Hazel Markus

[imomus]

Yesterday's discussion of the differences in tone between Japanese and American participants on the Japan Today Pop Vox page led to an interesting reference from Sparkligbeatnic to the work of Hazel Markus, Professor of Cultural Psychology at Stanford University. I watched a video of Markus outlining her interests and summarizing research findings into cultural differences between the American and Japanese senses of selfhood, and found it very much in line with the kind of points I've been making on Click Opera.



I was taking notes as I watched the video, so I thought I'd just turn these notes into today's entry, because I think some very important points are being made here, points that I'd like to be considered in the passionate cultural debates that happen so often in these pages as well as over at Marxy's blog, Neomarxisme. The notes are really for people who don't have the time or the bandwidth to watch the video, but I'd also like a permanent record to refer back to when these issues come up again in the future, as I'm sure they will. (So if you're reading this from the future, hello future!)

Notes taken from a video interview with Hazel Markus

people need other people to become human
to become a person you have to engage in various social meaning systems
that's a social, cultural project

social sciences have been dominated for the last 25 or 30 years by the computer as metaphor for the human:
the idea that most minds are pretty much the same, people are pretty much the same wherever you go
now we're recognizing that people have very different perceptions and orientations.

there's been a shift of emphasis: culture is not what you are but what you do

selfhood: who am i?

american answer: i am an independent autonomous entity made of a set of attributes, preferences, opinions, thoughts, abilities.
the goal of being a person is to try to express these attributes in behaviour, maintain independence, stay unique and different from other people.
the real focus is on myself, my thoughts, my feelings.

japanese: different. I am fundamentally interdependent, from the beginning connected with other people
what I should be doing is paying attention to my relationships with others
trying to keep them in good order, engage other people's sympathy, stay in harmonious interdependence.
i pay attention to your thoughts and feelings about me.
i pay attention to others, their expectations, the standards they're setting.

americans always tell you they're on average better than their peers.
japanese will tell you they're just the same as others, or that their peers are better

stanford students, asked to rate themselves, say 4/1 positive things about themselves. (they might add that they're not as patient as they should be).

japanese are uncomfortable with the question, with paying attention to self.
they say things like: i try to have my own thoughts, but stress harmony with others.
the important thing is to be peaceful, be like other people, maintain harmony.
over 50% of japanese self-descriptions refer to other people.

of course, americans are relational people, but our image, our narrative of ourselves doesn't bring other people into the explanations.
explanations: our frontier history, influence of greek philosophy, the cartesian tradition that says that thinking makes us human,
expressing my thoughts is the essence of what i am.



the us has a huge sprawling legal system that's about protecting individual rights, there are more and more personal rights to be protected all the time.
us advertising: each of us absorbs 300-500 images a day
american magazine ads are about freedom, being unique, choosing, being independent, being different from others.

how is that different from political ideology, hooked up with economic ideology, capitalism, individual, free choice?

it is an ideology. humanity lives according to ideas.
people may think they're unique, but if we all go to the mall buy the same shirt, how will we all be individual?
being unique is our norm, everybody tries to follow that norm.

japanese advertising: freedom, rebellion, being unique and special don't show up in ads much except a few ads directed at younger people.
instead we see in ads scenes of doing your job, doing your duty, doing the proper thing.
instead of one person alone somewhere and out of context, in japan you see people in a work setting, at the office, with other people, co-workers, friends.
it's obvious what they're doing. they're connected, oriented towards each other rather than looking out towards nothing or space.
the emphasis is on being part of the group. it's the way to be a person, a way of being.

jeans commercial: if I as an individual achieve more I deserve to have more.
in america we believe every boy can become president, every girl can become president, if you apply yourself, work hard, push on... americans love that message.
it's a strength, this american idea, but as a social scientist you recognize that it's not the case.
even to maintain the idea of myself as a person, that 'little engine that can', requires a whole host of invisible supportive characters.
in our american way, we keep that interdependence in the background.
we don't recognize the connections that allow us to become the person that we are.

american students tend to do much better when they receive praise. japanese students do better when they get criticism.

for american 9 year olds, the best way to get good performance is to let them choose what game to play, give them choice.
for 9 year old chinese and japanese american students, they get the best performance from a task their mother or a friend chooses for them.

another cultural difference is in the connection between talking and thinking.
we tend to think people who are good thinkers are good talkers
you have an idea and you express it.
in the asian cultural context there's no connection between talking and thinking.
just because you're a good at thinking doesn't mean you're good at talking.
this difference may lie behind the common perception in american universities that asian students are too quiet, too passive.
people coming out of different contexts don't hold the same ideas about the connections between talking and thinking.

Comments

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

social sciences have been dominated for the last 25 or 30 years by the computer as metaphor for the human

I think this probably goes back pretty far long before the invention of the computer. At least the concept of rational agency that is important in post-industrial revolution Europe and the US seems to be at the heart of our Western culture Selfway, as Kitayama and Markus would term it.
Computers are basically automated rational agents. But the web is something else altogther ;-).

