Social Conventions Across Cultures

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To add more inconsistency to social interaction, different cultures and different conventions.

For example in North America and Europe it's a big deal to do eye contact. In Asian and African cultures this is considered hostile.

So, how come people in Africa and Asia not considered autistic? I don't get NTs at all. That would be. 4.5 billion people over half the world's population because Asia and Africa are the largest continents by population (and size).

In Latin America, it's all about nonverbals, I have no idea why.

Growing in with traditional Asian immigrants, having lived in Asia and watched tons of HK TV while growing up, I don't know where this idea that Asians avoid eye contact come from. I've heard that myth quite a few times. Asians make eye contact all the time. In fact there was a recent study that suggested that Asians tend to put more focus on the eye area when judging expressions than Westerners do.

There might be some circumstances where you keep your head (and entire body) lowered but those are extremely formal and not things you encounter in everyday life and is usually a sign of (1)a formal situation and (2) power discrepancy and it is more to do with being physically lower than the other person (which involves keeping your head down literally). In the extreme case you cannot be physically higher than the emperor, cannot look at the emperor and cannot turn your back (hence the funny walk courtiers do in ancient shows).

I also work with African migrants all the time and I've never seen eye contact avoidance either.

In HK ancient dramas there is the tendency for people to stare dramatically out of the window or into the distance when making an important speech. In "A Step into the past" when a HK cop gets sent back into the past, he makes fun of this by grabbing the old sage around and telling him to look at him and he doesn't know why ancient people keep on wanting to stare dramatically into the distance.

http://www.ethiopianreview.com/scitech/6628

I've never seen an HK ancient drama but I sure have seen a lot of Hollywood movies, from ones made back in the 30's and all the decades right up to today. That same "dramatic stare off into the distance" happens when making an important speech. I think it's just a dramatic convention for any drama. When the person stares off into the distance, the focus shifts to him and what would be a dialogue in real life turns into a dramatic monologue. In movies, it allows the camera to pull in close and leave the other person out of the frame because they aren't part of the monologue. I think it's really just about what looks dramatic on film and isn't meant to be an accurate representation of life.

It's this. A couple of generations ago it was a lot more frequent, but as the Asian cultures became more Westernized, these cultural norms got eroded. This is why it's so infrequent and associated with formality these days.

Besides the fact that Asian cultures are far from uniform, a distinction must also be made when addressing peers vs. people above or below you. If you address peers, it's no problem looking at the eyes.

But to address the OP's main question about the variations in social conventions among cultures, try to think of it this way: for a healthy society to survive long-term, it needs to be balanced well with respect to what are regarded as traditional AS values and traditional NT values. A lot of AS folks tend to think of society as fundamentally an NT construct in its emphasis on establishing a cultural norm that people follow, but in reality all societies promote certain AS values as well. They have to, otherwise the society would collapse!

Examples (not necessarily balanced cultures):
US -- car culture and associated freedom and individualism (AS); conspicuous consumption, seeking the "latest and greatest" (NT). American culture is a mixture of other cultures, plus a bit added on its own
Nordic countries -- reserved, relatively emotionally "cold" (AS); Jante laws (NT)
Philippines -- emotionally expressive (NT).... I really can't think of a good AS value example intrinsic to Filipino culture. That might be partly why the Philippines remains impoverished and adopting of other cultures, e.g. the US.

My point though is that fundamentally there is a mixture of AS and NT out there, whether people realize it or not, and the balance of the two is important. There is a duality in everything, like one side is AS and the other is NT, in cultures, in physics, and even in individual human beings. The only real difference between each culture is for a given detail, whether the AS side or the NT side is picked to be included in the culture. If you start off with one particular value as AS or NT in the culture, in order for there to be consistency in the culture, various other facets of the culture need to be AS or NT as well, depending on the facet itself. Then in the end, after adding up all the AS and NT details, you end up with the final package: a culture.

To clarify, the criteria items for ASDs (relevant to eye contact) in the DSM are not “not looking at other peoples’ eyes enough”, but rather impairment in the expressive and receptive use of non verbal communication. Examples of not properly performing eye contact in the social contexts where the DSM is likely to be used, including looking at the eyes of others too much (“fixed gaze”) are given as specific examples of a much wider array of potential manifestations (rather than being the specific criteria itself).

This is no more confusing than the use of different verbal languages, nor the fact that any speech or verbal comprehension impairment would be identified by issues with developing speech and comprehension in one’s native language rather than issues with developing speech and comprehension in some language that is not used in your social/cultural context.

The Australian Aboriginal peoples don't make direct eye contact as it is considered impolite.

Very interesting post. I've moved around a bit and it's always interesting to observe this kind of "variables". Even from one European country to another - the same thing can go from recommended to completely unacceptable.

I find it easier to deal with people from other cultures. Maybe it's because the differences make their rules clearer. BTW, I've never had an American girlfriend and so I married a foreigner. American sexual repression explains at least part of that. I also like submissive women, which other cultures encourage.