Two groups of subjects — European Americans and Asian Americans, all undergraduates at the University of Michigan — took the “rod and frame” test. The apparatus looks like this:

What subjects see when they peer into it looks roughly like one of these configurations:

One of the uses of the test is to detect “field dependence”: to what extent is perception of the rod’s orientation affected by the orientation of the frame? That is, how able are people to “factor out” the frame and make accurate judgments about the orientation of the rod?

If we take a common metaphorical understanding of how “East” and “West” differ, we might think that “Easterners” would be more field-dependent than “Westerners,” since “context” is said to matter so much more in the East. Relationships matter more than individuals.

At the same time it’s an absurd claim. Vision is vision, right? Let’s not be fooled by the metaphor. There’s no way actual perception could differ culturally.

Except that’s exactly what the researchers found: the European Americans were less field-dependent than the Asian Americans. Not only were their judgments of rod verticality more accurate irrespective of the frame, but they got even more accurate when given control of the rod. The East Asians tended to see “rod and frame” together, and gave less accurate judgments when given control over the rod.

To me this finding is absolutely astonishing. I share it in many of my talks, because it makes the point so profoundly that culture goes to the very root of who we are as human beings: if how I literally see the world is partly a product of my cultural background, then how could any part of my life not be touched by culture?

It also serves as a stark reminder to anyone operating in an unfamiliar culture that we’d best be on guard against assuming our own perceptions are right and others’ are wrong. Chinese and Westerners actually see the world differently. Knowing that brute-force fact can help us immensely if we’re willing to distance ourselves from our own perceptions.

Puts a new spin on “seeing is believing.”

China is a multi-ethnic country, consisting of Han, Mongolian, Hui, Tibetan, and many other ethnic minorities. Do you believe that the abilities and natures of all ethnic groups are the same?

中国是一个多民族国家,象汉,蒙,回,藏,以及各个少数民族。你觉得每个民族的能力和天性都一样吗?

As I expected, these (highly educated) natives of China dove right into China’s different ethnic groups and all the stereotypes that are commonly held about the groups.

With the Americans I felt the need for kid gloves. It’s just not okay to be explicit about racial stereotypes in the U.S., or even to admit their existence — especially on a college campus. So instead of translating the Chinese question into English, I came up with a new, very different question in English:

There are stereotypes about certain ethnic groups in the United States. Some claim, for instance, that because few African Americans play volleyball, that this says something about abilities possessed by certain ethnic groups. Is there any truth to such stereotypes?

It’s almost painful to read. It feels like I’m literally walking on eggshells, carrying a tray of the finest crystal champagne glasses filled to the rim with Dom Pérignon. And sure enough, even with this ginger wording, the Americans were halting and hesitant in their discussions. For example:

A: Each person has talents that they can contribute to a body.

B: Right. More of an individualist…instead of having a broad label of being a part of a certain ethnic group, it’s more that each person brings a certain set of skills or interests to the table.

A: Yeah, and that each one is unique, not that we have to include everyone in every particular aspect of life, because that’s not where each individual person fits.

B: The way to look at it would be, you know, to basically, to break away this whole concept of the ethnic group. You’d have to look at people as having their own separate sense of values, or each individual as having a sense of special value, or interests. Everyone’s different in that sense, yeah.

I’ve written plenty about individualism, and I’ve called into question the sacred cow that Americans are “individualist” and Chinese are “collectivist.” Here, though, I think there’s a lot of validity to the claim that Americans are “individualist.” It’s meant in a very specific sense: the American belief — faith, really — that each human being has something unique to contribute to the world, and that this uniqueness must be honored (see also earlier posts on dreams). This sense of individualism is so strong that, as we can see from the excerpt, even the notion of group membership can be deemed offensive.

Now, there are all sorts of issues that come up as far as the eggshells go, and the equating of “stereotype” with “generalization.” That’s worth addressing another time.

