INDIVIDUALISTIC

versus
COLLECTIVE SELF
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
Mr. Arvin Russel R. Vierneza

Group 2 Members:
Bucad, Eduard Mike M.
De Chavez, Rose Anne L.
Laygo, Estelle Mae C.
Rodriguez, Xaviera Mae R.
INDIVIDUALISM
It is the giving priority to one’s own goal over group’s goals and defining one’s identity in terms
of personal attributes rather than group identifications.
An individualist is motivated by personal rewards and benefits. Individualist person set personal
goals and objectives based on self. Individualistic workers are very comfortable working with
autonomy and not part of a team.

COLLECTIVISM
This is giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group)
and defining one’s identity accordingly.
The collectivist is motivated by group goals. Long-term relationships are very important.
Collectivistic persons easily sacrifice individual benefit or praise to recognize and honor the
team’s success. In fact, being singled out and honored as an individual from the rest of the team
may be embarrassing to the collectivistic person.
Our first cultural value dimension is individualism versus collectivism. Individualism stresses
individual goals and the rights of the individual person. Collectivism focuses on group goals,
what is best for the collective group, and personal relationships. The contrast between more
individualistic and collectivistic cultures appears in people’s name. Individualist culture gives
priority to personal identity. Collectivist gives priority to one’s family name.

Value Contrast between Individualism and Collectivism

CONCEPT INDIVIDUALISM COLLECTIVISM
Self Independent Interdependent
Life task Discover and express one’s Maintain connections, fit it
uniqueness
What matters “ME” – personal achievement “WE” – group goals and
and fulfillment; rights and solidarity; social
liberties responsibility and
relationships
Coping method Change reality Accommodate to reality
Morality Defined by individuals Defined by social network
Relationships Many, often temporary or Few close and enduring
casual; confrontation harmony valued
acceptable
Attributing behavior Behavior reflects one’s Behavior reflects social
personality and attitudes norms and roles
Early Model of Collectivism and Individualism:
The German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies described an early model of collectivism and
individualism using the terms Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society).
Gemeinschaft relationships, in which communalism is prioritized, were thought to be
characteristic of small, rural village communities.
Two types of social relationships
1. Relationships that people enter as ends in themselves, or Gemeinschaft. Intimate or
communal association.
2. Relationships that people enter into as means to an end, or Gesellschaft. Goal-driven,
impersonal relationships.

Origin of Individualism
Individualism was used pejoratively in France to signify the sources of social dissolution and
anarchy and the elevation of individual interests above those of the collective.
For the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97), individualism signified the cult of
privacy, which, combined with the growth of self-assertion, had given “impulse to the highest
individual development” that flowered in the European Renaissance.
A view advocated by Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper (1902–94), any
explanation of such a fact ultimately must appeal to, or be stated in terms of, facts about
individuals—about their beliefs, desires, and actions.

Origin of Collectivism
The earliest modern, influential expression of collectivist ideas in the West is in Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s Du contrat social, of 1762, in which it is argued that the individual finds his true
being and freedom only in submission to the “general will” of the community.
Karl Marx later provided the most succinct statement of the collectivist view of the primacy of
social interaction in the preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: “It is
not men’s consciousness,” he wrote, “which determines their being, but their social being which
determines their consciousness.”