Let’s start with a test: In this graphic, there is a cow, a chicken, and grass. Which two go together? (Answer later.)
Now, back to the question about whether Hong Kongers can work with other cultures. We don’t spend much time thinking about how to collaborate and why we behave the way we do. That’s because, most of the time, we don’t need to. Our culture has worked that out for us already.
It’s probably good to clarify what we mean by culture: in essence it is a shared system that enables us to live and work together (1), and it is reasonable to conclude that without it, we would not function. The more culture we have, the better we function. I know that sounds like a stretch, but bear with me for a moment.
Pinker (2), a cognitive psychologist, professor, and author, claims human improvement has applied to almost every measure of human well-being. And though he does not identify culture as the source of that improvement, I think without the culture systems that allow improvement, we certainly would not be able to work together to grow our well-being, and we would face chaos. Pinker underlines his highly detailed research on ongoing improvement by reflecting on war: “If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million.” (3)
There is truly nothing worse than a group of people who don’t know how to collaborate. They would likely perish simply because they couldn’t accomplish anything to ensure their survival, and likely die due to the endless violence that Dunbar notes plagued our ancestral communities (4).
The question is: assuming we didn’t receive a manual :), what drives the development of our ability to work together? Let me be presumptuous and suggest that I think there are two main (but not the only) drivers of culture. One is the need to survive; shared systems significantly enhance that. Two, and equally important, is that we feel happier when we have empathy with a group that reciprocates that empathy. In short, our survival is based on shared systems and the empathy we all have (unless you are Donald Trump) for our family, friends, and others.
That may be simplistic, but I believe it offers a good broad-brush description.
But, don’t we have a problem here? If the world is increasingly interconnected, and we all have different cultures, how do we find a shared system of ‘meanings, beliefs, practices, symbols, norms, and values’ (5) that allows for successful collaboration rather than chaos?
It’s a big question, and in Simon Gillow’s new Cultural Awareness course for international students, you will soon be able to acquire the cultural knowledge-set and practice. Message Frank at +852 92791395 if you would like to be placed on the waiting list.
In the interim, to illustrate how different our cultural systems are and how challenging it is to develop a shared one, I want to share some research about language, culture, and cognition.
Let’s start with an individualist culture and language: English and the English. English culture is individualist, meaning that your sense of identity is less strongly tied to an in-group, although you are comfortable relating to other groups. In this culture, you feel comfortable saying “I” a lot. (Interestingly, unlike any other language group in the world, English capitalizes “I”). This contrasts with a collectivist culture, which is more strongly tied to an in-group and less likely to relate to other groups, where saying “we” is much more common (7).
Bear with me, I/we are getting there :)
In an individualist culture, people focus on the identity of a particular thing, as the definition of a ‘thing’ is an essential part of their thinking. In a collectivist mindset, the focus is on the relationships between things (8). These two groups literally see the world differently (9).
If we take a collectivist culture like Hong Kong, where group relationships are more important, using “we” is much more prevalent. It’s likely that you chose the cow and the grass in the graphic test because you think about how the things relate to each other. If you are an individualist, you would likely choose the cow and the chicken, as their identity as “animals” is more important to you.
How can individualist and collectivist cultures see or say the same things?
If you have a group of compound bilinguals (those who speak, for example, Chinese and English fluently) and present them with two stories—one filled with “I” and one filled with “we”—and then test them immediately in the picture test (10), they think like individualists after the “I” story and like collectivists after the “we” story.
Given that many Hong Kongers are compound bilinguals, they can think in two ways.
Hong Kongers can indeed work with other cultures. 😊 One person, two minds.
I am not saying that being bilingual is the same as being able to understand all different cultures, but it certainly helps!
To learn more about culture, check out Simon Gillow’s new Cultural Awareness course for international students. You will soon be able to acquire that knowledge-set and practice. Message me at +852 92791395 if you would like to be placed on the waiting list.
To become bilingual, use our exceptional tutors, exceptional learning, exceptional EdTech resources, and exceptional results. Contact us at service@myittutor.org or message +852 92791395.
1. Culture ‘encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, attitude, and habits of the individuals in these groups. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture
2. Steven Pinker in https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/02/harvards-pinker-makes-case-for-human-progress-in-new-book/ ‘To my pleasant surprise, war is not the only scourge that has declined over the course of history. Extreme poverty has been decimated: It’s gone from 90 percent of the world’s population to 10 percent. Literacy has increased from about 15 percent to more than 85 percent. Prosperity has increased; longevity has increased from about 30 to about 71 years worldwide, and 80 in the developed world.
Human flourishing has been enhanced in measure after measure…’
3. Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of our Nature (reviewed in https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/the-better-angels-of-our-nature-by-steven-pinker-book-review.html ) and explained in YouTube talk https://youtu.be/_gGf7fXM3jQ?feature=shared and https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html
4. Robin Dunbar in Managing the Stresses of Group-Living in the Transition to Village Life. R.I.M. Dunbar 1. 1) Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Radcliffe Observatory. Quarter, Oxford OX2 6GG, UK. ORCID: 0000-0002-9982-9702
5. I view culture as the rich complex of meanings, beliefs, practices, symbols, norms, and values prevalent among people in a society. The prevailing value emphasis in a society may be the most central feature of culture (Hofstede, 1980; Inglehart, 1977; Schwartz, 1999; Weber, 1958; Williams,1958). These value emphasis express shared conceptions of what is good and desirable in the culture, the cultural ideals.
6. Sourced in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQj1VPNPHlI&list=PL6gSiOFcJsJGwmD6bA-CySCg51qlc-TrP&index=5 10 minutes with Geert Hofstede on Individualisme versus Collectivisme)
8. The Geography of Thought, How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why. Richard Nisbett. Publisher: Free Press (April 5, 2004) ISBN13: 9780743255356
9. A picture test https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1194960/ ‘A growing literature suggests that people from different cultures have differing cognitive processing styles (1, 2). Westerners, in particular North Americans, tend to be more analytic than East Asians. That is, North Americans attend to focal objects more than do East Asians, analyzing their attributes and assigning them to categories. In contrast, East Asians have been held to be more holistic than Westerners and are more likely to attend to contextual information and make judgments based on relationships and similarities.’
10. See (9)
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