Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 And then this confirmation bias.
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Oh, is that a, that's some thunder there in the background. Is this a, is this an Indian monsoon?
Speaker 0 00:00:09 That is a BS. So some months and sounds for free.
Speaker 1 00:00:26 Hello, I'm Joseph shawls. Welcome to the deep culture podcast, where we explore the psychology of intercultural. Understanding. This is a podcast for people who move between different cultural worlds. We talk about intercultural experiences and we dig deep into the science and psychology of culture and mind today with me is my cohost ISI to Ray. How are you today?
Speaker 0 00:00:52 Hi Joseph. I'm wonderful. And I'm so happy to be with you here today.
Speaker 1 00:00:57 Now you and I first met at the brain mind and culture masterclass. Uh, you've been on the podcast team for a while now. I'm sure some listeners will remember the story you told about ordering food in France in the last episode. Well,
Speaker 0 00:01:10 I hope so. And it's wonderful to be on the podcast.
Speaker 1 00:01:14 Well, you and I have quite different backgrounds. So you grew up in India and I grew up in California, but whenever I talk to you, I feel like we find these parallels. Like we both grew up loving foreign languages. We both were the kind of person that couldn't wait to leave and go out and see the world.
Speaker 0 00:01:32 And when I am from the government discipline down in Eastern India, and I grew up having two first languages, English and Bengali.
Speaker 1 00:01:44 So you've been managing diversity, your whole life
Speaker 0 00:01:49 Navigating different culture and language world has been a real flight. Even as a four year old, I have to communicate with playmates who did not speak Bengali. Then from surviving in a small town in France to training employees in a multinational spread across 55 countries. It's a screen, quite a language and culture rollercoaster.
Speaker 1 00:02:14 I'm looking forward to learning more about all these experiences. I'm thrilled to have you here on the podcast. So I have a question you've spent time doing intercultural training. You've lived around the world. Have you met people? Who've spent a long time abroad, but don't seem to adapt very deeply. They kind of stay on the surface or don't really try to understand the local culture.
Speaker 0 00:02:39 Yes, absolutely. The terminal tourist phenomenon. They might live for yours in a foreign country and hardly adapt or complain about the locals are always compare everything to back home.
Speaker 1 00:02:55 Well, and on the other hand, some other people may just spend a short time, but have these profound life-changing experiences.
Speaker 0 00:03:03 That's cool. It's so odd. Isn't it? Some people really seem to resist.
Speaker 1 00:03:10 I think it's really common, but in the intercultural field, people don't talk about it that much.
Speaker 0 00:03:17 I think there's this idea that just by challenging or being in a foreign environment, we automatically become international or actually sensitive or something like that.
Speaker 1 00:03:28 And it's just not true. You know, some people go abroad and they hardly change at all, or they have stereotypes reinforced or they just decide, oh yeah, my, my country is the best after all.
Speaker 0 00:03:39 So in today's episode, we're going to look more deeply at cultural resistance. We'll ask what cultural resistance is white to resist. And we look at what and mind sciences can teach us about resistance.
Speaker 1 00:03:56 And that brings us to part one, no wine for good girls. Before we get to this idea of the eternal tourist. I wanted to mention that I was fascinated recently, when you told me the advice that you got from relatives before leaving India, when you moved to France for the first time,
Speaker 0 00:04:23 But that was about to leave. And it was my first time that I was leaving India. I was strictly advised by some of my relatives to not drink wine, whatever you do do not drink wine. They knew of course, that drinking wine was common in France. And they were worried that I would be somehow influenced even conducted by this morally questionable Gastonia.
Speaker 1 00:04:51 So for them, the goal was that you not be changed by your stay in France to not adapt because doing that would somehow compromise you
Speaker 0 00:05:01 Exactly. And that's where cultural resistance comes from. Isn't it? This idea that we have to protect ourselves from cultural difference, that if we adapt and change something valuable,
Speaker 1 00:05:18 I think though that resistance is not simply disliking something, right? But for example, if I'm living in Thailand, I may choose not to eat spicy Thai food because it burns my mouth, but that's not resistance.
Speaker 0 00:05:32 It's not, uh, because you're not making value judgments about it.
Speaker 1 00:05:37 So when we're talking about cultural resistance, we mean both avoidance, like don't do that plus a negative value judgment. There's something wrong with those people that do that thing.
