The relationships between collectivist attitudes and elementary forms of human relations: Evidence from Estonia

Abstract

This study examined the extent to which collectivist attitudes predict preference for the basic models of social relations. According to Fiske (1991), all social relations can be reduced to four basic forms – communal sharing (CS), authority ranking (AR), equality matching (EM), and market pricing (MP) – that guide people’s social initiatives and help them to understand and respond appropriately to the social actions of others. The preference for basic forms was studied using a set of questions about everyday hypothetical situations in which the four different models can be alternatively applied. We observed that EM is the dominant principle in distributing (received) benefits: everyone should get equal shares (regardless of their needs or position) and nobody should have an advantage over another. In those situations in which people were asked to contribute, the respondents were inclined to think in terms of cost and benefit, insisting that the contributions should be made according to MP. CS relationships were mostly limited to family-related situations. Although people scoring high on collectivism showed an inclination to use CS and avoid MP relationships more frequently in family situations, the association between the collectivist attitudes and elementary forms of sociality was fairly small. It is concluded that the relationships between the use of the relational models and the collectivist attitudes are modest.