[3] Cross-cultural studies are applied widely in the social sciences, particularly in cultural anthropology and psychology.
The first cross-cultural studies were carried out by 19th-century anthropologists such as Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis H. Morgan.
Together with Douglas R. White, he developed the widely-used Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, which is currently maintained by the open access electronic journal World Cultures.
[7] The original theory proposed four dimensions along which cultural values could be analyzed: individualism-collectivism; uncertainty avoidance; power distance (strength of social hierarchy) and masculinity-femininity (task-orientation versus person-orientation).
[8] With the widespread access of people to the Internet and the high influence of online social networks on daily life, users behavior in these websites have become a new resource to perform cross-cultural and comparative studies.