chp 13
CULTURE AND PSYCHOLOGY
Personality psychology focuses on psychological differences between individuals. Culture comes into play for two reasons. First, individuals may differ from each other to some extent because they belong to different cultural groups. According to one study, people in China are on average more emotionally reserved, introverted, fond of tranquility, and considerate than Americans (Cheung & Song, 1989). Second, members of some groups may differ from each other in distinctive ways. Doi described a Japanese mother who complained that her son was not as amae as he should be, a complaint you would probably not hear from an American parent. An important challenge for personality psychology is to understand ways that particular personality differences vary from one culture to another, or distinguish among individuals within different cultures.
Cross-Cultural Universals Versus Specificity
Are people from separate cultures so fundamentally different that they cannot be meaningfully compared?
To what extent are people from different cultures psychologically similar or different? Are their differences variations on a theme, or are they entirely different symphonies? To put the question one more way, does human nature have a common core? Or are people from separate cultures so fundamentally different that they cannot be meaningfully compared? Anthropologists have grappled with these issues for many years, and psychologists are relative newcomers to the fray. While both fields include plenty of proponents for both the “universal human nature” and “cultural specificity” positions, this is one of those eternal issues, like the nature-versus-nurture question (Chapter 9) or the consistency debate (Chapter 4), that seems bound never to be entirely settled.
In what follows, we will see plenty of evidence that culture has an important influence on how people are different from each other, as well as indications that there may be a common core to human nature. Furthermore, while cross-cultural psychology has traditionally emphasized how people in separate cultures are different, in the past few years an increasing amount of research has focused on how people around the world are psychologically similar, and turned more attention to the ways people differ within cultures. An important challenge for the future will be to figure out how universal psychological processes, such as personality and emotion, play out in diverse cultural contexts (Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006). We will return to these issues near the end of the chapter.
What Is Culture?
The term culture refers to psychological attributes of groups. According to one writer, these include “customs, habits, beliefs and values that shape emotions, behavior and life patterns” (Tseng, 2003, p. 1). Differences between cultural groups develop as a child learns the culture into which she is born (a process called enculturation), and as a person who moves from one country to another gradually picks up the culture of her new home (a process called acculturation). Culture may include language, modes of thinking, and perhaps even fundamental views of reality.
The concept of the cultural group is difficult to pin down precisely. Any group of people who are identifiably distinct can be a candidate. Traditionally, cultural groups have been defined in terms of ethnicity, nationality, and language, but important cultural differences can be found within national and linguistic borders as well as across them. Studies have compared North Americans with Asians, Japanese with Chinese, Spanish speakers with English speakers, inhabitants of different U.S. cities, and even residents of Manhattan with residents of Queens (Kusserow, 1999).
Psychologists are members of cultures, too. Every psychologist speaks a language and lives in a geographic area that inevitably influences her outlook. It is even possible that being a psychologist makes one a member of a certain “culture.”
Glossary
enculturation
The process of socialization through which an individual acquires his or her native culture, mainly early in life.
acculturation
The process of social influence by which a person partially or fully acquires a new cultural outlook, either by having contact with or living in a culture different from his or her culture of origin.THE IMPORTANCE OF CROSS-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
Psychologists have pretty much ignored cross-cultural issues until relatively recently, and many still do. Most of this neglect is fairly benign. Rather than worry about cross-cultural variation at every step, especially in the absence of much relevant data, most psychologists just try to describe and explain the phenomenon at hand as it applies to the people they can study most easily. Freud did not worry too much about cross-cultural concerns; he found middle-class Viennese women plenty complicated enough. Likewise, the European and North American psychologists measuring individual differences and exploring perception, cognition, and the laws of behavioral change have proceeded primarily within the Western cultural context. Research even within these limits has proven sufficiently interesting and difficult that most researchers have not attempted to carry it across cultural borders.
This attitude of benign neglect is rapidly becoming less tenable as research expands and accelerates. Even the Surgeon General of the United States has officially announced that “culture counts” for understanding mental health disorders, interventions, and risk factors (Public Health Service, 2001). Psychologists are interested in cross-cultural differences for three good reasons. Understanding cultural differences is important for increasing international understanding, for assessing the degree to which psychology applies to people around the world, and for appreciating the possible varieties of human experience.
Cross-Cultural Understanding
Different cultural attitudes, values, and behavioral styles frequently cause misunderstandings. The consequences can range from trivial to serious.
Near the trivial end of the spectrum, cross-cultural psychologist Harry Triandis described a mix-up with an Indian hotel caused by the difference between the American practice of marking an X next to the part of a form that does apply, and the Indian practice of marking an X at the part that does not apply. He received a postcard with an X next to “We have no rooms available,” and thought he did not have a hotel reservation, when he actually did (Triandis, 1994). This episode was surely inconvenient, but no major tragedy.2
More consequential differences include the preference of businesspeople in Thailand who try to preserve the dignity of everybody involved in a negotiation, or the tradition in Japan of getting to know a potential customer or vendor on a personal level before drawing up a contract. The Japanese practice permits controversial issues that might arise during a meeting to be settled beforehand, in private (L. Miller, 1999). When these styles encounter the relatively brash, direct, and sometimes even insensitive American way of doing business, the result is more conflict and probably less profit than would have been possible with a little more mutual understanding.
In 1994, an American teenager living with his parents in Singapore learned a lesson about cross-cultural differences the hard way. He was convicted of spray-painting some parked cars, which in the United States probably would have been considered an act of petty vandalism (albeit an extremely annoying one), punished by probation or a small fine. In Singapore, such misbehavior is taken more seriously. He was sentenced to pay restitution, spend a few months in jail, and—most surprising from an American perspective—to be hit several times with a bamboo cane, which can split open the skin and cause permanent scarring. The sentence caused an international uproar about whether this was an appropriate punishment or not.3
Behaviors that are ordinary in other cultures can also stir up a storm if they are practiced in the United States. In 1997, a Danish mother visiting New York went into a restaurant and left her 14-month-old daughter sleeping in a stroller parked outside. Alarmed New Yorkers saw the “abandoned” baby and called the police, who arrested the mother and placed the child in temporary foster care. Yet, apparently, this is a common practice in Denmark (see Figure 13.1). As one Danish writer commented,
In Denmark, people have an almost religious conviction that fresh air, preferably cold air, is good for children. All Danish babies nap outside, even in freezing weather—tucked warmly under their plump goose-down comforters. . . . In Denmark, [this mother’s] behavior would have been considered perfectly normal. (Dyssegaard, 1997/2004, p. 370)
Cross-cultural misunderstandings occur within as well as across international borders. In some inner cities of North America, a subculture of violence and fear has made it important to always receive proper “respect.” Anything that threatens such respect can make one seem vulnerable or can even literally threaten one’s life, so tokens such as stylish clothing, a fear-producing appearance, and even an advertised willingness to kill become highly valued (E. Anderson, 1994). Nonverbal expressions take on added meanings, too. For example, to gaze for more than a second or so at a person from this subculture may be taken as a sign of disrespect and provoke a violent response. Similarly, research has suggested that the American South has its own “culture of honor” that is different from the rest of the United States; it includes such behaviors as elaborate displays of mutual respect (such as calling people “sir” and “ma’am”) and the obligation to respond forcefully to any insult (D. Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle, & Schwartz, 1996). Honor cultures will be considered in more detail later in this chapter.
Generalizability of Theory and Research
Sigmund Freud’s theories were largely based on his own introspections and his experience treating upper-middle-class women who lived in turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna. It is not particularly original to observe that his view of humanity may have been skewed by the limits of this database.4 The problem is not unique to Freud, of course. As was discussed in Chapter 2, a basic worry about the generalizability of research findings concerns the degree to which the results of modern empirical research apply to humanity at large. About 80 percent of the participants in psychology studies come from countries that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic—“WEIRD” for short—although only 12 percent of the world’s population live there (Henrich et al., 2010).
The issue may be particularly acute for personality psychology, because a great deal of evidence indicates that culture affects the ways personality is expressed and emotion is experienced. The only way to incorporate this fact in psychological research is to include not only people besides college students, but also people from around the world.
The situation has improved a bit in recent years. The principal psychology journals increasingly report research from psychologists in many different countries, including Australia, New Zealand, many countries in Europe—Germany and the Netherlands are particularly active in personality psychology—and a growing number of Asian countries, including Japan, China, Korea, India, and Singapore. As psychology becomes more international, it will become more generalizable, and a better science.
Varieties of Human Experience
A third and more deeply theoretical issue also drives interest in cross-cultural psychology. A moment’s reflection is sufficient to realize that the way you see and construe the world is, to a considerable degree, a product of your experience and cultural background. An intriguing possibility to consider is how the world might look if you were from some other culture. Things that are now invisible might become clear, and things you see and take for granted might become invisible. You might even, in a real sense, become a different person.
For example, an indigenous resident of a South American rain-forest community might look at a tree and immediately see the uses for its bark and sap. That same individual might look at an automobile or a computer and have no idea what it’s for. A native of Western culture would immediately see the transportation and informational possibilities in the car and the computer, but would probably detect little potential on beholding a teak. A ride around the block might be sufficient to acquaint a visitor from the rain forest with the possibilities of cars; imparting an understanding of computers might be a bit more difficult. And if a Westerner visited the rain forest, there might be artifacts or objects the local residents would find equally difficult to explain. In a similar way, an American might look at a house and never notice which way its door points. To a Chinese person raised in the tradition of feng shui, this would be one of the first things noticed and would lead to some immediate conclusions concerning the dangers and possibilities that might exist within the house.5
Observations like these raise a profound phenomenological question: Does the human experience of life vary fundamentally around the world? Do people raised and living in different cultural environments see the same colors, feel the same emotions, desire the same goals, or organize their thoughts in comparable ways? The cultural anthropologist and psychologist Richard Shweder called these aspects of psychology experience-near constructs, and proposed that they are the most fitting subject matter for cultural psychology (Shweder & Sullivan, 1993). In a somewhat more accessible phrase, Triandis (1994) claimed, “Culture imposes a set of lenses for seeing the world” (p. 13). If that description is valid—and it probably is—then the natural next question is, How different are these cultural lenses and do they lead to views of the world that are fundamentally incomparable?
