Besides universalism versus particularism, discussed in the last post, another angle from which to view the differences between the American and Chinese responses is “rule-based” versus “relationship-based” cultures. In the U.S., rules rule: as we have seen in the pedestrian scenario and in the discussion of the interview scenarios, Americans are much more likely than Chinese to reason in terms of rules. The Chinese approach, in contrast, is to privilege relationships: the relationships between the hypothetical driver who hit the pedestrian and his passenger, or the relationships and interactions between the offending police officer and the innocent civilian.

One surprising logical consequence of these differences is that the classic distinction between “individualism” and “collectivism” gets called into question. This distinction is often listed first in discussions of how China and the U.S. differ. It is usually described something like this:

In the U.S., the main unit of society is the individual. Groups matter less. People are judged more on individual accomplishments and failures than on group accomplishments and failures.

In China, the group is king. Individuals are not free to choose their own actions if these actions interfere with the goals of the group. Individual accomplishments are deliberately muted, as are individual failures, at least in public.

These statements are more or less accurate. The problem is that they are often extended into a more general statement that “groups matter more” in China than they do in the U.S. Which is also true to some extent, except that a lot hinges on what is meant by “the group.”

Vast swaths of the scholarly literature in sociology and social psychology are devoted to the study of how human beings form social groups. One key distinction of the field is “ingroup” versus “outgroup.” An ingroup is a group to which members feel loyalty due to a sense of shared identity, such as an ethnic, racial or religious group. Outgroups are members of groups other than the ingroup. A classic example from American high school life would be the “jocks”: a group of people who share an identity as athletes, and a particularly high social standing. For any given jock, the other jocks are members of his ingroup; for non-jocks, the jocks are in an outgroup. Various other ingroup/outgroup divides characterize much of U.S. high school life: band members, “dirtheads”, nerds, and so on.

Within an ingroup, the shared sense of identity creates a sense of shared group interests. This, in turn, generates trust. If one of the ingroup members feels threatened by someone from an outgroup, it is the job of other ingroup members to protect the threatened member.

There is no single “ingroup,” of course, as people travel in many social circles, and degree of closeness can vary significantly. Relative to a group of classmates, one’s family could be an ingroup; relative to the school population as a whole, one’s classmates could be an ingroup. Concentric circles are often used to represent this aspect of ingroup–outgroup relations.

One of the key differences between Chinese and U.S. culture is where ingroup boundaries get drawn in society as a whole. The rule of thumb is that Chinese culture involves narrower group boundaries: ingroups are very small, perhaps consisting only of a person and her immediate family. Everyone else is an outgroup member, and is generally treated with a degree of suspicion.

In the U.S., in contrast, people are more willing to consider a broader range of others as potential ingroupers — hence Americans’ famous (and, viewed from some perspectives, cloying, and even insincere) friendliness toward strangers.

More on this in the next post.