The most vivid description I have ever heard of the Chinese “external locus of control” came from a student of mine my first year in China. It was spring of 1992, and she was talking about her older sister in Harbin, down the line from Qiqihar, where I was teaching English. Whenever she talked about [...]

One way in which cultures differ from one another is in what Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden–Turner call “locus of control” — in essence: Who makes things happen, me or the universe? I’ve discussed this in a previous post: “internally directed” cultures see individual will as the main factor, while “externally directed” cultures see circumstances [...]

Having just argued that we should be skeptical about characterizing China as collectivist and the U.S. as individualist, I will now do a complete about-face and give a striking example of just how collectivist thinking can be in China, and just how individualist Americans can be. The goal, still, is to shed light on a [...]

Before the China Law Blog posts, I had promised to flesh out the ingroup/outgroup picture I sketched in the first In Crowd post. In that post I questioned the standard descriptions of the U.S. as “individualist” and the Chinese as “collectivist,” pointing toward the distinction between ingroup and outgroup as one possible way to clarify [...]

After seeing the volume and nature of the responses my three guest posts generated, Dan Harris, gracious host of the China Law Blog, invited me to respond. You can read the responses here, or below. Audiences are often polarized by the claims I make about differences between Chinese and Western mindsets. It’s been no different [...]

Here is the last of my three guest blog posts on the China Law Blog. Again, I recommend scrolling down to see the comments if you read it on the China Law Blog site. Human beings stereotype. It’s part of our wiring. There’s no getting around it. In China you will be dealing with your [...]

Here is the second of my three China Law Blog guest posts. If you read it on the China Law Blog site, I recommend scrolling down to the comments section — there seem to be some strong opinions about my claims. Here’s the post: A favorite critique by Westerners of China is that “the Chinese [...]

Today, esteemed colleague and China Law guru Dan Harris posted the first of three guest posts by me on his multiple-award-winning China Law Blog. Please check it out, as he gives a nice introduction. For archival purposes, I’m putting the post here as well. Imagine for a moment that you’re going to set up a [...]

Besides universalism versus particularism, discussed in the last post, another angle from which to view the differences between the American and Chinese responses is “rule-based” versus “relationship-based” cultures. In the U.S., rules rule: as we have seen in the pedestrian scenario and in the discussion of the interview scenarios, Americans are much more likely than [...]

In the last two posts I’ve summarized similarities and differences between how Chinese and American interviewees responded to scenarios about a surprise arrest and a tax hike. I ended the last post with this: I got exactly what I had expected from the Americans: anger in response to both the Surprise Arrest and Tax Hike [...]