Tag: bias

Analogies: Understanding Culture Through Powerful Mental Models

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You are a manager in a foreign culture. You look at everything through your cultural lens.

Workplace behaviors are strange. Your colleagues’ habits seem irrational.

You feel like a visitor at the zoo, a spectator observing everyone.

In actuality, you are in their habitat; not the other way around. You are the odd one out, behaving according to your “strange” cultural norms and values in their culture.

You are the monkey in the zoo.

This is an example of an analogy: a powerful image that enables you to adapt your mental model to the reality of your environment or situation.

Last week, we talked about German manager, Marie, and her struggle working in a French office.

It was an analogy – the French office is like a royal court – that assisted her in adapting her frame of interpretation.

Why do analogies work?

Because they familiarize unfamiliar situations, helping us form new mental models to confront the unknown.

Analogies Reshape Mental Models

Schemes, representations, and images form the mental models used to perceive and understand the world around us.

These are largely based on past experience, education, and training.

The mental models we’ve developed provide shortcuts in decision-making, allowing us to make decisions quickly and efficiently without necessarily having all the details at our fingertips.

Because we don’t have all the details, mental models abstract reality; they are biased. They make the real world more simplistic than it actually is.

Despite significant experience or education to back our mental models, at some point, they are usually wrong in one way or another.

What’s worse is mental models are deeply rooted and slow – if not impossible – to change.

Analogies, however, make that change easier.

By “tricking” our brains into seeing something that previously seemed concrete (office behaviors, for instance) in a new light (viewing French companies like royal courts), we are able to draw different connections and conclusions than our previous mental model allowed, thus arriving at new decisions that more adequately address the reality of the environment.

Making the Unfamiliar Familiar

Unknown social constructs are reshaped by analogies into a picture you can comprehend.

The fresh perspective from this corrected mental model will allow you to make more rational decisions relative to the social constructs of the culture.

There are, however, limits to analogies. Like anything, they aren’t perfect.

But a good analogy that accurately represents a cultural dynamic that doesn’t align with your own is always an improvement on the mental model you’ve brought with you from abroad.

Trying to fit another’s culture into your own is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

So, how do you create good analogies?

Next week, we’ll talk about how Geert Hofstede’s dimensions can help.

3 Mechanisms That Bias Our Decision-Making: REVIEW

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Why do we make the decisions that we do? How do we rationalize these decisions?

Research is constantly evaluating how and why business managers make the choices we make, which we’ve outlined over the last few weeks.

To sum up, the three main biases discussed:

  • Availability bias – involves making a decision not based on an outcome’s true frequency/probability, but rather on how frequent an event enters the forefront of one’s mind.
  • Representativeness bias – involves judging the likelihood of an event based on how closely it relates to another event – i.e., on a mental model that does not exist in reality.
  • Anchoring bias – involves reaching a decision from an initial set point, often grounded in your culturally-influenced values and norms.

However, these are only a few ways in which culture creeps in to bias our decision-making.

Even our confidence in our decision-making ability is often influenced by culture.

Confidence in the Veracity of Decision-Making Ability

Research shows that, compared to their U.S. counterparts, Mexican managers are exceedingly confident in the veracity of their decision-making.

In a study by Christine Uber Grosse, entitled, “Global Managers’ Perceptions of Cultural Competence,” one Mexican manager explained the differences between leaders in Mexico and America, saying:

“We in Mexico are more colloquial or informal and are not so inclined to statistics. The Americans are very ‘manual-oriented’ and organized and we are more relaxed and ingenious.”

So, while before committing to a decision, U.S. managers expect to hear a complete plan laid out, including costs, a schedule, and the target results, Mexican managers rely more heavily on their gut instinct.

Moreover, when Mexican managers commit and something fails, they are more likely to double-down on that commitment, throwing good money after bad (as U.S. managers might put it).

According to research conducted by J. Frank Yates and Stephanie de Oliveira (“Culture and Decision-making“):

“A high degree of overconfidence has been found among Mexicans relative to Americans (Lechuga & Wiebe, 2011)…Overconfidence was widespread but differed in degree according to region.”

This overconfidence was attributed by the authors not so much to a manager’s judgment in confidence, but rather to differences in ability, as the latter varied substantially across countries.

Simplified Mental Models

Tying this all together with cross-cultural business, knowledge of the biases that influence decision-making – and another’s confidence in their decision-making – will help you navigate another culture’s rationale while also redirecting yours accordingly.

