from geert hofstede‘s national cultures, we have the individualism versus collectivism (IDV) dimension:

“The high side of this dimension, called Individualism, can be defined as a preference for a loosely-knit social framework in which individuals are expected to take care of themselves and their immediate families only. Its opposite, Collectivism, represents a preference for a tightly-knit framework in society in which individuals can expect their relatives or members of a particular in-group to look after them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. A society’s position on this dimension is reflected in whether people’s self-image is defined in terms of ‘I’ or ‘we.'”

here i’ve made a great, big table for you! — high scorers (the individualists) at the top — low scorers (the collectivists) toward the bottom. the anglo nations i’ve highlighted in blue text — they’re mostly at the top; the father’s brother’s daughter’s (fbd) marriage practitioners are in red — mostly between 25 and 40; and the east and southeast asians are in green. all of the anglo nations are in the top ten wrt to individualism (79+), and, with the exception of israel, no non-european nation scores above 50 — and israel’s population includes a good portion of european jews, so … so there. greece, croatia, bulgaria, romania, portugal, slovenia, and serbia (a lot of balkan nations there) are the european nations that score below 50 (between 25 and 35). nearly all the latin american/caribbean nations clump towards the bottom, and many of the east/southeast asian nations are down there, too. (the asterisks refer to nations that have their own entries as well as being part of hofstede’s group categories.)

remember that it’s the individualists who seem to work together best towards the collective — the BIG collective — society as a whole — a nation, for instance. meanwhile, the “collectivists” (as hofstede calls them) — or the clannish groups (as i call them) — don’t manage to handle, or even to create, commonweals hardly at all.

most of my “core” europeans — my longest outbreeding europeans — appear in the top ten of european nations in this list: uk, netherlands, (northern) italy, belgium, denmark, france. i’m surprised germany’s not in that top ten, though — the germans come in at number 12 amongst the europeans. three populations which started outbreeding slightly (or much in the case of ireland!) later than the “core” europeans also appear in the top ten: sweden, norway, and ireland.

i’m also surprised to see hungary there! although to be honest, i don’t know anything about the history of hungarian mating patterns. i will endeavor to find out!

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someone calling themselves maciamo created a map of europe using these figures, although i believe he used numbers as they stood in 2011 which have since been updated on the hofstede site — especially those for the arab world and other non-european nations — so the middle east, arab peninsula, and north africa parts of maciamo’s map should really be ignored, since many of the numbers are simply wrong (for instance, maciamo only had a general score of 38 for the arab world when he made the map, but now there are new scores of 25 for saudia arabia and kuwait).

i like this map a lot! but i think we should be a bit cautious about it, since maciamo’s methodology was a bit … involved. from what i can tell, he attempted to overlay the hofstede scores onto y-chromosome haplogroup distributions (his explanation of what he did is here). yeah … hmmmm. still, going by my gut instincts, his map looks really right! still — caution! caution. here it is. ‘sup with hungary?! [click on maps for LARGER views]:

and here is macaimo’s map with the hajnal line on it (like i like to do):

have a look at the thread @eupedia, ’cause there were a lot of interesting points brought up there! and i’m liking this maciamo fellow (^_^):

“I believe that individualism is an innate (hence genetic/hereditary) trait of character. It’s opposite is collectivism…. I believe that the individualism-collectivism dichotomy is responsible for many fundamental cultural differences between European countries.”

btw, if you’re looking for something good to read this evening, check out jayman’s latest post!: How Inbred are Europeans?

(note: comments do not require an email. i’m hungry!)