Remember the survey that showed surprising national results on
violence?
National self-images
often conflict with reality, study says
By James Janega, Chicago Tribune staff reporter, October 6, 2005
Canadians aren't quite as agreeable as they thought they were. Americans are a
bit more pleasant than we expected.
The Japanese aren't as neurotic as they feared; the Swiss are more
emotive than they felt they were; and only the Polish, it seems, know
themselves.
An analysis published Wednesday of 50 cultures worldwide has found that
stereotypes people believe about their cultures don't hold up to actual studies
of their national personalities.
The results of 10 years of studies comparing people's
self-image, views of close associates and their own national stereotypes were
released in the latest edition of the journal Science.
"People are very similar one to another, and the stereotypes we have in
this study, in most cases, we show that they're inaccurate," said Antonio
Terracciano, an Italian research fellow from Naples working at the National
Institute of Aging. Terracciano was one of 86 researchers worldwide who
contributed to the report.
The paper compares three pieces of research: how people viewed themselves, how
people viewed relatives or close friends in their own culture, and how people
described the typical member of their culture. In almost every case, the first
two studies painted a similar picture, while the national stereotypes were far
off the mark.
Although the paper doesn't describe what the Spanish think of the French, it
does shed considerable light on how the Spanish view themselves, for instance.
(They sell themselves short on the issue of conscientiousness, the study
finds--they're actually quite thoughtful, muchas gracias.)
A stereotype is a tricky thing, warns comedian Jackie Mason, who has used them
for years to walk a fine line between laughs and offense. "I think that people have a
stereotype of themselves in accordance to what they're told is their public
image," Mason said. "They don't necessarily believe the stereotype.
But they know what it is." He
added that you'd expect people to disagree with stereotypes of themselves.
To prepare the study, information was gathered from 49 cultures and subcultures from six continents, using
translations in 27 languages in language groups from Indo-European to
Sino-Tibetan and Polynesian.
Beginning a decade ago, people were asked to describe themselves. Six years
later, a similar questionnaire sought respondents' opinions about close
contacts within their culture. Finally, residents of 51
countries were asked to rate their overall culture on the same 30 measures of
neuroticism and emotional stability, extraversion, openness to experiences,
agreeableness and conscientiousness - in essence, to define their own cultural
stereotype.
Researchers in those countries then measured how well the stereotypes bore out
the average self-image within the same culture.
The British seemed worst at knowing themselves, guessing they were more
introverted and reserved than they actually are. Poles (whose national saying
to "stand in a corner, and people will find you" suggests a measure
of modesty) scored high in assessing their culture--even if they saw themselves
as more anxious, less outgoing and less conscientious than other groups.
"It's better to be low-key and do greater things than talk about great
things and at the moment of truth find you are less than you think you
are," said Malgorzata Kot, head librarian at the Polish Museum of America
in Chicago. "When I think about my group, my co-workers and friends, we
talk about ourselves. We are able to learn about ourselves, and see each other
a little bit better. It teaches us a lot."
But most cultures were able to identify at least one stereotypical
characteristic that held true. The paper notes that
Australians saw themselves as extroverts (and are, as studies show), that
German Swiss view themselves as very considerate (true), and Canadians
described themselves as amenable (yes, of course, though just a smidge less
than average).
Discrepancies between personal and national self-image arose most often when a
culture underestimated itself. In many cases, the research found in stereotypes
people not as they are, but as they want to be. And apparently, the research showed, much of humanity
is essentially as anxious, open, agreeable, outgoing and conscientious as
anyone else anywhere.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0510060121oct06,1,282782.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