Not to say that rational agency is necessarily a bad thing. But we should start from the realization that certain assumptions underlie our culture which do not necessarily apply in other cultures.

A new theoretical study at UCLA (http://newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=5688) of the origin of altruistic behaviour in social systems suggests that we may be able to understand these things much better in the near future.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

Genuine question: if Japanese people have a much more "eastern" (for want of a better word) view of themselves and their relationship with society, why is Japan such a rampantly capitalist country, as opposed to say, China or Russia?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You obviously haven't been to China or Russia recently!

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Oh snap.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Capitalism and "easternness" are not mutually exclusive. The feudal period of Japan lasted well into the 1860s, but there were "seeds" of capitalism right there, despite the confucian disdain among the upper classes for filthy lucre.

The military dictatorship of Japan during the feudal period required feudal lords to spend half of their time in Tokyo (then Edo), which resulted in massive urbanization. It also created a demand for the goods necessary to move around. This laid the foundation for farmers to be able to move away from subsistence farming and towards growing what the market desired.

It also saw the better-off farmers and merchants beginning to do things like become landlords, make business ventures, organize shipping routes, etc.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

Cheers for that. Of course, I phrased my original question incorrectly - I meant why did the Japanese never go down a Socialist road the way the Russians or Chinese did if, as Momus is suggesting, they have a much more communistic and less individual view of themselves than Westerners (that's what I meant by "easternness" in that context). I was always led to believe that national ideas of 'individual' versus 'society' were a factor in the capitalist/communist split.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

I figured this was probably only a minor point, but since someone else has already mentioned it, it might not be.

I don't think the view of humans as computers is necessarily a bad thing, as long as you are able to properly order the human/computer hierarchy: I am a machine that can balance itself and walk on two legs. I am a machine that's so optimized to recognize faces that I can see them in the clouds. I am a machine that can acquire new languages. I am a machine that can build other machines. I am a machine that can dance, really, really awkwardly.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That was one of the few weaknesses in Hazel's argument, I thought. She doesn't seem to realize that the computer metaphor is quite apt as long as one sees cultures as platform-independent operating systems. That's quite consistent with her idea that 'culture is not what we are but what we do'. Also, once computers are networked they become a powerful metaphor for interdependence.

[(Anonymous)]

The computer metaphor itself has changed a lot over the years, though. If you look at how it was used in cognitive science by the likes of Fodor and Chomsky (top-down command systems), it's pretty different to how the connectionnists use it (distributed networks). Obviously, both computers and societal perceptions changed and new paradigms were formed.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Computers are a human invention. I find it strange that people should want to compare themselves to their own invention, as if emulating what is basically a reduced, projected version of themselves, as if computers are the blueprint they are based upon, and not the other way around.

Don't you think?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think it's so strange. I know that when I create something I'm not quite sure what I'm doing, and I'm also not quite sure who I am. Only later, when my creation exists as a separate entity out in the world and people want explanations, do I make all sorts of retrospective statements of links between myself and my product, post facto rationalisations, etc. I then tend to use my creation as an all-explaining metaphor.

Marshall McLuhan said something similar about TV. He said that each medium is, in its prime, seen as a catch-all way of looking at reality -- it becomes 'a window on the universal'. Only later is it seen as a specific medium with its own particularities and limitations. At that point we see that 'the medium is the message', and that its universality was an illusion. I think the central metaphor of our times is inevitably the computer, just as in the 1960s and 70s it was television.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is true they can serve as a metaphor. I suppose it's just something I noticed before about the computer metaphor. I just find its reductionism a little worrying. My impression of the computer metaphor is a bit like the way that logic is taught in its early stages by presenting mistakes in logic. All oaks are trees, this is an oak, therefore it must be a tree. Good. But - all oaks are trees, therefore all trees are oaks, this is a tree therefore it must be an oak. Well, very basic stuff. It reminds me of that kind of mistake. I suppose, though, that if you realise the limitations that you mention then the metaphor can serve a purpose.

Sorry to sound pedagogic. It's just a fairly prevalent metaphor these days that I thought I'd like to take issue with.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

The most advanced technology of the day has usually served as a metaphor for the human brain. For example, if you look at the late 19th century or early 20th century, neuroscientists often used the metaphor of the telephone network and switching board.

Actually her statement about the computer was judge a side remark about cognitive science.

Qualms

[(Anonymous)]

All of this seems very close to Benedict-era "patterns of culture" which sadly force all national culture into a small, understandable box.

But besides that, I think the fact that she interviewed Japanese college kids is definitely suspect. Only about 30% of Japanese high schoolers go on to universities (opposed to joining the workforce directly or junior/speciality colleges), and those that do matriculate to higher education are those who excel at idealized Japanese behavior. The only way to pass the entrance exams is to have become a willing player in the one-track educational system early in the program. So, all of this "the Japanese feel this way" is more like "upper middle-class tracking Japanese university students feel this way.

for american 9 year olds, the best way to get good performance is to let them choose what game to play, give them choice.
for 9 year old chinese and japanese american students, they get the best performance from a task their mother or a friend chooses for them.

