Journal
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
Volume 77, Issue 6, Pages 786-788Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/amp0001013
Keywords
cultural change; China; individualism; collectivism; word embedding
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Funding
- National Social Science Fund of China [17ZDA324]
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The authors of the study concluded that there was no rise in individualism, continuing collectivism, and no effect of modernization on individualism in contemporary China. However, our reanalysis of their data suggested that individualism has been increasingly accepted and associated with positive aspects of life in China over recent decades.
By examining the changes in the conceptual associations between individualism-collectivism and 10 other concepts based on the Google Ngram Chinese Corpus from the 1950s to the 1990s, Hamamura et al. (2021) inferred (a) no rise in individualism; (b) continuing collectivism; and (c) no effect of modernization on individualism in contemporary China. We question the validity of these conclusions given the following issues in their research: (a) misinterpretation of statistical results; (b) improper calculation of cultural associations; and (c) inappropriate generalization of specific findings. Contrary to their original findings, our reanalysis of their data suggests that individualism has been increasingly accepted and associated with some positive (vs. negative) aspects of life (e.g., income vs. loss, richness vs. poverty) over recent decades in China. Future research should use more rigorous methods and diverse corpora to clarify and explain changes in individualism and collectivism in China.
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