In its ultimate form, the question is probably unanswerable. As we saw in Chapter 12, we can never know the experience of another individual in our own culture for certain, much less enter fully into the experience of a member of a different culture. But it’s useful to try. The experience of living abroad can make you a more creative person, especially if you make an effort to truly adapt to—rather than merely visit—the unfamiliar culture (Maddux & Galinsky, 2009). What does it mean to be more creative? The study used measures of insight, association ideas, and generation of new ideas. One task asked participants to draw pictures of aliens from another galaxy (see Figure 13.2). People who had lived abroad drew more creative aliens! Of course, we should always remember that correlation is not causality (see Chapter 2). It’s possible that living abroad makes you more creative, but perhaps also more creative people are also more willing to spend extended periods of time abroad. Either way, travel and creativity seem to go together.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURES
As psychologists turn their attention to culture, the first question that arises is a difficult one: How can one culture be compared with another? Comparison has been attempted in many ways relevant to personality, including the ways in which cultures shape behavior, emotional experience, thoughts, and one’s sense of connection with the larger world.
Etics and Emics
The basic assumption underlying cultural comparison is that any idea or concept has aspects that are the same across cultures and aspects particular to a specific culture (J. W. Berry, 1969). The universal components of an idea are called etics, and the particular aspects are called emics.6 For example, all cultures have some conception of duty, in the sense that a person should be responsible for doing what she is supposed to do. But beyond this basic etic, different cultures impose their own ideas about what the duty actually is. A dutiful person in New Delhi will probably behave differently from a dutiful person in New York (McCrae & Costa, 1995). At the same time, a renegade in New Delhi and one in New York will both break rules, but they will break different rules.
Some concepts might just be too emic to compare across cultures. Hong Kong psychologist Fanny Cheung and her colleagues suggest that some of these include the Buddhist concept of the selfless-self (which was mentioned in Chapter 12), renqing (relationship reciprocity) and yuan (predestined relationship) in Taiwan, and chemyon (social face) in Korea, along with the Japanese concept of amae that you have already read about (Cheung, van de Vijver, & Leong, 2011). Are these concepts understandable outside the cultures in which they arose? The issue remains unsettled.
The more common and much older practice is to try to find etic concepts that can be compared across cultures. Many such concepts have been investigated. Let’s look at a few of the more interesting and important ones.
Tough and Easy
One pioneering effort more than half a century ago concluded that some cultures are “tough,” whereas others are relatively “easy” (Arsenian & Arsenian, 1948). In easy cultures, individuals can pursue many different goals and at least some of them are relatively simple to attain; in tougher cultures, only a few goals are viewed as valuable and few ways are available to achieve them. Another early system suggested that the overall stressfulness of cultures could be indexed by the degree to which they were characterized by suicide, homicide, “drunken brawling,” and a tendency to view important events as influenced by witchcraft (Naroll, 1959). According to this classification, the Ifalik culture is much less stressful than the Tupinambá culture, in case you are planning a vacation.Achievement and Affiliation
David McClelland (1961) theorized that a central aspect of any culture was the degree to which it emphasizes the need to achieve, which he assessed by examining stories traditionally told to children. In some cultures, such as in the United States, children are told many stories along the lines of “The Little Engine That Could,” reflecting a high cultural need for achievement. Other cultures tell more stories that reflect needs for love or, to use McClelland’s term, affiliation. Cultures whose stories manifest a high need for achievement, according to McClelland, show more rapid industrial growth than those whose stories focus less on achievement, and data including measures such as the amount of electrical production have tended to bear him out: more achievement stories, more electricity. As always, though, the correlational nature of these data makes the direction of causality unclear. Does telling achievement-oriented stories to children make them more likely to grow up to build prosperous, industrialized, electricity-using cultures? Or do prosperous cultures create an environment in which children’s authors just naturally think up stories about achievement?
Complexity
Are some cultures more complicated than others? Triandis (1997) wrote of the difference in complexity between “modern, industrial, affluent cultures [and] the simpler cultures, such as the hunters and gatherers, or the residents of a monastery” (p. 444). This difference seems plausible, but let’s be careful. How do we know that modern industrial societies are more complex than hunter-gatherer cultures? Such seemingly simple cultures have their own rich patterns of interpersonal relationships and political struggles, although they may not be visible to an outsider. Things might become pretty complicated, for example, when it comes time to choose a new chief. It also is reasonable to wonder whether monastery life looks as simple from the inside as it does from the outside. While some cultures might be more complex than others, it is not easy to be sure which those are.
Tightness and Looseness
Triandis also proposed that the tightness-looseness dimension contrasts cultures that tolerate very little deviation from proper behavior (tight cultures) with those that allow fairly large deviations from cultural norms (loose cultures). He hypothesized that ethnically homogeneous and densely populated societies tend to be culturally tighter than societies that are more diverse or where people are more spread out. This is because in order to strictly enforce norms, people must be similar enough to agree on those norms, and also because strict norms of behavior are more necessary when people must live close together. For example, cultures that developed in places such as Hong Kong would tend to be tighter than cultures in places such as Australia.
The United States, historically a diverse and geographically spread out society, is a classic example of a loose culture. But the degree of looseness varies. Having lived in both places, I can testify that east-central Illinois is a much tighter culture than Berkeley, California. Berkeley is more densely populated than downstate Illinois, but it is also more diverse. This observation suggests that diversity may override density in determining tightness and looseness.
Boston, where I have also lived, is an even more interesting case. Tightness and looseness can vary by block. Homogeneous, ethnic Italian and Irish neighborhoods (the North End and South Boston, respectively), where cultural mores are quite tight, abut more diverse neighborhoods (e.g., Back Bay), where standards are much looser. Again, diversity seems key. All of these neighborhoods are about equally crowded. But whereas South Boston and the North End are populated mostly by people born and raised there and are each dominated by a particular ethnic group, nearly everybody I met in Back Bay seemed to be from somewhere else—usually California!8
So, is population density less important than diversity in determining whether a culture is tight or loose? Not so fast. Consider Singapore, a fairly tight culture, if you recall the incident of the spray-painting teenager.9 It is ethnically diverse to an amazing degree—much more so than Boston or even California. It is densely populated, however, and its tight organization appears to be an important part of what makes the country function efficiently on a daily basis.
An interesting way to index the tightness of a culture is to examine left- and right-handedness. Worldwide, about 10 percent of the population is left-handed (Hardyck & Petrinovich, 1977). But this figure might be an underestimate of the true propensity, because almost all cultures (including American and European) prefer that people be right-handed. The degree of pressure to be right-handed appears to vary. One cross-cultural survey found that about 10 percent to 12 percent of Eskimos and Australian Aborigines were left-handed, indicating little if any coercion in those two relatively loose cultures. In Western European samples, the rate was about 6 percent, and in Hong Kong, the rate was near 1 percent, suggesting that those cultures are much tighter. Interestingly, the percentage of “lefties” among women enrolled at the University of Hong Kong was zero, suggesting that they are subjected to particularly strong cultural pressures (Dawson, 1974).
Head Versus Heart
As was mentioned earlier, cultural boundaries can be determined in many ways, including even one’s city of residence. Anyone who has traveled around the United States knows that its many cities can be quite different from each other. According to psychologists Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson (2010), one important difference is that some cities emphasize “strengths of the heart” such as fairness, mercy, gratitude, hope, love, and religiosity. Others emphasize “strengths of the head” such as artistic excellence, creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, and learning. Using a self-report survey administered to more than 600,000 Americans over the Internet, Park and Peterson computed head and heart scores for a large number of U.S. cities.
Some of the results were what might have been expected, and others seem a bit surprising. The highest “head” cities were San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland (CA), and Albuquerque (NM). Do any of these surprise you? The highest “heart” cities were El Paso (TX), Mesa (AZ), Miami, and Virginia Beach (VA) (see Figure 13.4). The city in the United States with the lowest “heart” score is Boston. As I’ve mentioned, I lived there for several years. The verdict seems a little harsh, but I can see where it comes from. Findings like these immediately raise two questions. The first is, why does it matter? Do attributes like these, on the level of whole cities, have any broader implications? The answer appears to be yes. Almost all of the cities in Figure 13.4 were assessed as to their “creativity,” on the basis of such criteria as the number of scientists, engineers, professors, and artists who lived there, the number of patents granted per capita, the presence of high-tech industry, and the city’s overall level of openness and tolerance (Florida, 2002). Cities that scored high on creativity, defined in this way, tended to have better job growth, lower unemployment, and diverse immigration patterns. And these same cities tended to be the ones with higher strengths of the head, and lower strengths of the heart. They also were more likely to have voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in the 2008 election.
The second question is, why would cities vary on dimensions like this? Psychologist Peter Rentfrow and his colleagues (Rentfrow, Gosling, & Potter, 2008) offer three possible answers. First, different kinds of people are attracted to different cities, leading to selective migration. Artists and scientists may prefer to live in Boston or Los Angeles over Oklahoma City or Omaha, for example. Second, social influence can affect a person’s values. If you live around people who mostly strongly support—or oppose—gay marriage, for instance, over time these opinions may have an effect on your own beliefs. Third, ecological factors may influence cultural differences between cities (or other geographical areas). For example, a lack of winter sunlight can lead to depression (Kasper, Wehr, Bartko, Gaist, & Rosenthal, 1989), and high temperatures are associated with higher rates of violence (Anderson, 1989). Do either of these factors help explain the differences between U.S. cities in Figure 13.4? In this particular case, I don’t see that they do, but I have to admit that I got pretty gloomy by the end of the winter in heartless Boston.
Collectivism and Individualism
One of the most profound ways cultures may differ from each other is the way they view the relationship between the individual and society, and one of the most-studied dimensions of culture seeks to capture this difference. Many studies array cultures along the dimension of collectivism-individualism, which compares the Western view of the individual, which is probably familiar to most readers of this book, with a viewpoint more consistent with the Buddhist philosophy summarized in Chapter 12.
