Bruce Hood - The Self Illusion

Walk This Way

Yale psychologist John Bargh has shown that these chameleon effects can operate simply by reading about the attributes of others. This is priming, which reflects the way that the circuits of the brain that store related information can be influenced by external events. For example, when students were asked to unscramble sentences that contained words related to being elderly such as, ‘forgetful, retired, wrinkle, rigid, traditional, bitter, obedient, conservative, knits, dependent, ancient, helpless, gullible’, they left the experimental room walking like an old person. They were slower and frailer. If they read sentences that contained words related to being rude such, ‘bold, bother, disturb, intrude, annoyingly, audaciously, brazen, impolitely, infringe, obnoxious’, they were more likely to interrupt a conversation than students who had read polite words. 55

These influences of external events work because the mere exposure to words triggers thoughts that for a moment can influence our behaviours. It is not only actions – even our general knowledge can be primed to be better or worse. If you are asked to imagine what it must be like to be a professor for five minutes, then you will perform better on Trivial Pursuit questions than if you imagine being a soccer hooligan. 56Claude Steele, one of the most prominent African American psychologists, has been looking at how stereotypes distort behaviours. 57White students primed to think about being black African Americans responded with hostility when asked to repeat a task they had just completed, indicating that negative stereotypes can be triggered in the same manner. Just listing your race can influence the way you perform on a task. When asked to list their race before sitting an IQ test, African Americans did significantly worse than if they had not been asked.

These priming effects can even be triggered unconsciously through mimicry by others. For example, in mathematics tests there is a racial stereotype that Asian Americans do better than Caucasian Americans who do better than African Americans. 58To see if this stereotype could be triggered by mimicry, Asian American, African American and white Caucasian students were asked to take a mathematics test. 59Before they took the test, each one sat in a waiting room where there was another student of the same ethnic background who was also taking the test. The other student was, in fact, a confederate of the experimenters who had been instructed to either mimic or not mimic the real subject. When there was no mimicking, all three groups performed equally well, showing that the stereotype was not activated. However, if they had been mimicked by the confederate, Asian Americans performed significantly better than the white Caucasians, whereas the African Americans tended to show poorer performance. The same mimicry effect was found with the sex stereotype that women are not as good at mathematics as men.

Despite it being in our best interests to perform as well as we can, we are nevertheless at the mercy of stereotypes and those around us who can trigger them unconsciously.

When East and West Collide

Perhaps one of the most surprising lines of research in recent years has shown that cultural stereotypes operate at a much more basic level in the brain than has previously ever been considered. This is true even in the way we perceive the world around us. For example, it is often assumed that while people around the world may have different preferences and tastes, when it comes to music and art we all have essentially the same brain. When someone in Beijing hears Mozart, they hear the same music as someone from Boston. When someone from Tokyo looks at a painting by Magritte, they see the same image as someone from Tennessee. They may not agree about whether they like the work, but they have the same perceptual experience. But is that really true? Richard Nisbitt thinks not. He has accumulated a vast body of evidence to show that cultures can shape the way we literally perceive the world and, ultimately, the way we think about our self.

In his book, The Geography of Thought 60Nisbitt argues that cultures influence not only the way we process the world, but also the way we interpret it. He draws a sweeping dividing line between Eastern and Western cultures and argues that peoples from the East tend to see and interpret the world in a holistic or collectivist manner, noticing connections and patterns between everything. Peoples from the West, on the other hand, tend to be more focused on the individual objects in the world. Admittedly, we must bear in mind that here, West usually means US students whereas East typically means Japanese and Chinese students.

In spite of these caveats, according to Nisbitt, the collectivist/individualistic divide can explain a multitude of complex behaviours and traditions that vary from one culture to the next. For example, one characteristic of Eastern holism accounts for a philosophical leaning towards notions of order, resonance and harmony. Such leanings are exemplified in the Eastern notion of ‘ feng shui ’, a need to achieve balance for happier home and work environments. In contrast, studies of Westerners reveal a comparatively more individualistic attitude of an independent self. 61

Nisbitt thinks that the origin of this cultural divide can be traced back thousands of years to the times of ancient Greece and China. However, the recent modern history of the United States is sufficient to explain why, as a whole, this nation is individualistic. In a comparatively short space of time, the United States was rapidly forged out of the struggle of groups who had immigrated in order to establish a better life. Other nations tend to evolve over much longer periods as one invading army conquered another, but the United States experienced sudden rapid growth primarily from immigration. Initially, some of these early immigrants sought religious freedom, which again, strengthened their sense of independence. The early settlers formed self-sufficient communities, struggling to adapt to their new environment and compete against the indigenous peoples. There was little room for social loafing or slackers in these early communities and so to survive you had to rely on your own efforts.

In many ways, the notions of individualism and independence have been branded into the American psyche. For example, when asked to come up with twenty statements that we think define our self, Westerners typically respond with traits centred from their own perspective (e.g. ‘I am tall’), whereas those from collectivist cultures typically provide relational statements, such as ‘I am taller than my sister’. Maybe this focus on our relationship to others explains why social loafing is not as strong in these societies, where one is inclined to consider one’s self in social contexts. 62

What is most remarkable about the work coming out of this field of cultural psychology is that individuals from the East and West not only describe themselves differently but may in fact see the world differently. For example, study Figure 8 opposite and concentrate on the square frame and line on the far left. You have one of two tasks: either draw an identical line of the same length independently of the frame (absolute), or draw a line of the same relative length to the frame dimension (relative). The correct solutions are on the right.

The absolute task requires focusing on the line and ignoring the frame, whereas the relative task requires estimating the relationship of the line to the frame. Remarkably Japanese students are significantly better at the relative task than the absolute task while US students show the opposite profile by being significantly better at the absolute task compared to the relative task. 63This finding is interpreted to mean that the Easterners focus more on the relative rather than the absolute. But this difference does not exist in the youngest children who have been tested. Below six years of age, both Eastern and Western children show the same pattern of finding the relative task much easier than the absolute task. It’s only after schooling begins that the typical switch in thinking styles between East and West starts to appear. 64