Exploding the myth of cultural stereotypes

[ramonmercado]

Exploding the myth of cultural stereotypes
19:00 06 October 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Zeeya Merali

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8111

Americans are pushy and the English are reserved, right? Wrong, says a new study, which reveals there is no truth in this sort of national stereotyping.

An international group led by Antonio Terracciano and Robert McCrae at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) surveyed more than 40,000 adults from 49 cultures. Participants were questioned about how neurotic, extraverted, open, agreeable, and conscientious typical members of their own culture are. This data was then compared with participants’ assessments of their own personalities and those of other specific people they had observed.

The researchers found that there was no correlation between perceived cultural characteristics and the actual traits rated for real people.

In contrast, previous studies that have shown that some gender stereotypes, such as the idea that women are warmer and men are more assertive, do reflect real trends.

In many cases, cultures had overly harsh views of themselves. “The Swiss believe that they are closed-off to new experiences,” says Antonio Terracciano. “But in fact they are the most open culture to new ideas in art and music.”

Czech mates
Brits rank themselves as introverted, while Argentineans proclaim to be uniformly disagreeable, neither of which is held up by the data. Czechs think they are antagonistic, but they actually score higher in modesty and altruism than other people.

Richard Robins, a psychologist at the University of California at Davis, US, says that the study pulls the plug on claims that perceived differences in national character reflect genetic differences between ethnic groups. “Stereotypes about national character seem to be largely cultural constructions, transmitted through the media, education, history, hearsay, and jokes,” he explains.

Terracciano hopes that the results will make people address their own misconceptions. “People should trust less in their own beliefs about national character,” he says. “These can be dangerous and the basis for discrimination.”

Journal reference: Science (vol 310, p 96)

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Weblinks
Antonio Terracciano, NIH
http://www.grc.nia.nih.gov/branches/lpc ... cciano.htm
Robert McCrae, NIH
http://www.grc.nia.nih.gov/branches/lpc/rrm.htm
Richard Robins, University of California, Davis
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/robins/
Science
http://www.sciencemag.org/

[/code]

 

[AMPHIARAUS]

Participants were questioned about how neurotic, extraverted, open, agreeable, and conscientious typical members of their own culture are. This data was then compared with participants’ assessments of their own personalities and those of other specific people they had observed.

Subject A: I'm English and we are reserved, well mannered and aloof. However I am a loud, gregarious and sometimes vulgar drunk.

Subject B: I'm English and we are loud, agressive, vulgar and often drunk. However I am rather reserved, value good manners but a little aloof.


Is that how they concluded that there were no real stereotypes then?

 

[krobone]

Whaddya mean Americans are pushy!? Let me tell you something, buddy, we are the un-pushiest country in the world! :x

Why I oughta...

 

[ramonmercado]

Science gets the last laugh on ethnic jokes

Science gets the last laugh on ethnic jokes
Study shows that real personalities don’t match national stereotypes

By Kathleen Wren
Science
Updated: 2:07 p.m. ET Oct. 6, 2005


WASHINGTON - “Heaven is where the police are English, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the cooks are English, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians.”

Obviously the national stereotypes in this old joke are generalizations, but such stereotypes are often said to “exist for a reason.” Is there actually a sliver of truth in them? Not likely, an international research team now says.

The study, which compares “typical” personalities in many cultures with the personalities of real individuals from those cultures, appears in Friday's issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

Generalizations about cultures or nationalities can be a source of identity, pride ... and bad jokes. But they can also cause a great deal of harm. Both history and current events are full of examples in which unfavorable stereotypes contribute to prejudice, discrimination, persecution or even genocide.

“National and cultural stereotypes do play an important role in how people perceive themselves and others, and being aware that these are not trustworthy is a useful thing,” said study author Robert McCrae of the National Institute on Aging.

The new findings also call into question other stereotypes, such as age stereotypes, according to McCrae.

The researchers tested the possibility that cultural stereotypes might be based, at least partly, on real experiences that people have interacting with each other. If this were true, then such stereotypes would reflect the average personality of real members of that culture.

But, McCrae and his colleagues studied real and perceived personalities in roughly 50 countries and found that this wasn’t the case.

“These are in fact unfounded stereotypes. They don’t come from looking around you and doing your own averaging of people’s personality traits,” McCrae said.