THE SELF AND OTHERS According to psychologists who study this dimension, in collectivist cultures, with Japan used as the typical example, the needs of the group (the “collective”) are more important than the rights of individuals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Indeed, the boundary between the individual self and the others in one’s group is relatively fuzzy. For example, the Japanese word for “self,” jibun, refers to “one’s portion of the shared life space.” Japanese also exhibit a general desire to sink inconspicuously into the group; a Japanese proverb says, “The nail that stands out gets pounded down” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, pp. 224, 228).11
In individualist cultures, such as the United States, the single person is more important. People are viewed as separate from each other, and independence and prominence are important virtues. The willingness to stand up for one’s rights is all-important, and an American proverb teaches, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 224). As we saw in Chapter 12, an individualist view also leads to phenomena such as existential anxiety, the concern over whether one is living life in the right way. Because the philosophy of individualism isolates people from each other, members of individualist cultures may be particularly vulnerable to problems such as loneliness and depression (Tseng, 2003).
Japan, China, and India are the most frequently discussed examples of collectivist cultures, and the United States seems like the most obvious—or glaring—example of an individualist culture. A survey of employees of IBM (which has offices all over the world) found that natives of Taiwan, Peru, Pakistan, Colombia, and Venezuela were more collectivist and less individualist in outlook than natives of Australia, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States (Hofstede, 1984). Within the United States, Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans are more collectivist than Anglos (Triandis, 1994). Also within the United States, women are more collectivist than men (Lykes, 1985).
PERSONALITY AND COLLECTIVISM Researchers have developed long lists of behavioral and attitudinal differences. The most far-reaching suggestion is that personality itself might have a different meaning—or even no meaning at all—in collectivist, especially Asian, societies (Markus & Kitayama, 1998). One indication is the number of trait words in Eastern and Western languages. English has about 2,800 trait words that are used in everyday speech (Norman, 1967),12 whereas Chinese has about 557 (Yang & Lee, 1971). This is a noticeably smaller number, and has led some psychologists to suspect that personality in the Western sense is less meaningful in Eastern contexts (Shweder & Bourne, 1982, 1984). However, 557 is still quite a few, and every language studied so far has at least some trait words. So it is almost certainly going too far to say that personality traits have no meaning in collectivist cultures—and wrong to the point of being troubling to claim that members of collectivist cultures have “no personalities” (more will be said on this point shortly).
One does not have to go to such an extreme to notice many differences between individualist and collectivist cultures that are real, interesting, and important. For example, more autobiographies are written in individualist countries, and more histories of the group are written in collectivist countries (Triandis, 1997). In collectivist countries, satisfaction with life is based on the harmony of one’s relationships with others; in individualist countries, self-esteem is more important (Kwan, Bond, & Singelis, 1997). People from collectivist cultures carefully observe social hierarchies. In India, a person who is even one day older is supposed to receive respect from a younger friend (Triandis, 1997). People in individualist cultures are less attentive to differences in status. In the United States, many students call their professors by their first names; this does not happen in China, Japan, or India. However, everybody wants to be distinctive, even members of collectivist cultures. They just go about it differently. In individualist cultures, it has been proposed that people become distinctive by showing that they are independent and different from everyone else. In collectivist cultures, people are more likely to try to stand out by attaining prominent social positions such as becoming leaders, teachers, or intellectual authorities (Becker et al., 2012).
SELF-REGARD The individualist’s need for positive self-regard may be felt less acutely by a member of a collectivist culture (Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999). Specifically, research has found that Japanese people may not have the pervasive need to think well of themselves that is so characteristic of North Americans, and the theoretical explanation is that they tie their individual well-being to that of a larger group. Consistent with this theory, studies have found Japanese and American students respond differently to success, failure, and negative self-relevant information. For example, Canadian college students who heard they had failed a test of creativity quickly searched for ways to think well of themselves in other contexts, whereas Japanese students showed no sign of this response (Heine, Kitayama, & Lehman, 2001). In another study, Canadians who failed an experimental task persisted less on a second task and denigrated its importance. Japanese participants had the opposite reaction, working harder and viewing the task as something important they should strive to do better (Heine, Kitayama, Lehman, Takata et al., 2001). Apparently, this is because they have learned the Confucian view that failure always opens an opportunity for learning.
SOCIABILITY, EMOTION, AND MOTIVATION Collectivist cultures are more sociable. For example, Mexicans spend more time in social interaction than Americans (Ramírez-Esparza, Mehl, Álvarez-Bermúdez, & Pennebaker, 2008). Skiing in groups and social bathing are more common in collectivist cultures; members of individualist cultures prefer to do these activities alone (Brandt, 1974). In general, members of individualist cultures spend less time with more people; members of collectivist cultures spend more time with fewer people (L. Wheeler, Reise, & Bond, 1989). The cocktail party, where one is supposed to circulate and meet as many people as possible, is a Western invention. While Easterners may be relatively standoffish and shy at such gatherings, they also tend to have a few close relationships, not casually entered into, that are more intimate than usual Western friendships.
Arranged marriages are relatively common in collectivist cultures, whereas members of individualist cultures are expected to marry for love.Members of individualist and collectivist cultures may experience emotion differently. People in individualist countries report experiencing more self-focused emotions (such as anger), compared with people in collectivist countries, who are more likely to report experiencing other-focused emotions (such as sympathy) (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Furthermore, Japanese students reported more pleasant emotional lives when they felt they were fitting well into their group; for American students, individual concerns were just as important (Mesquita & Karasawa, 2002). Arranged marriages are relatively common in collectivist cultures, whereas members of individualist cultures are expected to marry for (self-directed) love. The downside of this romantic, individualist approach is that, when a married couple falls out of love, they may get divorced and cause their family to disintegrate. In collectivist cultures, this is less likely (Tseng, 2003). In general, emotional experience in collectivist cultures appears to be more grounded in assessments of social worth, to reflect the nature of social reality rather than private, inner experience, and, perhaps most importantly, to depend on relationships rather than the individual alone (Mesquita, 2001).
People in individualist and collectivist cultures also may have different fundamental motivations. According to one theory, a primary danger in collectivist society is “losing face,” or respect by one’s social group. While respect by others can be lost quickly, it can be increased or regained only slowly, so it makes sense to become risk-averse and attentive to the possibility of loss. In individualist cultures, the focus is more on individual achievement that stands apart from the group, so doing better for oneself is more important than the risk of losing face. In an attempt to test part of this theory, one study found that North Americans (Canadians) were more sensitive to information that indicated the presence or absence of possibilities for pleasure or reward, whereas Asians (in this case, Japanese) were more sensitive to information relevant to risk or loss (Hamamura, Meijer, Heine, Kamaya, & Hori, 2009). For example, when asked to memorize a long list of life events, North Americans were more likely to remember “gorgeous weather for hiking” (representing the presence of a positive outcome), and Japanese were more likely to remember “doing better than expected on a test” (the absence of a negative outcome). Similarly, North Americans were more likely to remember “a favorite class was cancelled” (absence of a positive outcome), and Japanese were more likely to remember “stuck in a traffic jam” (presence of a negative outcome) (Hamamura et al., 2009, p. 457).
This difference in motivation can have advantages. Because of their need to stand out, members of individualist cultures may self-enhance (describing themselves as better than they really are), whereas members of collectivist cultures, free of this need, may describe themselves more accurately. One study examined the holier-than-thou phenomenon, in which people describe themselves as being more likely than they really are to perform acts such as donating money or avoiding being rude (Balcetis, Dunning, & Miller, 2008). Members of individualistic cultures (English and German participants) were more likely to describe themselves as better (“holier”) than they really were, than were members of collectivist cultures (Spanish and Chinese American participants). Interestingly, this bias applied only to perceptions of self: Collectivists and individualists were both fairly accurate in predicting the future virtuous behavior of their acquaintances.
BEHAVIORAL CONSISTENCY Another basic cross-cultural issue is the matter of self-determination. The individualist view of the self assumes that the causes of behavior lie within the person. As a result, an individual is expected to behave consistently from one situation to the next. Indeed, in American culture, behavioral consistency is associated with mental health (Donahue, Robins, Roberts, & John, 1993; Sherman et al., 2010). The more socially embedded member of a collectivist culture, by contrast, might be expected to change his behavior more as a function of the particular immediate situation (Markus, Mullally, & Kitayama, 1997). As a result, a member of a collectivist culture might feel less pressure to behave consistently and less conflicted about inconsistent behavior. This difference is apparently the basis of the finding that, among Koreans, unlike among Americans, behavioral consistency is not associated with measures of mental health (Suh, 2002).
Some research suggests that, compared to members of individualist cultures, the behavior and experience of members of collectivist cultures are less consistent from one situation to the next. Koreans describe themselves as less consistent than Americans do, and different acquaintances of a Korean tend to agree less in their descriptions of his or her personality than do acquaintances of an American (Suh, 2002; see also Albright, Malloy, Dong, Kenny, & Fang, 1997). Self-descriptions of personality fluctuate more over time in Japan than in the United States (Chopik & Kitayama, 2017), and emotional experience also seems to vary across situations more for Japanese persons than for Americans (Oishi, Diener, Scollon, & Biswas-Diener, 2004).This last study adds an important qualification. As was explained in Chapter 4, consistency can be conceptualized and analyzed in two ways. One way focuses on the degree to which an individual varies his behavior or experience from one situation to the next—absolute consistency. The other focuses on the degree to which an individual maintains his differences from other people across situations—relative consistency. For example, even a brave and confident person might be more nervous in a burning house than in a normal classroom (low absolute consistency), but still might be the most confident person present in both situations. The study by Oishi et al. (2004) found that the Japanese had more inconsistent emotional experiences than Americans in an absolute sense; their emotions changed more from one situation to the next. But they had equally consistent emotional experiences in a relative sense, because a Japanese person who was happier than others in one situation also tended to be happier than most in other situations. This finding implies that while members of collectivist cultures may be more inconsistent in an absolute sense than members of individualistic cultures, individual differences and associated personality traits appear to be equally important in both contexts (see also Church, Anderson-Harumi, et al., 2008; Church, Katigbak, et al., 2008).
