ARE you a conformist or an individualist? Most Americans believe they are the latter â?? to be exact, 64 percent of us in 2011, according to the World Values Survey. Perhaps youâ??re a cage-busting entrepreneur, or a transgressive artist. Or maybe youâ??re just a freethinking outlier at your Thanksgiving table. My own nonconformity in early adulthood took the form of religious conversion from Protestant to Catholic, bailing out of college to play avant-garde music, and â?? most schismatic of all to family and friends â?? voting Republican.
In 1998, I came across a 16-question survey of individualism in the academic journal Cross-Cultural Research. I took the survey, and learned that my score reflected â??high individualismâ? and â??low collectivism.â? As my late, long-suffering mother would have said, â??Duh.â?
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