Now two years into the pandemic, we continue to hear constant fights about the fundamental antagonism between being an independent individual and being a good group member. You must be either a “freethinker” or a “sheep”!

But research suggests this is not the case and that the two often go hand in hand. Indeed, individualism may be the ultimate form of American conformity.

Individualism is a core part of American identity, with individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. This contrasts sharply with the collectivism expressed in other parts of the world, where the needs of the group are often prioritized over individual rights.

Yet even in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville in “Democracy in America” noted an apparent paradox in the American way of life: an unprecedented individualism was combined with mass involvement in “voluntary associations.” Far more than citizens in his native France, Americans were joiners, belonging to “associations of a thousand … kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive.”

As we found in our research, the groups we identify with, including our nation, shape our understanding of what it is to be a person. The ways in which we strive to be an independent self are influenced by the norms of the groups we care about. Over time, these values fundamentally become part of who we are.

American identity has strong norms of independence, emphasizing personal autonomy, responsibility and individual rights. Does this mean that American individualism is just another norm determined by the group?

Research suggests that indeed it is. In one study, for example, social psychologist Jolanda Jetten and her colleagues measured how much American and Indonesian citizens identified with their respective countries. Respondents were asked, for example, how glad they were to be an American or Indonesian and how connected they felt to their fellow citizens. The researchers then assessed these citizens’ levels of individualism by asking them how much they agreed with statements like, “One should be independent of others as much as possible” or “When faced with a difficult personal decision, it is better to decide yourself rather than follow the advice of friends or relatives.”

American citizens were more individualistic than Indonesians, which aligns with a large body of research on cultural differences. Crucially, Americans who were strongly identified with their country reported higher levels of individualism than Americans who identified less. It was the opposite in Indonesia, where citizens who identified strongly with the nation were less individualistic than those who were weakly identified.

In other words, it was identification with their nation — intersecting with the nation’s social norms — that determined individualism.

It also turns out that autonomy and interdependence are highly intertwined.

This counterintuitive pattern might appear surprising. But it occurs because the more individualized and specialized our roles, the more dependent we become on other people to function effectively.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a stark reminder of just how interdependent we all are. Our individual vulnerability to COVID-19 is highly dependent on the actions of the people around us and, with the rise of variants, responses around the world. As we noted in an April 2020 study, fighting a pandemic requires large-scale cooperation — which means having people get vaccinated, wear masks and take other precautions to protect their communities.

Dominic J. Packer is a professor of psychology at Lehigh University and Jay Van Bavel is an associate professor of psychology and neural science at New York University.