How stereotypes are born
If national stereotypes aren’t rooted in real experiences, then where do they come from?

One possibility is that they reflect national values, which may emerge from historical events. For example, many historians have argued that the spirit of American individualism has its origins in the experiences of the pioneers in the Old West.

Social scientists such as psychologist Richard Robins have proposed several other possible explanations for stereotypes and why they may be inaccurate. In a commentary that accompanies the Science study, Robins notes that some stereotypes may have been accurate at one point in history and then persisted while the culture changed. Or they may have grown out of historical conflicts between cultural groups.

Yet another possibility is that some very specific components of a stereotype may be accurate — for example, Italians may gesture with their hands a lot — but that they don’t necessarily tell us anything more generally about personality.

We may be “hard-wired,” to some extent, to maintain inaccurate stereotypes, since we are less likely to notice and remember information that violates our stereotypes. Generally, according to Robins, when we encounter people who contradict prevailing generalizations, we perceive them as unique individuals rather than representatives of their national or cultural groups.


Measuring personality
Researchers generally agree that the main components of anyone’s personality can be boiled down to five different aspects: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. How a person rates in these five categories can predict many important life “outcomes,” such as health and mortality, academic success, job performance and the ability to have successful, lasting romantic relationships.

McCrae and his colleagues have developed a questionnaire that can be used to evaluate someone’s personality according to these five basic traits. It’s called the “Revised NEO Personality Inventory," or "NEO-PI-R.” The survey results can be used to generate a profile of a person based on 30 specific characteristics that fall under these five larger categories.

The NEO-PI-R is widely accepted as an objective way to describe someone’s personality. People taking the survey can either rate themselves or someone they know well.

The survey says…
In the Science study, McCrae’s team began with two groups of NEO-PI-R surveys they had previously collected in a wide variety of countries. They averaged the profiles in each of the two sets, producing one profile that reflected how volunteers rated their own personalities and another profile that reflected how they rated the personalities of other individuals they knew.

The researchers also conducted a third survey in about 50 countries, using questions about the same 30 characteristics — but in this survey, they asked the volunteers to describe a typical person from their culture. They averaged these results, so that they had a third personality profile for each country, reflecting the national stereotype.

The authors found that in most of the countries, the two personality profiles that were based on information from real people matched each other reasonably well. But they were significantly different from the stereotype profile.

“There was essentially no agreement between people’s perceptions of the typical personality [in their culture] and what we actually measured,” McCrae said.

The one exception was Poland, where the ratings from volunteers provided a better-than-usual match between typical and real personalities, suggesting the volunteers were better at seeing past stereotypes to perceive people as they really are.

Perhaps in heaven, the therapists are Polish.

© 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science
© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9598717/

 

[Min Bannister]

Perhaps the study should have looked at how people behave in groups as stereotypes are general and groups are general (if that makes sense)? I once worked as a tour guide and often got large groups of people from countries such as the US, Germany, Denmark etc etc. Myself and the other guides found we could predict what the groups were going to be like from their nationality with pretty much 100% accuracy. The only groups that were hard to predict were the French. Consequently some groups were looked forward to and others were dreaded. I won't say which.

We could also predict what nationality "casual" visitors were from watching them walk across from the car park with a pretty high accuracy. Again it was hard to tell if they were French.

I don't know whether most of these groups actually conformed to their cultural stereotypes or not as I don't know what those are for most of the nationalities. Still, it was kind of interesting to observe. Maybe the type of people that go on bus tours tend to conform to national stereotypes??

 

[OneWingedBird]

Are the French that hard to spot? I always thought they tended towards really bad dress sense?

 

[ramonmercado]

French

Are the French that hard to spot? I always thought they tended towards really bad dress sense?

Yeah, the beret, striped jersey and string of onions are a dead give-away.

 

[chockfullahate]

but it's fairly easy to spot americans, and irish people in england for some reason.

 

[ramonmercado]

but it's fairly easy to spot americans, and irish people in england for some reason.

The English police were good at spotting the Irish and framing them for terrorist crimes.

 

[hokum6]

I eagerly await the study on why 'scientists' waste so much time studying useless crap.

but it's fairly easy to spot americans, and irish people in england for some reason.

Americans tourists are easy, they always wear bum-bags and carry enormous cameras.

Assuming you don't hear them coming first, of course...

