A cross-cultural study of collectivism: A comparison of American, Estonian, and Russian students

Three clearly distinguishable types of collectivism-relations with family (familism), peers (companionship), and society (patriotism)-were found in a cross-cultural sample including Estonian, North American, and 2 Russian populations. The Estonian sample was the least collectivistic in those 3 areas of social relations, a finding that contradicts the popular claim that Estonia is a collectivistic country (L. Keltikangas-Jarvinen & T Terav, 1996; S. H. Schwartz, 1994; H. C. Triandis, 1995). The 2 Russian samples, from Moscow and Narva, were more collectivistic than the U.S. and Estonian samples. The finding that the Russians living in Estonia were less collectivistic with regard to their families and society than the Russians from Moscow corroborates the general rule that those who have migrated to other countries are usually more individualistic than those who have stayed in their resident countries. The usefulness of the %S score (the percentage of a respondent's answers to the question "Who am I?" that referred to a group with which the respondent might share a common fate) for cross-cultural studies of collectivism is discussed.