]]> http://www.jasonpatent.com/2009/09/16/now-thats-what-i-call-individualism/feed/ 0 http://www.jasonpatent.com/2009/09/14/contracts-versus-hetong-redux/ http://www.jasonpatent.com/2009/09/14/contracts-versus-hetong-redux/#comments Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:20:02 +0000 Jason Patent http://www.jasonpatent.com/?p=765 Today we’re revisiting the topic of contracts versus hétong. There’s rich territory to explore here. I was recently revisiting Lin Yutang’s classic book, My Country and My People, and it spurred some more thinking on this issue.

I’ve quoted from the book before: it was Lin Yutang who referred to China as “a nation of individualists” in this book, published in 1935. Lin addresses what he calls Chinese “indifference,” which, he argues, is a function of the world’s unpredictability, especially with regard to (lack of) legal institutions to protect citizens:

Chinese youths are as public-spirited as foreign youths, and Chinese hot-heads show as much desire to “meddle with public affairs” as those in any other country. But somewhere between their twenty-fifth and their thirtieth years, they all become wise, and acquire this indifference, which contributes a lot to their mellowness and culture. Some learn it by native intelligence, some by getting their fingers burned once or twice. All old people play safe because all old rogues have learned the benefits of indifference in a society where personal rights are not guaranteed and where getting one’s fingers burned once is bad enough. (pp. 48-9)

This connects directly to what Americans sometimes perceive as an indifference to the “letter of the law”:

In one word, we recognize the necessity of human effort but we also admit the futility of it. This general attitude of mind has a tendency to develop passive defense tactics. “Great things can be reduced into small things, and small things can be reduced into nothing.” On this general principle, all Chinese disputes are patched up, all Chinese schemes are readjusted, and all reform programs are discounted until there are peace and rice for everybody. (p. 56)

No wonder Americans, laser-focused as we are on “honoring our word,” sometimes get up in arms. Contracts are about “honoring our word”; hétong are about reducing differences and working together to create “peace and rice for everybody.”

A caricature, to be sure, but one to bear in mind — and really think through — as you continue to develop your relationships in China.

The original Chinese Esquire series referenced in the Time piece is here (in Chinese only). It seems Chinese Esquire is using the power of dreams, along with fashion photography, to narrate a thoroughly modern Chinese man.

This kind of “modernity” highlights the shift, in certain young and “fashionable” circles in China, to a more future-based orientation. Dreams are by definition grounded in the future. The “pragmatic” aspects of Chinese culture in which we find resistance to dreams are, in contrast, based in the past: long and bitter experience has shown that the whims of the world can and do thwart the best of human intention and effort.

In an earlier post I wrote of Hoftede’s concept of “time orientation.” I mention it here because the drag of China’s deep past upon dreams can be formidable. And still we have the portraits in Chinese Esquire of China’s modern dreamers. No wonder so many Westerners return from China scratching their heads at the contradictions and the complexity. And while what I’m about to say is to some degree true of every place, and while I’m not nearly the first to say it, China defies all our efforts to put it into tidy boxes.

In case you’re thinking, “I’m not religious,” or “I’m not spiritual,” you’re still not off the hook. Sociologist Robert Bellah famously studied what he termed American Civil Religion: a set of religiously-based beliefs shared by Americans of all religious and non-religious stripes. These beliefs — about many things, including our duties toward our fellow humans, as well as the uniqueness of human life and the need to “express ourselves” and develop our talents — provide the energy behind much of the language used by the Americans in my research.

In America you don’t mess with someone’s dreams. Dreams may be impractical, far-fetched, pie-in-the-sky. But dismiss them and you’re in trouble.

“Dreams,” in the default case in Chinese culture, don’t carry the same charge — as evidenced in the Chinese discussion of the rock band question, discussed in yesterday’s post. One respondent referred to Wáng Èr’s music as a “hobby” (兴趣爱好) that he could pursue after college; another participant said — and stick with me here if you don’t read Chinese — 我觉得每一个人还是要follow自己的heart.” Do you see the English in there? I translate the sentence as: “I think every person should follow their own heart.” After being admonished by her partner for using English, she “translates” back into Chinese: “还是应该坚持自己的想法吧”: “[They] should maintain their opinions.” The flavor of dreams is completely missing without the English.