Speaker 0 00:05:50 Yes. And I think that the relatives that gave me that advice really did feel that French people must somehow be morally compromised given the fact that they commonly drink wine,
Speaker 1 00:06:03 But let's just point out that from their perspective. I mean, they were trying to watch out for you trying to protect you perhaps
Speaker 0 00:06:10 Of course. And I really appreciate that. And that also raises an important point. If drinking alcohol is against my religious or moral beliefs, then adapting profusely would compromise me. There's still this question remaining. Can I choose to not drink wine when in France, but still accept the fact that for French people drinking wine, the smell and not a sign of moral failure,
Speaker 1 00:06:41 And that's the challenge, isn't it accepting cultural difference at that deep level requires that ability to recognize that things which feel strange or wrong or uncomfortable or pap, perhaps even immoral may simply be a reflection of cultural difference.
Speaker 0 00:07:00 Yeah, it sounds so simple, but it can be hugely difficult in practice.
Speaker 1 00:07:07 Did she tell you in episode 13, you told a story about the first time you went out to eat with French colleagues and you're shocked at how they ordered
Speaker 0 00:07:18 That's correct. Everyone focused on what they wanted and no one took into account what others were eating. It seemed selfish to me.
Speaker 1 00:07:28 Well, I love that. You're so honest about your feelings in that moment, because it's so easy to say, oh, I want to learn about the culture or I appreciate cultural difference. But in fact, in real life, when you're confronted with uncomfortable difference, we really do often make these negative judgements. I remember first living in Tokyo being on a packed subway, train wall-to-wall people, no one was talking. Everyone seemed to be in this private little bubble. I could just hear the clickety clack of the train wheels. And I remember thinking, wow, look at these blank faces. That's so weird. What's wrong with the people.
Speaker 0 00:08:09 So we have these judgmental thoughts on negative feelings, but I think it's unavoidable. Human beings are naturally judgemental.
Speaker 1 00:08:21 Well then in my case too, I had that reaction, even though I recognized that this was cultural
Speaker 0 00:08:28 For me to swim, can't really stop these negative judgements. But it's also true that as we get used to something, as we start to understand it better, our attitude start to change. We start, accept and adapt. So for me, this is where things get interesting. Why is it that some people never seem to accept or adapt to cultural differences at a deeper level?
Speaker 1 00:08:59 Well, and this brings us back to this idea of the eternal tourist, which is where this conversation started. That there seemed to be some people who can spend a long time in a foreign country, but they really don't seem to adapt very much.
Speaker 0 00:09:13 Oh yes. I have friends who have the broad fleet, yours, they get along in everyday life. But one themselves, a bot don't really make many local friends, you know, outside of work would visit homes of other Indian families, sit on the floor and sing Bollywood songs.
Speaker 1 00:09:32 So they're in a foreign country is sitting on the floor, singing Bollywood songs.
Speaker 0 00:09:36 Exactly. And there's this thing I often hear, uh, there's, you know, there's no place like India.
Speaker 1 00:09:41 Yeah. And that is such a common reaction. I hear that as well in Japanese, there's a patine home value, which is roughly translated as well, just as you might expect. Or just as I thought Japan is great or an American I've heard Americans say, well, one thing I learned from traveling abroad was, you know, I'm glad I was born in America. So the question that I have then is how can we make sense of all these different reactions?
Speaker 0 00:10:08 And that brings us to part two, the trains run on time. So jumpsuit on the very first page of your first book, deep culture, the hidden challenges of global living, which came out in 2007, there's a quote by someone you call Jack. It says Japan is predictable. Lots of times. That's a good thing. I know my is going to come on time once this quote about.
Speaker 1 00:10:51 So I started the book with that because it was an example of how Jack was mostly concerned with surface culture. When talking about Japan, even though he had been living in the country for 14 years.
Speaker 0 00:11:06 So he was one of those eternal tourists, by the way, this book was based on your PhD research, right?
Speaker 1 00:11:14 Yes. And, and the basic idea was that despite globalization, deep intercultural understanding is harder than we think because of deep culture difference,
Speaker 0 00:11:25 Which again is related to
Speaker 1 00:11:28 Resistance. Right? And that research in fact was inspired by Jack or his real name is Jonathan. Bolick, who I called Jack in the book. And he's a friend of mine. He's a great guy, but he spent years living in Tokyo without adapting that deeply to Japanese culture. So I interviewed him, I quoted him and he was a key person in that book.
Speaker 0 00:11:53 And he knew you were
Speaker 1 00:11:54 Writing about him, right? Yes he did. Um, and I think he even enjoyed it. And I used to talk about him when I would give a presentation or in my teaching. And to be clear, what I wrote was not a criticism on the contrary, he was an example of a really nice person who for different reasons, uh, never really adapted deeply, but, uh, he was very open about that.
Speaker 0 00:12:17 Well, your book was published in 2007 and you interviewed him before that. So it's, it's, it's been quite a long time. I wonder how strap doing these days.
