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Here is the kind of scenario that researchers used to study amae. They asked subjects whether they would be annoyed by a neighbor who asked them to water his plants while he was away. Most people said that wouldn’t be annoying. Then, however, they asked the subjects what if the trip were for a week, would that be annoying? What about a month? Six months? A year? “The Americans got annoyed much sooner,” says Ellsworth. “They would see this as an inappropriate trespass on their goodwill at maybe one week. The Japanese would eventually see it as too much of an imposition, but the favor would have to be much bigger before they got to that point. We value independence, and we have contempt for people who seem too dependent.”

Yet if Americans get annoyed with the Japanese for seeming to be self-effacing and unreasonably tolerant, the flip side of that helps explain why other cultures are irritated by Americans. “What annoys people about Americans is that we have these big cheesy smiles on our faces all of the time, for no apparent reason whatsoever,” says Stanford University’s Hazel Markus. “For an American, a smile says, ‘I’m okay, I’m a good person, I’m in control, and I’m worth knowing.’ Everybody else thinks, ‘What’s the matter with this person? Is this person insane? Why do they have this smile on? They don’t know me, why are they smiling at me?’” In other words, the smile is annoying. “They think it’s fake, and along with that, what they find really annoying is that Americans act like they’re your best friend after five minutes.”

If you go to Amazon.com, you can purchase three DVDs of the movie Avatar for $59.97. If you go to a Web site that specializes in merchandise from China, you can buy a hundred copies of that film for $140. The U.S. government has waged a legal war by means of the World Trade Organization to crack down on this practice, but psychologists say that even if they win the legal war, they may be fighting a cultural difference that will be hard to overcome. Michael Ross of the University of Waterloo and Qi Wang from Cornell University have looked into how a culture’s history shapes its present attitudes.{40} They point to research that demonstrates the Chinese tendency to accept ancient wisdom as valid. By contrast, Western tradition encourages authors to “question, alter, and reject earlier ideas and theories.”

Think of Westerners’ concept of plagiarism. “Western plagiarizers typically claim lack of intent and apologize, resign, or pay damages. In China, such ‘borrowing’ of past work does not engender the same level of social disapproval,” Ross and Wang wrote. “The East Asian emphasis on the interconnectedness of selves implies that what is yours is also mine. I don’t have to apologize for appropriating your words and thoughts as if they were my own. Indeed, my use of your words demonstrates my admiration for you. In the West, with its clear demarcation between mine and yours, similar actions seem more akin to theft than admiration.” At least legally, China has started to move away from this attitude by beginning to accept international norms about copyrighted material, but this psychological point of view helps explain why the change has been infuriatingly slow to Western publishers.

Historical attitudes aren’t the only thing that raises barriers and creates cross-cultural annoyances. Another problem occurs when dissimilar cultures have different perceptions of time.

Consider this example. Today, Neil Altman is a psychotherapist in New York City. As a young man, Altman went to India as a Peace Corps volunteer, where he helped implement some new agricultural practices. Every so often, he had the occasion to visit the local horticulture office to get seeds and the like. The seeds were dispensed by the man who ran the office, Mr. Kahn, so Altman’s first stop was at Mr. Kahn’s desk. Inevitably, there would be six or eight people sitting around the desk, presumably also there to get seeds or transact some other business.

Altman describes what transpired this way:

Altman: “Good morning, Mr. Kahn, could I get some tomato seeds, please?”

Kahn: “Good morning, Volunteer sahib, won’t you join us for some tea?”

This anecdote is in Robert V. Levine’s book A Geography of Time, and Altman describes it as follows:

So I would have no choice but to sit down, and wait while some servant ran out to get me tea. Then Mr. Kahn would inquire about my wife, etc., and all the assembled people would have a million questions about my life, America, etc., etc., etc. It would be hard to know how to ask for my tomato seeds again. Eventually, after an hour or two, I would decide to risk being rude anyway. I would get my seeds and be on my way, noting that none of the people sitting around the desk had gotten their business taken care of.{41}

Levine finds that there are great differences around the world in the way people view time, and this has a profound effect on the social structures of a country. Until you learn to adjust to the local “clock speed,” as it were, life can be quite annoying.

For an American, everything is hurry, hurry, hurry, so tasks get done on time. In America, lunch can be delayed or even skipped to finish a project, and airlines brag about their on-time performance. By contrast, a country where breaks are sacrosanct and on time is a relative term can take some getting used to for an American Peace Corps volunteer. Levine found this out for himself when he visited India as well.

He had gone to the train station in New Delhi, because that was the only place in the city to buy a ticket for the train he was hoping to catch later in the week. He really needed to take that train, and he really needed to get his ticket as soon as possible. He joined a long line of potential travelers, all heading for a single ticket window. He inched forward, and after an hour he reached the window. He recounts,

The cashier greeted me with the familiar Namaste and immediately flipped up a sign that said “Closed for Lunch” (in English, I might add). With my blood pressure headed for Kashmir, I turned around to gather support for my case. But all my compatriots were already sitting on the floor, with their blankets spread out, eating picnic lunches. “ What can I do?” I asked a couple next to me. “You can join us for lunch,” they answered.{42}

Levine and his students have gone around the world, measuring the speed at which life progresses. Some of the observations are qualitative, but a few are quite concrete. For example, Levine has come up with an estimate for what he calls “the pace of life” by looking at how accurate clocks in public places are, how long it takes for a letter to be delivered, and how fast people walk.

Levine’s table shows the results of his assessment comparing thirty-one countries. The numbers in the columns represent the ranking on each of the variables measured. The “faster” countries were primarily European, whereas the “slower” countries tended to be closer to the equator. The United States was in the middle.

One consequence of living life at a slower pace is that the scheduled starting times for appointments aren’t carved in stone. Levine talks about hora Mexicana—the unspoken but universally understood fact that in Mexico, a meeting scheduled for 11 a.m. is really expected to start at 11:15. Or maybe 11:30. Or perhaps noon.