Now, I’m not claiming that the language of dreams in English “can’t be translated into Chinese.” There are much closer translations in Chinese for the language of dreams than the language chosen by this one participant. And I’m certainly not claiming that thinking in terms of dreams isn’t done in Chinese: if it weren’t, why would the respondent have said what she said, namely that every person should follow their heart?

What I find interesting about her approach, though, is that she felt pulled to use English, and that the first “translation” into Chinese that she thought of was that one, about maintaining opinions, which is so devoid of the spirit of following one’s heart.

Dreams are alive and well in China. I would argue that dreaming big dreams is as much a part of our humanity as anything. Still, default modes of thinking and reasoning about dreams in the U.S. and in China are strikingly different. And so we need, as always, to take care in what we assume our Chinese counterparts and partners are thinking.

One question asked of participants:

Tom is about to graduate from high school.  He decides he doesn’t want to go to college, despite his parents’ wishes.  Instead, he wants to join a rock band.  What will the family members all say to one another? What will happen in the end?  Who is right?

王二快要高中毕业了。虽然他的父母希望他上大学,但是他不想上大学,想组一个摇滚乐团。你觉得王二会怎么样和他的父母说?他的父母又会怎样反应? 最后他们会决定怎么做? 你会支持哪一边?

The Chinese and American responses differ sharply, with the Americans generally supportive of Tom despite his likely failure, and the Chinese in favor of the parents.

In their reasoning the Americans employ a cultural model I’ve called Follow Your Dreams: humans get one life; each human has unique talents; we are duty-bound to develop and express our talents; therefore Tom has a duty at least to try and be a rock star. One respondent offered up what became my favorite quote in the entire data set: “You have to do what you want to do.”

The Chinese focus more on the likely economic downsides of such an impractical venture. Wáng Èr (Tom’s Chinese alter-ego) can keep rock music as a hobby, but forget about it as a profession.

The question raises deep issues about what a human life is fundamentally about. Per usual, American assumptions that all humans inherently want, even need, to “follow their dreams” at the expense of everything else isn’t as universal or powerful as we might think. There is a lot of cross-cultural pull to following dreams; it just doesn’t rule the roost as decisively as Americans often assume it does.

More on this tomorrow.

Recall the following from the “rich person” discussion, said by Chinese participants:

C      How should he use his money,” “should”, this word, maybe I’m a little bit…uncomfortable.…“Should” has a bit of a feeling of morals, or preaching.

D      We should let everyone choose for themselves…how they should use…not “should.” Let everyone choose how to use his money.  We can only say if I were rich what would I do with it?

C      Right.

C         “应该怎么样用他的钱,” “应该” 这两个字我可能有一点…不舒服。”应该” 还有一点道德, 说教的感觉。

D     我们应该让每个人自己选择…应该去怎么用…不是“应该”…让每个人自己选择去用他的钱。  我们只能说如果我有钱的话我会怎么办。

C     对。

And:

E      This, I think…this question is different for each person.  Your saving or spending money depends on your own worldview, on the direction of your ideas about value.

F      I think this question should ask, “If you were rich, how should you spend your money?”

E      Yes.  In reality you’re just expressing your own view, right, about how you should use this sum of money.

F      It should be asked this way.

E     这个我觉得…这个问题就是因人而异的。  你这个钱的省花, 取决于你这个人的一种世界观啊, 价值意识的指向。

F     我觉得这个问题应该问, “如果你很有钱, 你应该怎么样用你的钱?”

E     对。  实际上你就是表达你自己的看法嘛, 应该怎么样去使用这笔钱。

F     这样问。

Here’s my question to you: In their responses to this scenario, between the Americans and the Chinese, who would you say is more individualistic? To me the answer is clear: the Chinese are hands down the individualists here.

How could this be? Especially for these two cultures, which are often presented as opposites based on the U.S. being “individualist” and China being “collectivist.”

No neat answers here. Instead, a healthy reminder that our generalizations and simplifications can come back to bite us when we least expect. And also a reminder that, as I discussed last Friday, there’s plenty about each culture contained in the other. There’s nothing inherently American or Western about “individualism,” and nothing inherently Chinese or Asian about “collectivism.” We can all comprehend both, and will call on some version of one or the other at different times.

