Complexifying Individualism Versus Collectivism and West Versus East: Exploring Global Diversity in Perspectives on Self and Other in the Gallup World Poll.

This article examines the widely held cross-cultural distinction between individualism and collectivism (IvC), traditionally mapped onto Western and Eastern societies respectively, through data from two new items introduced in the 2020 Gallup World Poll involving 121,207 participants across 116 countries. The first item assessed preferences for self-care versus other-care, and the second explored self-orientation versus kin- and other-orientation as life purposes, with self-care and self-orientation hypothesized to index individualism, and other-care and kin-/other-orientation to index collectivism. Contrary to expectations, self-care was more prevalent in Eastern countries, while self-orientation was higher in the West, challenging the conventional IvC-West/East pairing and suggesting these constructs are more complex and nuanced than commonly assumed. The study proposes two interpretations: either the items do reflect IvC but reveal that Eastern cultures may be more individualistic in some respects, or the items do not align neatly with IvC, indicating that qualities like self-care and other-care may manifest differently across cultures. By combining responses into nine categories, the research highlights the heterogeneity within and between cultures, urging caution in applying broad IvC and West/East binaries and advocating for more nuanced frameworks in cross-cultural research.