Naturally then, when we see other cultures acting differently, we assume our culture is the norm, the baseline, the standard. This makes their way different and quite strange. We Western individualists might be surprised to learn that our modern Western culture is the less common view. Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede measured individualism and collectivism across people from fifty-three nations. He found the three most individualistic nations in the world were the United States, Australia, and Great Britain. Their scores weren’t just the furthest left of the global norm; they were
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