Work, Achievement

Abstract

The role and relative importance of work in the U.S. American and Hispanic cultures is a widely discussed issue in the social science literature. The obvious differences in economic conditions and in living standards creates a strong inclination to search for simple explanations such as differences in people’s attitudes toward work. These explanations find fertile ground in ethnic stereotypes which tend to explain poverty by laziness, and wealth by diligence or work motivation. Such stereotypes reinforce ethnocentrism despite the strenuous efforts of the social sciences to combat these simplistic ethnocentric biases by substituting them with deeper insights.