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?

To overgeneralize: if you are an educated American, you probably have some sympathy for Tom, and you may even think he should go for it and forget his parents’ advice, even though you also think he will probably fail. You may think that he should pursue his dream; you may even think that he must pursue his dream, if he has truly been given a rare talent. You may believe that no matter what his parents say or do, they will not and cannot change Tom: he needs to learn lessons on his own, even if they are hard lessons, even if he suffers. His life is his to make, and the most valuable lessons are the ones learned through direct experience.

When I was a graduate student in linguistics doing research for my dissertation, I asked this question to several pairs of U.S.-born, native-English-speaking people. I also translated the question into Chinese and posed it to pairs of China-born, native-Chinese-speaking people. (The native dialects of the Chinese interviewees varied, but, being educated, all spoke Mandarin with great ease.) The summary I just offered of possible American views reflects a standard set of “cultural models” which my American interviewees turned to consistently in discussing this scenario.

Brief terminological aside: “cultural model” is a quasi-technical term used by scholars at the margins of linguistics, anthropology and psychology. Essentially it refers to an idealized notion of how the world works or should work. If I go to a restaurant and my server asks me to fill out a deposit slip or endorse a check, I will be surprised because the question violates my mental “model” of how restaurants should work. These models are called “cultural” because they are shared: I can reasonably expect my restaurant companions to be equally surprised about the server’s actions.

The cultural models that make up the “standard” Chinese view of the rock band question diverge sharply from the American cultural models. Before describing the “standard” Chinese view, though, I need to stop for a moment and address a concern that I hear every time I present my research. The concern is usually expressed as a statement like, “But that’s not how I think,” or “That’s not how it would go in my family.” My response is not to quote statistics, because I have none to offer. Instead, I say: Absolutely. No one person is going to follow the “standard” line entirely. I certainly don’t. The “standard” view I’m referring to is an approximation or aggregation, based on responses from interviewees, and, in the years since the research, on countless conversations with Americans and Chinese on the topic. The analysis will not stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny; no social science research ever can, no matter how many statistics are quoted. It is by nature inexact, because the subjects, human beings, are by nature inexact.

The “standard” Chinese view (I’ll now stop “scare-quoting” the term) differs radically from the standard American view. Tom — or, more properly, his Chinese alter ego Wang Er — has an opportunity to receive an education. Fewer things are more valuable than this opportunity, because in an overpopulated world, competition is intense, resources are scarce, and you need every edge you can get. Wang Er’s parents are absolutely right to insist that he go to college. Nothing is stopping Wang Er from pursuing music as a hobby. But his focus should be on studying hard and getting a solid, reputable job upon graduating. Not only will this set up Wang Er and his family with a strong economic foundation to guard against future calamity, but everyone will look good too and gain the respect of those around them.

The fact that Daily Show host John Stewart is parodying Tom Bolton is of course a sign that the “make them pay” approach is just one American approach. Many Americans either don’t believe in punishment, or believe it should be used much more selectively, favoring restitution, with the ultimate goal of learning how to be a participating, contributing group member.

One of the deepest thinkers on the subject is my old mentor George Lakoff, whose landmark book Moral Politics transformed how many saw the conservative–liberal divide in the U.S. The gist is that there are two dominant child-rearing-models-cum-moral-systems — Strict Father and Nurturant Parent — that are mapped metaphorically to U.S. politics via something Lakoff calls the Nation-as-Family metaphor. Not surprisingly, Strict Father morality correlates with conservative politics and Nurturant Parent morality correlates with liberal politics.

Lakoff’s model has been criticized for being overly reductive and simplistic. And while I generally agree with those critiques, I do think there’s a lot of validity in the model.

The reason I’m addressing it here in this blog is the same reason I wrote the Car Talk post on face: cultures are not monolithic, and we must guard against to temptation to paint in strokes that are too broad.

There’s another reason, though, for thinking these things through a bit more carefully. Not only is each individual in a cultural group unique; each individual is, I believe, in fact several people. Among linguists, it’s the socioloinguists who have led the way on this one, demonstrating through study after study that each of us speaks many “social languages”: we use different language with our parents than we do with our peers than we do with our bosses…and so on. American college students, when learning of this, are often resistant to not having one single, consistent “self,” immutable across space and time. But there is much evidence that each of us in fact “many different people.”

To me, that’s fantastic news. It means that we’re not bound to any beliefs we think we might be bound to, and that we have a much richer repertoire of ways of thinking — more arrows in the quiver — than we might have thought we have. That helps anyone in any unfamiliar culture; it will certainly help Westerners in China, and vice versa.

Later I’ll take up some specific ways in which this plays out in Chinese and American culture: ways which show that, despite all the differences, there’s no shortage of common ground to work with.

Suppose a citizen is walking down the street one day when the police arrest him. They don’t tell him why; they simply arrest him and keep him locked up for three days before letting him go. He has done nothing illegal. What will this person think? What will this person do?

Take a minute or so to think about it. Then, consider this:

The government passes a law doubling the income tax without consulting the citizens. Is the government right to do this? What would citizens say? What would they do? What should they do?

Do your reactions to the two scenarios differ? If so, how?

Americans tend to react to both scenarios with anger. They see the scenarios as analogous: in both cases a wrong has been perpetrated by the government against a citizen or citizens, and injustice demands an angry response.

Chinese respondents see the two scenarios (Chinese versions here) as fundamentally different kinds of incidents. The surprise arrest gets people angry, as it does with the Americans. But the tax hike is greeted with blasé resignation: there’s not much we can do about it, so why get all worked up?

Americans see in binary terms: black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. Universal principles hold over particular situations. Chinese are more likely to consider the specifics of a situation and make decisions based on those.

Woe to the American who tries to do business in China from up on a moral high horse. Get the dirty details, understand them, and adapt to them. If you don’t, the most you’ll have to show for your efforts is maybe a smirk of self-righteousness — but I doubt that’s what you came to China for.

Consider, if you will, this scenario:

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?

How do you answer? Chances are that if you’re American you will answer differently than if you’re Chinese. (If you want to see the Chinese version of this scenario, please click here. What makes the Chinese and English versions of this scenario “equivalents” of each other is a conversation unto itself…)

When I came up with this scenario I expected American and Chinese to answer differently, but not in the ways they ended up answering. I assumed the differences would show up in the “results”: I thought that since China is “patriarchal,” Dad would win; in the “democratic” and “consumerist” U.S., Dad would lose.

Therein lies the peril of taking useful generalizations a bit too far. Rather than in the results, the differences showed up in the process. The Americans emphasized discussion; the Chinese introduced me to a term I had never before heard: “shuo le suan” (说了算). The idea is that one member of a couple — it could be the husband or the wife — over time develops a certain authority in family matters. Few ventured to guess whose wishes would be followed, but there was a lot of certainty that whosever opinion carried the day, it would be because of this authority, and the matter would be settled quickly.

By the way, up above I wrote “…Dad would win…” and “…Dad would lose…” I am showing my American stripes in my choice of framing. American interview participants overwhelmingly use win and lose in their discussions; the Chinese equivalents, ying (赢) and shu (输) don’t make a single appearance.

Views on the family tend to show up everywhere, including the board room. What makes for “winning” and “losing” impacts how we see our partners and counterparts. If your organization is doing business in China, you’ll want to know all the ins and outs.