analysis – Success Across Cultures

From the North and South’s view of the Civil War to those of China versus Japan of WWII, interpretations of history differ wildly across the world.

When you enter your host country, knowing their historical perspective can help you better understand myriad aspects of their culture.

It can also help you avoid stepping on any landmines that might lead to a Monkey Moment.

History is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone wants to be the hero of their own story.

So, what “truth” do we choose to believe?

And what does it say about us?

Recent History in Textbooks

While distant history can still smart a bit, recent history often stings more.

9/11 is but one of those events.

The case of how 9/11 is presented in various textbooks across the globe shows how history isn’t necessarily skewed with time; it’s biased even in the moment, as originally reported by historical textbooks.

Graduate student, Elizabeth Herman, returned to her old high school about a decade after the tragic event had unfolded and discovered the school’s new history textbooks already detailed 9/11 and its aftermath.

She was curious how these events appeared in other school history textbooks around the world.

Interpreting 9/11

For her university thesis project, and later for research under a Fulbright scholarship, Herman analyzed textbooks from thirteen different countries to examine the differences in how this attack was being taught.

What she found:

American textbooks highlight the tragedy using volatile language and emphasize how the country came together after the attack
Pakistani textbooks call the assailants “unidentified terrorists,” omitting their identity
Turkish textbooks omit their extremist Islamic faith
Chinese, Brazilian, and Indian textbooks emphasize the “reckless” actions taken by the U.S. post-9/11 in their illegal war in Iraq
Chinese textbooks also interpret 9/11 as a sign of the decline of American authority on the world stage

So, considering all these selective details and interpretations of history, what exactly is “the truth”?

The Truth

As we’ve previously discussed, from a cultural context, there is no One Truth – at least none that we’ll ever know, as bias will always exist, in the writing of history and in the reading of it.

But what these interpretations can teach us is how different cultures view the world, how they view themselves, and how they hope to shape future readers’ perceptions of it all.

You might say, “If no one’s telling The Truth, then history is useless.”

But that’s not the case. A country’s interpretation of history allows us to understand their rationale, to seek the “why,” and that’s the whole point when you’re trying to accept and adapt to a foreign culture.

As Herman said on the results of her thesis:

“If you hand a student thirteen different ways of looking at 9/11 from thirteen different countries and ask them, […] Why do you think it’s different? Why do you think that Pakistan tells this story one way and Brazil speaks about it a different way? I think that that’s the only way that we can actually reach a new understanding of this event.”

Managers apply simple models to help make decisions. Personal experience and culture help form these models.

Our cultural environment largely influences the rationale of our decision-making processes.

Daily decisions don’t require extensive analysis; rather, progress is made more efficient using prior experience and rule of thumb.

But it’s important to note that when we lean heavily into “rule of thumb” and prior experience, we unconsciously rely on bias.

As identified by research, three mechanisms affect this decision-making bias:

Availability
Representativeness
Anchoring

We’ll outline each across the next few blog posts, starting today with availability.

First, a question…

Which of the following do you think kills more people worldwide each year?

Vehicular accidents
Lung cancer
Cape buffalo

If you answered “a) Vehicular accidents,” you’re a product of availability bias.

Availability bias involves making a judgment based upon the frequency of an event in the forefront of one’s mind rather than the event’s real-life probability.

Emotional or easily imaginable events – like vehicular accidents – are recalled more readily than a vague, obscure, or uninteresting incident.

This makes such events seem more prevalent and probable than they actually are.

And the answer…

An experiment was done in the U.S. with just such a question, where participants were asked whether more worldwide deaths were caused by lung cancer or car accidents annually.

Most answered that car accidents resulted in a higher fatality rate. The reality is that lung cancer kills nearly twice as many each year.

On average, over 2 million die each year from lung cancer, according to the World Health Organization, while the CDC states that around 1.35 million are killed on roadways across the globe annually.

The reason there is such a lopsided perception on each event’s probability is partially related to media culture, in which vehicular deaths are much more widely covered than those caused by lung cancer.

Humans really do have a selective memory: we remember more frequently and distinctly situations with a vivid narrative.

This skews the perception of each event’s frequency.

Other aspects that contribute to an individual’s availability bias include personal experience. If the individual knew of someone or multiple people, for instance, who had died from either lung cancer or a vehicular accident, this information might also bias their judgment.

Now, consider if you asked the same question of a Kenyan participant. In Africa, 200 people die each year from Cape buffalo, and such fatal incidents are likely heavily covered by the media.

Overall, a Kenyan participant might have a higher estimate than their U.S. counterpart regarding the global fatality rate caused by Cape buffalo.

In this way, cultural differences impact our availability bias and, in turn, our perception and judgment when it comes to decision-making.

On deck next week: representativeness.

Tag: analysis

9/11 Interpreted: Discovering Culture Through History’s Depiction in World Textbooks

3 Mechanisms That Bias Our Decision-Making: Availability Bias