Evidence of Poor Cross-Cultural Interactions in the EA community

[Yi-Yang]

Edit (2024-07-25): added strength of evidence to each evidence, but want to point out that I wasn’t being strategic with my research (e.g., no clear hypothesis, not really doing updating in a Bayesian way, etc).

Summary

In this project, I investigated non-Western EAs’ perception of CCIs they had with Westerners, specifically:

1. How often non-Westerners experienced CCI issues;

2. What kinds of subtle acts of exclusion (SAEs) they had experienced;

3. How their CCIs compare between EA and non-EA settings.

To do that, I collected an array of evidence from seven sources (e.g., anecdotes from interviews and a focus group, and some statistics from three surveys not done by me). And based on the evidence on CCIs I have collected so far, I believe that poor CCIs are likely to be a common but minor problem for most non-westerners in the EA community.

At the organisational or community level, I would not flag CCI issues as something to be heavily prioritised (moderate confidence), but I would recommend EA-aligned organisations and organisers to start or maintain interventions that are sensible or if the trade-offs are acceptable, like some of the ones listed here by AmAristizabal.

At the individual level, I recommend:

1. Checking out some of the vignettes shared by non-Western EAs here and here

2. Read more examples of SAEs here

3. Read some of my low-confidence takes on what non-Western and Western folks could do to improve CCIs

Background

I noticed that I was feeling annoyed in some of my cross-cultural interactions (CCIs) in the EA community, but I couldn’t tell for sure whether these interactions had exclusionary elements in them. These are more subtle, and are not the overt racist behaviours that I’m more familiar with.

Hence, I started this investigation out of a desire to sanity check myself (“Am I misinterpreting things? Or has anyone else experienced the same thing?”). I would also be happy if this project is useful to others too, perhaps by making non-Western folks feel less perplexed or less alone.

In this project, I investigated non-Western EAs’ perception of CCIs they had with Westerners, specifically:

1. How often non-Westerners experienced CCI issues;

2. What kinds of subtle acts of exclusion (SAEs) they had experienced;

3. How their CCIs compare between EA and non-EA settings.

This investigation was done pretty informally and in a non-strategic way (e.g. I wasn’t really explicitly thinking about this in a Bayesian probability way), but it does consist of an array of evidence from seven sources that I think, when combined, are pretty informative.

Evidence compiled

Evidence that might indicate less negative CCIs

1. EA Survey 2022 [very weak evidence]

According to the Rethink Priorities team who lead the EA Survey 2022 project, survey respondents who identified as more non-Western scored slightly better than survey respondents who identified as more Western in terms of:

• Satisfaction (mean): 7.55 (N=219) versus 7.17 (N=2251) out of 10.00 points

• Retention (mean): 5.51 (N=144) versus 5.42 (N=1736) out of 7.00 points

• Mental health (mean): 3.49 (N=143) versus 3.27 (N=1528) out of 5.00 points

The above three metrics aren’t exactly what I’m looking for, that is belongingness. It might be the case that non-Westerners do experience CCI issues but still get a lot of value from EA or belongingness in their local EA groups.

Evidence that might indicate more negative CCIs

1. My personal experience [weak evidence]

Firstly, I’ve noticed Western folks “hijacking” (most likely unconsciously or unintentionally) norms in spaces where non-Western folks traditionally belong, are the majority, or a mix of both. I’ve noticed at least one such behaviour in an EA setting before.

Here are a few non-EA-related examples (to preserve anonymity):

• A discussion group in Malaysia I was a part of has a norm about raising one’s hands and letting the moderator pick the next speaker to make speaking time more fair. Western folks tend to not follow this norm, and tend to have an outsized speaking time (>50%) despite there being only 10-20% of them. To be fair, the moderator did not enforce this norm well. I don’t know how other folks in the group felt about this.

• It’s a norm to not greet (or at most give a slight acknowledgement) to strangers in a lift or a corridor at an apartment in Malaysia. I noticed Western folks violating this norm many times. And I noticed Malaysians (including me) greeting back, sometimes reluctantly and sometimes in a way that isn’t a big deal.

Secondly, I’ve also noticed my relationships with Western folks are more likely than not asymmetric, i.e., I spent more effort and time building relationships with them as compared to vice versa. My experience in the broader EA community seems to mirror this too.

