Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 If a plane crashes in a far away country that you don't know anything about, will you care? Hello, I'm Joseph S and welcome to the deep culture podcast, where we explore culture and the science of mind. And I am here in rainy, windy Tokyo, and I'm here with my co-host Ishi tore, but you are in DGA in Eastern India, right?
Speaker 2 00:00:36 That is right. And it's a hot scotching summer day here.
Speaker 0 00:00:40 Well, I'm so happy to be with you today.
Speaker 2 00:00:44 So the title of this episode is culture and the self.
Speaker 0 00:00:49 And we got interested in this topic because we were saying that there's a fundamental dilemma to being a cultural bridge person. How do you move between different cultural worlds without losing your sense of self? On the one hand, you need to be adaptable. You need to fit in, but you have to find a way to be true to yourself.
Speaker 2 00:01:13 And this is a fascinating topic for me personally, because I grew up in India with a question of who you are and how you fit into society are really intertwined.
Speaker 0 00:01:26 Well, when you grew up in Bengal speaking, Bengali, but you also speak Hindi and English and French, uh, but when you are with other Indians, you are seen as Bengali, or how does that work?
Speaker 2 00:01:39 Well, yes, I am Bengali and I grew up in a Hindu family, although we don't really practice it very actively. And of course I am an Indian citizen. So these are some of the cultural worlds that are part of me and India is such a collective society to understand a person as an individual. You need to understand the communities, they come from their cultural self, so to speak
Speaker 0 00:02:08 Well, that just fascinates me this idea that we have a personal self and also a cultural self because in the us where I grew up, people are almost always focused on this idea of their individual self. When I ask my American students, if they are typical, for example, most of them say, oh, no, uh, they're not typical. They want to see themselves as unique individuals,
Speaker 2 00:02:34 But isn't it very American to think that you have to be unique?
Speaker 0 00:02:39 Well, absolutely. It's the country of individualism. So they often don't notice their own Americanness. Uh, for example, that this desire to be seen as unique is itself quite American.
Speaker 2 00:02:53 And this is the curious thing about the cultural self. Isn't it, it's hard to even understand what's cultural about ourselves without these intercultural experiences. I never really felt Indian until I left India
Speaker 0 00:03:08 And I never felt American until I left the us. So in this episode, we want to explore this idea of culture and the self.
Speaker 2 00:03:19 We'll talk about how our sense of self is shaped by culture. We'll ask the question, are you typical? And we'll explore the idea of the personal self and the cultural self.
Speaker 0 00:03:31 And that brings us to part one. I am a cat.
Speaker 2 00:03:50 If we are going to talk about the culture and the self, we first have to be clear about what we mean when we use the word self.
Speaker 0 00:04:00 So we'll start with a dictionary definition from the American heritage dictionary. And the first two entries are self the total essential or particular being of a person, the individual, or the essential qualities distinguishing one person from another individuality.
Speaker 2 00:04:21 So the self is what makes me, me my unique essence.
Speaker 0 00:04:27 I also like to think of the self as kind of the territory of the me, you know, the opposite of self is other.
Speaker 2 00:04:35 And this is such a common idea that it might not occur to us that the self has anything to do with culture. Some people will think, well, I am just me,
Speaker 0 00:04:47 But of course it does have something to do with culture because our sense of self is shaped by our cultural background. And that's not just my opinion. It's something that has been studied and can be quantified. There's a classic article about this. I'm sure we have mentioned it several times on this podcast already. Uh, it's by Marcus and Tama and it's called culture and the self implications for cognition, emotion and motivation.
Speaker 2 00:05:17 So the main idea of this article is that culture affects how we experience the self.
Speaker 0 00:05:24 Exactly. So let's read the first two sentences of that. Article. People in different cultures have strikingly different constru of the self of others and of the interdependence of the two. These construes can influence. And in many cases determine the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation.
Speaker 2 00:05:55 I find the wording very interesting. It talks about different constru of the self. So a self isn't, just something that we have, it's construed, meaning that we construct it and this structure of the self is influenced by culture.