Speaker 1 00:12:29 Well, he's still based in Japan. Uh, and since we're doing an episode on resistance, I thought, wouldn't it be fun to see how Jack or actually Jonathan is doing these days. And he was kind enough to agree to talk to me again this time using his real name
Speaker 0 00:12:47 Cream, that would be fantastic.
Speaker 1 00:13:02 Well, welcome to the deep culture podcast. Thank you. So, one of the reasons that I give you credit for my PhD, as you know, because you got me interested in this idea of surface and deep adaptation, I just give you a perfect case study. You gave me a perfect case study. Absolutely because you're happy in Japan and it's not like you're some kind of prejudice jerk or anything. You're a very positive person. Uh, yet you spent many years in Japan and did not adapt in a deep way in the way that I did. And so this raised the question for me at that time, like what is the difference between adapting deeply and staying more on the surface? One of the ideas that came out of that research was this idea of resistance of resisting adaptation and that you can sometimes adapt on a more surface level, but resist at a deeper level, even at the same time.
Speaker 1 00:14:14 And the theme of the podcast, this podcast is resistance. Um, and so I wanted to check in with you and, um, see how you're doing and I'm still resisting. Well, what I did was I, I found some quotes from when I interviewed you, I don't know, 15 years ago. And I wanted to read them back to you and see what you thought. So I asked you about what friendships you with Japanese. And this was what you said. You said, actually, I don't have that many Japanese friends. Actually my male friends are all foreigners. So has that changed? Is that basically the same?
Speaker 3 00:15:04 Um, far as Japanese male friends? I, I would say I have to when they came out of being long time students,
Speaker 1 00:15:17 That's nice. Yeah. And, and I'm assuming you speak to them in English, right?
Speaker 3 00:15:22 Yeah. My 30 years existence in Japan is basically all the English language.
Speaker 1 00:15:29 I actually asked you about your Japanese ability when I interviewed you. And, uh, you said, is this embarrassing for me to read back what you said?
Speaker 3 00:15:42 Oh no, it's in a book.
Speaker 1 00:15:47 Um, so when I interviewed you all those years ago, I asked you about learning Japanese and there will be some people who will think, oh, how could you possibly live in a foreign country for 20 or 30 years and not become fluent in the local language? And so I asked you why haven't you learned more? And this is what you said. I really don't have the opportunities. I would have to create opportunities. For example, I could go to the store, even though I don't need tuna fish, I could ask for the tuna fish, I could call a department store on the phone and ask for something. So you basically said you don't have the opportunities. Um,
Speaker 3 00:16:41 And that was very specific to certain kinds of communication as well, right? Just, you know, daily tasks at a supermarket kind of thing, and nothing to do with building relationships or professionals.
Speaker 1 00:16:57 When I was writing about that, I noted that the way you were talking about Japanese learning Japanese was a very kind of concrete way to get things done. Um, and you weren't so much thinking about it at, in terms of how learning a language allows you to have deep relationships. Uh, well, we did talk about the relationships that you have with people and the language that you use. And, and this is what you said, all the other English teachers that don't speak English. Well, avoid me. Other colleagues outside of the English department use a mix of Japanese and English, but I have much less contact with them. Very little. I could go days without using Japanese. I'm sure I have,
Speaker 3 00:17:52 I guess I was probably teaching in high schools and I was like the, what we used to say, the hired guns, where they would put the foreign teachers in the back, but we weren't even in the teacher's room at that first quote. Yeah. That's pretty shocking. I've had plenty of opportunities.
Speaker 1 00:18:08 So what is it that's holding you back
Speaker 3 00:18:13 Living in Tokyo? I think my environment allows for that. So at the end of the day, probably after a hard day's work, the last thing I kind of wanted to do was to come home and study. I just needed to unwind.
Speaker 1 00:18:26 Yeah. One of the things that I really learned from talking to you is how much resistance is about staying comfortable and human beings want to be comfortable and learning a foreign language or changing the way that you communicate is uncomfortable. I mean, it takes effort. It's effortful.
Speaker 3 00:18:50 It's hard. Yeah, let me wish it was better. When I first came to Japan, my thought I planned was only one or two years, so I was just working, working, working, and then, um, uh, yeah, maybe I just didn't realize until years later that, okay. How as a language teacher, how, uh, integrated, well language is culture, right? So had I known that maybe that would have motivated me a lot more, um, for sure and not, but, but as I get older and when I'm living in Japan and, and being single too, um, that need is becoming stronger now because let's say I do retire in Japan and I'm living on my own. Now I do need to call the hospital or I, you know, um, but then just have friends too. And, you know, and just having the language going forward would allow just a much more meaningful daily existence as well.
