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Study: Americans don't understand others
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Rugged American individualism could hinder our ability to understand other peoples' point of view, a new study suggests. And in contrast, the researchers found that Chinese are more skilled at understanding other people's perspectives, possibly because they live in a more "collectivist" society. "This cultural difference affects the way we communicate," said study co-author and cognitive psychologist Boaz Keysar of the University of Chicago. Simple study The study, though oversimplified compared to real life, was instructive. Keysar and his colleagues arranged two blocks on a table so participants could see both. However, a piece of cardboard obstructed the view of one block so a "director," sitting across from the participant, could only see one block. When the director asked 20 American participants (none of Asian descent) to move a block, most were confused as to which block to move and did not take into account the director's perspective. Even though they could have deduced that, from the director's seat, only one block was on the table. Most of the 20 Chinese participants, however, were not confused by the hidden block and knew exactly which block the director was referring to. While following directions was relatively simple for the Chinese, it took Americans twice as long to move a block. "That strong, egocentric communication of Westerners was nonexistent when we looked at Chinese," Keysar said. "The Chinese were very much able to put themselves in the shoes of another when they were communicating." The results are detailed in the July issue of the journal Psychological Science. Collectivist societies, such as the Chinese, place more value on the needs of the group and less on the autonomy of the individual. In these societies, understanding other peoples' experiences is a more critical social skill than it is among typically more individualist Americans. |
I love studies that point out the obvious.
Sounds like this study is about communcation not the ability to see things from other peoples perspective.
So I'm guessing that everyone else "understands" Americans?
I don't understand this study.
Where is the complete entirety of the report rather than a journalist's perspective of some elements of it?
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| Originally posted by NeoPhono So I'm guessing that everyone else "understands" Americans? |
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| Originally posted by infinity HiGH More so than Americans understand other people. Of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't any ignorance found elsewhere. |
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| Originally posted by NeoPhono I guess to me this whole thing is coming across as "Americans are ignorant whereas the rest of the world is enlightened." It doesn't make much sense that a whole population is somehow oblivious to the rest of the world, while the rest of the world "understands" Americans. I agree that certain elements of a population might be ignorant, but labeling an entire population based on those individuals is silly. I think ignorant Americans might be more visible than those of other cultures, but that can't be used to speak for the entire population. |
coincidentally my friends and i were watching clips from CNNNN last night 
first time i�ve read portugese, fuck its practically the same as spanish
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| Originally posted by HardTranceProd Why doesn't it make much sense? Objectively speaking, isn't it possible that, say, 60% of Americans are ignorant, compared to 30% in another country? It may not be a question of visibility, it's really an objective question about numbers. |
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| Originally posted by tathi coincidentally my friends and i were watching clips from CNNNN last night first time i�ve read portugese, fuck its practically the same as spanish |
hmmmm.
id say studies like this are biased against americans.
facts are, that in europe, india, and china, youre right next to, or a couple miles from a different ethnicity or culture. of course theyre gonna be able to get around better, theyve been doing it since birth.
america is a coast to coast nation, whos northern border is more like us than not. the southern border is full of racists who speak a different language.
the biggest "different" ethnic group in america is blacks, and to be honest their culture is fairly bankrupt and racist as well. you get wanna be gangstas, or ppl whos whole life is picking out imaginary conspiracies against them. not exactly a warm and welcoming group.
those latinos who have taken a step or two towards assimilation are still highly segregated, leastwise nearly every single one ive known or seen.
if you dont live here, you might not realize that nearly everyone who comes here is a racist straight off.
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| Originally posted by NeoPhono I find it hard to believe that there is that large of an objective difference. I'd also add that this study was looking to see how well people understood other's perspectives. Can a non-American, one of a different culture, really be said to understand what it is like to live in an American, non-collectivist society? I think that is the question to be asked. How you would test that, and how well did the experiments test the opposite also needs to be questioned. |
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| Originally posted by HardTranceProd holy fucking shit i'm speechless |
american's arent inherently ignorant, though i do like to tease them about it 
its due to being a decadent country- ie so much of australian world news deals with the US because that news is arguably pretty important. if you are only inundated with your own culture/popular culture/media constantly, you're bound to become insulated from the outside world to a certain extent.