Another of the interview questions I asked in my research was:

If a person is rich, what should he/she do with his/her money?

如果一个人很有钱,他应该怎么用他的钱?

As with the fallen tree question, the Chinese respondents hold to a very practical line: invest the money, because money makes money (钱生钱). The Americans, however, agonize over the question. They seem to feel intuitively that the “right” thing to do would be to give away a lot of the money. At the same time, they are troubled by the gap between ideal and real:

A      And you should give to people who don’t have much because they can’t…they’re not as fortunate as you.  They don’t have those capabilities.  They’re not in the same situation as you.  So I think people should give back to society.

B      I agree.

A      Do something, make a foundation, you know, I mean, you know like a charity.

B      Just put it where it’s needed.

A      Yeah.  A lot of people do say, yeah I earned the money, so I should keep it, but really what are you gonna do with all that money?  You’re just gonna spend it on yourself. That’s so selfish.  But then again if I were in that position I don’t know what I’d do.

B      Yeah.

A      It’d be…it’s easy to say…

B      Yeah, see, everybody says, this person should give it to charity, they should donate it, but that’s not what people do.

More than anything, what the Americans find troubling is hypocrisy: Saying one thing, doing something else. Not practicing what we preach. This is a function of the “universalist” aspect of American culture: Americans are inclined to judge a broad range of situations according to a fixed, static, set of criteria. In contrast, Chinese culture is “particularist”: specific situations, in all their complexity, tend to be privileged over abstract, universal principles.

The Chinese distaste for this kind of abstraction shows up in two responses. First:

C      How should he use his money,” “should”, this word, maybe I’m a little bit…uncomfortable.…“Should” has a bit of a feeling of morals, or preaching.

D      We should let everyone choose for themselves…how they should use…not “should.” Let everyone choose how to use his money.  We can only say if I were rich what would I do with it?

C      Right.

C         “应该怎么样用他的钱,” “应该” 这两个字我可能有一点…不舒服。”应该” 还有一点道德, 说教的感觉。

D     我们应该让每个人自己选择…应该去怎么用…不是“应该”…让每个人自己选择去用他的钱。  我们只能说如果我有钱的话我会怎么办。

C     对。

Another pair of interviewees goes as far as to suggest that a different question should have been asked:

E      This, I think…this question is different for each person.  Your saving or spending money depends on your own worldview, on the direction of your ideas about value.

F      I think this question should ask, “If you were rich, how should you spend your money?”

E      Yes.  In reality you’re just expressing your own view, right, about how you should use this sum of money.

F      It should be asked this way.

E     这个我觉得…这个问题就是因人而异的。  你这个钱的省花, 取决于你这个人的一种世界观啊, 价值意识的指向。

F     我觉得这个问题应该问, “如果你很有钱, 你应该怎么样用你的钱?”

E     对。  实际上你就是表达你自己的看法嘛, 应该怎么样去使用这笔钱。

F     这样问。

To put a harsh-sounding spin on it, we could say: What Americans do is pass judgment. We do so because we’re conditioned to judge based on how closely actual behaviors match up to a universal moral code. And lest I pass judgment on passing judgment, I’ll state again, as I’ve stated before, that in my own (very American) opinion, this has been, in the right contexts, one of the greatest gifts American culture specifically, and Western culture generally, has brought to the world.

You can see, though, what a mismatch a stubbornly universalist approach can be in the nitty-gritty, messy, detail-oriented context of Chinese culture. From one possible Chinese standpoint, Americans are hopelessly naïve: how could you hope to take one set of principles and apply them everywhere? Only someone who hasn’t lived in the world could think that way.

This is just one more way in which Westerners can get ourselves into trouble in our China dealings. It takes a special, hard-earned kind of self-awareness and leadership to function well, consistently well, in ways that are so contrary to our deepest, culturally conditioned norms.

In some research I did, I asked the following question to American and Chinese respondents:

A tree has fallen and is blocking a public road in a remote location, hours from the nearest city.  Several large trucks are present, and could move the tree off of the road.  Will they?  Should they?