Speaker 0 00:06:16 And so they go on to explain that these different ways of experiencing the self also reflect other cultural differences, uh, in cognition, our mental processes, our experience of emotion, and also motivation.
Speaker 2 00:06:32 I think that can be hard to make sense of because the way we experience the self seems so personal and private, how could possibly shaped by culture.
Speaker 0 00:06:55 And it's really interesting that when we were discussing this with the podcast team, I asked everyone, when do you feel most yourself? In what situation do you feel that you are really being yourself? And this is a question that I use in my teaching.
Speaker 2 00:07:10 And it was fascinating because on the podcast team, Daniel who grew up in Switzerland and Zena, who grew up in Lebanon had quite different answers. Let me first quote, from what Daniel wrote in my case, I would say it is, for example, when I am performing on a stage, my usual stages are classrooms. I also feel fully myself when moving hiking, skiing, dancing, for example,
Speaker 0 00:07:45 And in response to this, Zena said, it is not the doing, which makes me feel fully myself. Rather the being with certain people, those people are my husband and friends from different stages in my life. Those closest to things I have lived through and experienced. And that difference between Daniel's answer and Zena's answer that reflects what my students say too. My American students will often say that they're being themselves when they're doing something they like, for example, listening to their favorite music or doing their favorite sport, my Japanese or east Asian students, they more often talk about feeling themselves when they're with people. They feel close to probably the most common answer I get is when I'm with my friends or when I'm with my family. The idea is that when they're with the people they care about, then they can really express themselves freely.
Speaker 2 00:08:52 I think that I relate more to what Asian students say. My spontaneous response to that question was that I feel most myself when I'm in a familiar environment or with people I feel close to.
Speaker 0 00:09:06 And all of this agrees with what the Marcus and Tama article says. They say in effect these differences in how we experience the self depend on the culture that we were raised in.
Speaker 2 00:09:18 So people raised in more individualist societies tend to experience what they call an independent constru of self. The feeling that the self is separate from others and has unique qualities that sets it apart. And they contrast that with an interdependent control of self, when we experience the self more in relation to others,
Speaker 0 00:09:44 And this is something that I will admit. It took me a long time to get a feeling for in Japan, but there is a kind of built in assumption that people are in things together. For example, a man may refer to his wife as mother, and she may call him father. Even if the children aren't there, you know, in, in this moment, you're not so much a separate person as you are a relationship. And so I'm wondering if in India, as in Japan, people use titles and honorifics in this way.
Speaker 2 00:10:16 Yes they do. In Bengali. For example, it's rare to call someone only by their first name. You always need to add an honorific that reflects your relationship with them. For example, when I address the grocery store owner, I add a da after his name, which literally means elder brother, people. Don't just use the word I for themselves. We often say we or they,
Speaker 0 00:10:47 Well, it's interesting in Japanese, even the word for self GBO implies that people are interrelated. It's made up of two characters G, which is self and Boone, which is portion. So the mental image is like each of us is one part of a larger hole,
Speaker 2 00:11:04 Like a slice of
Speaker 0 00:11:06 Exactly. And, and not only that, the word you use for, I depends on who you are and who you're talking to. There are more polite forms of, I like watashi. There are more masculine forms like, or Boku. There are more feminine forms like AHI. Atashi one of the most famous books in Japanese literature is by NA SOI. And it's called waa, which is translated into English as I am a cat, but that just doesn't capture the atmosphere because the word for I in the title is waha, which is, it's a rather old fashioned form of eye that's used by high status males.
Speaker 2 00:11:51 So the cat is referring to itself with this high status form.
Speaker 0 00:11:57 And that's exactly what makes it amusing. It's as though the cat is looking down its nose at, we lowly humans by referring to himself as waa high, like the honorable eye Emma cat. And in fact, that's what the book is about. A, a cat who finds humans so inferior because of their folly.
Speaker 2 00:12:26 So having different words for I is a reflection of a more interdependent sense of self. We are who we are, not as unique individuals, but in relation to others, in some dialects of Hindi, the first person singular form may is completely non-existent in everyday speech. It's only the first person plural hum, which means we is used to talk about oneself.
