We argue that many people (even researchers!) have two conflicting intuitions about what collectivism is. 

Version 1: One is "warm fuzzy" collectivism--being nice and positive to people in general. People in individualistic, Western cultures tend to agree with warm fuzzy survey questions.

Version 2: The other is what we call "responsibilism," which emphasizes duties in close relationships, but wariness of distant people. People in collectivistic, non-Western cultures tend to agree with responsibilistic items.

The Problem: Many attempts to measure collectivism combined these two versions of collectivism. That led to confusing result, like the US scoring higher than Japan.

The Solution: Measure the right concept! We created a responsibilism scale to do just that. And we gave it to over 12,000 people in 100 cultures around the world from Greenland to Madagascar.