在一个很偏僻的乡下地方,有一棵大树横倒在公路上,挡住了过往车辆。在这个时候正好有几辆卡车经过。你觉得他们会不会主动把这棵大树从公路上拉开?你觉得他们应该不应该这样做?

To most Chinese respondents this was a fairly straightforward question, with an equally straightforward answer: the truck drivers’ actions would line up with their personal interests. If they could significantly speed their own passage by moving the tree, then they would; otherwise not. Since from the question it looks like moving the tree would speed them along, then in this case they probably would move the tree.

The Americans sound a similar theme, but the focus of the discussion is entirely different. While the Chinese discussions center around the “Will they?” question, the Americans are drawn to the “Should they?” question. And they are broadly in agreement that the truck drivers should indeed move the tree. What I find most interesting is how the Americans, explicitly or implicitly, frame the discussion in moral terms. One American says flat out:

You know if there’s an ambulance that needs to get through that public road, and it’s sitting there and a tree happens to fall down in front of it, I mean I would think that there’d be a sense of a moral obligation to help out by moving it.

The word moral comes up several times in the American discussions. Not once, though, does any Chinese discussion touch even remotely on issues of morality. In fact, there seems to be an aversion even to discussing the “should” question. One Chinese respondent says:

I think they would do this.  “Should they do this?”  I think this is a conceptual question.

我觉得他们会这样做的。  “他们应该不应该这样做?”  我觉得这就是一个观念的问题。

By itself there’s nothing shocking about saying that this is a “conceptual question.” What shocked me, though, when I heard it is that being a “conceptual question” is grounds for dismissal: after saying this the speaker abruptly shifts the topic back to what would happen under various circumstances.

Eventually I discovered that the responses to the “fallen tree” question were but a small part of two contrasting systems of thinking: an American, “God’s eye view” that has to do with morality, and a day-to-day, problem-solving approach from the Chinese.

One way this difference can play out for Westerners in China is what I noted last Wednesday: a thirst for “justice” that can be blinding and counterproductive. “Justice,” though, is just one aspect of the broader moralistic system of American thinking that can cause problems for us in China. It’s just too easy for Westerners to make snap judgments about behaviors we see in China, labeling them “wrong” or “immoral,” without understanding — or, sometimes, even trying to understand — the broader cultural context for contrasting frames of reference.

We’ll keep digging into this as the week goes on.

For instance, consider this scenario, in both its English and Chinese versions:

The Smiths are a three-person family living in the United States:  Mom, Dad, and their 17-year-old son Bill.  Mom and Dad both work full-time jobs for similar salaries.  Mom wants to buy a new car and give the old one to Bill; Dad thinks their current car will last several more years, and doesn’t think they should waste money on a new car. What will they all say to one another? What will happen in the end?  Who is right?

李家有三个人:爸爸,妈妈,和十七岁的男孩子李四。爸爸妈妈两个人每个星期都各工作四十个小时,领一样的工资。现在妈妈想买一辆新汽车,把旧汽车给李四开。但是爸爸认为现在的车还可以再开几年,买新车等于是浪费钱。你觉得爸爸,妈妈,和李四会说什么?最后他们会决定怎么做?你会支持哪一边?

The Americans focused more on family discussion in resolving the scenario; the Chinese mostly said that one of the parents — the one with “final say” (说了算) in the family — would make the call. Yet the Americans talked a lot about one of the parents having final say, and the Chinese spoke often of family discussion. Ultimately things didn’t shake out the same way in the two groups, but each group had access to the same, or at least similar, cultural models as the other group.

What I like about this is what it does to demystify “Chinese” and “American,” these two notions that are so frequently set off against each other as opposites. What if I’ve already got everything that’s “Chinese” inside of me — I just haven’t called it that yet, because it’s organized differently? More like scattered parts than a system, but still ultimately the same, or close-enough-to-the-same, parts as “real” Chinese culture. It’s a little zany to think that way, and I don’t think it’s provable in any meaningful sense, but I think it makes for a powerful starting point for rethinking cultural “difference,” and for intercultural training. “They” are suddenly less exotic, less strange, more like me.

The notion of cultural models that are shared across different cultural groups is something I’ve dubbed “supraculture,” and you can read about it in detail in a recent publication of mine.