Communities and societies may differ in Collective or Individual values orientations. While Individual Community cultures act based on their individual needs, Collective Community cultures consider the needs of others as much or more than personal needs. Collectivism also employs a face mechanism to defend oneself or others against losing face by means of saving or giving self-esteem and respect. Individualist cultures usually employ low face mechanism.

Some researcher distinguish relational (relational networks among individual persons i.e. kin) and group (person is part of larger social group as a whole) collectivism (Brewer and Chen, 2007)