When I first arrived in my host culture (and didn’t speak any of the language), I went to a park and immediately everyone started staring at me, little kids pointed at me, and people snapped my picture. I didn’t have my fly down, I wasn’t inappropriately dressed, and I wasn’t doing anything other than being there. I didn’t know it then, but this was my first introduction to the “stare at foreigners” pattern that is endemic in my host culture.
It is constant, endless staring that never seems to end; it is brazen, unapologetic, and in your face, constant staring. I didn’t realize how pervasive it was until I traveled with my kids to another country and my son asked me, “Dad, why aren’t the people here staring at us?” He just figured that being stared at was normal—so much so that the absence of staring struck him as odd!
Staring is something that aggravates many expats in my host country and used to drive me crazy, but the other day I realized I had changed. I took my entire family to a restaurant where a guy stared at us the entire meal. I wasn’t actually bothered by it; instead, I looked at my family and realized that everything he saw was new and a curiosity: I’m a foreigner and he’s probably never seen one before; my wife is a local and he’s probably never seen a cross-cultural couple before; my kids are biracial and he’s probably never seen that before; I have four kids and most locals only have one or two; all my kids are boys and that’s statistically unlikely. As I considered what he saw, far from being upset at the staring, it kind of made sense to me that he was staring.
How did that change take place? As expats, we regularly encounter stressors and differences and things that can easily make you raging mad at your host culture. It may not be staring, but there are definitely things your host culture does (or doesn’t do!) that irritate you and drive you crazy. How do you live as an expat without developing Raging Expat Syndrome—ok, so that’s not a real thing but I’m sure you’ve seen it in others (if not in yourself!), a low-level of resentment that makes you constantly annoyed by your host culture, ready to explode the next time a local does “that thing” that you can’t stand.
The good news is that Raging Expat Syndrome is easily avoidable…if you know how to deal with and process cultural differences. You don’t have to rage at differences—with the right method, you can respond with empathy, humor, tolerance, and—dare I say—even emulation!
This topic is quite complex, so we’ll address it over the next weeks. Today is the foundational understanding of what makes up cultural differences—and how that informs our response to them—and in the next weeks I’ll share how to move past cultural frustration towards understanding, empathy, and emulation. Let’s dive in!
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Keys of understanding culture: norms and values
Before we understand how to deal with cultural differences, it’s first important to understand that cultures differ in two broad categories: norms and values. Understanding both, and knowing how they differ from each other, is critically important to knowing how to respond to and process cultural differences, so let’s examine what they are at the start.
What norms are
Merriam Webster provides this definition of norm:
a pattern or trait taken to be typical in the behavior of a social group / a widespread or usual practice, procedure, or custom
Merriam Webster, “Norm”
Put simply, a norm is something that a lot of people typically do—what they normally do. Saying hello with a firm handshake is a norm in US American culture; saying hello with a bow is a norm in some Asian cultures; saying hello with a kiss is a norm in other cultures. Whatever is normal for you to do in a situation is the norm of your culture.
Norms can also be what people don’t do in a situation. In US American culture, you don’t talk with food in your mouth while eating; in Chinese culture, you don’t stick your chopsticks straight up in a bowl of rice; in Thailand, you don’t step on money; in Japan, you don’t wear shoes into someone’s house; in many Arab cultures, men and women don’t touch when greeting each other.
Norms are visible and observable, things that people do (or don’t do) according to the custom, practices, and procedures of a country, city, company, or even family. However, we get so used to what is normal in our culture that we often don’t realize we have a norm for basically any situation until that norm is violated or we see someone acting according to a different set of norms.
What values are
What, then, is a value? Merriam Website again provides a helpful starting point:
something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable
Merriam Webster, “Value”
We need to tweak this definition a tad to apply to our cross-cultural context: a value is something that a culture believes is intrinsically valuable or desirable. Values are the beliefs a culture has about what is honorable, right, proper, true, good, or praiseworthy — and thus, conversely, what a culture believes is shameful, wrong, improper, false, bad, or worthy of censure/shame.
Values are deeply ingrained, often unspoken, and yet color deeply our view of the world—so deeply that oftentimes they are so deep that we cannot fathom another cultures’ values and are quick to judge them as not just different, but wrong. I have a friend who lived in a culture where only the oldest woman was allowed to speak and all younger women were expected to be silent—this applied in any situation, whether it was a 70 year old woman with a 20 year old woman or a 10 year old girl with a 7 year old. Westerners would bridle at that as wrong, and yet someone raised in that culture would feel just as strongly that it would be shameful for a younger woman to speak.
Why does one culture say that practice is obviously wrong and another say it’s clearly right? It’s not just because they have different cultures—that’s too simplistic an answer—it’s because they’ve imbibed the values of that culture so deeply that they can’t imagine a different way could not just be acceptable but praiseworthy.
How norms and values interrelate
In reality, values and norms are not always easily separated because values always influence norms and norms always reflect values. Put simply, norms are what people do—values are why they do it.