2. Focus group study of Non-Western EAs’ experiences with Western EAs [moderate evidence]

Here’s the summary of a report of a focus group I ran in a retreat just before EAGxPhilippines (read more here).

What are my goals? And what did I find? Are CCIs in EA even an issue for non-Western EAs who attended the retreat? It’s more likely than not that they had experienced at least one mildly-to-moderately bad interaction. These are usually more subtle and unintentional. It’s very unlikely that they had experienced an extremely bad interaction. It’s very likely that their interactions are mostly positive. How widespread is it? (optional) Uncertain, but probably yes.

3. Community Health Survey 2023-2024 [extremely weak evidence]

David Moss published the following graph in relation to the Community Health Survey:

It seems like non-Whites are slightly more concerned about Justice, Equity, Inclusion and Diversity (JEID) issues compared to Whites. However, the sample size is pretty low, and more Asian. And I don’t think this exactly means “non-Whites experience more JEID issues than Whites”, which is the thing I’m more concerned with.

4. [redacted]’s experience [weak evidence]

In the past year or so, [redacted] published a post that highlighted some of their negative experiences in the EA community, including ones that are CCI-related. The post got around a few hundred karmas (if I’m remembering correctly), but the author had removed the post recently.

5. Feedback surveys from EA Globals in 2023 [extremely weak evidence]

In 2023, EA Global feedback survey respondents who identified as more non-Western gave slightly lower scores in response to the question “This event was a place where I felt welcome” (on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being highest).than survey respondents who identified as more Western: 4.30 versus 4.54 out of 5.00 points.

• However, the sample size of non-Western respondents is very small, only 20. These are survey respondents who shared ethnicity information (i.e., there are probably more non-Western respondents but they weren’t captured because I was filtering for those who gave information about their ethnicity.

• Furthermore, like EA Survey 2022, non-Western respondents gave a higher satisfaction score (mean): 9.20 versus 8.80 out of 10.00 points.

6. Interviews to understand Non-Western EAs’ perception of cross cultural interactions they had with Western EAs [somewhat strong evidence]

Here’s the summary of a qualitative study I did (read more here):

I interviewed 21 non-Western EAs (selected from an EA conference’s Swapcard and a few from my own personal network) and discovered: An overwhelming number of interviewees (19 out of 21) thought their cross-cultural interactions in EA settings were almost all neutral or positive. However, among the same 19 interviewees who found their CCIs to be mostly neutral or positive, they’ve also reported the following: 43% (9 out of 19) reported at least one general negative CCI 48% (10 out of 19) reported at least one SAE caused by Western EAs 19% (4 out of 19) reported at least one SAE caused by other non-Western EAs (or themselves) 81% (17 out of 19) reported: At least one general negative CCI, or At least one SAE caused by Western EAs, or At least one SAE caused by other non-Western EAs (or themselves), or A mix or all of the above. When asked to compared CCIs between EA settings and non-EA settings, 7 out of 14 thought CCIs in EA settings are about the same when compared to non-EA settings. 5 out of 14 thought CCIs in EA settings are better for them. 2 out of 14 thought CCIs in EA Settings are worse for them. Here are the most reported experiences: General negative CCIs Non-Western EAs found the act of connecting with Western EAs challenging. (4x) Non-Western EAs felt suspicious about the lack of representation. (3x) Non-Western EAs found the English language barrier challenging to overcome. (3x) SAEs caused by Western EAs Western EAs treating non-Western EAs in a way that’s demeaning. (4x) Western EAs were coming across as paternalistic towards non-Western EAs. (2x) SAEs caused by non-Western EAs Non-Western EAs changing their accent or communication style to be more Western. (2x)

And here are a few vignettes that I want to highlight. I recommend reading more here.