Speaker 0 00:12:53 And that is so different from Americans. We are constantly talking about ourselves and we have all these words that reflect how important the self is like their self-esteem or self-worth, self-confidence believing in your self, self actualization, following your dream, being your true self. And when I was looking into this, I found this article, uh, on the psychology today website, which was talking about self-esteem and it said confidence in one's value as a human being is a precious psychological resource and generally a highly positive factor in life.
Speaker 2 00:13:38 Wow. So feeling good about yourself is a precious psychological resource
Speaker 0 00:13:51 In India. How would it be if you start talking about the importance of feeling good about yourself,
Speaker 2 00:13:57 I would seem so full of myself. It seems like there's even sometimes a glorification of the self. I remember reading poetry by Walt Whitman in leaves of grass. He talks about the song of myself. He says, I celebrate myself and sing myself.
Speaker 0 00:14:17 That is very American.
Speaker 2 00:14:20 But if we say that culture is the part of the self, then what's the relationship between who we are individually, our personal self and the parts of us that are cultural are cultural self.
Speaker 0 00:14:34 And that brings us to part two. Are you typical? You know, one thing that might be confusing about this topic is that we have been using this word self, but people also use the word identity when talking about these things,
Speaker 2 00:15:02 Of course, people use these words in different ways, but I think there are some important distinctions to be made. We can say that from the constructivist perspective, we create our sense of self and our worldview based on our experiences, things that we know personally are more real to us
Speaker 0 00:15:22 To make this point to my students. I sometimes ask them if a plane crashes in a far away country that you don't know anything about, will you care?
Speaker 2 00:15:33 That's a tough question. What do they answer?
Speaker 0 00:15:36 Well, usually about half say, yes, they would care. And half say no. And the students who say that they would care, they say to their classmates, you know, you should care about this, but the classmates who said that they wouldn't care, they say, but do you really care?
Speaker 2 00:15:59 So we might say we care, but a plane crash in a far away country just doesn't feel as real.
Speaker 0 00:16:06 And sometimes a Japanese student will even say to me, well, if there's a Japanese person on the plane, then I will care more.
Speaker 2 00:16:15 Which just goes to show that the things that are more familiar to us are more part of ourself. So that's what we mean. When we talk about the self as a kind of psychological territory,
Speaker 0 00:16:28 When I use the word identity. On the other hand, I think of that as a kind of label that we use to define or to describe ourself. So when I say I'm an American, I'm labeling myself and we often claim a particular identity. When we say, you know, I'm a sports fan or I'm gay, or I'm a musician.
Speaker 2 00:16:50 Sometimes though people label us in ways that we don't really like
Speaker 0 00:16:56 Yes. In Japan, for example, people often simply see me as a foreigner, no matter how long I've lived in Japan or how well integrated I am.
Speaker 2 00:17:07 So one obvious lesson is that we have to be careful about how we label people,
Speaker 0 00:17:21 So that's identity, but let's get back to this idea of the self
Speaker 2 00:17:27 Earlier. We were talking about how people who are raised in more collective societies, experience the self as more connected to others. But that doesn't mean that people in more individualist societies do not have a
Speaker 0 00:17:46 Cultural self. And what I mean is that everyone is shaped by the cultural patterns that they grew up with. Even if we don't notice those patterns,
Speaker 2 00:17:56 Right? For example, in India, like in a lot of places, many people identify with particular cultural communities, but even in more individualist societies like Australia, people still look at the world from an Australian point of view. Their experience of the world is still shaped by growing up in Australia and being a unique individual is not at tall contrary to having a cultural self,
Speaker 0 00:18:25 But it's easy to get that mixed up. You know, some people seem to think that sharing in a culture means that everyone acts the same. So if you talk about cultural patterns, they immediately bring up an exception. I've heard conversations like, so how was Japan? What are Japanese people like? Well, you know, they're rather quiet. Well, I know a Japanese who isn't quiet at all. Well, well of course, but you know, in general, no, but that's just a stereotype. Everyone is a unique individual. Well, of course they are. But you know, often people don't speak up.
