LMAO) even less conforming than the Modernised scots, showing that they had the lowest rate of conformity.
• The experiment also found that whether or not the individuals in the group were Traditional or Transitional / Rural or Urban did not make a significant difference to the results