 

[Vardoger]

I eagerly await the study on why 'scientists' waste so much time studying useless crap.
Americans tourists are easy, they always wear bum-bags and carry enormous cameras.

Assuming you don't hear them coming first, of course...

According to my stereotypical view of americans they are very obese and enjoy eating 1 kilo hamburgers.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

I eagerly await the study on why 'scientists' waste so much time studying useless crap.

I eagerly await the study on why "scientists" who conduct these studies are a bunch of clipboard-clutching, soap dodgers with no mates and nothing better to do with their time.

but it's fairly easy to spot americans, and irish people in england for some reason.

Americans tourists are easy, they always wear bum-bags and carry enormous cameras.

And wear tartan caps lets not forget.

 

[rynner2]

OK, let's go for the big one - Americans and Football!

Americans are soccer-savvy ... and that scares little Englanders
Apparently some English people need to delude themselves about America in order to feel good.
Steven Wells
June 15, 2007 12:34 PM

David Beckham is going to the LA Galaxy. Hurrah. Let's all laugh at American soccer. Again.

Modern Englishmen are in two minds about Americans playing proper football. Some think it only right the poor benighted heathens be gifted the game historian Eric Hobsbawm rightly described as an artform. But others fear it'll make Americans more like us and therefore much more difficult to despise.

I am firmly in the former camp. Public toilets, atheism, publicly funded radio and association football - these are all things of which no society can have too much. Witness the fact that soccer-playing America is massively liberal, loving, caring, socially conscious and nice. While soccer-hating America consists of increasingly isolated gangs of Bush-supporting, bible-bashing, gun-crazed, dungaree wearing, banjo-playing, quasi-fascist chicken-lovers and their twelve fingered, pin-headed, cyclopic, drooling monster children.

Alas, Englishmen who live in desperate fear of an American soccer planet are legion. As the recent spate of stories about US businessmen buying British clubs and Goldenballs relocating to LA proved, there's no shortage of stuck up limey soccer snobs who still think it's frightfully funny the ghastly Yanks play the round ball game at all.

Like most prejudices, this hatred disguises fear. Recently a leading English soccer journalist told me he "really hopes football fails in America". Others are less blatant but they make their loathing plain through sarcasm, satire and snidery. :shock:

You know whom I'm talking about. Reader, I am about to piss on my chips. I will not only bite the hand that feeds me, I will take the arm off at the shoulder. For no one has mocked American soccer more consistently or with more vigour than the sneering, primly moustached, stiff-lipped cads of the Guardian Unlimited Sports desk.

It's always been thus. In the 1970s, when the star-studded New York Cosmos were filling stadiums during the first American soccer revolution, Roy of the Rovers found himself playing Stateside for the Pine City Pirates. Roy was appalled by the shallowness, ballyhoo and sheer incompetence of American soccer. "I thought I was going to learn something by coming to the States!" he moaned. "I didn't dream I'd have to teach them how to play the game!"

And who could forget the 2002 World Cup and Gary Lineker reading from a typically and hilariously stoopid Yank match report: "Wolff procrastinates over a sideline handpass and is ref-charged for clock abuse" and "he top-bodies the sphere into the score-bag, and Mexico have a double-negative stat!"

Oh those pig-ignorant cack-gobbed Yank wankers! How we laughed. What more confirmation could we possibly need that these gibbering, thumb-fingered mouth-breathers will never understand the beautiful game?

Of course, it turned out Gaz was reading a marvellous Guardian Unlimited spoof. Hell, I laughed. And so did Lawrence Dallaglio when he repeated the quotes the next night on a different TV show. And so did the studio audience. Which is when the penny dropped. This isn't just how Brits think Americans perceive soccer - this is how Brits need to think Americans perceive soccer. And that, actually, is a little bit sad.

During that same World Cup, before the US v Germany game, a British TV crew stopped folks in Time Square and asked them (oh hilarity!) if they even knew a game was taking place (lol!!!!!! rotflmao!!!!!!!!!!). Unfortunately almost everyone said yes. One dude in a soccer shirt even invited the reporter to watch the game with him. "We thought there was apathy," muttered a deeply disappointed Gabby Logan back in the studio.

The rest you know. The "USA!" chants at Manchester United games. The MU Rowdies gags in the Fiver, The Guardian Unlimited design-a-new-hilariously-Americanized-MUFC-crest Gallery that was then ripped off by The Sun so the whole nation could join in the yanks-don't-get-football yukfest.

