Intranational cultural variation: exploring further implications of collectivism within the United States

Within-nation cultural variation across regions provides a largely untapped resource for examining cross-cultural relations usually studied at the international level. The current study examines the relations of collectivism, helping behavior with strangers, and pace of life across regions of the United States. The study shows that within-nation cultural variation can be used both to (a) cross-validate findings generated at the international level, findings that are otherwise exceedingly difficult to cross-validate, and to (b) generate new findings. The current study provides cross-validation for the previously reported negative relation at the international level between collectivism and a faster pace of life. The study also provides evidence that in the context of helping strangers, collectivism is negatively associated with certain types of helping behavior. In particular collectivism was negatively associated with the 'planned' (as opposed to 'spontaneous') and 'giving' (as opposed to 'doing') types of helping.