Despite it being in our best interests to perform as well as we can, we are nevertheless at the mercy of stereotypes and those around us who can trigger them unconsciously.
When East and West Collide
Perhaps one of the most surprising lines of research in recent years has shown that cultural stereotypes operate at a much more basic level in the brain than has previously ever been considered. This is true even in the way we perceive the world around us. For example, it is often assumed that while people around the world may have different preferences and tastes, when it comes to music and art we all have essentially the same brain. When someone in Beijing hears Mozart, they hear the same music as someone from Boston. When someone from Tokyo looks at a painting by Magritte, they see the same image as someone from Tennessee. They may not agree about whether they like the work, but they have the same perceptual experience. But is that really true? Richard Nisbitt thinks not. He has accumulated a vast body of evidence to show that cultures can shape the way we literally perceive the world and, ultimately, the way we think about our self.
In his book, The Geography of Thought 60 Nisbitt argues that cultures influence not only the way we process the world, but also the way we interpret it. He draws a sweeping dividing line between Eastern and Western cultures and argues that peoples from the East tend to see and interpret the world in a holistic or collectivist manner, noticing connections and patterns between everything. Peoples from the West, on the other hand, tend to be more focused on the individual objects in the world. Admittedly, we must bear in mind that here, West usually means US students whereas East typically means Japanese and Chinese students.
In spite of these caveats, according to Nisbitt, the collectivist/individualistic divide can explain a multitude of complex behaviours and traditions that vary from one culture to the next. For example, one characteristic of Eastern holism accounts for a philosophical leaning towards notions of order, resonance and harmony. Such leanings are exemplified in the Eastern notion of ‘feng shui’, a need to achieve balance for happier home and work environments. In contrast, studies of Westerners reveal a comparatively more individualistic attitude of an independent self.61
Nisbitt thinks that the origin of this cultural divide can be traced back thousands of years to the times of ancient Greece and China. However, the recent modern history of the United States is sufficient to explain why, as a whole, this nation is individualistic. In a comparatively short space of time, the United States was rapidly forged out of the struggle of groups who had immigrated in order to establish a better life. Other nations tend to evolve over much longer periods as one invading army conquered another, but the United States experienced sudden rapid growth primarily from immigration. Initially, some of these early immigrants sought religious freedom, which again, strengthened their sense of independence. The early settlers formed self-sufficient communities, struggling to adapt to their new environment and compete against the indigenous peoples. There was little room for social loafing or slackers in these early communities and so to survive you had to rely on your own efforts.
In many ways, the notions of individualism and independence have been branded into the American psyche. For example, when asked to come up with twenty statements that we think define our self, Westerners typically respond with traits centred from their own perspective (e.g. ‘I am tall’), whereas those from collectivist cultures typically provide relational statements, such as ‘I am taller than my sister’. Maybe this focus on our relationship to others explains why social loafing is not as strong in these societies, where one is inclined to consider one’s self in social contexts.62
What is most remarkable about the work coming out of this field of cultural psychology is that individuals from the East and West not only describe themselves differently but may in fact see the world differently. For example, study Figure 8 opposite and concentrate on the square frame and line on the far left. You have one of two tasks: either draw an identical line of the same length independently of the frame (absolute), or draw a line of the same relative length to the frame dimension (relative). The correct solutions are on the right.
The absolute task requires focusing on the line and ignoring the frame, whereas the relative task requires estimating the relationship of the line to the frame. Remarkably Japanese students are significantly better at the relative task than the absolute task while US students show the opposite profile by being significantly better at the absolute task compared to the relative task.63 This finding is interpreted to mean that the Easterners focus more on the relative rather than the absolute. But this difference does not exist in the youngest children who have been tested. Below six years of age, both Eastern and Western children show the same pattern of finding the relative task much easier than the absolute task. It’s only after schooling begins that the typical switch in thinking styles between East and West starts to appear.64
Our cultural upbringing can even influence how we watch a film. In one study Japanese and US students watched an underwater scene with various fish and plants.65 US students could recall information about the large fish, whereas Japanese students recalled more detail about the background and the relationship between objects. When presented with a recognition task in which individual fish were presented alone, against the original background or different background, US students recognized the fish irrespective of the background, while the Japanese students were thrown by the absence of background or a different background. In another study using a different Eastern population, US and Chinese participants watched movies of a shoal of fish with one fish swimming out front that could be interpreted as either leading the shoal or ostracized by the other fish.66 US students thought the lone fish was more likely to be leading the shoal, whereas Chinese students interpreted the movie as the lone fish being rejected by the group.
Figure 8: The Frame Test: The task is to draw the length of the vertical line either exactly (absolute) or proportionately (relative)
It’s not only what you see that is influenced by culture, but also what you don’t see. We may think that we have a good grasp of events that take place around us, but unless we pay special attention, we often miss conspicuous events. This happens in ‘spot-the-difference’ puzzles. Take a good look at the two pictures in Figure 9. Something is different between them (answer at the end of the chapter).
Our inability to notice changes between the images is called change blindness and we vary in the extent to which we can spot the difference. If you are someone who can rapidly process the whole picture, then you are more likely to notice differences. Those who focus on individual elements are going to take longer because they cover less territory during inspection. They can’t see the wood for the trees. It turns out that Westerners are much slower on measures of change blindness than Easterners who are quicker to spot the difference. The Easterners are considering more of the picture rather than focusing on individual elements. In fact, measurements of eye movements indicate that Easterners make more eye movements and spend less time dwelling on individual targets when inspecting scenes compared to Western participants.67 That’s pretty low-level stuff. We are generally not even aware of how we control our eye movements so how could culture shape these?