There is also some reason to wonder whether cultural comparisons of behavioral variability based on self-report are entirely accurate. One study showed that on standard questionnaires, black South Africans (who tend to be more collectivist) rated their behavior as more variable than did white South Africans (who tend to be more individualistic). However, behavior as described in daily diaries and direct observations of behavior (including video observations across 12 laboratory situations!) showed that the behavior of both groups was equally consistent and equally predictable from personality measures (Fetvadjiev et al., 2017). This study highlights the importance of assessing the effect of personality through multiple methods (recall the four types of data discussed in Chapter 2), as well as helping to confirm that personality really does matter, everywhere in the world.
VERTICALITY AND COMPASSION The collectivism-individualism dimension has become a staple of cross-cultural psychology. But as research has accumulated, the picture of this difference between cultures has become more complicated. For one complication, Harry Triandis has suggested that individualistic or collectivist societies can both be further categorized as either vertical or horizontal (Triandis & Gelfand, 1998; see Table 13.1). Vertical societies assume that individual people are importantly different from each other, whereas horizontal societies tend to view all persons as essentially equal. Thus, a collectivist-vertical society might enforce strong authority on its members (e.g., China), while a collectivist-horizontal society might have weaker authority but a strong ethic that enforces equality and sharing (e.g., Israel). An individualist-vertical society would have strong authority but also give individuals the freedom (and the obligation) to support themselves in a market economy (e.g., France), whereas an individualist-horizontal society would value individual freedom but also assume that meeting everyone’s needs is a shared obligation (e.g., Norway).Cultures also differ from each other in other ways that do not map well onto collectivism-individualism. One study compared self-compassion, defined as “holding painful emotions in mindful awareness while feelings of care and kindness are extended to the self” (Neff, Pisitsungkagarn, & Hsieh, 2008, p. 267), between the United States, Thailand, and Taiwan. While self-compassion might seem like a quintessentially collectivist idea, the study found that, while the highest levels were in Thailand, the lowest levels were in Taiwan—both ostensibly collectivist societies—and individualist United States fell in the middle. The authors speculated that the basis of the difference might stem from the predominance of Buddhist philosophy in Thailand compared with Confucianism in Taiwan. This finding also serves as a reminder that Asia—the largest continent on Earth—is too diverse to be considered a single culture. It contains many cultures that differ from each other in important ways.
CAUTIONS ABOUT COLLECTIVISM/INDIVIDUALISM: THE JAPANESE CASE The collectivism-individualism distinction has been used to compare many cultures, as you have seen, but the most common comparison is between Japan and the United States (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). So it may be surprising to learn that this comparison has been called into question. According to Japanese psychologist Yohtaro Takano, the oft-cited study by Hofstede (1984) failed to measure individualism correctly due to an error in interpreting a factor analysis (Heine, Lehman, Peng, & Greenholtz, 2002; Takano & Osaka, 1999). Even more surprising, a review of 16 other studies found that 11 of them reported Japanese and Americans to be about the same on this dimension and the remaining five actually found the Japanese scored higher on individualism than Americans (Takano & Osaka, 1999)! A further study tested the implication of individualism-collectivism theory that Japanese would conform more to group judgments in a replication of the classic Asch (1956) conformity experiment.13 The rate of conformity in Japan was about the same (23 percent) as in the United States (25 percent; Takano, 2012; Takano & Sogon, 2008). Another recent study showed that the behaviors associated with aspects of situations were remarkably similar between Japan and the United States. For example, when a person is being criticized, people in Japan and the United States both report that they act irritated, express hostility, and feel anything but cheerful (Funder et al., 2012).
So where does the view of Japan as being so different from the United States come from? Takano and Osaka suggest it might be a cultural myth. They write,
During the period between the opening of Japan in 1854 and the beginning of the Pacific War, quite a few Western observers noted that the Japanese lacked individuality. . . . In particular, Percival Lowell, who is known for interpreting the pattern on Mars’ surface as canals, devoted a whole volume . . . to advocating the view that the Japanese were “impersonal.” These observers prepared the basis for the common view. (Takano & Osaka, 1999, p. 311)
This common view, they suggest, led to anecdotes and biased selection of cultural phrases being used as a basis for thinking Japanese are particularly collectivistic, without a firm empirical basis otherwise. Other kinds of bias might have come into play as well.
“Japanese collectivism” was stressed by Americans and “American individualism” by Japanese during World War II. “Japanese collectivism” (specifically, “Japanese collective economy”) was again stressed amidst “Japan bashing” at the time of the 1980s trade conflict between the US and Japan. (Takano, 2012, p. 410)
The implications of Takano’s argument are sobering. He highlights the way that a central aspect of collectivism-individualism theory can lead to members of collectivist cultures being seen as basically “all alike” and even as lacking personalities altogether, an attitude that edges uncomfortably close to dehumanization. The Japanese case should remind us that not all initial cultural comparisons will be supported by the evidence that accumulates over time, and that we should be careful that comparisons between cultures not lead us to forget the wide variety of distinctive individuals who inhabit every culture on Earth.
IS THE WORLD BECOMING MORE INDIVIDUALISTIC? A difference that exists at one moment in history might change or even reverse over time. Evidence that cultural differences are not set in stone comes from a recent study of 78 countries that found that, on average, individualism scores have increased on average about 12 percent since 1960. This change occurred in all but a few countries—exceptions included Armenia, Malaysia, Mali, and Uruguay, which lagged in economic development during this period. The authors concluded that individualism increases, relative to collectivism, in countries that experience higher incomes, more education, and a shift in occupations from rural and farm settings to cities and offices. With the shift in individualism also come shifts in values, with these same countries showing increased tendencies to value friends as much as family, wanting children to be more independent of the family, and valuing free expression more and traditional practices less (Santos, Varnum & Grossman, 2017). The moral of the story is that the world is always changing. For the better or worse? That’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it?Honor, Face, and Dignity
Collectivism-individualism theory basically divides the world into two parts, whereas a newer approach divides it into three. Psychologists Angela Leung and Dov Cohen (2011) suggest that cultures differ on three dimensions they call honor, face, and dignity.
Western cultures in general, and the United States in particular, are said to be dignity cultures. The key idea is that individuals are valuable in their own right and this value does not come from what other people think of them. This attitude leads to catchphrases such as “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” and advertising slogans that exhort people to “think different.” Internal strength and sturdiness allows one to be true to oneself, which means living up to one’s own values and not necessarily the values of anyone else. This kind of culture fits well with and tends to emerge in market economies that are based on equal exchanges of goods and services among free individuals.
Cultures of honor are said to emerge in environments where the forces of civilization—such as laws and police—are weak or nonexistent and people must protect themselves, their families, and their own property. As was mentioned earlier, one example is the historic American South—which continues to influence modern culture in the southern United States. Another example is Latin America. An insult is an important event in such cultures, because to tolerate it could signal weakness and put one’s person and property at risk. A strong social norm demands retaliation, regardless of the cost. Turning the other cheek is not an option. Instead, one needs to signal that one is ready to use violence if necessary, such as by owning and displaying guns. Members of honor cultures are highly sensitive to threats to their reputations, which may be why U.S. states that are part of this culture have higher rates of suicide, and individuals who endorse “honor” values are at higher risk for depression, no matter where they live (Osterman & Brown, 2011)Finally, cultures of face emerge in societies that have stable hierarchies based on cooperation, such as Japan or China. People in such a culture are motivated to protect each others’ social image by being careful not to insult, overtly criticize, or even disagree with each other in public. Authority figures are respected and obeyed, and controversy is avoided. Such behaviors protect the centrally important “3 H’s” of hierarchy, humility, and harmony (Leung & Cohen, 2011, p. 510).
Of course, all cultures have elements of all three values in them, and individuals within cultures vary in the degree to which they accept the dominant cultural perspective. Leung and Cohen (2011) report a series of experiments in which people from the three cultures returned favors (a dignity behavior), repaid insults in kind (an honor behavior), or refrained from cheating (a face behavior). Not only did members of the three cultures vary in these behaviors as expected, but individuals within each group who more strongly accepted the cultural norm were more likely to behave in the culturally typical way. These findings underline yet again a theme that is emerging as increasingly important in the study of cultural differences: Individual differences within a society are every bit as important, if not more important, than the differences between them.
Glossary
etics
The universal components of an idea; in cross-cultural psychology, aspects of a phenomenon that all cultures have in common.
emics
The locally relevant components of an idea; in cross-cultural psychology, aspects of a phenomenon that are specific to a particular culture.
CULTURAL ASSESSMENT AND PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT
Many concepts used to assess differences among cultures can also be used to assess differences among individuals. We just saw this with the concepts of dignity, honor, and face. The three dimensions Triandis uses to describe cultures can also be used to describe persons. The cultural complexity dimension is analogous to the personality trait of cognitive complexity; cultural tightness resembles the traits of conscientiousness and intolerance for ambiguity; the collectivist-individualist distinction is analogous to a dimension of personal values that focuses on whether one believes that the individual is more important than the group (ideocentrism), or vice versa (allocentrism). Psychologists have also used more familiar personality-trait concepts to understand cross-cultural differences.
Researchers have done this in two ways. The first is to try to characterize cultural differences by assessing the degree to which average levels of specific traits vary between cultures. The second is to dive a bit more deeply into the cultures being compared by assessing the degree to which the traits that characterize people in one culture can meaningfully characterize people in another.
Comparing the Same Traits Across Cultures
As an example of the first approach, psychologists have translated the MMPI (see Chapter 5) into Chinese and found that, compared with Americans, Chinese people on average score higher on emotional reserve, introversion, considerateness, social caution, and self-restraint (Cheung & Song, 1989). At present, the most common way to compare the personalities of different cultures is using the Big Five (see Chapter 6). A study using translations of the NEO Personality Inventory (see Chapter 3) assessed extraversion in a large number of “Old World” nations, producing the map shown in Figure 13.5. Another study using the same inventory compared ethnic Chinese living in Canada with those in Hong Kong. Those who lived in Canada described themselves (S data) as being more open, cheerful, and agreeable, and these differences with people in Hong Kong increased the longer they lived in Canada—which suggests they arose because of the cultural environment (McCrae, Yik, Trapnell, Bond, & Paulhus, 1998).Single nations can contain different subcultures. One study compared personality differences across areas of Russia (Allik et al., 2009). One notable finding: People who lived farther from Moscow were less trusting. Research has also documented ethnically based differences within the population sometimes described simply as “European Americans.” One fascinating study compared American-born, second-generation-or-later descendants of immigrants from Scandinavia, with similarly distant descendants of Irish immigrants. When videotaped recounting times in their lives when they felt happiness or love, Irish Americans smiled more than did Scandinavian Americans, consistent with the customs of their different ancestral cultures (Tsai & Chentsova-Dutton, 2003).
