Hofstede’s Individualism-Collectivism (I-C) index has long been a cornerstone of cultural research. But how accurate are the country scores that continue to shape scholarship, policy, and popular discourse? This project scrutinizes the empirical validity of Hofstede’s I-C scores and the cultural narratives they have reinforced—particularly the presumed East–West divide and the many societal traits said to correlate with it. Using updated World Values Survey data and theoretical refinements, we reconstruct the I-C dimension to reveal a more compelling cultural pattern. But if these scores have shaped decades of thinking, how much else might rest on shaky ground? What might we discover about culture and its evolution if we dare to question the ideas that once seemed unquestionable? 

Is individualism really the opposite of prosociality? This project revisits a widespread assumption: that societies emphasizing individual freedom and autonomy are inherently less cooperative. Drawing on a rich set of cross-cultural indicators—from civic honesty to volunteering and altruism—we test whether individualism truly erodes large-scale social cooperation, or whether, on the contrary, it might actually enable it. Challenging conventional wisdom, this work reinterprets the Individualism-Collectivism divide through the lens of modern evolutionary and cultural change theories to shed new insights into what sustains trust and cooperation in complex societies. 

How culturally homogenous are today’s nations—and is that changing? This project explores an often-overlooked aspect of culture: its sharedness within national borders. Building on the foundational ideas in our “Nationology” paper (Akaliyski et al., 2021), we develop an Attitudinal Heterogeneity Index (AHI) to measure the extent of cultural diversity within 115 countries using World Values Survey and European Values Study data. Beyond just measuring, we examine how economic inequality, democratic governance, religious pluralism, and other macro-level forces shape this internal diversity—and how it has evolved from 1990 to 2022. This is the first study to systematically trace the predictors and temporal dynamics of cultural diversity within nations at such global scale. 

Public support for gender equality has grown over the past decades—but has it grown everywhere, and for everyone? This project takes a global, long-term view of how gender role beliefs have changed across societies, drawing on nearly three decades of World Values Survey and European Values Study data. Why has progress stalled in some places while accelerating in others? What deeper demographic forces—fertility, generational turnover, the timing of parenthood—might be shaping these patterns beneath the surface? And could the future of gender equality depend less on cultural persuasion than on population change itself?