Tag: moral

Do You Know Yourself? Individualist vs. Collectivist Self Insight

Posted on by Leave a comment

How do you see yourself?

Can you accurately self-reflect on your traits, behaviors, and ideology and use that knowledge to predict how you might behave in the future?

Do you see yourself clearly? Do you understand why you do the things you do?

And how does your culture influence that self-insight?

Over the next several weeks, we will dive headfirst into the six cultural constructs discussed in last week’s post, the first of which is individualism versus collectivism.

Individualism vs. Collectivism

Individualists and collectivists often have different motivations. 

Why?

Because the societies and cultures that form these us provide us with different values, norms, dreams, desires, etc.

Individualist cultures generally prioritize personal achievement and independence.

Collectivist cultures, on the other hand, prioritize cooperation and group harmony.

These diverging priorities lead to diverging motivations.

And, according to the following study, a differing degree of self-insight.

Self-Knowledge & Culture

Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, this study by Balcetis, Dunning, and Miller examines how cultural differences influence people’s ability to predict their own behavior in situations with moral or altruistic overtones. 

The researchers found that collectivists were more accurate in their self-predictions compared to individualists. 

In three different studies, individualists overestimated their likelihood to act generously in situations involving redistributing rewards, donating money, or avoiding rude behavior, while collectivists were generally more accurate in their self-predictions. 

Both groups predicted peer behavior with similar accuracy, but even when samples were taken from the same cultural group, collectivists still demonstrated more precise self-predictions than individualists. 

This suggests that the accuracy of social insight and self-insight can be biased by culturally bound motivations.

Results, Discussed

Why do individualists have a harder time predicting their own behavior? 

One theory is that they focus on themselves too much and assume their behavior will be consistent with their personal traits, leading to inaccurate predictions. 

Individualists who are motivated to emphasize personal uniqueness tend to strive to be better than the group, and thus the best strategy for self-prediction is an internal one based on one’s dispositional nature. 

On the other hand, collectivists who prioritize fitting in with the group may be better at predicting their own behavior because they consider external factors and group behavior.

Collectivists are not motivated to emphasize personal uniqueness and instead strive to fit in with a comparison group, so the best approach to take when making predictions about the self is an external one based on distributional, group-level base rates.

Factors such as face-saving may also moderate these patterns of accuracy. 

This highlights how understanding what constitutes normative social behavior can inform personal self-understanding, but cultural differences may prevent people from knowing themselves precisely because they strive to be different from the norm or typical group member.

Step 2 of Cross-Cultural Integration: Accepting in Action

Posted on by 3 Comments

There are things about foreign cultures you won’t be able to accept. As we covered last week, behaviors or beliefs that cross a moral or ethical line are the most difficult aspects of a culture to embrace.

That’s where YOU draw the line.

But in order to be successful across cultures, one must integrate as much as possible. To an extent, you must accept the culture as it is. This means you shouldn’t judge the local culture, you should accept ambiguity, you should actively tolerate, and you should explain your monkey moments.

Four Key Steps to Acceptance

  1. Don’t Judge – Be “culture-neutral.” Don’t view differences as good or bad. Viewing a culture as “different” instead of “wrong” will allow you to warm up to their ways. Finding fault in another is often due to fear that you are the one who’s wrong. As Charlyne Blatcher Martin writes for global business protocol, “It is safe to say that our fear or insecurity is often the breeding ground for casting a suspicious eye at ‘the foreigner.’”
  2. Accept Ambiguity – You’ll find that many processes and behaviors of other cultures are ambiguous to you. You must relinquish control and accept this ambiguity. Doing so will allow room for fresh connections to be made. You’ll see that you don’t always have the “right” answer; there are many answers to the same question.
  3. Practice Active Tolerance – To be actively tolerant means to allow for other opinions and points of view, while still standing firmly behind your own. You don’t have to agree, but you should accept that others have differing opinions.
  4. Explain Yourself – Undoubtedly, you’ll make a fool of yourself and have a monkey moment or two during your integration. Instead of hiding behind a tree branch, talk about them with your hosts and explain why your behaviors and views differ from their own.

Accepting Inaction

“The locals are always late! So disrespectful!”

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard something along those lines in cultures where time is valued differently than in the Western world.

In some cultures, being late is not a problem. But to Westerners, it’s a waste of time, money, and is a mark of disrespect.

Yelling and berating the locals for their culture valuation of time isn’t acceptance; it’s accepting inaction.

Accepting in Action

Instead of pulling your hair out, someone who is looking to integrate into a culture where the trains don’t run on time must go with the flow.

Relax.

I know many travelers who’ve accepted another culture’s valuation of time but still follow their own internal clock. This is accepting in action. I also know many who’ve adapted to and adopted it, themselves.

We’ll talk about adapting next week.

 

Step 2 of Cross-Cultural Integration: Accepting

Posted on by 3 Comments

Last week, we talked about awareness. Awareness of culture differences throws a fork in the road: once you’re aware of differences, you can either tolerate or be intolerant toward cultural values and norms.

This is where acceptance comes in.

Acceptance plays a huge role in your cultural integration. To be successful, you must accept the culture into which you’re integrating. If you reject it, then you will ultimately fail in this foreign culture.

But, then again, there will be things you willingly accept and things you morally reject.

What Must You Accept?

A myriad of cultural values and norms must be accepted if you want to integrate into a culture. Some will be easy; others will be hard. Here are some examples.

Easy to accept:

Hard to accept:

Whether it’s adapting to the time management mantra of “it will get done when it gets done” in cultures like Nepal or India or accepting that South Koreans eat dog meat or that the French eat horse meat, you must accept that things are morally sound in some countries, even when they’re unsound in your own.

How Do You Accept Something You Morally Reject?

If you have ethical issues with the cultural norm, you can draw the line at accepting another’s culture instead of adopting it.

For example, let’s talk about headscarves. Women from Western cultures often morally reject the idea of wearing the Muslim hijab. Some see it as oppressive and as a way to control women and their human rights.

As reported by Independent, in 2016 an entire Air France cabin crew refused to fly to Iran when they were ordered by the airline chief to wear headscarves upon disembarking the flight in Tehran.

When venturing into a country like Iran or Saudi Arabia, not only might a Western woman feel uncomfortable wearing the hijab, but she might feel as though she’s complicit in what she views as oppression of women by following this custom.

If they reject this custom, then they won’t be able to do business in this country, as happened in the case of Marie Le Pen, France’s far-right presidential candidate, when she refused to wear a headscarf on her visit to Lebanon in February.

According to The Washington Post, “Marine Le Pen walked away from a meeting with Lebanon’s top Sunni Muslim leaders after she refused to wear a headscarf. The move sparked an outcry across the Arab world.”

The question is: is it worth it to spark an outcry?

You Draw the Line

As with most things, it depends on the situation and your own personal standards. YOU draw the line between what you culturally accept, what you adopt, and how far you choose to integrate into a culture.

You may come to accept things as small as greetings and time management, but those that touch upon a moral obligation will be harder to accept or adopt. It’s up to you to draw that line for yourself.

I’ll tell you how I drew my own line next week.