Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)
behavioralscientist.org
behavioralscientist.org
On my side, I wanted to slap those people calling others they barely knew "friends", overselling their lunch as "amazing", assuring an outcome with certainty, virtue signaling or refusing to say when something was completely wrong. It's like they were always in a tiny marketing process.
Eventually, I learned to smooth communication, and to appreciate their enthusiasm.
But it did take time.
Also I must confess I have an American filter permanently on, now. If something comes from the US, I just assume most of it is BS until proven otherwise.
Because indeed, the American academic culture is full of BS (perhaps the most glaring example being that the cornerstore of hiring is the recommendation letter, which to me is essentially overt nepotism - and in a recommendation letter, every candidate is the best ever, Gauss incarnate, the Chosen One to break the frontiers of knowledge, because if you say even the slightest bad or ambiguous think they're not going to get hired. But everything is like that).
The thing is that in academia everything is competitive (grants, conference acceptances, etc.) so we Europeans must be Americans as well if we want to be successful, because it's hard for a paper, proposal, etc. to get chosen if you're being realistic while some of your rivals are exaggerating everything. This is something I realized when I worked in the UK (not America, of course, but more "American" than the rest of Europe) and then even more when I worked with actual Americans, and I consider this realization to have boosted my career considerably.
Spent 6 months at Ohio State as exchange student and I loved it and hated it.
I remember once being asked how was I and me answering honestly, just for an american friend to reprimend me on actually answering.
I was like, "why the hell you asking how am I if you don't care?".
Got to admit though no place is easier to make friends than US. This excess talking can often lay fertile ground to deeper connection that is harder to find elsewhere.
It took us about 2 years to really learn how to talk to each other.
There are other times which are the opposite. Like, when I ask my wife if she wants some rice or some porridge, and she says very imperatively. "I will do it myself." She actually means straightforwardly, I am going to do it myself, not that she's displeased with me and that she's not going to accept any token from me and is going to punish me in several small ways now. (Which is what many of my ex-girlfriends would have meant.)
It's actually hard to give examples in a text medium like this, because so much of it is really context and tone of voice.
That's an odd way to say what you're saying
From GP's text I assumed she's not Chinese but for whatever reason (parents worked there, she was adopted as a grown-ish kid, something else) she spent most of her formative years there.
Maybe we're both wrong but on its face what GP wrote doesn't strike as odd at all to me.
All of my life I've felt at a distance from others who exhibit typical American social habits, and have actually got along better with people from various other cultures such as eastern Europe. (There are a lot of first and second generation immigrants from eastern Europe where I live in the US.)
I have always been perceived as rude and blunt, and in recent years those with typically American social attitudes have even begun pathologizing behaviors like mine as being "on the spectrum".
As to why I am like this was a mystery to me in childhood. I acted just like my family and extended did! Everything was normal at home, and then I would treat someone at school like I would treat a sibling and it would result in arched eyebrows.
Turns out my family's attitudes towards socializing were strongly influenced by my mother, since she was a stay at home parent. And she came from a part of the US made up of small agricultural communities that were mostly German and Dutch in origin. These small communities had transplanted their national cultures in little bubbles all over the US, and by dint of mostly isolation from the broader culture had maintained those mores for centuries.
It was only when my mother had moved away to the city that this culture shock occurred, about 150 years after immigration.
So yes, there is a lot of cultural variation in the US, probably not as much as in Europe, but it exists. There are subcultures within the US of various vintages that exist alongside the mainstream culture that have all learned how to be different and coexist at the same time.
Decades later, that's clearly an exaggeration or just plain wrong, but it is certainly true that people do underestimate cultural differences within the US, and overestimate them within Europe.
The language barriers makes Europe much more culturally diverse, but also makes that diversity much harder to discover since you can't fully understand a culture without learning its language.
It is more like the cultural difference between Canada and Mexico, you don't have such a wide spread within USA. You have some parts that is more like Canadians, and some parts more like Mexicans, but Mexico to Canada is still a bigger cultural leap than anything within USA.