Speaker 1 00:19:51 When I was interviewing you before I asked you about cultural difference and let me just, It's all, it's all in the book, man.
Speaker 3 00:20:05 So go
Speaker 1 00:20:05 Buy that book. That's right. Deep culture, 2007 multilingual matters. Um, so this is what you said about Japanese cultural values. The Japanese ability to be patient has rubbed off on me. They are attuned to other people's feelings, but a lot of times they limit themselves too, by being too concerned with what other people think. And so they don't express themselves or do what they really want because they're too worried about how other people view them.
Speaker 3 00:20:41 Yeah. It's not a bit ignorant there, A little bit of truth, but,
Speaker 1 00:20:50 Uh, yeah. Wow. So let me tell you what I wrote about that in my book, and then see what you think, because what I said at the time was that you understood and appreciated things that you found to be positive about Japanese cultural values, but at some level there was a deeper kind of resistance. You know, when you say they limit themselves or they worry too much about what other people think and that that's largely unconscious, but what do you think?
Speaker 3 00:21:25 Yeah. Making judgements on yeah. Not knowing the culture very well.
Speaker 1 00:21:33 There was actually another quote, which was related to that. You said Japanese society as a whole will never fully accept me. There's a sense that there's a barrier there. I didn't feel it was even worth trying to break that barrier down. I'm happy on this side. Wow.
Speaker 3 00:21:52 What was I facing?
Speaker 1 00:21:54 Actually, you did mention that you mentioned that other foreigners had told you that even if you speak fluent, Japanese, Japanese people will never accept you. And to be fair, Japanese society is not easy to become. It's not easy to get any inside.
Speaker 3 00:22:09 Yeah. Making blanket statements like that based on, and not, not having to adapt it very deeply at that point. I'm more aware now I'd like you to know so
Speaker 1 00:22:22 Well, it's, it's really fun to talk to you about this stuff.
Speaker 3 00:22:26 Some of these are cringe-worthy,
Speaker 1 00:22:30 Uh, but this idea which you picked up on that resistance is about making judgments because that kind of keeps us comfortable, but it's nice also that, you know, your thinking continues to evolve over time.
Speaker 3 00:22:50 Yeah. I think maybe because I didn't really adapt and get deeper, but I think maybe I'd benefit from the length I spent there and plus meeting you and, you know, learning more about cultural awareness. Um, but yeah, maybe I'm sure. Well, I'm sure there are foreigners that have been in Japan 40 years and still haven't adapted at all.
Speaker 1 00:23:12 Um, I think the other thing about resistance is that, you know, you kind of have the luxury of choosing how much you want to adapt. Do you live in Tokyo, you work in an English speaking environment. Things are all, you know, efficient. And, but for people who don't have that freedom to not adapt, like let's say that you're a refugee and you've come to a country and you have to learn a language simply to survive and you didn't choose to come. And then you're under this enormous pressure to adapt to these local conditions and maybe people have prejudice against you. And so in, in a situation like that, the pressures are enormous. And also in that sense, resistance is a kind of very natural self protection mechanism. What we're calling resistance discovers this enormous range of different experience. But I suppose in the end, human beings are both need to protect themselves and feel comfortable. But we also, we're curious, and we want to be connected to the people around us. It struck me that you talked about these friendships that you made, and maybe it was your desire for connection with people, which is allowing you to feel more and more like Japan really is home and that you have deeper connections then.
Speaker 3 00:24:42 And just, that's just probably a maturity process too, of having lived in a place that long. It just kinda hit me. And maybe we talked about it years ago in the book, but my whole life, I moved every two or three years. So I was always having to go these new places and finding certain ways to feel comfortable and adapting at the same time. Then I had uprooted. So maybe there was just, this part of me was natural resistance to that. Oh, well this is going to end in two years. And now I'm going to be moved to Turkey or I'm going to move to the east coast. I'm going to move to a rural town in Idaho, or we're going to move down to the deep south again. Or I don't know. I just, it just kinda hit me.
Speaker 1 00:25:28 I hadn't, I hadn't thought of it that way, but for someone who grew up moving around a lot, like you did, then maybe resistance is a way to avoid the disappointment of having to uproot yourself again.
Speaker 3 00:25:45 Yeah. But I always found that every place we went to it and I loved, and I always, I didn't want to leave there. So I found certain level of comfort, but
Speaker 1 00:25:55 Well, I, I want to thank you for agreeing to talk to me about this and to do so publicly on this podcast, I'd hit, this has been so great.