Another study looked at clusters of traits that vary across the United States (Rentfrow et al., 2013). Based on personality tests taken online by more than a million participants,14 the researchers identified three types of people. One they called friendly and conventional, characterized by traits such as sociable, considerate, dutiful, and traditional. This type of person was especially common in the American Midwest and South (see Figure 13.6). A second type they called relaxed and creative, characterized by traits such as open-minded, tolerant, individualistic, and emotionally stable (scoring low on neuroticism). These people were predominantly found on the American West Coast, in the Rocky Mountain states, and in the Sun Belt. The third type they labeled temperamental and uninhibited. These people received high scores on traits such as impulsive, irritable, inquisitive, passionate, and competitive. They also scored relatively high on neuroticism. Such people were found in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states. As was mentioned earlier, such differences can occur for several reasons, including the tendency of people to migrate to areas of the country where they feel like they “fit in,” the possibility that people are influenced in their personality development by the people they interact with all day long in the area where they live, and even the effects of climate on mood.
Cultural differences in personality are not just interesting; they can be consequential. Countries where people are more conscientious, on average, are also places where fewer people are atheists and where there is less alcoholism, smoking, and corruption (Mõttus, Allik, & Realo, 2010). On the other hand, these countries also tend to have less democracy, lower life expectancy, and less robust economies. The countries that scored highest and lowest on conscientiousness may surprise you (or maybe not): India, Malaysia, and Croatia had the most conscientious people. Japan, Belgium, and Sweden scored lowest. The reasons for these results are complex, but seem to stem from the fact that conscientiousness is a multifaceted trait (as are all of the Big Five). It subsumes narrower traits such as competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, and deliberation, and each of these facets is distinct and has its own consequences. This means that as a tool for cultural comparison, the Big Five traits by themselves might be too broad. It can be useful to look at individual differences a bit more specifically.
For example, another trait that varies around the world is self-esteem. According to one study, residents of Canada have higher self-esteem than those in any other country in the world, followed by Israel, Estonia, and Serbia. Residents of Japan have the lowest self-esteem, and those in Hong Kong and Bangladesh are not much higher. This fact may be significant, because one recent study found that the lower a country’s average level of self-esteem, the higher the suicide rate (Chatard, Selimbegović, & Konan, 2009). In this sense, cultural differences in personality might be a matter of life and death.
A further complication when comparing personality around the world is that the same outcome may be associated with different traits. Consider, for example, the tendency of people to be religious. In secular countries where organized religion is relatively weak, highly religious people tend to be low on openness to experience. But in countries where the role of religion is strong, highly religious people are more likely to be agreeable and conscientious (Gebaur et al., 2014). These are people who get along well with others and tend to follow social norms, whatever they may be.
What about gender differences? Psychologists addressed this question by administering the NEO Personality Inventory, or translations of it, in 26 cultures to 23,031 individuals (Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001). They found that, in almost all cultures, women scored higher than men in neuroticism, agreeableness, warmth, and openness to feelings; men scored higher than women in assertiveness and openness to ideas. Surprisingly, these gender differences were actually larger in so-called developed societies such as Belgium, France, and the United States than in less-developed areas such as Zimbabwe and Malaysia.
Different Traits for Different Cultures?
The findings summarized above are interesting, but their meaning is not always clear, because they depend on a not-so-hidden assumption—that the same traits can be used to describe people in different cultures. This assumption is probably all right if one wishes to compare Michigan with New York, but becomes more tenuous when comparing, say, China and the United States. Psychologists have put major effort into investigating the degree to which the same traits are relevant and have the same meaning across cultures. The results are mixed.
An influential program of research has shown that the Big Five traits of personality can be found in observers’ personality ratings in more than 50 cultures (McCrae, Terracciano, & 78 members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project, 2005). But other studies have found many variations from one culture to the next. For example, one study concluded that measures of the Big Five could be effectively translated into Spanish, but that such translations also missed particular aspects of Spanish personality, such as humor, good nature, and unconventionality (Benet-Martínez & John, 1998, 2000). In the Levant (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank), a study of Arabic trait words found seven factors, not five—the two extra factors were integrity and humility (Zeinoun, Daouk-Őyry, Choueiri & van de Vijver, 2017). Another study found that openness to experience did not emerge as an important trait in Chinese personality assessment (Cheung, Cheung, Zhang, Leung, Leong, & Yeh, 2008). Building on findings like these, some researchers have argued that only three of the Big Five—conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness—should be considered truly universal (De Raad & Peabody, 2005).
Translating personality-trait terms from one language to another is hazardous because translations are always at least a little bit inexact. Some quantitatively sophisticated psychologists are attempting to improve the degree to which personality tests are comparable from one culture and language to the next, by using a statistical technique called item response theory (IRT). IRT analyses go deep into personality inventories by looking not just at mean scores, but at patterns in how participants respond to specific items. One such study found that, in a scale used to measure satisfaction with life, four of the five items yielded different patterns of response between Chinese and American participants (Oishi, 2006). Another study found that, while Germans appeared to score higher than Minnesotans in aggression and absorption, and Minnesotans higher in well-being, control, and traditionalism, these findings might be due simply to differences in patterns of item response (W. Johnson, Spinath, Krueger, Angleitner, & Riemann, 2008). Still another study found that the NEO Personality Inventory, widely used in cultural comparison, had different patterns of response in the United States, the Philippines, and Mexico (Church et al., 2011). These recent findings serve as a caution that, when comparing mean trait scores between cultures, there may be more (or less) than meets the eye.
To move beyond such problems, an increasing number of psychologists around the world are developing trait scales endogenously (from the inside), to see if personality-trait constructs that emerge in one culture also emerge in another. This approach is much more difficult because the nature of the research requires the work of psychologists who are native to each culture, and many areas of the world do not have the traditions or means to train and support homegrown psychologists. Nonetheless, progress is being made.
One study examined personality traits in China. It began by listing the trait words found in a Chinese dictionary and then asking a total of 751 Chinese participants to rate themselves or one another using those traits. The researchers found that the traits could be summarized by seven factors that they labeled “extraversion,” “conscientiousness,” “unselfishness,” “harmfulness,”15 “gentle temper,” “intellect,” and “dependency/fragility” (Zhou, Saucier, Gao, & Liu, 2009). As you can see, only three or four of these seem similar to any of the Big Five: extraversion, conscientiousness, intellect (which resembles openness), and perhaps harmfulness (as the opposite of agreeableness). A parallel study, conducted in Spain, also found seven factors in Castilian Spanish (Benet-Martínez & Waller, 1997). The Spanish personality factors were labeled “positive valence,” “negative valence,” “conscientiousness,” “openness,” “agreeableness,” “pleasantness” (referring to emotional experience), and “engagement” (or “passion”). Chinese and Spanish may both have seven basic personality traits, but, to read these lists, they are not the same seven.Thinking
One of the most intriguing and challenging questions facing cross-cultural psychology concerns the degree to which people from different cultures think differently. On one level, it seems safe to infer that because behavioral traits differ across cultures, as we have just seen, the thinking associated with behavior must be different too. On another level, it is difficult to specify the ways in which thought processes in one culture may differ from those in another, so research attempting to do this opens an exciting new frontier in psychology that has important and controversial implications.
HOLISTIC PERCEPTION AND THE SELF For example, one line of research suggests that East Asians think more holistically than Americans, explaining events in context rather than in isolation, and seeking to integrate divergent points of view rather than set one against another (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). In particular, this difference appears to characterize how they think about the self. According to one study, Japanese and Chinese people are more willing than Americans to describe themselves in contradictory terms (e.g., as friendly but shy), and also use more holistic phrases such as “I am someone insignificant in the universe” or “I am a living form” (Spencer-Rogers, Boucher, Mori, Wang, & Peng, 2009, p. 32). Methods of neuroscience (discussed in Chapter 8) are also beginning to be applied to cross-cultural differences (Kitayama & Park, 2010). One study showed that areas of the prefrontal cortex that are generally activated when one thinks about one’s self are also activated when Chinese—but not Americans—think about their mothers! This finding was interpreted to mean that the self is a broader concept for Chinese, because it includes important other people (Zhu, Zhang, Fan, & Han, 2007).
These differences may be related to the collectivism-individualism distinction discussed earlier, in which collectivists feel more a part of their social environment than individualists do. The difference may reach down to the perceptual level. In one study, Japanese participants either watched animated underwater scenes or looked at photographs of wildlife; in both cases, they remembered more information about the wider context than did American participants, and were better able to recognize specific objects when they saw them in their original settings (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). These results suggest that an American observer may look at a scene and see a specific object or person, whereas the Japanese observer is more likely to see and remember the larger context.
INDEPENDENT THINKING A controversial area of cross-cultural research concerns the degree to which Asians, compared with Americans, characteristically formulate and express independent and original points of view. Various psychologists and educators have observed that Asian students seem drawn to fields that require rote study and memorization rather than independent thinking, and that they are less willing than European Americans to speak up in class discussion (Mahbubani, 2002). One Vietnamese American writer lamented that this occurs because
self-expression is largely discouraged across Asia. . . . Asia is by and large a continent where the ego is suppressed. The self exists in the context of families and clans . . . [while] America still values the maverick, the inventor, the loudmouth class clown, the individual with a vision. (Lam, 2003, p. M6)
Other observers have offered a different interpretation. One study showed that thinking for Asian Americans is disrupted by trying to talk at the same time, whereas this effect was not found in Americans of European descent (Kim, 2002). Thus, a quiet Asian American student may be silent because she is thinking! The Confucian philosophy of learning prescribes that the first thing a student should do is learn the basic facts of a field, then analyze, and finally innovate. Early in her learning career, a student is not supposed to formulate independent opinions; that should come only later, after she has sufficient knowledge (Tweed & Lehman, 2002). Another writer has observed that
Asians are respectful not because they are afraid of their teachers or because they have no questions, but because they are brought up with the idea that humility ensures better learning. They are taught to listen attentively and to question only after they have understood others. (J. Li, 2003, pp. 146–147)
Values
The most difficult issues in cross-cultural psychology concern values. People feel deeply about matters of right and wrong, and may be not merely surprised but also upset and angry when they find that other people do not share their views. Sometimes, wars start. Thus, a particular challenge is to try to understand how even seemingly obvious and basic values can vary across cultures, and to formulate an appropriate response to these differences.
