The article comprehensively reviews the concept of national cultures and its validity for cross-cultural research.

The concept of national culture is widespread in cultural and cross-cultural research. It is believed that the residents of certain countries or people of certain nationalities share certain values, beliefs, customs, norms, and patterns of behavior. In this respect, scholars are used to speaking about, for example, British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Moroccan, German, Austrian, American, Canadian, Japanese, or Chinese cultures.

What are those similarities and shared characteristics? These are frequently the language, ethnicity, religion, historical, and cultural traditions of people residing in certain territories. Such an understanding of national cultures appears quite simple and straight out of common sense. However, …  

Do people in national cultures speak their common languages?

What about language? People in such countries as India, South Africa, Switzerland, Canada, and the Netherlands are multilingual and do not share their language as a cultural commonality. Can we then speak about Indian, South African, Swiss, Canadian, and Dutch national cultures?

Do people in national cultures share their common ethnicities?

What about ethnicity and cultural heritage? Many countries, such as the United States, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and Nigeria, are multiethnic and have emerged due to the conversion of various historical and cultural influences. Can they be considered American, Indian, Indonesian, Singaporean, or Nigerian national cultures?

People in national cultures can be diverse in many ways

Thus, one can see that national cultures can be less homogeneous in terms of languages, ethnicities, cultural history, and other cultural characteristics than researchers expect. Their (sub)cultural variations may expand beyond presumably common national characteristics.

Besides, when people live in countries and likely share national cultures, they can have substantial individual and typological differences that may stretch beyond national similarities.

Do national cultures exist?

In the social sciences, researchers tend to believe that people of such national cultures share certain cultural values, attitudes, personalities, identities, emotional experiences, expressions, and patterns of behavior. These are common assumptions of traditional cross-cultural studies that expect such within-country homogeneities. Extensive cross-cultural research has demonstrated the validity of this assumption. An abundance of findings showed that cultural samples of people from national states have many similar characteristics that are different from the characteristics of people in other cultural samples from other countries (Karandashev, 2019, 2021).

Validity of cross-national comparisons

National cultures exist, and people in those countries share many things. A comprehensive cross-cultural analysis of the data from the World Values Survey demonstrated that the global division of values across national cultures is valid. Researchers found that:

299 in-country regions from 28 countries in East and Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Anglo world overwhelmingly cluster along national lines on basic cultural values, cross-border intermixtures being relatively rare. This is true even of countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, or Mexico and Guatemala, despite their shared official languages, religions, ethnic groups, historical experiences, and various traditions. Even the regions of neighboring African nations, such as Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Mali, do not intermix much when they are clustered on the basis of cultural values.

(Minkov & Hofstede, 2012, p.133)

Thus, we can see that the country-average data and results are worthwhile for cross-cultural research. Three other studies, which examined cultural differences between different states of Brazil, supported the notion that national cultures are meaningful units for cross-cultural research. The studies utilized the Hofstede cross-national dimensions and revealed that the Brazilian national culture is common on those parameters across Brazil’s states. It turns out that those cultural dimensions are the same in every state of Brazil, but they are very different from other countries in Latin America as well as other countries around the world.

Thus, one can see that the country-average data and results are worthwhile for cross-cultural research. Three other studies, which examined cultural differences between different states of Brazil, supported the notion that national cultures are meaningful units for cross-cultural research. The studies utilized the Hofstede cross-national dimensions and revealed that the Brazilian national culture is common on those parameters across Brazil’s states. It turns out that those cultural dimensions are the same in every state of Brazil, but they are very different from other countries in Latin America as well as other countries around the world (Hofstede et al., 2010).

Therefore, these findings show that the cultural borders between countries are valid in Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. These findings support the validity of cross-national comparisons.

Limitations of cross-national cultural comparisons

The validity of these findings, however, can have limitations, which social scientists should keep in mind to avoid the pitfalls of generalization. Averaging the data collected from selected samples of people of given nationalities can lead to somewhat misleading conclusions. The simple statistical means of variables collected in cultural samples can hide substantial individual and typological variations. variations within countries (Karandashev, 2021).

Scholars of culture and the general public can also be interested in a large collection of publications titled “What is National Culture,” presented by IGI Global Publishing House.