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Operationalizing the “American Dream”: A Comparison of Approaches

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Abstract

Institutional anomie theory (IAT) attributes the relatively high levels of violent crime in the United States to a social structure characterized by institutional imbalance towards economic dominance and a cultural ethos known as the American Dream which emphasizes individual material success. One of the greatest challenges in testing IAT lies in how to measure these central structural and cultural constructs. While extant research has largely coalesced around the operationalization of institutional imbalance, the measurement of culture has been markedly inconsistent. Such inconsistency may account for the more equivocal support for its cultural dynamics relative to its institutional dynamics. Using data on 47 countries, this study compares several approaches to operationalizing the cultural ethos known as the American Dream and explores whether these different operationalizations produce consistent findings. Study results provide mixed support for the cultural dynamics of IAT regardless of which approach is used and indicate that the approach taken to the measurement of culture can result in entirely different conclusions. We discuss the implications of these findings for IAT and future research on the relationship between culture and crime.

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Notes

  1. To help maintain the distinction, value dimensions are hereafter capitalized while cultural values are in lowercase.

  2. This dimension is hereafter referred to as Achievement Orientation where the Masculinity pole corresponds to a competitive Achievement Orientation and the Femininity pole refers to a cooperative Achievement Orientation.

  3. We considered the inclusion of the Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (2004) cultural data but decided against it because utilizing this source would reduce our sample size by about one third. We also opted not to use the GLOBE dataset (House et al., 2002) given its smaller sample and theoretical overlap relative to Hofstede’s indices. Finally, we did not include Inglehart’s (2018) two-dimension cultural model given that it does not clearly map onto the four values specified in the American Dream cultural ethos.

  4. Beugelsdijk et al. (2013) found that Hofstede’s dimensions are replicable across generations. Schwartz (2009) also found relative stability for each of his value orientations over a twelve-year period from 1988 to 1999. We also examined the stability of the WVS cultural proxies by examining the correlation between the respective measures at Waves 2 (ca. 2000) and 7 (ca. 2020) for eleven countries which had data available at both waves. We found moderate to strong correlations for the preferences for private ownership (0.52), competition being good (0.54), and the preference for a stable economy (0.65), while the correlation for hard work bringing success was weak (− 0.15). Appendix 2 shows longitudinal trends in the average values for each of the WVS cultural proxies by geographic region, which highlights the relative stability in these measures over time.

  5. One was subtracted from the original coding for each individual item such that 0 reflects “not at all like me” and 5 reflects “very much like me.”

  6. This factor accounted for 72.4% of the variation in the components. The Eigenvalue would have dropped to 0.58 with a second factor. Finally, power, achievement, self-direction, and stimulation are each strongly and positively correlated with the resulting factor.

  7. The PCA using the four WVS measures would have resulted in a two-factor solution. Using a varimax orthogonal rotation, the first factor would explain 42.3% of the variance (Eigenvalue = 1.69) and would be highly correlated with the belief that competition is good (ρ = 0.91), and that hard work brings success (ρ = 0.82). The second factor (Eigenvalue = 1.38) would account for 34.4% of the variance and would be positively correlated with the preference for private ownership of business (ρ = 0.82), but negatively correlated with the prioritization of a stable national economy (ρ = − 0.83).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, California State University, San Bernardino, CA, USA

    Douglas B. Weiss

  2. Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Mateus Rennó Santos

  3. Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Alexander Testa

Authors
  1. Douglas B. Weiss
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  2. Mateus Rennó Santos
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Correspondence to Douglas B. Weiss.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: Countries in the Analytical Sample

Country

Code

Homicide rate

Country

Code

Homicide rate

Argentina

AR

6.6

Netherlands

NL

0.9

Australia

AT

1.3

New Zealand

NZ

1.1

Brazil

BR

25.5

Norway

NO

0.8

Bulgaria

BG

2.3

Pakistan

PK

6.3

Burkina Faso

BF

0.7

Peru

PE

7

Canada

CA

1.8

Philippines

PH

8.3

Chile

CL

3.5

Poland

PL

1.2

Colombia

CO

41.6

Romania

RO

2

Ecuador

EC

13.4

Russia

RU

19

Egypt

EG

1.4

Singapore

SG

0.5

Estonia

EE

6.2

Slovenia

SI

1

Finland

FI

2.1

South Africa

ZA

37.1

Germany

DE

1

Spain

ES

1

Ghana

GH

1.9

Sweden

SE

1

Hungary

HU

1.8

Switzerland

CH

0.8

India

IN

3.9

Thailand

TH

6

Indonesia

ID

0.6

Trinidad & Tobago

TT

26.3

Iran

IR

2.8

Turkey

TR

4.6

Japan

JP

0.4

Ukraine

UA

6.8

Jordan

JO

1.6

United States

US

5.3

Lebanon

LB

3.5

Uruguay

UY

6.8

Malaysia

MY

2.2

Vietnam

VN

1.3

Mexico

MX

15.2

Zambia

ZM

6

Morocco

MA

1.5

   

Appendix 2: Longitudinal Trends in Cultural Indicators from the World Value Survey—2000 to 2020

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Weiss, D.B., Santos, M.R. & Testa, A. Operationalizing the “American Dream”: A Comparison of Approaches. Int Criminol 1, 281–298 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43576-021-00023-0

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