With various worldviews and cultural backgrounds, subjective realities exist, resulting in different mental decision models.

But one thing is universal: managers use their simplified and biased mental models to make their decisions.

Although likely different than your own, their simplified mental model is not irrational; it is based upon their subjective cultural perception and reality, just as yours is.

Oftentimes, no matter how illogical a decision may seem to you, the other is acting rationally within their own cultural framework, their baobab.

So, before concluding that a foreign manager’s decision makes no logical sense, familiarize yourself with the culture, its perception, and its reality.

You may then understand how a manager’s availability, representativeness, and anchoring biases – or any other culturally-influenced bias – enter into their decision-making.

3 Mechanisms That Bias Our Decision-Making: Anchoring Bias

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An anchor prevents a boat from straying from a set point.

When making decisions, managers are starting from their anchor – their initial set point, which is grounded in culturally-influenced values and norms.

A manager will drift from this point until the chain pulls taut.

There, he will reach a final decision, but inevitably, because he is anchored to a set point, that decision is influenced by anchoring bias.

We’ve talked about availability bias and representative bias in the last two blog posts and how each influences decision-making.

This week, let’s take a deep look at anchoring.

Anchoring in North African Souk

Let’s say you’re from a Western culture and travel to Northern Africa as a tourist. There, you head into a souk, and a seller zeroes in on you.

Knowing that your cultural norms and values are anchored in paying top prices for quality goods, the seller asks for a much higher price for a carpet than he might ask of locals.

Assuming your ignorance of the local pricing market, he starts astronomically high when haggling. That way, he can negotiate down to the highest amount you’re willing to pay.

He knows your anchoring bias allows for it.

If you never discover how much locals are paying for the same carpet, you’ll be none the wiser. You might even walk away thinking you scored a real bargain, when in reality, you paid ten times the local rate.

But if you later discover the seller gouged you on the price, you’ll likely feel scammed, which can often strain future negotiations.

This is one way in which markets use anchoring bias to their advantage in cross-cultural business.

Anchoring in Vancouver Housing Market

Sometimes, exploiting anchoring biases can backfire for local communities.

Let’s travel from North Africa to Vancouver.

The ‘90s saw a peak in Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese immigrants migrating to Canada. A large number settled in the Vancouver area.

Hong Kong real estate is notoriously pricey, so when Hong Kongers anchored in Vancouver, they were willing to pay top dollar for property.

The local real estate market exploited this anchoring bias and charged higher rents.

The result was that, like Hong Kong, Vancouver real estate now has a reputation of being exceptionally expensive.

According to MoneySense,

“Data collected by David Ley shows how, over the last few decades, metro Vancouver has become similar to other Pacific Rim ‘gateway’ cities, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, London and Sydney. Each of these gateway cities have rising housing costs that are fueled by high immigration-driven population growth and foreign investors.”

So, when exploiting anchoring biases in cross-cultural business goes South for local communities, how do they re-anchor?

In 2018, the British Columbia New Democratic Party was voted in primarily due to their platform on housing costs. Their goal was to increase the housing supply, slow demand, and dissuade overseas buyers by taxing empty homes and raising the foreign-buyer tax from 15 to 20 percent.

In this way, Vancouver is attempting to re-anchor their housing market to align with their own cultural norms and values.

3 Mechanisms That Bias Our Decision-Making: Availability Bias

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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?

  1. Vehicular accidents
  2. Lung cancer
  3. 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.

The Four Principles of Cultural Acceptance: Becoming Culture-Neutral

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Are you having trouble with cross-cultural acceptance when managing or working in a foreign culture?

Coping strategies are necessary to promoting tolerance and helping you move past any cross-cultural hang-ups and ethnocentricity.

Last week, we talked about Acceptance: the First Step in Cross-Cultural Management.

We’ll expand on that step this week by diving into our four principles of cultural acceptance.

The Four Principles

Cultural acceptance strategies involve four key principles:

  • Don’t judge
  • Accept ambiguity
  • Tolerate actively
  • Explain yourself

In the coming weeks, we’ll look more closely at these principles, starting today with judgment.

Why Shouldn’t We Judge?

Cross-cultural management requires you to step out of your narrow ethnocentric tunnel-vision and accept other worldviews as viable alternatives to your own.

It requires you to recognize other cultural value systems and behavioral norms as valid.