Then Bex signed for the LA Galaxy-and the whole sad circus started all over again.

Trouble is, the joke tells us nothing about America or American football (or "soccer" as those crazy, propeller beanie-wearing goofballs call it!!!!!!!!!!!!). And it tells us everything about us.

We - a substantial chunk of us, anyway - are desperately scared that association football will succeed in America. That the USA will become a footballing power. That the yanks will develop a version of the beautiful game as irresistible as jazz, rock'n'roll or the amazing American language (and unless you've checked the English/American phrase books handed out to GIs in 1942, you probably have no idea how much American you speak, limey).

Why are we scared? Because as a nation we have a desperate need to feel superior to the vibrant barbarian culture that's replaced us as top global ass-kicker.

Face it, feeling superior to Americans is about all we've got left. But the list of things we actually do better than the Yanks is slim and getting slimmer. Did you know that the bastards even brew decent beer these days?

So what have we got left to be smug about? Wensleydale cheese, Ricky Gervais, Theakston Old Peculier and Helen Mirren. And, oh yeah, football.

Sorry, the Yanks get it. Not all of them. Not even most of them. But enough of them. Even if Bex bombs. Even if the MLS collapses, American soccer isn't going away.

It's time for a new joke.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/ ... y_and.html

 

[Beakmoo]

but it's fairly easy to spot americans, and irish people in england for some reason.

It's the pig under my arm isn't it?

 

[ramonmercado]

but it's fairly easy to spot americans, and irish people in england for some reason.

It's the pig under my arm isn't it?

Nah, thats passe.

Its the armelite in one hand and the lump of semtex in the other.

But fortunately thats thats passe as well.

 

[witchflame]

Well a good mate of mine is Irish, sounds very much like she is irish, but constantly gets thick, dim witted people asking her if shes Canadian! I mean, for gods sake, shes got an obviously irish accent!!!

Maybe she should start throwing in the odd 'begorra' and talking about shamrocks in with her normal day to day conversation. Then maybe the dubbers will get the fact she is not Canadian!

stupid arsewipes.

 

[rynner2]

Re: French

Are the French that hard to spot? I always thought they tended towards really bad dress sense?

Yeah, the beret, striped jersey and string of onions are a dead give-away.

Onion Johnnies, the travelling salesmen whose berets and bicycles inspired Britain and much of the world's classic image of the archetypal Frenchman, are setting sail for England once more.
5:55PM GMT 26 Nov 2012

Beset by tough market conditions at home, the producers of Brittany's celebrated pink onions have decided it is time to seduce a new generation of British housewives with their Gallic charm and strings of eye-watering produce.
The Etoile du Roi (Star of the King), a replica of an 18th-century sailing ship, set off from the Breton port of Roscoff on Monday, weighed down by a hefty cargo of onions that it will deliver to London on December 6 after stopovers on the Channel island of Jersey and at Portsmouth.

It was from Roscoff in 1828 that the first French onion salesman to try his luck in England set sail, the trip across the Channel being far shorter and less hazardous than an overland journey to the markets of Paris, AFP reported.

Having returned with tales of how quickly he had sold his cargo, he established a tradition that was to continue well into the 20th century, according to Francois Seite, a former salesman himself who is now the president of the local "Johnnies" association and Chamberlain of the Confraternity of the Onions of Roscoff.

"From Roscoff to Plymouth, it is the same as Roscoff to Rennes [in southern Brittany], except that there is the Channel in between them," explains the 72-year-old former farmer who, like his father and grandfather, spent years on the highways and byways of England, first by bicycle then with a little van.

In the 1920s and 1930s there were as many as 1,500 French onion pedlars who regularly travelled from Brittany to England, Wales and even Scotland, selling their merchandise door-to-door.
So many of them had the Breton first name Yann, they quickly became known as "Johnnies", and the image they created of a Frenchman with a string of onions around his neck, sporting a beret and a traditional stripey top has proved indelible.