Speaker 2 00:19:03 I think this kind of confusion comes from the idea that culture is about how we act. So people may think if someone is less typical, that means that they aren't sharing the culture,
Speaker 0 00:19:16 But that's not what it means. There's no contradiction between being unique and sharing in a cultural community. In fact, understanding how things work in a community, kind of knowing the rules of the game. It's precisely that which lets us express our individual self.
Speaker 2 00:19:42 I've had the experience where I've met someone from a country I knew very little about. And it was impossible to know if how they're acting is being typical or it's being a unique part of who they are.
Speaker 0 00:19:59 And I guess another way to say this is that we are all typical and we are all unique.
Speaker 2 00:20:06 If you get along with people in society, it means that you are typical. You are interacting in a way that people understand, even if you decide to do something unconventional, you know that it's unconventional
Speaker 0 00:20:21 And it's the same with language when you don't speak a language. Well, it's hard to express yourself in a unique way. You really have to master the system to play with it. And it's the people who grow up in a society that have mastered the kind of cultural rules of the game. They know what's expected and they can choose how to play the game.
Speaker 2 00:20:44 This can also help us understand why living in a collective society does not mean you are less of an individual. In fact, when you are around people, you know, well in a close community, people can really appreciate your uniqueness.
Speaker 0 00:21:01 You know, I think the irony is that if you're part of a close community, you don't need to constantly talk about how unique you are because people can see it just by interacting with you
Speaker 2 00:21:12 In the end, no matter what society we live in, all of us are functioning at those two levels. We understand cultural expectations and that lets us navigate in our own unique ways.
Speaker 0 00:21:27 So this kind of answers the question that we started out with of how to be yourself as a cultural bridge person, because the more deeply we understand different cultural worlds, the easier it is to navigate them in your own way.
Speaker 2 00:21:45 And that brings us to part three, researching the self.
Speaker 2 00:22:01 At the beginning of the episode, we said that it's possible to measure cultural differences in how we experience the self. And we referenced this groundbreaking article by Marcus and Keith Tama, but to understand what was so remarkable about it, I think we need to back up and look at what came before it. Most traditionally anthropologists were the ones that studied cultural differences. They would go to some isolated cultural community and study how people lived on this podcast. We often talk about Edward Hall. He was an anthropologist, but he wasn't interested in that kind of research. He wanted to understand interactions between cultural communities. He wanted to find ways to compare them for a long time. You studied cultural difference by making comparisons, gear, Toof data, for example, famously compared IBM employees in 40 different countries by giving them questionnaires about work preferences. He talked a lot about individualism and collectivism,
Speaker 0 00:23:16 And this approach looks at culture in terms of shared behaviors. It tries to measure cultural difference by seeing how culture influences behavior. And this really turned into a dominant paradigm.
Speaker 2 00:23:30 And this is where Marcus and Keith come in. Their article was published in 1991. And this was a time when new technologies were just starting to be developed. That allowed us to cognitive processes in new ways. For example, F M R technology allowed us to measure what areas of the brain are activated in real time.
Speaker 0 00:23:56 Their article provided the framework for doing that kind of research. So instead of giving out questionnaires and asking about attitudes, researchers could focus on the inner workings of the brain and mind
Speaker 2 00:24:11 Since then, there has been just an explosion of this kind of research carried out by for example, psychologists and even neuroscientists, in a sense, the idea that Marcus and Kitta Amma proposed in 1991, that it's possible to measure differences in how we experience the self has turned out to be true.
Speaker 0 00:24:33 So basically the argument goes like this culture influences the way we experience the self and that relates to other differences. For example, the psychologist, Richard Nisbet found that in cognitive processing tasks, east Asians tend to focus more on context. Whereas Westerners focus more on objects. Nibi says that, whereas an Asian sees a wall, a westerner sees a brick.
Speaker 2 00:25:07 So growing up in a more interdependent community means that you not only relate to other people in a particular way, but that your mind actually processes information differently. That's pretty amazing.
Speaker 0 00:25:22 There are differences related to some really deep parts of this self. For example, brain imaging studies have found that there are differences in how east Asians and Westerners regulate emotion.
