Culture Matters (Part 1)
There are those who theorize that culture does not matter in interviewing—that if you consider the person in front of you, not worrying about cultural differences, you’ll get the best results—but the research proves this theory incorrect. Culture matters, and if we deal with someone from a different cultural background solely through our own cultural lenses, we’re very unlikely to reach a profitable outcome.
Regardless of whether you are aware of it, or believe it matters, you grew up in a culture, and that culture shaped how you perceive the world. Every bit of information that comes your way and every thought that results, happens through the filters your particular culture has created and continues to create within you. The mix of culture that develops within you may be different than those around you, but it will share many similarities and it will always be there in the background churning through the data.
Based on the work of social psychologist Geert Hofstede, amongst many others, Americans are shown to be far and away the most individualist people in the world. We may love our families, relatives, and friends, yet we see ourselves as separate and distinct from those relationships. The relationships exist, but for Americans they do not define us; we are self-construed. That is, through choice, preferences, and volition we create our own identities and prioritize or goals and values above even those of our in-groups. So, interesting concept, and how might this impact the way we perceive a given conversation or meeting?
If we see ourselves as individuals, we also will tend see others in the same light. They are also self-construed and the links between them and others around them are tenuous and generally not of high importance. As we watch an event unfold, we (as individualists) perceive a group of individual actors playing out a series of actions based on individual choices. There is a strong chance we will not perceive, or at least not perceive as important, the interrelationships between the players and contextual contributors that are playing a role in events unfolding as they are. As an example, if we see an argument unfolding, as Americans we see two people making conscious choices to engage in an argument and we experience it as, essentially, a battle of two wills.
Conversely, if you come from a highly collective society, your identity to a large extent is created by and through others. For example, in more collective countries it is common to introduce yourself via your family whereas I can think of basically no time in my life that I have ever done that. Those connections matter in a collective culture and they, likewise, influence how you will perceive an event. The context in which the events take place and the relationships between the players will be perceived much more readily than the actions of the individuals involved in the event.
In his brilliant book The Geography of Thought, Richard Nisbett quotes social psychologists Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama who put it this way: “If one perceives oneself as embedded within a larger context of which one is an interdependent part, it is likely that other objects or events will be perceived in a similar way.”
Let’s go back to the example of witnessing an argument. Rather than seeing it through a lens of conscious choice, a witness from a more collective culture would see more of the context and situational factors that led to the confrontation and possibly an air of inevitability given those driving forces. And rather than seeing just two individuals, our witness here would be more attuned to the social connections and relative status of the arguers.
One more interesting thing to note here is that the individualist observer will have their attention focused very much on the argument, the main event as it were, and will have diminished awareness of what else is taking place in the periphery. Individualism tends to overlap with analytic thought processes where most of the attention is drawn to a main focal point than to objects or events on the periphery. Collective cultures tend to be much more holistic in their thought, where less attention is given to the focal object and more attention to the outlying objects and events.
Check out the thumbnail and preview image from a famous study known as the Michigan Fish Test originally conducted by Richard Nisbett.
If you were asked to look at this for a moment, and then describe what you saw, as an American it’s a sure bet you’d be able to describe the three prominent fish, but you’d be a bit iffy on the number of smaller fish, frogs, kelp and whatnot. And if something in the background were changed and you were shown the picture again, you’d have trouble identifying what changed, but you’d nail it if one of the prominent fished changes. Those from a more holistic culture would experience roughly the opposite.
The point is, two people from two different cultures can experience the same events and yet experience them in dramatically different ways, form starkly different perceptions of the causes, and even remember the events differently. Understanding and controlling for this in intelligence interviewing and business dealings is of paramount importance.
There are hundreds of differences we could discuss relative to culture, and I genuinely wish I had the space and time, but I don’t, so in the continuation of this installment I’ll carry on with the individual versus collective perspective and see where it takes us. I’m confident it will lead to some discussion that may surprise you.
