Fifteen Eighty Four

“… I’m afraid there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Africa will make it. I know because I served in Nigeria. It’s their culture, you know [emphasis added]. It will not allow them to create a modern society. Ever, EVER” (Rosling et al., 2018, p. 167).

This comment was made by a European investor after Swedish physician Hans Rosling presented economic statistics to a group of investors, which showed that the distinction between developed and underdeveloped countries was vanishing because of the recent rapid economic growth of former underdeveloped countries including some in Africa.

It is generally believed that a spiritual culture (e.g., “national character” and “ethnicity”) is something like destiny, namely, the invariant essence of a culture, which controls how its people feel, think, and behave. In Cultural Stereotype and Its Hazards, I presented a case study of Japanese culture to test the validity of this belief.

In Japanology, collectivism has been considered the essence of Japanese culture. It is contrasted with individualism in Western culture. Collectivism refers to the mentality to place priority on one’s group, whereas individualism on oneself. It has been argued that collectivistic Japanese people lack individuality, lack autonomy, look almost identical, always behave as a group, always obey the superior, and so on and so forth. Is this portrait of the Japanese veridical?

In social psychology, cross-national comparison of individualism and collectivism has been a trend for decades. The most popular comparison has been the one between Japan and the USA because Japanese are usually considered typical collectivists, whereas Americans typical individualists. This flourishing empirical comparison provides a rare opportunity to test the validity of the prevailing view of culture.

I reviewed all the psychological empirical studies (i.e., dozens of surveys and experiments) that directly assessed individualism and collectivism to directly compare Japanese and Americans. Surprisingly, no difference was found. Some studies showed that Japanese were more collectivistic, but some others showed that Americans were more collectivistic. Majority of studies reported no statistically significant difference. On the whole, the empirical studies revealed that Japanese and Americans are similar to each other with respect to individualism and collectivism.

Psychological studies are often criticized for their artificiality, which leads critics to question their applicability to real life. As for Japanology, it relies heavily on real-life instances in arguing that the Japanese are collectivists. I spent decades searching for real-life instances of individualism and collectivism. For the Japanese, I found as many instances of individualistic behavior as collectivistic behavior. For the Americans as well, I found as many instances of collectivistic behavior as individualistic behavior. Again, no substantial difference was found between these two nations.

“Japanese collectivism” was most severely criticized during the US-Japan trade friction between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. It was argued that Japan closed its domestic market by forming exclusive business groups led by major banks (called keiretsu) and an exclusive nationwide group led by the Japanese government (called “Japan Inc.”) while exporting a flood of products to foreign markets. However, economic statistics and later empirical studies disclosed that the arguments on the “closed” market of Japan had no empirical basis. These arguments had been formed by the preconception of “Japanese collectivism,” which led its advocates to selectively attend to those episodes that appeared to be consistent with “Japanese collectivism.”

As it turned out, “Japanese collectivism” had no reliable empirical basis. But why did this unfounded stereotype come to be widely accepted?

This cultural stereotype originated with a Westerner who visited Japan more than one hundred years ago in the 1880s. In his book on Japan, he repeatedly stressed that Japanese people lack individuality. This intuitive characterization of the Japanese was widely accepted by the Westerners who valued individualism; it was popularized by anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s best-selling book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword after World War II. Once established, the notion of “Japanese collectivism” was consolidated by cognitive biases well-known in psychology (e.g., the confirmation bias and the correspondence bias) and became the common view about Japanese culture.

The case study of “Japanese collectivism” thus revealed that this is nothing but a cultural stereotype that is far from the reality of the culture. But why and how is a cultural stereotype biased? The key to answering this question is the situation.

In psychology, an intense debate (i.e., “the person-situation debate”) lasted for nearly twenty years as to what is the primary determinant of human behavior. Some argued that the character is. Others argued that the situation is. This debate based on a variety of empirical data revealed that human behavior is affected by the situation much more strongly than usually assumed. This means that people tend to react to given situations rather directly. The highly developed intellectual ability of humans enables them to discriminate even subtle differences between situations and to select or devise adaptive behaviors in respective situations. In many situations, therefore, people do not automatically follow the demands of their spiritual culture.

This flexibility is not confined to individual behaviors. The highly developed intellectual ability also enables humans to create diverse cultures and to modify them rather flexibly in response to situational needs. Although a cultural stereotype tends to regard a spiritual culture as an unchangeable destiny, this belief has never been proved. Many instances of cultural modifications can be found in human history.

In short, the cultural stereotype is biased in that it fails to take into account the impact of the situation and thus greatly underestimates the flexibility of human behavior and culture.

A biased cultural stereotype is not only an inaccurate image of a culture but also a menace to human societies. A cultural stereotype about a group of people is often formed by another group. The ethnocentrism of the latter group tends to attach negative value to the cultural stereotype. This often exacerbates a conflict between these groups.

Amid the US-Japan trade friction, Americans who valued individualism and thus hated collectivism were furious with the “collectivistic” Japanese and the “collectivistic” Japanese economy. Against the backdrop of this fury, the US government not only restricted imports from Japan but also intervened in the domestic affairs of Japan. In Japan, as a result, some industries utterly collapsed (e.g., semiconductors and supercomputers) and its economy experienced a serious financial crisis and a chronic recession as well as more than thirty years of deflation.

When concerned groups have comparable power, a cultural stereotype could cause a more serious consequence, namely, a violent conflict with bloodshed. In Cultural Stereotype and Its Hazards, I cited the instances of Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In human history, many other instances can be found. To prevent future tragedies, it seems indispensable to realize the nature and hazards of the cultural stereotype accurately.

About fifty years ago, American journalist Robert Whiting published a book titled The Chrysanthemum and the Bat (Whiting, 1977). This title is obviously a play on Japanology’s bible, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Whiting asserted that Japanese baseball players would not dare to challenge the MLB (Major League Baseball in the USA) because they are not autonomous athletes and merged into their groups (i.e., teams). Later, however, social and economic situations changed and a number of Japanese players joined the MLB. Many of them successfully competed with MLB players from the USA, Canada, Dominica, Cuba, and so on.

In Cultural Stereotype and Its Hazards, I wrote that one of them, Shohei Ohtani, was chosen as MVP (Most Valuable Player) of his league twice. Needless to say, this is an accomplishment as an individual, not as a group. While this book was being printed, he was chosen as MVP for the third time. The three-time MVP is the same as an American superstar, Mike Trout. As some historians stress, it seems that humans are basically all alike irrespective of their diverse cultures.

References
Benedict, R. (1946). The chrysanthemum and the sword: Patterns of Japanese culture. Houghton Mifflin.
Rosling, H., Rosling, O., & Rönnlund, A. R. (2018). Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world―and why things are better than you think. Sceptre.
Whiting, R. (1977). The Chrysanthemum and the Bat. The Permanent Press.

Title: Cultural Stereotype and Its Hazards

Author: Yohtaro Takano

ISBN: 9781108833202