Individualistic and Collective Societies
Being a great fan and admirer of eastern cultures, I have for most of my life had many varied interactions with the cultures of Thailand, Japan, China, the Philippines, and other Asian countries to a lesser scale. As wonderful as my experiences have been there have definitely been some difficult and uncomfortable social lessons learned due to my individualistic styled American upbringing and my ignorance of the collective orientation of most Eastern societies. In addition some of these difficulties manifested because of the power distance state of a particular culture and the fact that I wasn’t aware of this social convention. Having even a basic knowledge of whether a culture is more individualistic or collective, and what its powder distance position is can help so much in understanding the people of that culture and in being able to interact with them properly from an applied psychological point of view and in just plain old getting along.
My experiences with Asian/Eastern cultures have been many. I am a martial artist having studied Muay Thai from Thailand, Karate from Japan, and Kali form the Philippines. I’m also a practitioner of Chinese and Japan medicine as a Shiatsu practitioner using healing skills and methods from both countries. I have been to Japan three times in my life, I read, write and speak Japanese, and my ex-wife Takako is 
Japanese and we were married in a Thai Buddhist temple. As a musician I have worked with many Japanese musician, singers and dancers. As a practitioner of Taoist Meditation I have had deeper interactions with Chinese people and culture and my two primary doctors in Chicago and New York are both Chinese acupuncturists. You can imagine that through all of this, and other accounts too numerous to mention, there have been plenty of times I’ve come to face misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and straight out confusion in dealing with people from these collectivist cultures. Collectivist cultures are those where the individual puts the needs and desires of the group they belong to ahead of their own needs. Those in collectivist culture who sacrifice their personal goals, passions, and desires for the good of the group are seen as people having ideal character. As an American dealing with people on American soil I tend to expect people to have roughly the same communication style, values, sensitivities etc that I do. In dealing with Japanese people, the culture I know best, their strong collectivist stances really informs their thinking processes and behaviors. Ideas of not shaming family members, employers or “higher ups” is very strong and I have found superseded even one to one personal loyalties and intimacies at times. This as you can imagine can lead to actions and behaviors that people in individualistic based societies would consider betrayals and quite maddening. Individualistic cultures are those where the individual puts his needs and interests first before whatever group he’s attached to, if indeed he’s even attached to a group. Individualism of character is the hallmark of a successful person here.
I have also noted that a high power distance usually accompanies collectivist styled cultures. Power distance is defined as, “…the extent to which people in a society accept inequalities based on social status, wealth, power, laws, and/or physical characteristics “ (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). For instance in Japanese society, your status is very important to how you are treated and how you treat others. What doors are open to you and which are closed. And what’s expected and not expected of your behavior. As a “gaijin” (slang word for foreigner) I can escape the oppressive collectivist system they have there that many working class Japanese actually find intolerable but they endure for family and society. Even their language has a complex level of hierarchal speech known as keigo. In keigo your language will tell where you stand in society and it informs how you are to behave and speak to others in society. As a gaijin learning the Japanese language this is one of the hardest parts to master. But this language along with various societal and familial behavioral rules denotes a high power distance in this culture where people recognize their level or place and they accept it as the norm, in contrast to a low power distance society like we have in America where we try to think of everyone on roughly the same level more or less. And that standing up for yourself against someone on a so-called higher level like a politician, millionaire etc is looked as a very admiral act.
Having a foundational knowledge of whether a culture or society is individualistic or collective, or what their power distance is, is crucial in planning applied psychology interventions. Its also crucial in developing hypotheses for experimentation in that you will have a better idea of how people may behave if you are informed as to their particular societal stance. Getting to know other cultures even on a superficial can be of great benefit to the researcher. If he were to design experiments or interventions based on his own societal stance, he could theoretically spend and waste countless hours of planning, research, writing on to find that the individualistic, collective, or power distance orientation and become a major confounding variable that has skewed all of his data.
References
Schneider, F., Gruman, J., Coutts, L. (2012) Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Sage Publications, Los Angeles.