Responsibilism explains cultural differences between East and west
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An international research team investigated how people’s sense of responsibility in close relationships shapes cultural differences between Eastern and Western countries.
Researchers at Arizona State University led the study, which challenged the long-held idea that cultures differ primarily based on whether they prioritize the group over the individual. The team suspected existing surveys measuring “collectivism” were flawed, and developed a new survey, called “responsibilism”, to measure duties people feel toward those they have close relationships with.
The researchers translated the responsibilism survey into 45 languages and distributed it to 12,247 people across 100 cultures, representing 90% of the world’s population. The results showed that East Asian countries, along with nations in Africa and the Middle East, generally scored higher on responsibilism than countries in Western Europe, North America, and Australia. This new measure reliably distinguished between these regions, something previous surveys failed to do. The study connected responsibilism scores to broader societal trends.
Countries with higher responsibilism scores tended to have lower democracy ratings and more government corruption, as well as fewer policies supporting immigration and innovation. At the individual level, higher scores predicted behaviours like living with extended family and a willingness to lie for a close friend, while lower scores correlated with returning lost wallets and fewer parking violations among diplomats from those countries.
The researchers observed that United Nations diplomats from countries with high responsibilism scores received significantly more parking tickets than those from more independent cultures.
