Читать книгу Cultural DNA - Bains Gurnek - Страница 11

Three broad sources of evidence are used to build the case for what constitutes the DNA of different cultures: primary data, secondary sources of information, and explanatory research.

Most of the primary data centers around the evidence accumulated over 25 years of working as CEO for the psychological consultancy YSC, which has 20 offices globally covering all the regions analyzed in the book. Our core work involves getting under the skin of both people and organizational culture – which we have been doing globally across the world for decades. As a consequence, our different offices have developed finely tuned instincts for what really makes people and organizations tick in different parts of the world. We have also systematically assessed 30,000 people working in a range of organizations across the world, which gives us a deep source of data and information to draw upon when forming hypotheses about cultural differences. In addition, a core feature of the data that the conclusions presented are based upon is a painstaking analysis of over 1,700 in-depth reports, approximately 200 from each region, which contain the strengths and development themes identified for executives in each culture. This gives us sound insights into the positive qualities, as well as issues, that leaders from each culture need to be mindful of as they negotiate the ecology of the fast-changing global business environment.

I have also accessed the considerable research conducted on cultural differences over the past few decades, employing a variety of methodologies such as value surveys, behavioral experiments, and personality instruments. Following the seminal work by Geert Hofstede and his colleagues, there have been several detailed and extremely comprehensive surveys of values across the world's key cultures.13 The Globe study of 62 countries involving over 900 organizations, mentioned earlier, is one of the most important. The World Values Survey, mentioned earlier, is also an important source of data. The work of Michael Minkov, which extends the Hofstede constructs,14 and Shalom Schwartz are also accessed.15

However, values are only one part of the story. Such inquiry can only touch the surface of differences in how people think. I have also drawn substantially on behavioral experiments and observations conducted by researchers across different cultures. Surprisingly, for a psychologist, I have been much less persuaded by evidence using standard personality instruments, as these frequently produce nonsensical results when it comes to cross-cultural comparisons. This is largely because a high proportion of personality tests implicitly or explicitly ask respondents to compare themselves to the people around them. By their very nature, many such instruments therefore cannot be used for teasing out differences across cultures. Last, but not least, I have drawn upon the observations of legions of anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and travelers who have drawn strong psychological conclusions about the cultures that they have engaged.

Much has been written about cultural differences. However, there has been a limited effort to explain why such differences exist in the first place. This is one of our main objectives: to get underneath the skin of differences and to provide an explanation for why they might exist. Here, there have been extensive breakthroughs that provide a foundation for understanding the roots of differences between cultures. Over the past decade, analysis of mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA has enabled us to build a very precise picture of how and when groups populated different parts of the world. In a field that was at best murky and speculative before, there is now a high degree of precision and convergence that I will draw upon extensively when seeking to explain cultural differences. We also now have a much sharper lens, driven in part by advances in analysis of ice cores, on the profound climatic challenges that have affected modern humans since they arrived on the scene 200,000 years ago. The modern concern with global warming can perhaps create the false impression that our environment in the past was some kind of stable, unchanging nirvana for humans. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Furthermore, while ecological and historical processes have been the main drivers of the cultural DNA of regions, there is increasing evidence that genetic features may also have a role to play. A wide range of genetic investigations, which will be reviewed later, suggest there has been rapid and intense evolution since modern humans left Africa that affects a diverse range of attributes, such as food tolerance, disease resistance, and energy metabolism. From the point of view of psychological differences, there is now extensive evidence of profound variations across different groups in some of the genes that determine both the level and uptake of key neurotransmitters. These findings are relatively new and still in the process of being tested and replicated. However, some differences do appear robust. For example, the serotonin transporter gene, which affects the level of serotonin in the brain by influencing the same functions that the drug Prozac impacts, has both short and long allele versions. Individuals with the short alleles are more prone to anxiety and depression following negative life events. A variety of other behavioral and psychological traits are also associated with the presence of short alleles. Now something like 80 percent of people in China have the short allele versus 40 percent in the United States and 25 percent in South Africa.16

Similarly, a gene called DRD4, which influences dopamine levels in the brain, also has short and long alleles. Individuals with the long alleles are more adventurous, novelty seeking, independent minded, rebellious, as well as hyperactive – and something like 75 percent of South American Indians possess the long allele version. The figures for the United States are in the region of 30 percent and in Europe 20 percent or so. In China the rate of the long allele is close to 0 percent.17 Similarly, large differences are seen in genes that influence the opioid system, which, as well as being associated with perceptions of pain and well-being, is also associated with emotional reactions to disruption of social bonds. When northern Europeans see Italian or Spanish soccer players react as if they have been mortally wounded at the slightest physical impact, it may not just be histrionic acting out – the poor guy writhing on the ground to boos from the crowd may actually be biologically more sensitive to pain.

The latter point illustrates something more important. If a small number of the differences observed between cultures reflect such biological factors, it may be wiser to recognize this fact rather than to pretend otherwise. At the very least, this can absolve individuals from personal blame, as well as lead to greater empathy, when their reactions or behaviors are not in accordance with what other groups expect. In addition, overwhelmingly most genetic adaptations, as will be reviewed later, arose first because of cultural change, which then drove differential selection; a kind of culture-gene coevolution.