And this acceptance inherently means you do not judge. You become “culture-neutral,” not relegating things to boxes of “good” and “bad,” but simply viewing them as facts of life.

Monkeys do not pass judgment in the zoo. They just go about their business, as do the other zoo animals.

While it may seem apparent that passing judgment will get you nowhere as a manager in a foreign culture, you’d be surprised how often we are naturally inclined to do so.

In practice, avoiding judgment is difficult and must, at least initially, be an active endeavor.

This is because the culture you are raised in is the “right” one, the “best” one…at least, that’s what each and every one of us has been taught.

What Is The Best Country on Earth?

When you ask someone, “What is the number one country?” the citizens of every nation on Earth will likely answer, with conviction, that it’s their own. 

Nationalism is a strong byproduct of primary conditioning.

But let’s look at this objectively.

First off, how do you define “number one”?

Some might define it monetarily.

So, looking at the wealthiest countries per capita, you will find that Luxembourg comes out on top, followed by Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, and Iceland:

  • Luxembourg (GDP per capita: $119,719)
  • Norway (GDP per capita: $86,362)
  • Switzerland (GDP per capita: $83,832)
  • Ireland (GDP per capita: $81,477)
  • Iceland (GDP per capita: $78,181)

Does this mean Luxembourg is the best country in the world?

If you’re resoundingly shaking your head “no”, you might believe happiness is the “number one” country criteria. And in judging happiness, you could consider country suicide rates as an indicator of a nation’s overall happiness.

In that case, you’d see the countries with the lowest suicide rates are not the wealthiest:

  • Antigua and Barbuda (0.5%)
  • Barbados (0.8%)
  • Grenada (1.7%)
  • Bahamas (1.7%)
  • Jamaica (2.2%)

In fact, Luxembourg (13.5%), Norway (12.2%), Switzerland (17.2%), Ireland (11.5%), and Iceland (14%) don’t even crack the top 10.

Does this mean Antigua and Barbuda is the best country in the world?

And does this data indicate that happiness does not correlate directly with wealth? If so, what makes a country “number one”? Should wealth be the criteria of what’s “best”? Should happiness? Should either?

Putting everything into perspective like this will encourage you to look past your preconceived notions and avoid passing judgment. Because nationalism might inform you that your country is number one, but the numbers tell another story.

We’ll talk more about this powerful “no judgment” principle next week.

Ethnocentricity: When Subjective Bias Enters Cross-Cultural Research

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Culture has a four-corner foundation.

To recap, the four main building blocks are:

These four categories, in particular, will not only aid your understanding of cross-cultural differences, but they’ll allow you to adapt your managerial methods when leading across cultures.

Below is an overview of these four building blocks.

monkey_charts_CMYK

 

As you can see, countries are scattered across the scale from left to right, accordingly. But one of these countries remains in place.

The United States.

The US always appears on the far left of the scale.

Why?

Because of ethnocentricity.

What is Ethnocentricity?

Ethnocentricity involves judging other cultures based on the values of your own.

Even great researchers, like Geert Hofstede, haven’t managed to design a purely objective framework in their studies on cross-cultural differences.

Their own cultural heritage inevitably appears in their research via charts like this one and through constant comparisons (and often biases) between their own culture and “the other.”

Simply put, the values and standards we find most important to our own culture are often what we deem worthy of study and comparison.

Religion, norms, language, customs, ideology – these are the attributes we compare in order to understand cultural identity. And, whether or not the intention for bias is there, those conducting the study determine their culture to be “right” and the other to be “wrong.”

Although ethnocentrism may sound wholly negative, it is psychologically innate.

The US vs. China

Let’s look at an example.

When cross-cultural research is done from an American viewpoint, individualism is often a highly valued criterion.

Moreover, the future-oriented, rule-oriented, and self-determined United States swing their bias of time valuation, personal vs. societal responsibility, and locus of control in the relative directions.

These “typically American” values force the U.S. to the far end of a spectrum of the four building blocks of culture, as these are important values to Americans and are highly considered when categorizing cross-cultural research.

If, say, China was conducting the same research, their spectrum – and where they landed on the spectrum – would undoubtedly differ.

China would evaluate other cultures according to their own valued criteria.

These criteria would likely have roots in collectivist, rather than individualist ideology. The way other cultures relate to their own values would form the subjective and ethnocentrist results that cross-cultural research often takes on.

Next week, we’ll delve more deeply into ethnocentrism and discuss how it directly manifests in cross-cultural research.