This is very interesting as it shows very early installment of cultural principles.

My ongoing argument with "culture" is that the Japanese education system is absolutely the strongest socializing force in Japan, and the curriculum is completely nationalized - the State has all voice in how students "become Japanese." And with unified entrance exams as the telelogical goal, even private high schools must essentially stick to the lesson plan. In this condition, the socializing of Japanese students can become a political tool, and I am of the opinion that it has. At least, the system was created to filter the best students towards joining the government. At worst, the government wants a population with the characteristics written above.

I just am very skeptical that the ideal Japanese behavior exists and reproduces itself genetically without structural involvement. The kikoku shijo spend one year abroad, and they're deemed "un-Japanese". That's all it takes to lose most of the tenets of Japanese behavior. Does the ease of losing the behavior suggest that the beliefs are naturally-occuring and rational?

Marxy

Re: Qualms

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, thanks Marxy, you've just re-stated what I think is the central fallacy of your thinking, which is the idea that the particularities of Japanese culture are the result of some kind of government conspiracy.

Re: Qualms

[(Anonymous)]

Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after me, Momus.

Seeing that you've never even tried to debase my argument through facts, I'm having a hard time being convinced it's just a "fallacy" when many people have reached the same conclusion. You sprinkle Postmodern deductive superstatements like pixie dust and expect all this social science to just wither away.

But again, I'm the one who is so ethnocentric that I actually learned the language of the area I study! Such a flagrant violation! Such a perverse adherence to discredited Modernism!

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I think it would be interesting to hear some opinions on Japanese education and socilisation from kikoku shijo.

Do we have any at hand?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Okay, I've got a kikoku shijo sitting on the sofa beside me at this moment. She's out of Japan right now, but she studied in the UK. Confronted with Marxy's argument that Markus is basing generalised views of 'how Japanese feel' on university kids, she says she thinks the figure for higher education is closer to 50%, and that those people don't feel different about collectivism than any other Japanese.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

(By the way, Hisae specifies that she qualifies as a kikoku shijo not because of her four years at St Martin's in London, but because of one academic year spent in New Zealand when she was 16. This was enough to qualify her as kikoku shijo for university entrance examination purposes.)

Chain Reaction

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

By the way, I feel the need to tell of my good fortune. A friend of mine has very kindly arranged for me to receive two free tickets for something that appears to be called "Chain Reaction". It is a programme on Radio 4 that will be featuring Alan Moore interviewing Brian Eno - two of my heroes in one room.

Anyway, it's possible that they will throw the floor open (is that the expression?) or throw the questioning to the floor, or floor the open questioning, I'm not sure which. Does anyone have anyone questions? If I get the chance to ask one, it had better be a good one, I think, so if anyone here has a good one, I'll pretend it's mine (and report back).

Re: Chain Reaction

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

For Alan: "Describe the sound of Glycon's voice without immitating it."

For Brian: "Try to reproduce it vocally from Alan's description."

Then, someone press Record.

[(Anonymous)]

I think that for the red-state demographic, there is an explicitly Levi-Straussian dynamic going on wherein all cultural interdependencies are summed up (and explained away) by religious affiliation. Churches, not schools, are the central social institution, and rugged individualists slap "God is my co-pilot" stickers on their light-duty trucks. If religion is society representing itself to itself, then "god" becomes the catch-all for what people owe to each other and to their collective support structure. Oddly dehumanizing, because people stop seeing the choice for good that others make every day and attribute it all to the big ol' bearded man in the sky.

B

[imomus.livejournal.com]

people need other people to become human

On a certain level this is a terribly banal and obvious statement, but extrapolations from it aren't. For instance, we might find a new way of looking at power based on interdependence rather than independence. Instead of seeing power in a Nietzchean-Machiavellian way, as a superhero or prince seizing power and vanquishing all contenders ('kicking ass'), we could see it as something much more distributed: power is a question of controlling the interdependence of people. It's a question of facillitating interconnections. I have power to the extent that I'm connected to others, and can controls third parties' connections to each other.

Stop right there: if power is really that, what does it mean when I whoop my encouragement (affirmation) for the self-assertion of someone in a minority group? What does it mean when I encourage someone to loosen themselves from the social context rather than enter more deeply into it? Am I not then easing that person away from power rather than ushering them towards it?

(This is one of those comments I just scribble in the margin in the spirit of 'show all thinking', I don't really expect anyone to pick it up.)

[(Anonymous)]

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

The article on the mathematical model of altruism I linked above may provide some hints here, perhaps.

If reputation becomes a variable in social systems, then one's power increases to the extent that one is perceived by others as a well-connected member of a group. So self-denial can be explained as a form of self-serving. This may give even Darwinists a satisfactory explanation of how altruism can arise in social situations, which is why that work is exciting. Even interdependent behaviour can probably be explained as a form of rational agency if the connections in the model are set up correctly.