Episode 12: Social Determinants of Health & Priority Populations.

[Music] I've got it. Now you can too. It's the Effing Audacity. Now in a can. [Music] Hello, my name is Renee Maxine Haas, and this is the Effing Audacity. I'm joined by a new reallow, a professor of psychology at the University of Warwick in England, and a visiting professor at the University of Tartu in Estonia. Her work focuses on personality, emotional expression, values, and how culture shapes the way that we understand ourselves and each other. She spent decades researching cross-cultural psychology and the ways personality and emotional life vary across societies, which makes her a perfect person to talk with about authenticity, emotional expression, and whether being yourself means the same thing everywhere. Your research has focused on personality and culture for many years. What drew you to studying how people express emotions and understand themselves across different societies? It all goes back to 1990s when I was a doctor of students, and it was about a time when people started to become interested in cross-cultural art differences. I did my PhD in psychology department, and all of a sudden, all sorts of papers were published, which asked a question to what extent some language was discovered or found in the United States in North America. Did it actually work the same way in a different part of the world? It was exactly a time when my PhD worked, and it's how it started, because we were curious to find out, for instance, to what extent is famous or infamous or five-factor model of personality, for instance. Is it universal? To what extent is universal? Can it be used to describe people's personalities, you know, outside of the US, outside of a Western world in different languages? I think by the time we started doing this research, there were just a handful of studies which had tested, you know, this model in non-Western or non-Indo-European languages. And the same art was about emotions, because Arbor was his really famous paper published on sort of two-facts, a structure of emotions, or emotional experience to be more precise, and it was about positive and negative emotions, and we didn't really know, you know, if the same two factors, forward factors, emerge in our cultural context as well. So the maybe I should say yes, I'm originally from Estonia, which is a small country in Northern Europe, and we speak language, which is very different from Indo-European, and we speak language, very few people speak. So it was really important for us to understand, to what extent there's no American theoretical concept, creepy applied in our context as well. So this is how it started. Fascinating. Authenticity is often associated with openly expressing feelings and individuality. From a cross-cultural psychology perspective is that universal or culturally specific? I think authenticity, the way we talk about it, it's a very western concept, because as you said, it's all about expressing your individuality, your inner characteristics, including your emotions, sort of like we talk about our, I don't know, attributes, personality characteristics, what makes us special. It's not a universal way to talk about yourself. So already many years ago, I went to a well-known cross-cultural psychologist, a social psychologist, or he's a Rosemarco, so she know what it's like, I'm a, say, sort of published a paper in which they showed that people in western and sort of non-western cultures were, they have different kinds of self-concepts. We talked about independent versus interdependent self-concept, meaning that in western cultures, it's, it's, it's yourself, a way you see yourself. It's defined by your sort of unique characteristics. If somebody asks you who you are, you talk about your qualities, your personality traits, whatever makes you special in your view, this is who you are, but in many different parts of the world, in non-western cultures, people see themselves in terms of relationships. So the relationships with other people are essential parts of you. You cannot really talk about yourself without defining those relationships first. And even later research has argued that we should move beyond this dichotomy because it's too simple or too simplistic in a way. So I think an important thing to understand when we talk about authenticity, expressing your uniqueness, your internal attributes and everything, this is a very Western way to think about yourself. And when we think about non-western, more collectivistic cultures, you know, it's more about relationships and of course it affects a way to express ourselves because it's not so much about who you are in terms of your personal characteristics, it's more about who you are in terms of your relationships and if relationships are important or authentic self needs to be expressed in a different way because maybe you don't want to disrupt group harmony for instance because you want to maintain those good relationships which are so important for you. And so in this way it has a direct impact on how we also express our emotions and they have a quite some studies which have investigated this and which are simply interesting and have actually shown that in more collectivistic countries are a small flexibility in a way to express your emotions because when norms, all these norms like I have to be happy or I have to express my happiness in order to express my authenticity are not that strongly present in that. There are different cultural norms across different cultures and I imagine that emotional expression is considered differently whether the a response is appropriate or respectful or even trustworthy. I think it's interesting too because this can show up for the individual when they take themselves out of the culture that they're familiar. So when people move between cultures or spend significant time abroad they often start questioning parts about themselves, their personality or what parts are cultural conditioning from your perspective, how intertwined are those two things? I think what it's said, I think all of us who have travelled around the world or lived in different cultures, we have noticed how our behaviour and also maybe emotional expression when we move cultures for instance are accessible travelers I'd say can adjust the expressions are based on cultural expectations without losing their authenticity because it's sort of this kind of cultural intelligence I would say because you need to understand how people feel and how they think and how they express themselves when you move cultures because you don't want to be insensitive if you want to have good relationships with people who are and also fit in in some way so these are definitely issues you need to navigate understands about yourself but I don't think it necessarily means you will be losing your authenticity I think it's about adjusting your behaviour to environment and I think we also do this when we are in our own culture because let's say you are a really really extra-out of person and you I don't know you are very talkative you enjoy having fun and sort of like laughing out loud and doing all sorts of things but if you don't have any psychological or passated disorders you will be able to adjust your behaviour in certain situations so that like you need to attend the funeral of someone who maybe it's not too close to you maybe you're not overwhelmed by feelings of sadness but at the same time you won't be laughing you won't be chatting to that person next to you because you will be able to adjust your behaviour and and and your expression of emotions based on the situation or demands and circumstances so you can think about the culture of sort of removing cultures in the same way it's a cultural norm maybe not to be that expressive in terms of your emotions and the and you can adjust your exclusivity in order to fit in or to be polite, for instance. I experienced this personally. For example, if I was in Indonesia, the weather was hot and humid. My pace slowed down. I became more relaxed. It's a very happy, fun, cultural personality. The people there are so open and joyful. And so those