Philippines is a collectivist society, yes.
The Philippines is so rich in terms of culture, from the moment we are born as Filipinos, we are out to experience our parents’ beliefs and as we grow we become more like a motivated followers of a certain group that our parents belong to. We become what our family and the society teach us and we tend to base our judgments as kids by the way we see elder people and how they follow the Filipino culture.
The most perfect example for me is a growing Filipino kid’s fear of answering back to his/her parents when being scolded. It is because as a kid, he/she learned to respect elders as a result to adherence to norms and teachings in the society. And as Filipinos, we were taught lessons by our parents, teachers, and the whole society every day that eventually shaped us. Although we develop individual choices when we become adults, we cannot negate the fact that the lives we had when we were kids were definitely logged into us and became something that shaped our idea of the self. That is the exact explanation why we tend to have similar reactions over things with our colleagues because we belong to the same group and the same culture.