THE SEARCH FOR UNIVERSAL VALUES Cross-cultural research on values has followed two tracks. One track seeks values that are universal to all cultures. This is similar in intent to the research summarized in the previous chapter (Chapter 12) that tried to identify traits that all cultures see as virtues. Finding universal values would have two implications. First, we might infer that a value held in all cultures is in some sense a “real” value that goes beyond cultural judgment, a value we can be confident should be valued. (Do you agree with this inference?) Second, if we could find a set of common values, we might be able to use these to settle disputes between cultures by developing compromises based on the areas of universal agreement.
An influential study by cross-cultural psychologists Shalom Schwartz and Lilach Sagiv (1995) identified 10 values as candidates. The 10 possibly universal values are power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, understanding, benevolence, tradition, conformity, and security. Another way to look at these values is to see them as goals that everybody, everywhere, wants to achieve. Schwartz and Sagiv theorize that these values can be organized in terms of two dimensions. One is the openness to change–conservatism dimension, and the other they called the self-transcendence–self-enhancement dimension. For example, stimulation is high on openness to change and low on conservatism, whereas conformity, tradition, and security are the reverse. Likewise, achievement is high on self-enhancement and low on self-transcendence, while benevolence is the reverse (see Figure 13.7). Ratings of these values followed this two-part structure, more or less, in countries including Israel, Japan, and Australia. The hope of this ongoing research is to develop not just a universal list of values, but an understanding of how these values relate to each other and apply to decisions, behaviors, and cultural priorities.CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN VALUES While Schwartz and Sagiv’s research seeks to identify a universal structure of values, they acknowledge that cultural differences are still important. The second track in cross-cultural research on values strives to illuminate these differences. A long-standing interest of many researchers has been the differences between collectivist and individualist cultures in their styles of moral reasoning (J. G. Miller, Bersoff, & Harwood, 1990). While the individualist cultural ethos emphasizes liberty, freedom of choice, rights, and individual needs, some theorists claim, the collectivist cultural ethos emphasizes obligations, reciprocity, and duties to the group (Iyengar & Lepper, 1999; J. G. Miller & Bersoff, 1992). The collectivist style of moral reasoning imposes a group norm; the individualist style emphasizes independent and individual choice.
We can see this distinction even within North American culture. For example, although individualism is often viewed as a Western cultural attribute, the Roman Catholic Church—a Western institution if ever there was one—is profoundly collectivist in outlook. Individualism is really a Protestant, northwestern European idea, whereas collectivism is more Catholic and southeastern European (Sabini, 1995). Martin Luther broke with the Catholic Church over the right of individuals to interpret the scriptures. The Catholic view was—and still is—that any interpretation must come from the Church itself.
We can hear echoes of this ancient argument, as well as of the distinction between individualism and collectivism, in the modern debate over abortion. The individualist point of view, endorsed by many (though not all) Protestant and Jewish denominations, is that abortion is a matter of individual moral responsibility and choice. One might deplore abortion and regard it as a tragic occurrence but still endorse the idea that it is the pregnant woman who is most centrally involved, and in the end it all comes down to her individual, free decision. Those who endorse the right to safe, legal abortions do not like to be called “pro-abortion”; they prefer the term “pro-choice.”From either a collectivist or individualist perspective on the abortion debate, the other point of view is simply wrong.
The very different, collectivist point of view, strongly espoused by the Catholic Church and some of the more conservative Protestant denominations, is that abortion is morally wrong, period. The unborn fetus is already a person—a member in good standing of the collective, if you will. To abort that fetus is to kill a member of the collective, something no individual member—not even the fetus’s mother—has a right to do. Indeed, it is the duty of the collective, institutionalized in the church or the state, to prohibit any such act. The matter does not come down to personal choice at all. It comes down to a collectively determined issue of right and wrong.
No wonder this debate shows no signs of subsiding, and no wonder, too, that grounds for reasonable compromise seem nonexistent. In the abortion debate, we see a head-on collision between two fundamentally different ways of addressing moral issues. Elements of both views coexist, uneasily, in North American culture, but one of them cannot be mapped onto the other. From either a collectivist or individualist perspective on the abortion debate, the other point of view is simply wrong.
THE ORIGINS OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
We have now surveyed ample evidence that the average personalities of people in different cultures are often different, that people differ in how they differ in different cultures (i.e., the same traits may not apply in all cultures), and that cultures can hold profoundly divergent basic values. So this may be a good time to step back and ask two questions that, while not often addressed, have been lurking in the background all along: Why are cultures so different? And what determines the specific, distinctive psychology that a particular culture develops?
Avoiding the Issue
One approach to cultural psychology, influential until fairly recently, regarded these questions as essentially unanswerable. The philosophy of deconstructionism holds that reality has no meaning apart from what humans invent, or “construct.” This philosophy is an important part of the modern study of literature, and has also permeated some areas of anthropology (e.g., Shweder & Sullivan, 1990). Translated into cultural psychology, deconstructionism implies that any answer to why a culture is the way it is would itself have to be based on the assumptions of another culture (J. G. Miller, 1999). This is another way of saying that no meaningful answer is possible. If you recall Funder’s Third Law—about something beating nothing two times out of three—you will not be surprised to learn that I do not have much patience with the deconstructionist approach. Differences between cultures are real, and to ask why they exist is to ask a good question.
The Ecological Approach
The most reasonable answer would seem to be that different cultures developed, over a long period of time, in different circumstances, and with the need to deal with different problems. Triandis (1994) proposed a straightforward model that can be diagrammed as
In this model, behavior comes from personality, which comes from implicit and explicit teaching during childhood (socialization is another name for enculturation in this context), which is a product of the culture. The first term in Triandis’s model is ecology, by which he means the physical layout and resources of the land where the culture originated, together with the distinctive tasks and challenges this culture has faced.
A somewhat different ecological model was offered by Oishi and Graham (2010). This model can be diagrammed as
In this model, everything affects everything else. Ecology changes the culture, but culture also changes the ecology. Ecology changes the mind, but the mind changes the ecology, too. Perhaps most importantly, culture and the minds of the people who live in a culture change each other over time as well.
For example, the collectivist nature of Chinese culture might be traceable to the need, thousands of years ago, to develop complex agricultural projects and water systems that required the coordination of many people. To succeed at these tasks, a culture had to develop in which people were willing to surrender some degree of self-interest in order to serve the common good. In terms of the systems diagrammed above, the ecology changed both how people related to each other and the overall culture. At the same time, the success of this change allowed the building of huge irrigation systems and terraced farms that changed the overall ecology and Chinese civilization in profound ways.In the same historical period, people who lived in hunting and gathering societies, where individual effort is more important, did not develop the same collectivist outlook or complex social system as did the Chinese. While it takes thousands of people to build a water system, a hunting party that becomes too large will not catch anything. This difference, we could speculate (and honestly, that’s all we are doing), may be one reason China developed a collectivist culture while Germany developed an individualist one. A related line of speculation explains that North Americans value independence and personal achievement more than do Europeans (British and Germans) because North America was settled largely by voluntary immigrants who faced the task of developing a whole, new, seemingly empty continent16. The necessity to complete this cultural task led a distinctively American culture to emerge from its European roots (Kitayama, Park, Sevincer, Karasawa, & Uskul, 2009).
On an even broader scale, biologist Jared Diamond has argued that European countries became dominant colonial powers around the world because of an accident of geography. Ancient Europe had native plants that were easily turned into reliable, food-giving crops and animals that were readily domesticated to provide food and transportation. Another, ironic “advantage” is that at the same time Europeans began to travel around the world, at home they often lived close together in filthy cities. Those who survived developed wide immunity to diseases that were fatal to other peoples, such as Native Americans, who lived in cleaner environments (Diamond, 1999). The arrival of Europeans often marked the beginning of a devastating epidemic.
Disease can affect cultural development in other ways. One study examined the degree to which cultures differ in their average levels of extraversion, openness, and sociosexuality (which, as explained in Chapter 5, is the willingness to engage in sexual relationships in the absence of a long-term relationship) (Schaller & Murray, 2008). The average level of these traits tends to be lower, it turns out, in countries that historically have suffered from high levels of infectious disease. (Many of these countries lie near the equator,17 where the warm climate apparently facilitates disease transmission.) Why? The authors of the study speculate that extraverted behavior, open behavior, and—perhaps most of all—“sociosexual” behavior, all increase interpersonal contact and the risk of catching an infectious disease. As a result, people who are more introverted and less open and sociosexual have better chances for survival, making their type more common as members of the culture over time. In a related finding, cultures from areas with historically high levels of pathogens also tend to promote conformity, presumably because this leads to behaviors—such as cleanliness and orderliness—that help to prevent the spread of disease (Murray, Trudeau, & Schaller, 2011). Such cultures also have fewer left-handed people! This does not mean that being left-handed spreads disease; rather, it implies, as was mentioned earlier, that the suppression of natural left-handedness is an indicator of the degree to which a culture enforces tight adherence to its rules.
Even small differences in ecology can lead to cultural differences in personality. Truk and Tahiti, small islands in the South Pacific with cultures dependent on fishing, have evolved different patterns of gender roles and aggressive behavior (Gilmore, 1990). In Truk, catching fish requires venturing out to sea, which is hazardous. The result is a culture in which the men who must do this learn to be brave, violent, and physical; they are also dominating of women. In Tahiti, fish can be caught easily in the home lagoon, which is not dangerous at all. The men in this culture tend to be gentle, to ignore insults, to be very slow to fight, and also to be respectful of women. Apparently, this is all because of where the fish are!