As well as the four tonnes of onions on board the Etoile du Roi, another 20 tonnes of Roscoff Onions are being dispatched to England by Brittany Ferries, a company established in 1972 by Breton farmers precisely in order to provide the remote region on the western edges of France with access to the British market.
"Our geographical isolation from the rest of France and Europe makes it hard for us and in these tough times, not trying to find alternative outlets for our produce would be suicidal," said Jean-Frangois Jacob, the secretary general of the local agricultural cooperative.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... es-up.html

How's that for bumping a thread?!
(And it's got a sailing boat in it!)

 

[Kondoru]

Hurrah!

I love onions!

 

[ramonmercado]

But they don't sell red onions.

 

[rynner2]

I'm pretty sure we had French onion sellers in the westcountry just a few years ago. While searching for links, I came across this little story from 2 years ago which does reinforce the 'stereotype' theory:

Heckler brands minister racist on TV over French army

Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne has been dubbed a racist by a heckler in the BBC's Question Time audience.
It came during a debate on the BBC One programme over the defence treaties which have been signed by the UK and French governments.

He said British soldiers would not need to speak French, wear onions round their necks or striped T-shirts following the move.
An audience member shouted: "ooh racist" at the MP as he spoke.

The Liberal Democrat minister had said: "We're not merging our Army with France. Our soldiers won't be required to speak French or wear onions round their necks or stripey t-shirts, or ride bicycles.
"Don't believe every thing you read in the newspapers."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11699172

 

[Zilch5]

Americans tourists are easy, they always wear bum-bags and carry enormous cameras.

Once in Hong Kong I saw a huge American woman wearing purple leggins which barely covered her bum, a very loud Hawaiian shirt and an enormous straw hat - it was quite the ensemble. Then she turned around and exclaimed loudly "Why are these people staring at me???"

I tried not to laugh - I failed. :lol:

 

[Vardoger]

I'm pretty sure we had French onion sellers in the westcountry just a few years ago. While searching for links, I came across this little story from 2 years ago which does reinforce the 'stereotype' theory:

Heckler brands minister racist on TV over French army

Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne has been dubbed a racist by a heckler in the BBC's Question Time audience.
It came during a debate on the BBC One programme over the defence treaties which have been signed by the UK and French governments.

He said British soldiers would not need to speak French, wear onions round their necks or striped T-shirts following the move.
An audience member shouted: "ooh racist" at the MP as he spoke.

The Liberal Democrat minister had said: "We're not merging our Army with France. Our soldiers won't be required to speak French or wear onions round their necks or stripey t-shirts, or ride bicycles.
"Don't believe every thing you read in the newspapers."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11699172

I see that as a reference to 'Allo 'Allo and the stereotypes the English got of France on that show.

 

[rynner2]

I see that as a reference to 'Allo 'Allo and the stereotypes the English got of France on that show.

The onion sellers were about years before TV was even invented, so 'Allo 'Allo can hardly be the source of the stereotype!

(Stripey jumpers are a Breton thing, and the onion sellers came mostly from Brittany.
http://www.thenauticalcompany.com/nauti ... at_36.html )

 

[GNC]

Why do French onion sellers and burglars both wear stripey jumpers? Not the start of a joke, a genuine puzzle.

 

[rynner2]

Why do French onion sellers and burglars both wear stripey jumpers? Not the start of a joke, a genuine puzzle.

Well, you obviously don't earn much selling onions, so they needed another source of income.

Hmm..

I think I may be creating a politically incorrect urban legend here!

 

[ramonmercado]

Why do French onion sellers and burglars both wear stripey jumpers? Not the start of a joke, a genuine puzzle.

Well, you obviously don't earn much selling onions, so they needed another source of income.

Hmm..

I think I may be creating a politically incorrect urban legend here!

UKIP will use it in a campaign to keep the onion sellers out.

Buy British onions!

 

[Sergeant_Pluck]

Why do French onion sellers and burglars both wear stripey jumpers? Not the start of a joke, a genuine puzzle.

Maybe they are burglars who specialise in stealing onions, and you only ever ever see them when they are making good their escape....on bicycles.

 

[ramonmercado]

Why do French onion sellers and burglars both wear stripey jumpers? Not the start of a joke, a genuine puzzle.

Maybe they are burglars who specialise in stealing onions, and you only ever ever see them when they are making good their escape....on bicycles.

They probably steal the bikes as well.

 

[rynner2]

The stereotype of burglars wearing stripey (Breton) jumpers turns up on a recent QI

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... J_Justice/

Alan Davies (of course) is the 'criminal' so attired! 8)