The opposite is true in the USA: nearly everyone speaking English to each other, watching the same TV shows, driving the same cars, eating the same breakfast cereals - easy to believe they must all be culturally very similar, when in fact they are not.
But we also know that there are much bigger differences if you cross many national borders and language barriers by going to the other side of Europe, they too will have those micro differences but when going there you also get many major macro differences.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts and experiences with different cultures.
Not sure if that was what she meant, I wasnt there. But if I responded that way, this would be the meaning.
> up hill street
?
Do you mean a highway ramp or a bridge?
I’m a non-american living in Austin, TX and what folks call hills here is different from what we call hills back home…
Some month ago an Italian PhD student of mine (I’m from Germany) asked me if I was upset or mad at him. I had no idea why he was asking and was completely taken aback by this suggestion. But turns out, in Italy (at least the northern part of it), the three dots typically indicate that you are upset or at least impatient with the receiver.
I still wonder how many of my Italian collaborators I have sent strange impatient emails in the past…
I’ll see you there.
Has a very different vibe than:
I’ll see you there
Where the first one, with a dot, would signal the sender is mad or impatient while the latter is neutral.
I’ll see you there…
This one however… I’d also assume the sender is impatient because I just told them I’m gonna be late, or something bad happened („there“ being a funeral for example), or it’s unclear whether we will both arrive (a heavy storm might be coming, possibly blocking roads).
Some of my Indian friends use it the same way as you do, which often throws off some of my American friends, who interpret it as impatience, and vice versa.
It's always worth being aware of these differences if you can be and also giving people the benefit of the doubt too.
I'll be saying something, and she'll raise her eyebrows up and down twice. To me it looks almost like Groucho Marx, and looks like someone thinks you are joking or saying something silly, and are responding with a non-verbal "oh really?" Or maybe like a suggestive flirting thing, except totally out of any flirting context, so wth does flirty suggestive eyes mean when you were talking about figuring out which outlets to plug the kitchen appliances into so that they don't trip the breakers? It just throws me right off the horse and all I can think is "WTF IS THAT?"
We're old enough and adult and frank enough that I can simply say everything I just said here and we tried to figure it out. It simply became the interesting thing we talked about for a while that day. But she could not explain it. So I never got an answer. It's just something she does unconsciously and apparently is not meant to deflate or derail or laugh at whatever I was talking about. It's apparently more like an actual "oh really?"
I never saw her even-more-filipina mom do it, nor her brother or sister or other family members, and she actually mostly grew up in the us and a few years in China but in a special place with all the other foreign people as her mom worked for the UN. So it may have nothing to do with the Philipines, or China.
So a little eye-waggle can be like that.
Update: I just told her I cited her in this conversation, and now she tells me her family and extended family does all do it, just I'm not around them enough to have seen it, and it is a phillipino thing, and it means I understand or agree like what I would do with a head nod.
Edit: spelling
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fs...
With the ellipsis I do feel like the tone is very context dependent.
To paraphrase an old boss who was from NJ: we respect you enough to stab you in the front, and never in the back.
California, by comparison, was just as ruthless as Wall Street corpo raiders, but with a thick veneer of BS smattered all over it.
I haven't been to Russia but some of it reminds me of encounters I've had in Greece.
But anyway: people tend to express themself in many different ways. It is great to be tolerant to others, while trying to be polite and culture-aware yourself.
1. I wonder when this "difference between culture-driven emotions" fades away. I've been in the US for 35 years now, and I still sometimes sense that I'm viewing interactions the way a British person would (less often than I used to)
2. I wonder how the "noise" of differences between individuals compares in "amplitude" to the ability of culture to shape emotion. Any given population of any significant size will likely contain fairly wide variations of introversion, sociability, communication comfort, positivity, etc. etc. To what extent does or can cultural factors create any sort of coherent pattern "on top" of that variation?