In a workshop related to an EA related cause area, Western and non-Western folks sat at separate tables, probably unintentionally. Someone B knows who attended a similar workshop at a different time had a similar experience. In one of the afterparties during an EA conference, K had two potentially negative CCIs: When they went in the wrong direction, someone yelled the right direction to them in a way that felt infantilising and demeaning. When they were inside the afterparty space, no one seemed interested in engaging with them, so they left early. L had a call with an EA grantmaker. The purpose of the call was to receive feedback about a grant application they were rejected from. L thought that the delivery of the feedback was callous and the grantmaker’s body language was giving off a “I don’t want to be here” vibe. The already-supposed-to-be-short call also ended much earlier than expected. L felt uncertain about what factors contributed to that dynamic, but they suspected the difference in culture may play a part. Although there were a few Africans in an EA conference in Europe, L still felt a little suspicious that they didn’t see any African Europeans. Personal notes from Yi-Yang: I think the message L is trying to convey here is that it’s weird that they did not see any African Europeans in an EA conference in Europe, when they expect there to be more African Europeans than (Continental) Africans. I suspect L might be worried that African Europeans found EA circles in Europe to be unwelcoming. In conversations with Western EAs in EA conferences, M sometimes feels like they’re treated like a lower-status implementer or information source instead of an equal-status collaborator. Personal notes from Yi-Yang: Concretely, this might look like: - Assuming a person is ignorant and not asking whether they know something. - Giving off a body language that the person they’re speaking to is not competent enough.

Limitations

1. There were too many variables to control for (e.g., social status differences, personality, interviewees’ social skills, my own interview skills, etc), and I expect the qualitative data I collected to be noisy.

2. There’s probably some selection bias—almost all of my interviewees are also EA conference attendees.

3. There’s also probably some survivorship bias—people who are most putoff by negative CCIs or who may have experienced the worst CCIs may have already left the EA community, and I should be reaching out to them instead.

4. The “Western” and “non-Western” categorisation can be somewhat arbitrary—there may be folks who are somewhere in the middle that were not selected for.

5. Without even considering how memory retrieval can sometimes be a hit-or-miss, SAEs are already hard to detect. I expect there to be misinterpretations of what actually happened by my interviewees (e.g., some people are just generally rude). And I don’t think I did a good job of steering interviewees towards giving me an empirical observation of what happened.

6. I’m an ethnic Chinese from South-eastern Asia and I noticed a very strong bias towards interviewing more folks from Southeast Asia and East Asia, which isn’t very representative of actual demographics in the EA community. Although I was somewhat semi-systemic with who I picked, it still surprised me.

7. There were potentially other kinds of information I didn’t search for that might be more decision-relevant to various EA stakeholders, like how bad a negative CCI was, how it affected their involvement in EA, what specific changes they would like to see, or the base rates of SAEs in large communities and compare that to EA.

Conclusion

Based on the evidence on CCIs I have collected so far, I believe that poor CCIs are likely to be a common but minor problem for most non-westerners.

• Why common?

  • 81% (17 out of 19) of the interviewees in this study experienced at least one broadly harmful CCI incident.

  • And even if one only selects for interviewees who experienced SAEs caused by other Western EAs, that number is pretty high: 48% (10 out of 19).

• Why minor?

  • Satisfaction scores (from EA Survey 2022 and EAG exit surveys in 2023) are quite high, and are in fact higher than what Western EAs scored.

  • From my interviews:

    • An overwhelming number of them thought their CCIs were almost all neutral or positive.

    • A slight majority of them do think that EA spaces are better for them compared to other spaces.

    • I got the “vibe” that most of the interviewees felt that their poor CCI experiences were pretty minor.

    • 1-2 interviewees had mentioned that they are considering distancing themselves from EA, but poor CCIs were only a minor complaint to them compared to, for example, feelings of disconnect brought on by EA’s elitist culture.

Recommendations

At the organisational or community level, I would recommend EA-aligned organisations and organisers to start or maintain interventions that are sensible or if the trade-offs are acceptable, like some of the ones listed here by AmAristizabal. However, I would not flag CCI issues as something to be heavily prioritised (moderate confidence).

At the individual level, I recommend:

1. Checking out some of the vignettes shared by non-Western EAs

2. Reading more examples of SAEs here

3. Reading some of my low-confidence takes on what non-Western and Western folks could do to improve CCIs

Further research

What more could be done here? Here are some possible paths that I’m more optimistic about (in no particular order):

1. Test out various interventions or theories of change that could reduce rates of poor CCIs and improve belongingness for non-Western folks.

   1. Someone I trust mentioned that they’re more optimistic about such work.

2. Interview folks working in organisations that have a lot of CCIs, are very mission focused, and have a somewhat of an elitist culture (e.g., United Nations, foreign affairs ministries, etc) and find out more about the best practices they implemented.

3. Conduct a larger survey among EAs to make more accurate the frequency of poor CCIs or SAEs, and the negative effects from such poor CCIs.