It is also possible to explain the development of subcultures as a function of particular conditions experienced by groups within larger cultures. As I mentioned earlier, extreme poverty and decades of racial discrimination have led some ethnic subcultures within the United States to develop styles of self-presentation (young males seeking to appear tough and threatening) and self-definition (through identification with gangs and other sources of social support and physical protection) that strongly contrast with the mainstream culture (E. Anderson, 1994). The culture of honor in the American South may have its roots in the agrarian past of that region, where land and possessions had to be personally protected, or else lost (D. Cohen et al., 1996). Other aspects of minority subcultures in the United States and Canada stem from distinct ethnic heritages rooted in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, which have been more or less imported to the North American continent.
Genetics and Culture
Almost all psychologists who study cultural differences assume the differences are mostly learned, not innate. Genetic differences may also play a role, but if they do, the role is complicated. One relatively large study (with 398 participants) found that Americans and Asian-born Asians differed in the trait of “interdependence” (with Asians being on average higher), but only among individuals who carried certain alleles of the DRD4 receptor gene (Kitayama, King, Yoon, Tompson, Huff & Liberzon, 2014; see Chapter 9). Notice that the finding was not that the two groups had different genes, but that the groups appeared different only when individuals who shared this gene were compared. The best interpretation appears to be that people with this gene are different in their interdependence depending on which culture they grow up in, whereas the interdependence of individuals without this gene are not so strongly affected by their cultural upbringing. As I said, it’s complicated.
More generally, genetic differences are unlikely to be the primary basis of cross-cultural differences because, according to DNA analyses, individuals within a given ethnic or racial group are only slightly more similar to each other than they are to individuals from different groups (American Anthropological Association, 1998). Another reason genetics cannot fully explain cultural differences is because cultural groups are not just ethnic or linguistic but can also be defined on the basis of history, geography, religion, philosophy, or even politics.
Moreover, the distinction between culture determining personality, and personality determining culture, is not clear-cut. Take, for example, the hypothesis that societies that must develop large-scale projects requiring many participants—such as ancient China—tend to develop collectivist cultures. The same pressures that push the culture in a collectivist direction may also push individuals in the same direction: Collectivists thrive, have more children, and their genes (e.g., a gene that predisposes one to avoid interpersonal conflict) become more widely represented in the gene pool over generations. This gradual change in genetics might, in turn, help to entrench the cultural differences even more deeply. A child born into such a culture—or someone who migrates to it—might or might not have the relevant gene, but will absorb the relevant cultural teachings. So, does culture produce personality or is it the other way around? This question might, in the end, be a lot like the classic query concerning chickens and eggs. It’s not only hard to say which one came first, it’s also not very meaningful.
Glossary
deconstructionism
A philosophy that argues reality does not exist apart from human perceptions, or constructions, of it.
CHALLENGES AND NEW DIRECTIONS FOR CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH
Cross-cultural psychology raises several issues that make research especially challenging, and which are likely to receive increasing attention in the future. How do we avoid having our view of other cultures colored by our own cultural background? Does focusing exclusively on cultural differences lead us to exaggerate them? How can different cultures’ values be reconciled? What is the right way to think about areas of the world—or even individuals—with more than one culture? Now that we have almost finished our survey of recent research, it is time to consider these questions.
Ethnocentrism
Any observation of another culture almost certainly will be colored by the observer’s cultural background, no matter how hard he tries to avoid it. A truly objective point of view, free from any cultural bias, is difficult to attain, and some anthropologists argue that it is impossible. As Triandis (1994) pointed out, researchers are most in danger of committing ethnocentrism (judging another culture from the point of view of your own) when the “real” nature of the situation seems most obvious. It never occurred to the Danish mother visiting New York that parking her baby outside was a problem, and, more importantly, when profound values clash, it can be a real challenge to appreciate how the opposing point of view might have some validity.
The Exaggeration of Cultural Differences
Cross-cultural research sometimes exaggerates differences by acting almost as if all members of a given culture are alike (Gjerde, 2004). Researchers often imply that everybody in India, Japan, or China acts or thinks in the same way; some even claim that Indians, Japanese, and Chinese all have the same, “Eastern” view of the world. Given the size and diversity of these populations, such blanket characterizations are almost certainly wrong (Matsumoto, 2004; Oishi, 2004). Indeed, one recent analysis found that the average differences in personality traits across countries were about 8 times smaller than the differences between any two individuals randomly selected from these countries (Allik, et al., 2017). As one writer observed,
For instance, we say, the Japanese culture is serene (although many Japanese are not; just look at my sisters!), or the American culture is fast-paced (although many Americans are laid-back; just look at the students in my personality course!). (Oishi, 2004, p. 69)
Cultural differences tend to be exaggerated for at least three reasons. One is that cross-cultural psychology has long been in the business of finding differences. After all, if cultures were predominantly similar, then cross-cultural psychology would not have much to do. At the same time, even cross-cultural psychologists harbor stereotypes, which may increase their tendency to exaggerate the differences they perceive (Oishi, 2004; Oyserman et al., 2002; Takano, 2012).
A second reason is statistical, and it concerns some of the issues raised in Chapter 3. Many studies of cultural differences use significance tests rather than examining effect sizes. If the cultural groups studied are large, as they often are, then statistically significant results—differences that would be unlikely if only chance were operating—are easy to find. Once found, they will be published and may be described as important. Yet, the actual size of the differences may be very small. A related problem is that many analyses of cultures look for differences at the aggregate or general level, which examines an average across a large cultural context. For example, studies have showed that advertising is often different from one culture to the next (e.g., Han & Shavitt, 1994). But advertising targets the largest possible number of people at once and reflects general cultural views rather than individual perspectives. At the level of the individual, differences between cultures may be smaller (Oishi, 2004; Oyserman et al., 2002).
A third reason is the psychological phenomenon that social psychologists call the outgroup homogeneity bias (e.g., Linville & Jones, 1980; Lorenzi-Cioldi, 1993; B. Park & Rothbart, 1982). One’s own group naturally seems to contain individuals who differ widely from each other. But members of groups to which one does not belong seem to be “all the same.” For example, students at one college often have stereotypes about what students at another, nearby college are like. But they are well aware that the students at their own college are very different from one another. Many of us can easily describe stamp collectors, Californians, and members of the National Rifle Association—unless we happen to belong to one of those groups, in which case we may feel they are too diverse to characterize in any simple way. Even cross-cultural psychologists and anthropologists—who, of all people, should know better—sometimes fall into this bias trap. They may describe members of another culture (but never their own culture!) as if everybody in it were essentially the same. But just as Western culture contains both individualists and collectivists, the same is true about China, India, or anyplace else. Somebody who says “Nobody in India has a sense of the self as being separate” is making the same mistake as somebody who assumes that everybody in the world senses the self as being separate.
Interestingly, to emphasize the variations between individuals within a culture is an individualist view. To emphasize variations between whole cultures is a collectivist view. Which view is yours? Cultures and Values
Unless one is careful, cross-cultural psychology can sometimes lead to cultural relativism. As we saw in Chapter 12, cultural relativism is the phenomenologically based idea that all views of reality are equally valid, and that it is presumptuous and ethnocentric to judge any of them as good or bad.
This is a point of view that seems fine until we begin to consider some examples. In some areas of Africa and Asia, female genitals are mutilated as part of a cultural tradition intended to preserve purity and thereby improve girls’ chances for marriage. Typically, elderly village women use a razor blade or piece of glass, under unhygienic conditions and without anesthesia, to remove the clitoris or the clitoris and labia minora of a young girl. Each year, this procedure is performed on about 2 million girls between the ages of 4 and 15. Opposition expressed by the World Health Organization and some international human rights groups has sometimes been denounced as ethnocentric (Associated Press, 1994). For another example, in Afghanistan, women who are raped may be considered adulterers, and, in some cases, are only released from prison if they agree to marry their rapists (King, 2011)! Does our different cultural perspective truly mean that we have no grounds for condemning traditions like these?
Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List describes the career of Oskar Schindler, who, by the standards of the dominant culture of his day (the Nazi culture), was a misfit and an outlaw. One of the fascinating things about this movie is the way it shows that Schindler was far from a perfect person. He is portrayed as disorganized, deceitful, impulsive, and not very good at calculating risks. Yet, it is precisely these traits that allowed him to engage in behavior—a complex and dangerous scheme to save thousands of Jewish lives over several years—that today is regarded as heroic. Being a misfit in one’s culture is not always a bad thing.
The dangers of cultural relativism have been compellingly described by psychologists Jack and Jeanne Block and their colleagues:
If the absolute definition [of psychological adjustment and of right and wrong] risks the danger of a parochial arrogance, the relative definition may be advocating the value of valuelessness. . . . To the extent that relativism implies one culture is as good as another . . . relativism provides a rationale for tolerance that is also a rationale for perpetuation of what is, rather than what might be. (J. Block, Block, Siegelman, & von der Lippe, 1971, p. 328)
This issue is what makes the search for universal values, discussed earlier in this chapter, so important. Every culture is likely to have its own values, but perhaps we can all agree about a few.
Subcultures and Multiculturalism
At the beginning of this chapter we saw how the term culture was surprisingly difficult to pin down. Some cultural groupings are both obvious and oversimplified, such as the difference between East and West (which neatly divides the globe in two), or (almost the same thing) collectivism and individualism. Another way to group people is on the basis of language or in terms of geography, such as political boundaries or one’s continent of residence. All of these groupings have proved useful as bases of psychological comparison, but it is important to bear in mind that they are also imprecise and, to some extent, arbitrary. Members of the same cultural group by one definition may belong to different groups by another definition.
Another complication to cultural grouping, especially in nations of immigrants such as the United States and Canada, is the existence of multicultural individuals. For example, California includes many young people raised in Spanish-speaking households among extended and powerful Mexican American family groups, who also attend English-speaking schools, watch U.S. television, and participate in other thoroughly “Americanized” aspects of U.S. culture. The same is true of many Asian Americans and first-generation children of immigrants from many different lands, not to mention the many children whose two parents come from different ethnic or cultural groups. When confronted by the typical university form that demands, “State your ethnicity,” what are they supposed to put down?