What this means is that when you encounter a cultural difference that makes you bristle, it could be because you dislike the norm itself, even if you have no objection to the value. I’d be awkward in a greet-by-kiss culture because I’m not used to it, even though I don’t object to it. But usually merely different norms doesn’t lead to Raging Expat Syndrome because norms can be quickly learned.
What’s far harder—and more likely to lead to the syndrome—is when a norm violates a value that you hold dear or because the norm imposes a value that you oppose. A woman growing up in a Middle Eastern culture where unmarried men and woman do not touch will probably react quite negatively if a man greets her with a kiss. Why? Because the norm violates a deeply held value about the proper relationship of men and women.
This difference of norms and values explains why some norms are easy to embrace and others cause so much difficulty. I can drive on the left-hand side of the road without raging at it, since it represents the same values as in the US (order, rule following, efficiency, safety, etc.), but I’m sure I’d have more trouble in a culture where the roads seem chaotic because my values are violated.
The point of these examples is to identify that a norm is never just an action; a norm reflects and embodies a value. To emulate a culture’s norms, then, is not just taking certain actions with your body—it is participating in the values of that culture, which may or may not be the same as yours.
Why this understanding is crucial
This isn’t ivory tower musings of a wannabe sociologist; this is exactly why you get frustrated with a culture and, if you leave that frustration unchecked, develop Raging Expat Syndrome. There’s four important lessons to draw from this understanding of norms and values.
First, and this should be obvious except that lots of expats are bad at this—the more you embrace and emulate the norms of a culture, the less frustration you’ll feel and the less conflict you’ll cause. You don’t have to agree with a value or a norm to emulate it—as long as you’re not violating your conscience or doing something immoral, try to imitate those around you as much as you can, especially in little things that you think don’t matter. You’ll not only honor others and cause less conflict, but you’ll experience less stress yourself if you go with the flow rather than fight the stream of your host culture. And if you bridle at that notion, it means you’re probably from an individualistic culture that taught you to “express yourself” and be different from everyone else. I know it’s hard to change, but if you’re in a collectivist culture, that individualism is gonna cause you a lot of stress and create immense conflict with those around you. Try to adapt.
Second, most of your frustration comes from judging your host culture’s norms by your home culture’s values. I’ll repeat that: most of your frustration comes from judging your host culture’s norms by your home culture’s values. I reacted to people staring at me by saying it was rude—my culture values privacy and so I judged that person’s actions by my value, leading to frustration with him for not acting according to my value! Yet, as I’ve learned talking to locals over the years, they’re just curious about me and aren’t trying to be rude. If I say in my head “that person is rude,” I’ll react negatively, but if I say “that person is curious”, then I’ll have an entirely different reaction. Your frustration comes from using your value to judge their norm; learn to avoid this!
Third, we need to understand and respect a culture’s values if we are ever to make peace with a culture’s norms that irritate us. For example, by realizing that I, too, value curiosity—I regard it as critical to innovation and learning—I’m to empathize with someone who stares at my family because we are a curiosity compared to most locals. If I were him, I’d be quite curious too—and that’s actually something I regard as good! Identifying and respecting my host culture’s values helps me to make peace with the norm.
Fourth, we must humbly recognize that judging another culture’s values takes an immense amount of careful thought. What causes Raging Expat Syndrome is that we experience a norm which violates our values and we instantly judge the norm or value as wrong. Then, of course, our anger is justified because we’re angry at something that’s wrong. But while there are moral absolutes in the world and some values are morally superior to others, it’s far harder to make that assessment than you’d think. For example, consider that my culture values both privacy and curiosity but decides which one is more important in different situations:
- When it comes to a couple’s sex life, their privacy trumps your curiosity (but a very close friend or a doctor can ask about your sex life in certain situations)
- When it comes to a stranger on the street, their privacy trumps your curiosity (but you are allowed to take quick “secret” glances at them)
- When it comes to a celebrity on the street, your curiosity trumps their privacy so that you can stare or take pictures without permission
My host culture would actually agree with situation one and situation three, but in situation two they’d say you can stare at a stranger rather than only have short glances. If I can stop my internal judgement of their culture, am I really so certain that my culture has gotten situation two right? After all, if my host culture says that curiosity can trump privacy in some situations (and even situation one has exceptions!), am I really so certain this isn’t one of those times? Is staring at a foreigner actually that ethically different from staring at a celebrity? Am I really so sure that a short glance at a stranger is fine, but a stare is not? Is there really an objective moral justification for that difference in short and long glances? And am I so certain in my answers to these questions that I have valid moral grounds from which to judge another person as being wrong for staring?
The point in these questions is not to suggest that all things are relative—I believe there are moral absolutes in the universe—but rather to identify the complexity and difficulty of making those comparative ethical judgments. I have to remind myself to be humble when my internal cultural judge screams out “rude!”—after all, I might very well be wrong. That humility in the face of the complexity of the situation helps me to be empathetic rather than judgmental.
Summing it up
I hope you can see how this basic understanding of norms and values is helpful; in the weeks ahead, I’ll be sharing my four-step process for processing cultural differences so that you can avoid Raging Expat Syndrome. Learning to engage cultural differences with humility, empathy, humor, and even emulation, is critical to your surviving and thriving as an expat.
Stay tuned for more!
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