4. Search for and interview non-Western folks who were previously very engaged and had distanced themselves from EA (to counter survivorship bias).

5. Interview non-Westerners and learn how poor CCIs affected their involvement in EA, what specific changes they would like to see, and which existing efforts if missing will cause more poor CCIs.

I’m less optimistic about doing literature reviews on this topic, since two people I trust mentioned that they’re less optimistic about such work.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for their valuable feedback (in alphabetical order): Catherine Low, Charlotte Darnell, Chin Ze Shen, Joseph Lemien, and Mo Putera.

And thank you to the EA Survey team from Rethink Priorities and the CEA events team for the statistics.

And thank you to all my anonymous interviewees for sharing your experiences with me.

Appendix

Definitions

Western and non-Western

The kind of CCI I’m most interested in is between Westerners and non-Westerners, but forming racial categorisations seems difficult.

Like what Scott Alexander proposes here, I buy into the idea that a person’s ethnic identity could be mapped into a space that has multiple axes like: genetics, culture, language, geography, etc. So, the more Western a person is the closer they are to the centre of this space, and the more non-Western a person is the further they are from the centre.

This makes categorisations more nuanced, but also more challenging. For example, the compromise I made, especially when it came to getting statistics, was to only use these three factors in figuring out how Western or non-Western a person is:

1. Nationality, i.e., a person’s primary citizenship

2. Current residence, i.e., a person’s current primary location of residence

3. Racial identity, i.e., a person’s race they identify with most (e.g., Black, White, etc)

For my specific investigation, I propose that a Westerner is someone who:

1. Has a nationality in countries that are typically associated as Western.

2. Is primarily living in a country that is typically associated as Western.

3. Is White or mixed-race

Using the United Nations’ M49 geoscheme, I labelled countries from the following geographical subregions as “Western”: Australia and New Zealand, Northern America, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, and Western Europe.

Subtle acts of exclusions (SAEs)

I decided to use the term, “subtle acts of exclusion” from Jana and Baran’s book of the same title, because I find it easy to understand and convey. To make their term a bit more specific, I extended it to “subtle acts of exclusion that are any one of prejudicial, unjust, or both” (but I’ll keep the original SAE acronym as it is). What do I mean?

• Subtle: You might have experienced some social situation in the past where you’ve received mixed or conflicting cues (either verbal or non-verbal) that caused you to have two or more interpretations of what happened.

  • So you get the “vibe” that a person just did something that makes you feel excluded, but you’re also unsure whether they meant to exclude you.

  • This is different from the more overt kinds of discrimination, e.g., lynching, using slurs, etc, where it’s pretty clear they mean to hurt or discriminate against you.

• Exclusion: I’m pointing to actions that signal to someone that they don’t belong in a group, or they’re not socially accepted in a group.

• Prejudicial, unjust, or both: I think some acts of exclusion are or can be good (e.g., I prefer to hang out with people who can fulfil my need for respect), but the acts of exclusion I’m pointing to are generally “bad”:

  • The exclusion is caused by prejudice or preconceived opinions that are not true (e.g., I exclude people with green hair because they are known to steal peanuts); or

  • The exclusion is done unjustly or in ways that morally bad (e.g., I exclude people with blue hair because I believe their existence is evil); or

  • The exclusion is done with prejudice and unjustly.

I also think it’s important to be clear about a few things regarding SAEs:

• SAEs can happen either intentionally or unintentionally, and either consciously or unconsciously. In fact, I’m generally more interested in SAEs that are unintentional and unconsciously, since this is the type that I think is happening more often in EA settings.

  • I’m also guessing such SAEs are outputs of our fast, automatic, instinctual, heuristic-like decision making process (i.e., System 1). Some folks may also point to the phenomenon of implicit bias.

• In its original definition, SAEs are done by someone else unto a victim. However, for this piece of writing, I’ve stretched the definition to also include SAEs that are done by the victim unto the victim themself.

• In the context of this writing, I’m using SAE as a broader term that contains the more academic but less intuitive-at-a-glance terms: microaggression and internalised racism. If you’re interested to know more, I’ve compiled a list of examples and nonexamples of microaggressions and internalised racism here.