3. Some US habits can be seen as having nothing to do with the relationships between individuals, and everything to do with creating certain social moods. The reason that US retail interactions are studded with "Have a nice day" is not, in general, because anyone actually cares that much about whether your day is nice or not, but because having people behaving in that way creates an easy going, affable mood in which people's anger, disappointment and sadness of the moment is not really appropriate to bring to the surface. It can seem grating and "fake" on early encounters with it, but after a while (maybe a long while), you can appreciate it as a communal, non-coercive effort to "make nice" because everyone benefits from that, on average and over time.
4. US English really needs to re-acquaint (no pun intend) itself with the word "acquaintance" as an alternative to "friend". The almost universal use of "friend" to describe anyone you know (even from the most singular and minor of interactions) really robs verbal behavior about the social environment here of so much subtlety.
Well, we just call them brothers or sisters if they are that close. Actually…
As a Brit I have one friend I've known since childhood I'd call "brother" unironically. Even then I'd probably have to have been drinking.
There are distinctly American customs and cultures that Europeans would look as stereotypically American.
Also, when asking this, expect a real response back.
Just because they're saying "I'm alright" instead of pouring their heart out about how they had one customer earlier who caused a lot of trouble, doesn't mean that they aren't being honest.
A. When they ask how you are, tell them.
I would never initiate a casual conversation with a cashier. If the cashier asks me how I am today, I'll say "fine, thanks." and that's it.
If some people live in an island where some place are around 10 degrees and other around 15 degrees, they may say "our island is very diverse, look, yesterday I went to the south, and it was freezing! 10 degrees! it's 5 degrees less than here!"
I understand you see the differences in people you meet in your same culture. But how do you even see the similarities, if you have no experience of other cultures?
Indeed, in most countries, you'll notice the dialect of the capital city of the prominent language contains a lot more clipped and shortened words than the rural dialects tend to. This happens here in Finland - Helsinkians speak a much more abbreviation heavy Finnish than the dairy farmers up in Pohjois-Pohjanmaa, which has sort of the equivalent of Finnish southern drawl.
In the Netherlands, efficiency is part of communicaton, especially in cities. In more rural places people connect a bit more and take time for eachother. These are different rules.
And yes, sometimes Dutch people are rude because they like to be. Different people, different strokes.
Because tying it to salary seems pseudo-scentific and rather snobbish (but happy to be corrected if there is solid science backing it). Are rich people generally more direct than poor people within a culture? Not in my experience.
The distinction between urban and rural is valid in my experience. But the urban poor tend to be on the same side of this divide as the urban rich.
(edit: Just to be clear, I didn't downvote it)
A passive aggressive dig, or, a genuine statement of care. However, I can definitely see how people who did not grow up around it may see it as fake or weird or question intent.
That is the whole point, what words mean changes from culture to culture, punitiveness is relative. In some culture "great" is the neutral word, in other it is "it is ok" is the neutral one etc, so when a culture who feels "great" must mean you like it a lot come to a culture where it is just the normal thing to say they will feel everyone is fake since they say that things are great even though they aren't particularly excited about those things.
Also “bless your heart” is the dumbest expression in the world. Oh wow look at me I’ve said something that sounds nice, but actually it means something secretly rude, maybe, but only I know how I meant it! That’s just poor communication.
In the northeast, people are kind but not nice. They'll help you out when you have flat tire but may grumble under their breath that you might need to learn how to change your tires yourself. It takes a long time to get to know them, but once you do, they'll take their shirts off their backs for you.
In the pacific northwest, people are nice but not kind. They'll be super polite to you but when you ask for help or ask to hang out, they'll snub you. They're mostly homebodies and they already have enough friends, no room for more.
In the midwest, people are kind and nice. They'll help you out and they'll invite you to their homes for a meal. But they are somewhat cautious of outsiders.
In the south, people mostly just have a nice façade that is skin deep. They'll be nice and friendly to you and talk to you all day, but they may not care that much for you at all. Their friendliness is more about them wanting to feel that they are nice people, and less about them actually caring about you. Many will talk behind your back ("bless your heart" culture).
