Making strangers less strange

Yesterday I wrote about how each of us is “several selves,” and that this inner plurality gives us a wealth of options to choose from in relating to cultures that might otherwise seem unfamiliar. In some research I did I looked at how Chinese and American participants reasoned through certain scenarios. I discovered a number of “cultural models” in the process. In general the Chinese and American participants came to different conclusions in their reasoning. However, in their reasoning there was often ambivalence: two or more competing cultural models being weighed against one another. The “winning” models tended to be different, but the inventory of models was essentially identical.

For instance, consider this scenario, in both its English and Chinese versions:

The Smiths are a three-person family living in the United States:  Mom, Dad, and their 17-year-old son Bill.  Mom and Dad both work full-time jobs for similar salaries.  Mom wants to buy a new car and give the old one to Bill; Dad thinks their current car will last several more years, and doesn’t think they should waste money on a new car. What will they all say to one another? What will happen in the end?  Who is right?

李家有三个人:爸爸,妈妈,和十七岁的男孩子李四。爸爸妈妈两个人每个星期都各工作四十个小时,领一样的工资。现在妈妈想买一辆新汽车,把旧汽车给李四开。但是爸爸认为现在的车还可以再开几年,买新车等于是浪费钱。你觉得爸爸,妈妈,和李四会说什么?最后他们会决定怎么做?你会支持哪一边?

The Americans focused more on family discussion in resolving the scenario; the Chinese mostly said that one of the parents — the one with “final say” (说了算) in the family — would make the call. Yet the Americans talked a lot about one of the parents having final say, and the Chinese spoke often of family discussion. Ultimately things didn’t shake out the same way in the two groups, but each group had access to the same, or at least similar, cultural models as the other group.

What I like about this is what it does to demystify “Chinese” and “American,” these two notions that are so frequently set off against each other as opposites. What if I’ve already got everything that’s “Chinese” inside of me — I just haven’t called it that yet, because it’s organized differently? More like scattered parts than a system, but still ultimately the same, or close-enough-to-the-same, parts as “real” Chinese culture. It’s a little zany to think that way, and I don’t think it’s provable in any meaningful sense, but I think it makes for a powerful starting point for rethinking cultural “difference,” and for intercultural training. “They” are suddenly less exotic, less strange, more like me.

The notion of cultural models that are shared across different cultural groups is something I’ve dubbed “supraculture,” and you can read about it in detail in a recent publication of mine.