[David_Moss]

Reading the examples of negative CCIs (e.g. below) makes me think that one of the most informative kinds of future research would be assessing the frequency all events of this kind across all EAs, and assessing whether they differ across Western and non-Western EAs. Based on my own experience, I would expect both Western and non-Western EAs to experience similar events near-constantly, both within EA and without. So it seems it seems like a core crux is whether they occur more frequently or severely in either group /​ when different groups interact /​ in some particular setting rather than another.

When they went in the wrong direction, someone yelled the right direction to them in a way that felt infantilising and demeaning.

When they were inside the afterparty space, no one seemed interested in engaging with them, so they left early.

[Yi-Yang]

Based on my own experience, I would expect both Western and non-Western EAs to experience similar events near-constantly, both within EA and without. So it seems it seems like a core crux is whether they occur more frequently or severely in either group /​ when different groups interact /​ in some particular setting rather than another.

Thanks for the comment! Not sure if you’ve seen this, but there’s weak evidence that poor CCIs occur less frequently in EA settings than non-Ea settings.

When asked to compared CCIs between EA settings and non-EA settings,

• 7 out of 14 thought CCIs in EA settings are about the same when compared to non-EA settings.

• 5 out of 14 thought CCIs in EA settings are better for them.

• 2 out of 14 thought CCIs in EA Settings are worse for them.

[Ben Millwood]

FWIW it strikes me as odd /​ surprising to say that e.g. Black African Americans are not Westerners purely by virtue of not being white or mixed race.

[Ben Millwood]

I should also say I’m grateful to you for what is obviously a pretty significant amount of work, done thoughtfully and with measured conclusions.

(also I think there are some links missing from the Recommendations section?)

[Yi-Yang]

Ah, thanks for pointing that out.
And I appreciate the praise!

[Yi-Yang]

I also feel somewhat confused too. I agree that e.g., Black African Americans are probably pretty close to the category of “West”. At the time, I was thinking about the trade off between including people who are sort of in the middle of West and non-West, and having a clearer demarcation between West vs non-West to reduce noise.

I don’t think I have a lot of strong reasons, but I thought the clearer demarcation is more important. If folks disagree about my decision, happy to hear more!

[Joseph Lemien]

One thing that seems notable to me about these cross-cultural communication/​norms issues is how often they are simply a result of ignorance. If I live in a country for several years I’m probably going to learn that people view it as rude to do some things, and I’ll see how the Romans do it. But if I am only visiting for a short period of time, I will probably be profoundly ignorant of how people there view various behaviors. If I haven’t previously spent time living in, thinking about, or reading about different cultures, I might not even be aware that people have different norms.^[1]

Before reading this, I didn’t know that it was a norm in Malaysia to not greet people in a elevator or a corridor at an apartment. I almost certainly would be guilty of violating this norm if I were to visit Malaysia.

1. ^

   Or at most, I would be aware of relatively obvious artifacts and things that are easy to describe, such as how some cultures tend to take showers in the evening/​morning, people eat using forks/​chopsticks, greeting a person involves a handshake/​hug/​kiss/​two kisses/​three kisses. But it is much harder to describe similar underlying assumptions and values (relationships to parents, happiness with conformity, desire for uniqueness, etc.). I find the Edgar Schein 3-level framework for culture very simple, but useful for starting to think about these things.

   

[Yi-Yang]

Hmm I think you’re right! I don’t think my advice doesn’t seem to be solving this issue.
Perhaps a better advice is to just read more about the norms of the country first? And expect such poor CCIs to happen and allow for space to have meta-conversations around what’s appropriate?

[Joseph Lemien]

I do hope that people learn about behavioral norms before visiting a new place or interacting with people from other places, but it is an unrealistic expectation to expect (for example) for all people joining an event in COUNTRY_A to know about and adapt to COUNTRY_A-style norms of communication and interaction.

Little books of “Learn COUNTRY_A culture and customs while you are on your flight” have existed for decades; the knowledge is generally easily available. But most people simply don’t bother (unaware? aware but deprioritizing?). I imagine that if there was an EAGx event in COUNTRY_A and a Google Doc of a few cultural norms to be aware of was shared with attendees in advance, some of the easier and more clear gaffes could be avoided (such as wearing a tank top and shorts in a religious temple, or not offering to pay for a shared meal, or making a comment about a person’s weight).

There are some small things we can do to reduce the risk of poor CCIs occurring, but of course we will never reduce the risk all the way to zero. Realistically, I suppose we need to simply accept that some level of poor CCIs will occur.