Terms like Seattle Freeze, Minnesota Nice, Southern Hospitality are all overgeneralizations and don't apply to each individual, but nevertheless capture a part of the culture that is at least somewhat true.
For instance, a 2008 survey showed WA state ranked 48th out of 50 in trait extraversion. Seattle definitely feels socially different from other places -- it is very palpable.
Here's the paper ranking 50 US states on the Five Factor model (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness)
https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/research/papers/others/2008/rentfr...
I prefer to think we all just have different ways of showing that we care.
That is from your perspective, everyone think that their culture is the "obviously good one", we value what we were taught to value. You value those traits since you came from that culture, a person from a "show happiness and spread warmth" culture will think that their way is the obviously superior one and that the culture you think is superior is making the worse bleak and depressing so not good at all.
Fine, you could quibble about perspectives for most of the other ones, but it seems like an abjectly negative description of the South.
But many of my social interactions are based in commerce. So I'll go to a restaurant to eat, alone. I'll go grocery shopping, alone. And so the clerk/cashier/waitress greets me and serves me and of course they're nice, because their wages are on the line here. And gradually I just felt fake and futile, because all these pleasantries we exchanged had an undercurrent of a business transaction and not the bonds of trust, fraternity, an actual relationship.
Yes, it does feel really hollow when I enter a store and the clerk greets me enthusiastically, because they don't know me, and any concern for one another's feelings, that's merely a business transaction. I tire of this fakery.
It just makes your work much more fun and time pass faster than being sullen and distanced. It hs nothing to do with my wages being on the line, I literally had zero obligation to be nice to customers. But every once in a while I had a pleasant interaction and that made it worth the effort.
I would bet it’s the same for your crockery clerks. That kind of work is very boring and repetitive and social interaction is the only respite you get from it. Just something to keep in mind when you are feeling cynical about them greeting you friendly and so on.
First Fin says "Skoll!" (Cheers)
Second Fin asks "Are we here to drink or to talk?"
The problem is not with advertising ( or over advertising ) that youre happy when your are indeed happy.
The problem is with not doing so when the situation is inversed - that is advertising youre unhappy when you are indeed unhappy - and couching it in good cheer for outward appearances.
People in most cultures value genuineness over fake cheer although no one really is fully immune to fake cheerfulness and often find themselves falling for it - even when they want to fight it. Because in the end after all the cake and watermelon, its a form of deceitful presentation of the self - whether the person intended it or not. It trips you up in your read of the other person and thus leads to a maladjusted state of affairs where you are forever adjusting and hedging your reactions to the others person true emotions. Its a tax on your mental faculties.
Is this really? I am French so we are rather private (in the sense that friendship is something that takes time, and before that there are rather generic interactions). But if my best friend whom I adore and whatnot did a dinner for me I would thank him very much.
I wild be surprised if "thank you" is not used between friends in the Netherlands
"Wie hier als vriend naar binnen gaat, komt nooit te vroeg maar steeds te laat"?
Meaning:
"Who enters here as a friend will never be early but always late."
I have to say, I'm like that, my wife definitely isn't, so it's not really a law of nature. But where I live (in the south) it's common for friends to just walk around the back of the house and walk into the door unannounced, it's a sign of true closeness. Though I also think that is getting less common. Idk, might be the internet diluting all cultures.
True story. One of the major times I almost broke up (before we got married) with my wife, who grew up in Fujian China, is the first time I told her, "I love you," and she replied, "Thank you." (Now, on our anniversary, I might get her a bouquet with a note saying, "You're welcome.")
First time I almost broke up with her before we married was our very first date, when she was 45 minutes late. She finally called me, telling me that the CEO came in at the last moment with a new idea, and that she would be there as soon as she could. Afterwards, she was an additional 45 minutes late, because just after she got off the phone, the CEO came in with another idea. Where she's from, where she grew up, this kind of thing is just unfortunate but, "understandable."
> I would have liked my guests to say that they were looking forward to spending more time with me, that they really liked the evening together, or that they felt happy or connected to me.