Speaker 2 00:25:34 I was surprised when I learned about this, you would think that emotion is very basic to human beings and that wouldn't be affected by culture, but that's not what the research has found in general. East stations have more control over physiological processes of emotion.
Speaker 0 00:25:53 So for example, in one study, uh, they showed disturbing images to east Asians and Westerners, and the subjects were told to not show any emotion. Interestingly, both Westerners and Asians were able to control their expression of emotion, for example, to not show it on their face. But east Asians were also able to down regulate the physiological markers of emotion.
Speaker 2 00:26:18 So it wasn't just the expression of emotion to oversimplify a bit. They were able to turn off their emotion in a way that Westerners couldn't
Speaker 0 00:26:30 And the researchers hypothesized that this is because in Asian societies, people are more attuned to the mental and emotional states of others. And the ability to regulate emotions in that way allows people to get along better. And research has also shown that east Asians more spontaneously take the perspective of others when thinking about themselves,
Speaker 2 00:26:53 All of this makes sense from the perspective of the interdependent construal of self, the self is experienced more in relation to others and less as separate.
Speaker 0 00:27:05 And there's so much research that we simply don't have time to introduce here. For example, Westerners are more likely to make the fundamental attribution error. This means that they tend to think that people do what they do because of some inner state, whereas Asians more often assume that people do what they do because of the situation. Uh, there's research about motivation decision making, interpretation of events. It goes on and on.
Speaker 2 00:27:31 This is a lot more than we can really digest, but it seems clear that cultural differences in how we experience itself are a lot more complex than it might seem. That's all really impressive, but it does leave me wondering a bit about what to take away from all this. What is it for you, Joseph?
Speaker 0 00:27:53 Well, one thing I take away from all this is, you know, I'm not crazy after living in Japan for many years, I keep finding these subtle, but profound differences in how people experience the world and relate to each other and how they think. And I consider myself a, a pretty flexible person and I'm well adapted, but I keep bumping up into these deep cultural differences.
Speaker 2 00:28:19 Is that discouraging for you? Does that mean that you feel like you can't ever really adjust?
Speaker 0 00:28:25 No. I mean, we all have challenges adjusting to wherever we live, even if we never leave our hometown, it gives me the feeling that there's always more to explore. Being a cultural bridge person is like carrying out a nonstop experiment in the psychology of the self.
Speaker 2 00:28:42 Yes. And so is living in India. I am someone who doesn't always feel like I fit into the society that I grew up in, but seeing all of this deep difference makes me feel that maybe I'm not such a misfit after all. And I think that's probably a good place to stop. We've covered a lot of ground today.
Speaker 0 00:29:03 Yes. And just in case you want to follow up on any of these ideas, here are some of the sources that we've been referring to. We've been talking about Marcus and Tamas, 1991 article culture and the self implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. If you're interested in learning more about emotion, you might check out Carta, Moser, and Tama culture shapes, electro cortical responses during emotion suppression. We mentioned Richard Nesbit's book, the geography of thought for a brief introduction into the world of cultural neuroscience checkout she's article mapping mindsets, the world of cultural neuroscience. And, uh, we talked about the work of Garrett Hoffsteader dimensions of national culture in 50 countries and three regions. Also the quote about self-esteem came from the psychology today. Website, just look for psychology today. Basics self-esteem.
Speaker 0 00:30:08 The deep culture podcast is sponsored by the Japan intercultural Institute and NPO dedicated to intercultural education and research. I am the director of GI to find out more, just do a web search for the Japan intercultural Institute. And if you like the deep culture podcast, please recommend us on social media. And if you'd like to sign up for the J I newsletter, write us at DC podcast at Japan, intercultural.org, thanks to our podcast team Robinson, Fritz, Yvonne VanderPol, Zena Matar, Danielle glimpse. And I'd like to give a special welcome to a new member of the J family Kumi Fritz, and all the members of GI. And of course, thanks to you. Ishita for sharing this time with me.
Speaker 2 00:30:59 Thank you, Joseph, for spending a lovely afternoon with me.