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| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN american's arent inherently ignorant, though i do like to tease them about it its due to being a decadent country- ie so much of australian world news deals with the US because that news is arguably pretty important. if you are only inundated with your own culture/popular culture/media constantly, you're bound to become insulated from the outside world to a certain extent. |
, and due to the fact that our nation is incredibly young. It just never had the chance or time to refine it's 'culture.'
How the hell has this become a discussion on American ignorance? This has got nothing to do with ignorance whatsoever:
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| The Effect of Culture on Perspective Taking ABSTRACT�People consider the mental states of other people to understand their actions. We evaluated whether such perspective taking is culture dependent. People in collectivistic cultures (e.g., China) are said to have interdependent selves, whereas people in individualistic cultures (e.g., the United States) are said to have independent selves. To evaluate the effect of culture, we asked Chinese and American pairs to play a communication game that required perspective taking. Eye-gaze measures demonstrated that the Chinese participants were more tuned into their partner's perspective than were the American participants. Moreover, Americans often completely failed to take the perspective of their partner, whereas Chinese almost never did. We conclude that cultural patterns of interdependence focus attention on the other, causing Chinese to be better perspective takers than Americans. Although members of both cultures are able to distinguish between their perspective and another person's perspective, cultural patterns afford Chinese the effective use of this ability to interpret other people's actions. |
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| Originally posted by tathi first time i�ve read portugese, fuck its practically the same as spanish |
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| Originally posted by Lira Portuguese == Old Spanish |
Here's the full article. I haven't read it yet.
(Please be nice to my server.)
LINK
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| Originally posted by venomX I'm gonna look for the article, I can access it through my university database. I'll get back to you when I have it. I don't think the findings are going to be able to be ruled out due to semantics though. This differences are reasonable conclusions of the prevailing theories about social interactions in collectivistic/individualistic cultures. They've just never done head to head comparisons in such a specific way. |
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| Originally posted by Lira If you find it, could you please send it to me? |
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| Originally posted by NeoPhono I just posted it, right above your last post. |
Ah, much more interesting...
There is no reason to suspect that Chinese and Americans have a different understanding of the role of mental states in people�s actions. In fact, the appreciation of the mind of the other, or theory of mind, has an identical developmental trajectory for Chinese and Americans. By 5 years of age, both can begin to use another person�s knowledge, distinguishing it from their own knowledge and showing appreciation for the role of another person�s knowledge in predicting what he or she will do (Sabbagh et al., 2006). On the surface, then, our results are strange because they might suggest that our American subjects had lost this ability by the time they reached adulthood. This is not what we mean to imply, however.
There's always a however
We make a distinction between having perspective-taking ability and using this ability (Keysar et al., 2003). Both Chinese and American children show clear ability to reflect upon the mental states of other people. But using this ability to spontaneously and unreflectively interpret the actions of another person is a different matter. It seems that culture has its effect here at the level of use, not ability. It takes prolonged exposure to cultural patterns that reinforce attention to the other to induce a mode of interpretation that is not egocentric.
Apparently, the interdependence that pervades Chinese culture has its effect on members of the culture over time, taking advantage of the human ability to distinguish between the mind of the self and that of the other, and developing this ability to allow Chinese to unreflectively interpret the actions of another person from his or her
perspective.
Americans do not lose the ability to reflect on and reason about another person�s mental state. They can accurately judge that another person cannot see occluded objects. But years of exposure to a culture that values independence and does not promote other-orientation does not provide the tools to unreflectively interpret actions from the perspective of the other.
It's the difference between research data and what is essentially journalistic sensationalism.
Americans aren't martians
Chinese aren't drones
All's still well in the world in that regard
This caused our American subjects either to show disregard for the director�s perspective (��which block?��) or to take more time and effort overcoming their own perspective in order to understand what the director actually meant (see also Epley, Morewedge,
& Keysar, 2004).
As Mead (1934) suggested, perspective taking is indeed crucial for any social interaction. People�s behavior is ambiguous because it can be motivated by a variety of underlying intentions.
Therefore, the interpretation of another person�s actions depends on the ability to consider that person�s mental states. We have shown that unreflective perspective taking is very much a function of cultural patterns. Unreflective perspective taking is more natural for members of a culture that emphasizes interdependence than for members of a culture that emphasizes independence.
Which is what it really comes down too in anyone's case regardless of your cultural background.
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| Originally posted by tathi first time i�ve read portugese, fuck its practically the same as spanish |
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