As a Dutch person, I think saying "Thanks for dinner, was fun!" is fine, but I could see how saying just the first part, or focusing too much on the effort spent on the food, could make me suspicious, as if that was the most positive thing that can be said about the evening.
Also, I think it's quite common to exchange a few words about when one might meet next, either concretely ("See you at X event?") or vaguely ("Let's meet again sometime soon!"). If it's left out, one might suspect the other party doesn't want to meet again, perhaps.
My own culture is all about distrusting others and being very selective about what you reveal about yourself and paying close attention to material balance in social interactions so someone else isn't getting more out of the relationship than you. A point that came up last time I was visiting my home country was that my habit of thanking the cashier after finishing my transaction was a glaring giveaway that I was an outsider, and that I should be careful about it to avoid being taken advantage of.
In comparison, American culture has been very freeing, I can typically trust people to not be trying to stab me in the back, I don't have to worry as much about taking advantage of by friends, I can ask people to be honest about me and they will be, and so on.
There are a lot of little pleasantries with strangers that took time to become fluent at, but people you actually know seem to be just as honest as what the author describes the Dutch as being, just with a lot of initial padding like "please don't take this the wrong way".
The example given of being asked to dinner and responding bluntly with "I'm busy tomorrow" doesn't seem that rude to me, but to be fair, I am in a physics and engineering environment, neither groups of people being known for their social smoothness :)
More contemporarily, I can speak specifically to black culture- if you're black interacting with white strangers in a foreign environment, you may find yourself being overtly friendly to strangers simply as a means to compensate against any potential stereotypes. I'm sure being a minority in any situation can elicit this reaction though, including being a white minority. And I've also experience d the opposite, where I'm a "white" minority- and I had to simultaneously present myself as not being a threat, but also not an easy victim.
Interesting. Since I'm the fish who can't see the water, could you provide me with some examples of this?
When I was younger and would go hiking or climbing in Scotland and Wales, I would definitely have to be quite mindful of "showing I was not a threat" when entering small village stores and pubs there.
The more densely and contiguously populated and area is, the easier it is to (a) feel a part of the "in group" (b) not feel aware of the difference between "insiders" and "outsiders".
My experience is that the behavior you describe in Americans is roughly proportional to population density and tourism levels. Areas with lots of people and/or lots of visitors do not require this "low threat establishment". Areas with less people and/or less visitors often do so. I think this is true of Europe just as much as the USA, and I would guess it is probably the same worldwide.
However, pretty much the whole time it felt a bit like we were being boisterous in church. As polite as everyone was, it felt at least in part fake; like they were a bad actor over-playing a role; like they were tolerating us but wished we'd just shut up and leave. Conversations felt shallow - if I actually responded with anything of substance about the bushfires, for example, they seemed to lose interest immediately. There was a sense of guardedness that meant I could rarely tell when anyone actually thought. Australians are typically rather... open in that respect.
As we were lining up to board our flight home, I heard groups of other Australians talking and instantly let of of a tension I hadn't realized I was carrying. Like I'd walked out of church and was allowed to act normally again.
But here's what I don't understand. The teacher doesn't actually know whether her mother was a wonderful grandmother -- after all, she just got to know her! I get that the intent is to make another person feel good about themselves, but if you praise anything and everyone, how does this praise convey anything special?
Edit: I guess my actual question is this: How do you tell plain courtesy from actual commendation? When do you know someone actually means it?
i have noticed that the inverse also exists.
Especially in northern/eastern europe.
Calling out the cynical truth and how everything is bad but could also be so much worse seems to be way for people to connect. This often happens in a crisis situation aswell.
It can also just be seen as an appreciation towards the grandmother for being there enough for the kids to come to the meeting.
My ideal style is somewhere between Dutch directness and American friendliness - mostly direct, but with a generally more "positive" affect than the "neutral"-seeming Dutch approach, and more open to having friendly interactions with strangers without being "fake".
