Self-Centered Culture Experiment

New Scientist magazine recently published an article about an experiment that purports to demonstrate that when "putting yourself in the shoes of others, cultures that emphasise interdependence over individualism may have the upper hand."

I find this study fascinating, but not for the subject matter itself.

In a new psychological experiment, Chinese students outperformed their US counterparts when ask to infer another person's perspective. The researchers say the findings help explain how misunderstandings can occur in cross-cultural communication. In the experiment, psychologists Boaz Keysar and Shali Wu at the University of Chicago, Illinois, US, recruited 40 students. Half of the volunteers were non-Asians who had grown up in the US, and the other half were native Mandarin speakers who had very recently emigrated from various parts of China. The volunteers played a game in which they had to follow the instructions of a person sitting across the table from them, an individual known as the 'director'. Researchers placed a grid structure between the two people consisting of small compartments, some of which contained objects such as wood blocks, toy bunnies and sunglasses (see image, right). Some of the individual compartments were covered on one side with cardboard so that they were blocked from the view of the director - only the study subjects could see the objects inside. Off the charts The volunteers had to follow the instructions of the director and move named objects from one compartment to another. But – as a sneaky trick – the researchers sometimes placed two objects of the same kind in the grid. In this case, the subjects would have to consider the director’s view to know which object she was referring to. For example, the grid sometimes contained two wooden blocks, one of which sat in a compartment hidden to the director. The director would then ask the subject to "move the wooden block to a higher square in the grid". Chinese students would immediately understand which wooden block to move – the one visible to both them and the director. Their US counterparts, however, did not always catch on. "They would ask 'Which block?' or 'You mean the one on the right?", explains Keysar. "For me it was really stunning because all of the information is there. You don't need to ask," he adds. (Self-centered cultures narrow your viewpoint)

What I find fascinating here is not that the Chinese students 'outperformed' the American students, but that the researchers apparently believe that the assumptions made by the Chinese students are superior to those made by the American students.

Bias much?

The American students recognized that the directions were ambiguous, then, rather than making an assumption about what the researcher wanted, they requested clarification. In some cases this clarification was stated in a way that suggested that the students were aware that the researcher was aware that there were two blocks "You mean the one on the right?". Not "There are two, which do you mean?".

The researcher states "all of the information is there. You don't need to ask". The American students are communicating more clearly, providing feedback that the instructions are ambiguous and that to complete the task with minimal chance of mistakes they should resolve the ambiguity. The Chinese students assume that the researcher is talking about the block they can see, but do not consider the possibility that the researcher is quite aware that there are two blocks, even though he cannot at present see both of them.

Obviously this sort of guessing game quickly results in death by iocane powder. We don't know what any of the students were inferring about who knew what, but the point is that the article consistently disses the American students for seeking to resolve the ambiguity explicitly. Both techniques have pros and cons, but it is clear that these researchers hate Americans. They are probably terrorists too.