parts of me came out, versus when I was in Japan, I was more reserved. The part of me that's very comfortable keeping to myself. I'm very introverted. That part came out very strongly. And I also noticed much later into my travels. When cultural things that I was very used to, especially around productivity, being hard working, that mentality, when that had been gone for months, parts of me that I thought were me were no longer there. And I was learning the parts of me that stayed that were always there, no matter what the context was. For listeners that are interested in this story, they can go my previous episode. It's titled What Years of Travel, Talk Me About Authenticity. With globalization and social media, people are constantly being exposed to emotional and cultural norms online. Do you think that emotional expression across cultures is becoming more similar because of this, or do deep cultural differences remain surprisingly stable? Good question. I didn't know. Can I ask you yes and yes? I think to some extent, yes and yes, because I think to some extent, I definitely, people travel so much. And we are so connected in our days more than we've ever been to. And also our internet, CB shows, so definitely has an impact on how people behave, on how they express their emotions at the same time. Really important and significant cultural differences persist because not all people are constantly online. Not all people are interested in communicating with people from different cultures. Not all people are interested in traveling or maybe they are, but they just cannot because of economic or social difficulties. So these differences still persist. And some of those differences are so deeply grounded in our culture of heritage. That even though the opulators change some of the basic principles to state a safe and maybe it can just give you a personal example from Estonia and Finland, which are neighboring countries. And for instance, there is this famous sort of theory about silent things, which also applies to Estonia. So you could say silent Estonians because silence has been cherished and valued, both Finland and Estonia for, I didn't know for how long. We have so many old saying about people who talk too much are a bit like shabit and you know, you shouldn't really laugh too much because that's another sign of shabit or if you are too happy or you look too happy, you expect your emotions like, oh my god, you know, things are going so terribly well, you know, people would say, oh my god, you know, don't you not supposed to save us out loud because you will jinx it somehow. And it's sort of a silence is appreciated. It's been appreciated, meaning that when two people meet, they can happily just be sit together in complete silence. This silence is friendly and it's not predsending because there are so many studies which have shown that in North America, for instance, silence in such situations is seen as something uncomfortable. Also, Estonia's opinions didn't do any small talk. If you have nothing to say, you say nothing, it's mutually accepted and you give other people space. You respect other people by respecting privacy, by not chatting. And it has changed to some extent. It has changed because I think both countries, at least in capitals, there are so many international people. Of course, if you have different style of communication, when I went to Finland fast more than 40 years ago, it was still a silent sort of country. You can easily go around nobody would say anything. And nowadays, in Helsinki, it has completely changed. People are chatty, people are small talk. And since the fourth, it has definitely changed across decades because of this globalization. But it's not so at the same level. And if you go to smaller places, people keep to themselves and not really talk to strangers or each other as much as people in some other parts of the world. And it's fine. It's absolutely fine as long as you know, such as this is friendly silence. So yeah, so I think things have changed, but maybe not as much as we think they have. I had reverse culture shock after being out of the United States for a year, mostly traveling throughout Asia and Europe, and then returning to New York City for additional travel. And strangers were just chatty and friendly. And I was like, I forgot that this existed. It was quite a change up. But it is quite nice because when I'm back in Estonia and also I was in Finland a few years ago for half a year when I was in sabbatical. And each time I went back home in England, it was lovely because I really appreciated those moments where at least I'm in a coffee shop. It's about today and you sort of like you keep chatting for an expo minutes about the kind of coffee beans you like. And you know, it may be so happy. So I'm a thought like, oh my god, I mean, this is wonderful. This is so nice. Yes. I wonder because for me how you described Estonia, Finland, the more silent culture, keep to yourself, not overly chatty, that would be my absolute comfort. So I would love that. And I wonder if they're, you know, I could imagine people who are born there that are actually quite extroverted and they have the reverse discomfort from me where they actually wish they could be so much more chatty and they're constantly holding themselves back. We know that in people who have high levels of acceleration, who as well as openness to new experience, these other ones we usually go abroad and seek out different places and different people. So it's, I mean, it's been shown in so many different studies that it's a specific, I hate to say type, but let's say these two personated traits make it much more likely for someone to leave their country and culture. What's one misconception people often have about emotional expression across cultures? It's a really good question. I didn't know there's a misconception, but maybe people don't really think about it. It's basic facial expression expressions the way we express basic emotions. It's actually pretty universal and we can amplify the level of expression the way we express our joy, the way we express our sadness, the way we express when we are angry, for instance, or when we feel discussed, when we are surprised. So the facial expressions look pretty much the same regardless of culture. And I think people don't often think about it. And the same goes for sort of emotional experience when it comes to your physiological reactions. So some of those components are universal across cultures and some of those components are culture specific or you mentioned traveling in Japan. And there's a really cool study are from the sciences in which they show really unhappy and sort of scary films to participants from Japan and the US and the Japanese participants when somebody was present in the same room they couldn't express that comfort they more-skinned with this weird smile because of cultural norms we couldn't show how upset or sad or angry they were. And they more-skinned with this sort of a bit strange smile but the US participants really expressed whatever negative emotions they experienced. So this part is definitely culturally determined to a large extent but when it comes to your physiological reactions, the way we experience anger, for instance, you feel like you are literally boiling. It's something happens to you and to you experience and you extreme sense of fear. We all know how it feels. It's in your legs or love or this immense sadness. So these are all very universal as are our facial expressions and some really cool studies about how even blind people who are born blind so they couldn't learn those facial expressions, you know, from other people because they've never seen the faces of other people's started. So they still smile the way you know we all do who can sort of see and when we are sad, if they have the same facial expression and sense of fear. So you know think about emotions. Emotions consist of multiple different components. Some of them are universal across cultures, and some of them are culture specific. It was an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for joining me. So much for having me.