- Americans do reduce social distance with phatic conversation. "how are you?" "Good, how about yourself?"
- Americans do have expected formal acknowledgements. There are a few cultures where formality is a sign of adding social distance, but in America it's definitely an acknowledgement. In another culture the emphasis will be on how much you liked the thing, but in the US, it is important to say "thank you"
- There is a lot of fake positivity in the US for sure. For instance, you'll see this online with "I don't know who needs to hear this but YOU ARE LOVED". That's a strange sentiment to express. How could you know?
But ultimately it's mostly just words. The sentiments expressed are the same and the language is just different. It might just be a thing among Anglophones since the British are somehow worse about the word / intention mismatch though without the enthusiasm.
This does remind me of that Reddit thread where an Eastern European asks "Guys, what is a chamicha? My American colleagues always compliment me on it and I thank them and we go on." where it was discovered that it was "Nice to meet you".
There is some idea that you need to be "strong" (whatever that is) or "fit in", which is just wrong to me. If you don't, people judge you and talk bad about you. I know lots of people who do it about many people, even their closest friends.
Here's an example, Two middle aged British couples go to a bar in Amsterdam, and quietly sit at a table in the corner having a few drinks. The bar then becomes a Karaoke bar filled with student aged locals who are very raucous, spilling drinks etc. At the end of the night, one of the men from one of the couples goes to the bar and gives the barman a tip equal to about 20% of that tables spend. The barman then proceeds to tell the man "I dislike British women". The Dutch barman thought that was acceptable and that there would be no recourse. If that were said in many parts of the UK there's a chance the barman would have a pint glass thrown at his head for saying such a rude and out of nowhere thing.
As a Brit who has been to many, many European countries, I can say there's only really two countries that are really different and that's France and The Netherlands. Neither of their general population really feels any obligation to be courteous or polite to foreigners. The locals from every other European country I've been to have been polite/not rude as a bare minimum.
Somehow the Germans learned faster, though.
We have only recently made each other's acquaintance; we are not friends (we haven't even shared a meal, let alone a glass); and it can't even presume to practise the same sports I do. What gives?
I cannot of course claim to know the intention of this person, but I have heard this phrase said ostensibly genuinely (to me it has the association of group therapy, though that might be due to popular media).
However, to me as a Dutch person, it comes across as devoid of meaning, a phrase that can be said if one didn't bother to listen or care to come up with any thought or more meaningful response. So, it doesn't surprise me that the author read it as sarcastic (although she might've been right, again I can't know).
The social expectation in the Netherlands to always come up with a response and share your opinion or thoughts, rather than just listening silently and nod (or say “Thank you for sharing,” which to me amounts to almost the same thing) can be criticized as well, of course. It can be a bit exhausting, at times. But, it also contributes to the feeling of having a genuine connection and conversation.
Germans are already different by the way, my German colleague was a bit shocked when he had a hair cut and one colleague walked in asking if he tried to do it himself followed by another asking if he fell down the stairs. It’s camaraderie, I guess mostly in younger people. Honestly his hair wasn’t bad at all.
as a bussiness, you are basically asking for a handout to make the lives of your waiting staff bearable. In my opinion this mean you should not run a business.
Why would i tip someone when they do their job? Should we do this for all jobs? (the same goes for the military in my opinion).
However, I've followed the debates occuring in the USA as a handful of restaurants have experimented with no-tip policies, and I am now really ambivalent about the practice. Several restaurants with owners who sounded very committed to end tipping have returned to it; I've read remarks from many waitstaff who say that they prefer and can make far more that way than they would ever be paid on a salary.
I don't think there's a clear answer. My gut still tells me that it's a bad idea, but I do not want to ignore stories from those actually working in and around businesses where this is a thing.
Having said that, I strongly suspect you're correct about that, though I'd also guess that personality traits are also a very important component, and those are also not handed out "fairly".
It's so blunt it actually makes me laugh.
From the classic https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-bet... referenced elsewhere like in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37176703
i don't even like myself ! i'm the worst of all humans on this planet.