Cops and taxes: Mystery solved…sort of
In the last two posts I've summarized similarities and differences between how Chinese and American interviewees responded to scenarios about a surprise arrest and a tax hike. I ended the last post with this:
I got exactly what I had expected from the Americans: anger in response to both the Surprise Arrest and Tax Hike questions. In the Chinese population, why was the response to Tax Hike so different from the response to Surprise Arrest?
The question shows my American bias. A simple Chinese answer to the question might be: These two questions are completely different. Why would you even expect that there would be similar responses to the two questions?
Here’s why: because in both questions a wrong is perpetrated by someone in power over someone out of power. And because right is right and wrong is wrong, I would be equally angry about both scenarios. And because I would be equally angry, everybody else should be too.
This string of statements has logical and factual flaws and weaknesses that I didn’t see at the time I was beginning my research. What I didn’t think of at the time:
What is considered a “wrong” varies a great deal by culture.
What is meant by “someone in power” and “someone out of power” can be construed in many different ways.
“Right is right and wrong is wrong” is a highly contestable statement.
My own angry feelings would be a poor predictor of how other people would feel, even without culture to complicate matters.
#s 1, 2 and 3 turned out to explain the differences between the Chinese and American responses fairly completely. #4 is generally true, but in this case my intuition that “other people” would be angry was not completely false, given how angrily the Americans responded to both scenarios.
Regarding #s 1-3, I am not going to descend into a post-modern spiral of moral relativism here. That said, I do want to put “right” and “wrong” into a cross-cultural context.
In earlier posts I have at times written about universalism and particularism. Universalist cultures tend to believe in timeless truths holding of all situations; particularist cultures are more likely to take into account the specifics of individual situations. This difference can account for most of the puzzling similarities and differences in the Chinese and U.S. responses to the Surprise Arrest and Tax Hike scenarios.
Fundamentally what is at play here are two starkly divergent default ways of viewing the world. From a typical Chinese perspective, life presents itself as a series of problems to be solved. Ideals may exist, but they are secondary to whatever is the most immediate need. I think of it as a kind of triage: life throws so much at us that we can’t possibly address everything, so let’s figure out what’s really at stake, and put our energies where they are best used. This requires a mastery of detail: if I don’t understand exactly how situations differ, how can I possibly decide which of them are worthy of my time and effort?
In short, life is a series of particular events with particular actors whose actions cause particular consequences for particular people. I can’t be asked to evaluate a scenario unless I know the…particulars.
For Americans, the calculus is different. Americans tend to be more interested in abstractions, and are more willing to engage in abstract discussions, because Americans are fundamentally interested in what is universal, on what unites across difference. The reasons for this are often debated, and range from hard-core “materialist” approaches that view America’s physical environment, especially its abundant land and other resources, as the fundamental determinant, to more nuanced approaches that factor in what the American mindset inherited from European antecedents. (It turns out, for instance, that the Swiss are even more universalist than the Americans.)
Regardless, those who subscribe to the universalist world view will approach the scenarios in a radically different way from how the Chinese do. Instead of richly specific scenarios, Americans see roles, such as perpetrator and victim. Who actually instantiates the roles is of secondary importance; what matters more is that a wrong was committed, and when a wrong is committed, there must be some form of redress.
So let’s pan out and look at Surprise Arrest and Tax hike through these two different lenses. An American will likely see the scenarios as follows:
Surprise Arrest describes a powerful perpetrator committing a wrong against a powerless victim. The power asymmetry combines with the actual harm to the victim to generate anger, along with calls for strong counter-action.
Tax Hike describes a powerful perpetrator committing a wrong against a powerless victim. The power asymmetry combines with the actual harm to the victim to generate anger, along with calls for strong counter-action.
When seen through the role-based universalist lens, it’s no surprise that the two scenarios seem essentially identical.
From a Chinese perspective, the scenarios look like this:
Surprise Arrest describes a specific individual (policeman) committing specific, immediate and tangible harm (physical restraint, deprivation of information) to someone (the arrestee) who has done nothing to deserve this treatment, and whose life is immediately affected in specific ways. Redress by the victim toward the policeman is a logical consequence.
Tax Hike describes an amorphous and distant group of people (“the government”) taking a somewhat abstract action (passing a law) which will probably harm an amorphous and mostly distant group of people (“society”). The action might harm me or someone I know at some later stage, but it’s not at all clear how severe the harm will be. And besides, no immediate, or even long-term, actions present themselves for the taking: how can “society” punish “the government”?
It’s not that the government’s actions aren’t wrong. The Chinese participants made it clear that they thought it was wrong. Viewed, however, through the particularist lens and its triage approach, Surprise Arrest is bound to draw a lot more ire than Tax Hike. There is potentially much more bang for one’s precious problem-solving buck in redressing the Surprise Arrest scenario than in redressing the Tax Hike scenario.
So, the universalism/particularism split solves the biggest piece of the mystery. But it's not the whole story.