Some Aspects of American Culture

In our orientation notebooks, we were given a reading called The Values Americans Live By. This was developed by someone who does cross-cultural seminars for people coming to the United States. He found 13 deeply ingrained values; he also notes that Americans see all of these values as positive, whereas people from other cultures might see them as negative and undesirable.

As an illustration, the author, L. Robert Kohls, mentions that if a foreigner asks for directions, the American would tell someone details of how to get there on one’s own, rather than walking 100 meters to accompany you – that is because the self-help concept is so strong that no American would think someone would want to be dependent on another, even temporarily. Also, the future orientation makes Americans think it is good to prepare you to find other addresses in the future.

The paper pairs each American value with a counterpart value from a more traditional country. I know I wouldn’t have thought of these in this way, so I am summarizing here:

1- Personal Control over the Environment – vs. Fate – Americans consider it normal that man should control nature, that individuals can control whatever in the environment might affect him or her, that problems are not a result of bad luck as much as laziness and unwillingness to take responsibility, that it is normal to look out for one’s self-interest.

2 – Change as Seen as Natural and Positive – vs. Tradition
In the U.S., change is indisputably good; it is linked to development, improvement, process, growth. Other cultures value stability, continuity, tradition, and a rich and ancient heritage (as an aside, then, I wonder how these cultures viewed the Obama campaign?).

3 – Time and its Control – vs. Human Interaction
To foreigners, Americans seem more concerned with getting things accomplished on time than with developing deep interpersonal relationships. Americans’ language is filled with references to time. And the international visitor learns soon that it is rude to be late, and that one must call if one is going to be late.

4 – Equality/Fairness – vs. Hierarchy/Rank/Status
Equality is a cherished American value, along with the assertion that all people have an opportunity to succeed in life. The author claims that seven-eighths of the world sees rank, status and authority as much more desirable – even to those who find themselves near the bottom of the social order.

5 – Individualism/Indepenence/Privacy – vs. Group’s Welfare
Individualism developed in the Western world from the Renaissance onward. Americans do, in fact, join a lot of groups – but they do also leave these groups. The word “privacy” doesn’t exist in many non-Western languages; if it does, it often has a negative connotation, suggesting loneliness or forced isolation from the group.

6 – Self-Help/Initiative – vs. Birthright Inheritance
Americans take credit only for what they have accomplished without outside assistance. If you look at an English-language dictionary, you can find more than 100 composite words with “self-“ as a prefix. Equivalents of these words cannot be found in most other languages.

7 – Competition – vs. Cooperation
Americans believe that competition brings out the best in an individual, and even very young children are encouraged to compete. The author notes that many Peace Corps volunteers are distressed to find lack of competition in the classroom, when they had thought it was a universal value.

8 – Future Orientation – vs. Past Orientation
Valuing the future and the improvements Americans are sure the future will inevitably bring means that they devalue the past and, to a large extent, are unconscious of the present (ah, that is why I am trying to live more in the moment!). Since Americans believe that Man, not Fate, controls the environment, that has made them good at short-term projects.

9 – Action/Work Orientation – vs. “Being” Orientation
Reading this section made me long for the simple life in Morocco – it says that Americans routinely plan and schedule an extremely active day, including relaxation that is limited in time and pre-planned… And when (workaholic) Americans meet, the first question will be, “What do you do?” (will the economy change that?)

10 – Informality – vs. Formality
Those coming from a more formal society will find Americans informal and, it seems to them, disrespectful. Americans are some of the most informal people in the world – even compared to the Western Europeans. Titles, dress, and greetings are especially illustrative.

11 – Directness/Openness/Honesty – vs. Indirectness/Ritual/”Face”
Many other countries have developed subtle, sometimes highly ritualistic, ways of informing other people of unpleasant information. Americans are not only direct and honest, but also public about it.

12 – Practicality/Efficiency – vs. Idealism
Americans have a reputation for being realistic, not philosophical. This also causes some professions – those that make money – to be more valued than ones that are aesthetically pleasing.

13 – Materialism/Acquisitiveness – vs. Spiritualism/Detachment
Americans value and collect more material objects than most of the world’s people would ever dream possible to own. And since they value newness ad innovation, they sell or throw away their possessions frequently and replace them with newer ones.

Of course, these values also help to explain why America and Americans have had so many achievements…but seeing these values listed this way does make you think.