Perhaps some of them should check “all of the above” (or at least more than one option). One study showed that bicultural Chinese Americans can switch quickly between Chinese and American ways of looking at the world, sometimes without being aware of doing so (Benet-Martínez, Leu, Lee, & Morris, 2002). Another study suggested that bilingual individuals may, in some sense, have “two personalities” (Ramírez-Esparza, Gosling, Benet-Martínez, Potter, & Pennebaker, 2006). Americans who spoke only English, and bilinguals taking the personality test in English, scored higher in extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Mexicans who spoke only Spanish and bilinguals taking the test in Spanish scored higher in neuroticism; results for openness were mixed (for related work with Chinese/English bilinguals, see Chen & Bond, 2010).
By some estimates, about half the world’s population is bilingual (Grosjean, 1982), so many individuals may have two personalities, in this sense. But such biculturalism does not always come easy. Some people integrate multiple cultural identities to gain the maximum benefit from each, while others experience conflict and even stress (Haritatos & Benet-Martínez, 2002). The concept of bicultural identity integration (BII) has been introduced to measure and explain this difference (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002). Individuals who score high on BII see themselves as members of a combined or emergent joint culture that integrates aspects of both source cultures. For example, they might see themselves as “Mexican American” in a way that is neither Mexican nor American but comfortably combines aspects of both cultures’ traditions and languages. Individuals who score low on BII, by contrast, experience conflict between their two cultures and feel stress from being unsure which one they really belong to. Research has further refined this picture, suggesting that BII has two aspects: the degree to which bicultural individuals see their two cultures as distinct from each other (as opposed to overlapping), and the degree to which they see their two cultures as being in conflict as opposed to in harmony (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005).
The study of multicultural individuals is important on both theoretical and practical grounds. On a theoretical level, the concept of two personalities within one individual is truly fascinating. An old Czech proverb says, “Learn a new language and get a new soul” (quoted in Ramírez-Esparza et al., 2006, p. 2), and psychology is just beginning to explore the ways this proverb may be correct. On a practical level, many areas of the world, including the United States, Canada, and many countries in Europe, are experiencing increased waves of immigration, and a major challenge in the coming years will be accommodating these multicultural citizens into the larger society in a way that minimizes stress and conflict within as well as between people. Personality psychology may be a useful tool for figuring out how to do this.
outgroup homogeneity bias
The sociopsychological phenomenon by which members of a group to which one does not belong seem more alike than do members of a group to which one does belong.
THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN CONDITION
According to the existential philosopher Sartre, discussed in Chapter 12, one fact applies across all individuals and all cultures. That fact comprises the “a priori limits which outline man’s fundamental situation in the universe.” In the same passage, Sartre wrote,
Historical situations vary; a man may be born a slave in a pagan society or a feudal lord or a proletarian. What does not vary is the necessity for him to exist in the world, to be at work there, to be there in the midst of other people, and to be a mortal there. . . . In this sense we may say that there is a universality of man. (Sartre, 1965, pp. 52–53)
Despite cross-cultural psychology’s traditional emphasis on differences between cultures, the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way, with an increasing number of psychologists emphasizing the degree to which people all over the world are psychologically similar (e.g., Matsumoto, 2004; McCrae, 2004; Oishi, 2004).For one thing, differences between cultural rules for appropriate behavior might mask similar motivations. For example, it is easy to observe that the Chinese generally appear less extraverted than Americans. They talk less often and more quietly, among other differences. However, Chinese culture tends to restrain feelings and considers their public display inappropriate. Thus, it is possible that an extraverted American might laugh twice as much as, and appear to have stronger feelings than, an equivalently extraverted Chinese when the two feel the same way (McCrae et al., 1996). In a similar fashion, the same sensations that Americans report as emotional experiences are interpreted by members of many other cultures in a more physical manner. An American might report “feeling depressed,” and a Chinese might report “feelings of discomfort in the heart” (Zheng, Xu, & Shen, 1986). Other research suggests that culture may influence more how a person wants to feel rather than how she does feel. For example, Asians may hope to feel positive low-arousal emotions such as calm, whereas European Americans prefer positive high-arousal emotions such as enthusiasm. Yet, when asked about their actual experience, they report feeling about the same (Tsai et al., 2006). And everybody, it seems, wants to please their parents. In one recent study, European American and Asian American college students both reported more life satisfaction to the degree that they felt they had fulfilled their parents’ expectations—even though the contents (and intensity) of those expectations were quite different (Oishi & Sullivan, 2005).
We saw, in Chapter 4, that psychologists debated for years whether personality traits or situations were more important determinants of behavior. The eventual conclusion was that both are important, and because each affects the other—they interact, in other words—it’s not really meaningful to say which one matters more. Cross-cultural psychology has begun to explore the degree to which persons and situations are similar or different around the world, and the conclusion appears to be that both are more similar than might have been expected. A study of the aspects of situational experience in 20 countries found that experiences were largely similar no matter where you went, and the typical situation was “mildly pleasant” (Guillaume et al., 2016, p. 493). In a related study of 21 countries, behavior was pretty consistent around the world as well—the typical behavior at 7 P.M., around the world, was a positive and relaxed activity (Baranski et al., 2017).
In a similar vein, I once heard psychologist Brian Little relate an unpublished result from a cross-cultural research project. He was interested in the goals or “personal projects” people pursue (see Chapter 14), and the degree to which they might vary cross-culturally. Little teaches at a university in Canada, and it was easy for him to ask his students to describe their current personal projects. At considerable expense and difficulty, he managed to have a group of Chinese students in China surveyed on a similar question. The researchers took great pains to translate the question into Chinese, then back-translate18 it into English to make sure it accurately crossed the cultural divide, and they expended the same efforts translating the students’ answers. Almost uniformly, the results disappointed anyone expecting large differences. The goals—get good grades, shop for tonight’s dinner, find a new girlfriend—seemed more universal than culturally specific. Then, to his great excitement, Little read one particular Chinese student’s response: One of her current projects, she reported, was to “work on my guilt.”
Little reported his initial reaction as: Wow, what a profoundly different, non-Western type of goal. What interesting insight a goal like working on one’s guilt provides into the fundamentally contrasting, collectivist Chinese worldview. And, not least of all, what a publication this will make! Then, good scientist that he is, Little did some checking. The statement turned out to be a misprint. The Chinese student enjoyed making homemade blankets, so she was trying to find time to work on her quilt.
Sometimes, cross-cultural differences in personality have a way of disappearing just when you think you have found them.
SUMMARY
If, as the phenomenologists claim, a person’s construal of the world is all-important, a logical next question concerns the variations in such construals of reality across cultures.
Culture and Psychology
Individuals from different cultures may be psychologically different from one another, and members of particular cultural groups may differ from each other in distinctive ways.
The process by which a child picks up the culture into which she is born is called enculturation; the process by which someone who moves into a culture picks up its mores is called acculturation.
The Importance of Cross-Cultural Differences
It is important to examine psychological differences between cultures because misunderstandings can lead to conflict and even war, because theory and data developed in one culture might not be applicable in another, and because understanding how other peoples view reality can expand our understanding of the world.
Characteristics of Cultures
The comparative approach of most modern cultural psychologists contrasts etics, elements common to all cultures, with emics, elements that make cultures different.
Cultures have been compared on emic dimensions including toughness (vs. easiness), achievement and affiliation, complexity, tightness-looseness, emphasis on the head versus heart, collectivism-individualism, and the degrees to which they emphasize dignity, honor, or face.
People in collectivist cultures are said to regard society and relations with others as more important, relative to individual experience and gain, compared with people in individualistic cultures. The usual assumption that Asian cultures are more collectivist than European or American cultures is probably too broad, given all the exceptions (e.g., Mexican culture is more collectivist than North American culture).
A large amount of research has contrasted collectivist and individualist cultures on behavior, values, and views of the self. As cultures around the world become more industrialized, individualism seems to be increasing.
Dignity cultures emphasize the importance of the individual; honor cultures emphasize self-protection and rituals of respect; and face cultures emphasize harmony and the maintenance of stable hierarchies.
Cultural Assessment and Personality Assessment
Trait analyses have assessed the average differences between members of separate cultural groups across various personality traits, and also have evaluated the degree to which the traits that characterize people in one culture can accurately characterize people in another.
Analyses of thinking styles have addressed hypotheses such as the idea that members of collectivist cultures think more holistically and are less prone to self-expression than members of individualist cultures.
A few values may be universal. One analysis suggests 10 potentially global values that can be organized in terms of two dimensions: openness to change versus conservatism, and transcendence versus self-enhancement.
Despite the evidence for a few universal values, cultural differences are still important. Collectivist cultures place group values (such as harmony) ahead of individual values (such as freedom); individualist cultures do the reverse.
The Origins of Cultural Differences
Deconstructionists avoid the question of where cultural differences originate, but the ecological comparative approach holds that cultural differences originate in the diverse ecologies to which groups around the world must adapt. Such ecological differences may also produce small but consequential genetic differences.
Challenges and New Directions for Cross-Cultural Research
Ethnocentrism is a constant hazard in doing cross-cultural research because one’s cultural context inevitably affects one’s point of view. The other extreme—cultural relativism—is also a hazard. Though difficult, it is important to find ways to make basic moral judgments while avoiding ethnocentrism.
Cultural differences may be exaggerated in some cases, because cultural psychologists are in the business of explaining differences, because researchers can be prone to stereotyping, and because analyses of statistical significance may describe small differences as important.
In particular, the outgroup homogeneity bias may lead to exaggerated views of the degree to which people in another culture are “all the same.” Individuals differ within as well as between cultures.
Cultures often contain subcultures; many individuals are multicultural, and in that sense may even have more than one personality. Their challenge is to successfully integrate the different cultures within themselves rather than feel conflicted by them.
Although cross-cultural psychology has traditionally emphasized differences between cultures, some recent work is emphasizing psychological processes that all persons have in common.
The Universal Human Condition
Cross-cultural psychology has traditionally emphasized differences between cultures, but some recent work is emphasizing psychological processes that all persons have in common.
The universal human condition, regardless of culture, was identified by Sartre: Everybody everywhere must exist, work, relate to other people, and ultimately die.