Speaker 0 00:26:18 So we can learn about resistance from hearing stories like with Jonathan moving on from that, what can we learn from science about resistance, I guess from the perspective of evolutionary psychology resistance is a form of threat response.
Speaker 1 00:26:40 Yeah. I think I agree at the most basic level, it's a, it's a kind of threat response. We could also call it a natural bias,
Speaker 0 00:26:48 But how is resistance of bias?
Speaker 1 00:26:52 Our mind is full of biases often called cognitive biases. And a lot of those biases are related to resistance.
Speaker 0 00:27:02 For
Speaker 1 00:27:02 Example, absolutely. I mean, ethnocentrism means we judge things from our own cultural perspective and of course that's going to tend to make us judge cultural difference negatively,
Speaker 0 00:27:16 Right? And then there's familiarity bias. We naturally feel comforted and have positive feelings about the familiar. I remember in episode nine, Yvonne talked about her American friend who wanted to eat at McDonald's. When she was traveling in Europe, she was stressed out and needed something familiar to comfort her.
Speaker 1 00:27:42 I have done the same thing. Look for something familiar when you're stressed in a foreign country, because basically novelty is stressful. It's exciting, but it's stressful and that can irritate us and it can make us more judgmental. On top of that, we have in-group bias. We naturally have more positive feelings about people who are similar to us. And we rely on heuristics, which are these kinds of mental shortcuts that we use. We jump to conclusions when we don't understand. And that also leads us to making negative judgements.
Speaker 0 00:28:23 And then this confirmation bias.
Speaker 1 00:28:26 Oh, is that a, that's some thunder there in the background. Is this a, is this an Indian monsoon?
Speaker 0 00:28:33 That is a BS. So some months and sounds for free And, and yes. So does confirmation biases well and, uh, that contributes to resistance. Uh that's when we look for things which confirm what we already believe. So if we start off with a negative image off a new place, you're likely to find more and more things that confirm those negative.
Speaker 1 00:29:02 And there are so many of these cognitive biases we could go on and on. But I think the larger point is that resistance is natural, which doesn't mean it's good, of course, but it's a natural part of the way our mind works and the way that human beings are. And it reminds me of this quote from Milton Bennett, from his 1986 article, it was the very first sentence, which really stuck in my mind. Intercultural sensitivity is not natural. It is not part of our primate past, nor has it characterized most of human history.
Speaker 0 00:29:39 It's hard for me to digest this idea that in the cultural sensitivity is not natural at some level it's discouraging human beings naturally resist difference if contributes to violence and oppression and prejudice and discrimination.
Speaker 1 00:30:01 That is so true. It is hard to digest that. And I try to remember though that although humans are resistant by nature, we are also curious by nature. We are also empathetic by nature. We also form community by nature. We are social. We want to be with other human beings. So there is this very fine balance between these two things
Speaker 0 00:30:26 Then to, so how, and as ultra rich people, we can't really change human nature, but maybe we can tip the balance of breath towards this openness to change.
Speaker 1 00:30:40 I hope so. And I don't think we can use logical arguments against resistance, but I think we can set the conditions to lower resistance. This requires security. We need to feel safe, even if we don't feel completely comfortable. And we need to understand the differences that are provoking resistance.
Speaker 0 00:31:03 I think what intercultural training does that it provides that safe space for people to explore difference, to come to new understanding.
Speaker 1 00:31:13 Well, and wouldn't it be great if this podcast, uh, our conversation and talking to Jonathan and the community of listeners that we have here, wouldn't it be great if that's helping to accomplish that a little bit,
Speaker 0 00:31:27 But I really hope so. And I believe so read that it's, it's time to wrap this episode up. And by the way, if you will want to learn more about bias, do take out episode nine of the deep culture podcast bias is not bytes.
Speaker 1 00:31:49 The deep culture podcast is sponsored by the Japan intercultural Institute, an NPO dedicated to intercultural education and research. If you're interested in going deeper into these topics, you can do that at GIS brain, mind and culture masterclass to find out more search for the Japan intercultural Institute. We would really like to hear from you write us at DC podcast at Japan, intercultural.org. We're also on YouTube. Please subscribe. You can put your comments there, a special thanks to everyone on the podcast teams. Zaina Matar, Danielle glance, you Easter, uh, Yvonne VanderPol, and thanks to our sound engineer, Robinson, Fritz, and everyone at GII. And thanks to you. Ishita for spending this time with me.
Speaker 0 00:32:40 Thank you so much, Joseph. It was wonderful. And if you heard some rain and ponder in the background during the episode that some Indian monsoon delivered right to you.
