Power Distance In American Culture

Culture - Power Distance
This is a determinant basic to all societies that Hofstede has named. It is describing the distribution of "power" among individuals and groups in the society, and how inequalities in power are dealt with in these societies.
Inequality of power is a basic fact of life. It cannot be 100% eliminated. Iit is impossible to have _no_ power distance, because this means everyone is exactly equal (skills, actions, genetics, etc) unless of course you are on about a bunch of identical lumps of rock...
Inequality can take many forms -the differences of physical and mental characteristics (genetics, fitness, education, IQ, etc), social status, and prestige, wealth, political power, laws, "rights", "priviledges" etc. All of
It just is. Definitions of what is desirable/undesirable are culturally dependent
.
Please note - Power distance CANNOT be measured for individuals. It is a statistical result coming from many thousands of people. You can have people expressing ideals from either high/low power distance in all societies.
Origins of Power Distance
(Origins are "independent
" variables. All these "origins" _lead to_ a society having power distance.)
How does power distance come about? You can predict the power distance of a society - without knowing much about them - from a couple of things (this is for modern societies). 41% from geographical position (latitude - Pole/Equator) 51% from latitude and population size 58% from latitude
. population and wealth.
So as you can see, the environmental factors play a major role (the Equator is warmer, more vegetation, etc.)! Population is also determined by the carrying capacity of the area (how many can be supported without famine?) and partially on technology (which can change the environment - and needs