Response to Chapter 4_Ben

The chapter focused on the idea of "I" and "We" in the individualism and collectivism, the author loved to narrate a interesting example to explain and introduce the idea, that was the business contract between Swedish and Saudi Government, I thought that this method was quite interesting and showed the interaction and details between two different group of people from different social background. However, I did not participate in any business activities, there was a thing that was real: people adopted different approaches to achieve their goal and managed their own affairs who came from individualism and collectivism.

For example, most of Chinese have a traditional concept which the son and daughter have duty to take care their parents and lived together after parents retired, even if son or daughter has married. On the contrary, people of individualism, such as United States, parents always encourage their son or daughter move to the other house when they were adult. Parents will live by themselves after they retired, and they usually concentrate on the nuclear family, Chinese focus on the extended family, that was true; I lived with my grandmother, parents and sister for many years, indeed, I gathered with my sister, cousins, uncles and aunts during the childhood. My idea of family included grandma, parents, sister and cousins actually, and my idea are changing now. We always discuss about the duty and "group benefits" in the daily life, we cannot do a personal event which damaged the family benefits seriously, it was prohibited and shamed. Teachers and parents said that: When you would like to make a decision or do something, you have to think about your group/us first. This idea was a representative one of the collectivism' s culture.

For instance, I have to deal with a lot of group work or group presentations in my home university, and I just have one or two group works in here, most of the assignments have to finished by yourself, not a group. People really cared about the personal advantages rather than the group's benefits here, if you have this phenomenon in Macau or China, you will be seems a "selfish" person in the group and become unpopular.