“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
-New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in his Inaugural Address
All governments face the challenge of balancing the rights of individuals against the good of the collective. Most Americans want the right to do what they want with their own property, and yet most Americans also do not want rowdy property owners ruining their neighborhoods by having loud parties at 2:00 a.m. The trick of government is to figure out the correct balance between the rights of the rowdy neighbors and the needs of everyone else in the neighborhood to get a good night’s sleep.
With one simple line, Zohran Mamdani erased that nuanced goal. He doesn’t want to balance individualism and collectivism; he wants to replace individualism with collectivism. This idea is especially strange because, as Jonah Goldberg noted, the New York City government Mamdani wants to replace with collectivism is already quite collectivist. How much collectivism is enough? Mamdani seems more interested in a gutting of American individualism than in balance.
Because he is a government official, Mamdani’s speech, plus remarks and actions in recent days, set off a firestorm. Many observers, including Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, and Matt Taibbi, have pointed out that “collectivist” governments have generally not ended very warmly. Catholic Bishop Robert Barron summed up this sentiment: “Collectivism in its various forms is responsible for the deaths of at least 100 million people in the last century. Socialist and Communist forms of government around the world today—Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, etc.—are disastrous.”
They are right to worry. Indeed, research from my own lab shows that cultural shifts in favor of collectivism predict future shifts to a dictatorial government. However, it is also worth asking a deeper, more fundamental question about Mamdani’s comment. He used three psychological terms to describe individualism and collectivism: Is he right about those terms? Is individualism psychologically frigid and rugged? Would people truly be happier with the “warm embrace” of collectivistic societies?
Although no set of research studies can possibly capture the whole truth, based on what we know so far, it is fair to say that Mamdani’s assertion is highly questionable at best and outright false at worst. Let’s briefly evaluate some of that psychological evidence.
Individualists Are Not Frigid
On the surface, one can see why the myth persists that collectivism is warm and happy. Psychology research has long verified the commonsense idea that we need other people. Indeed, the desire to fit in with others is an irreducible and foundational human motive. That fact sounds like pro-collectivism.
But the myth rests on the false assumption that individualists are hermits who avoid human interaction and as a result are deprived of good relationships. It turns out they aren’t like that at all. Individualists are people who view interactions through an autonomous lens, where people are agents who can make choices that are not dictated by the collective. And that leads to an important question: What happens when we compare the individualist way of engaging in relationships with the collectivist way?
Contrary to the Mamdani narrative, research generally shows that people in individualistic countries have healthier relationships than those in collectivistic countries. For example, one study of 39 nations evaluated relational mobility—that is, the ability of people to choose their relationships in a more individualistic fashion (versus being forced into relationships by a collective hierarchy). You might think that this individualistic trait would lead to worse relationships. You would be wrong. Quite the opposite: The study showed that relational mobility was associated with increased trust in others—the building block of all good relationships. Other research studies show that this highly individualistic societal feature was associated with better relational intimacy, more self-disclosure, and higher degrees of social support. This coalesces with other evidence from my own lab showing that individualism is associated with helping behavior in the United States. Taken in total, this suggests that (quite the opposite of Mamdani’s quote) it is collectivists who are more likely to be frigid and individualists who are more likely to be warm.
But They Are Rugged (And Therefore Happy)
People need more than relational belonging, of course. The desire for autonomy—the need to be an individual agent who chooses—is itself a major human motive. Individualist cultures encourage the meeting of this need, and thus it is perhaps unsurprising that individualism is consistently associated with happiness around the world. For example, in three separate studies, Fischer and Boer evaluated the relationship of both individual autonomy and wealth to three different markers of mental health in 63 nations. In their words, “the overall pattern strongly suggests that greater individualism is consistently associated with more well-being … providing individuals with more autonomy appears to be important for reducing negative psychological symptoms, relatively independent of wealth.” Individualism produces more wealth—a fact that’s itself instructive for political purposes—but it also makes people mentally fit.
That is in part because a focus on individual autonomy also fosters personal resiliency. As I’ve documented elsewhere, evidence shows one of the reasons conservatives are happier than liberals is that they are more resilient—they are psychologically tougher. So, it turns out that one of Mamdani’s two adjectives for individualism is correct: Individualists aren’t “frigid,” but they sure are “rugged.” And rugged is a good thing, because rugged people tend to lead happier lives.
Everyone needs other people; and everyone needs some degree of autonomy. But this nation was built largely by erring on the side of rugged individualism, and that’s a good thing for political, relational, and psychological health. If we truly tip the psychological balance in favor of collectivism, we will not like what we get.