People In The U.S. Think They Are Better Than They Actually Are. People In Asia Don’t.

Some headlines seem immediately true before you even read the research behind them. That was my impression when I first came across this article in Scientific American. Shinobu Kitayama is a psychology professor at the University of Michigan studying cultural neuroscience, and in the article he analyzes how the cultural differences between Western and Eastern cultures play out in the mind:

"From the East Asian perspective, the Western tendency to boost good feelings about oneself could come across as futile, unnecessary or even childish because it shows how the person is failing to appreciate the relational nature of the self. But our data suggest that Americans boost their positive selves because it helps them adapt to their culture. Altogether, by adopting the cultural neuroscience approach, we may keep our cultural preconceptions and biases at bay, thereby making our science less ethnocentric."

Kitayama's conclusion from all the research is that we often underplay the importance of how culture shapes our mindset. Where we grow up and the environment we are raised in seems to have the most profound impact in exactly how great we imagine ourselves to be. It's a point that I have often shared when traveling internationally as a reminder for audiences outside Western nations to take the victory laps themselves that others might take for far lesser achievements.