I’m skimming through an academic paper[1] that I’d roughly describe as cross-cultural psychology about morality, and the stark difference between what kinds of behaviors Americans and China view as immoral[2] was surprising to me.
The American list has so much of what I could consider as causing harm to others, or malicious. The Chinese list has a lot of what I would consider as rude, crass, or ill-mannered. The differences here remind me of how I have occasionally pushed against the simplifying idea of words having easy equivalents between English and Chinese.[3]
There are, of course, issues with taking this too seriously: issues like spitting, cutting in line, or urinating publicly are much more salient issues in Chinese society than in American society. I’m also guessing that news stories about murders and thefts are more commonly seen in American media than in China’s domestic media. But overall I found it interesting, and a nice nudge/reminder against the simplifying idea that “we are all the same.”
Dranseika, V., Berniūnas, R., & Silius, V. (2018). Immorality and bu daode, unculturedness and bu wenming. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 2, 71-84.
Note that there are issues here relating to meaning of the words in English and Chinese (immoral and bu daode) not being quite the same, which is a big part of the paper. In fact, the authors even claim that daode is not a reasonable translation for morality (a claim that I roughly agree with).
Similarly to morality, words like friend, cousin, to be open, or hair have different connotations and are used in different ways, and shouldn’t be viewed as exact translations, but rather as rough analogues. My naïve assumption is that the more closely related languages and culture are, the easier it is to translate concepts directly.
I wonder if the main difference is that the Americans and Lithuanians are responding more based on how bad the things seem to be, while the Chinese are responding more based on how common they are. Most of the stuff on the Chinese list also seems bad to me, just not nearly as bad as violence.
I’d think the article you’re referencing (link) basically argues against considering “daode” to mean “morality” and vice-versa.
The abstract: “In contemporary Western moral philosophy literature that discusses the Chinese ethical tradition, it is a commonplace practice to use the Chinese term daode 道德 as a technical translation of the English term moral. The present study provides some empirical evidence showing a discrepancy between the terms moral and daode.”
I think this is a really big and valuable finding, and generally agree with your thinking about language and morality differences, which are valuable research areas.
Anyone doing a deeper dive in the paper might want to think about whether Chinese survey participants are surprised to see relatively extreme and serious crimes like theft and violence and decide not to touch those concepts with a ten foot pole, and default to things that people frequently talk about or are frequently criticized by official news sources and propaganda.
Not that they’re super afraid of checking a box or anything; it’s just that it’s only a survey and they don’t know the details of what’s going on, and by default the tiny action is not worth something complicated happening or getting involved in something weird that they don’t understand. Or maybe it’s only that they think it’s acceptable to criticize things that everyone is obviously constantly criticizing, especially in an unfamiliar environment where everything is being recorded on paper permanently (relative to verbal conversations which are widely considered safer and more comfortable). It’s not that people are super paranoid, but, like, why risk it if some unfair and bizarre situation could theoretically happen (e.g. corruption-related, someone’s filling quotas), and conformity is absolutely guaranteed to be safe and cause no major or minor disturbances to your daily life?
I didn’t read the paper, and these musings should only be seriously considered as potentially helpful for people reading the paper. The paper seems to have run other forms of surveys that point towards similar conclusions.
From the study it looks like participants were given a prompt and asked to “free-list” instead checking boxes so it might be more indicative of what’s actually on people’s minds.
The immoral behaviors prompt being:
The aim of this study is to learn which actions or behaviors are considered immoral. Please provide a list of actions and behaviors which, in your opinion, are immoral. Please list at least five examples. There are no correct answers, we are just interested in your opinion.
My impression is that the differences between the American and Chinese lists (with the Lithuanian list somewhat in between) appear to be a function of differences in the degree of societal order (i.e., crime rates, free speech), cultural differences (i.e., extent of influence of: Anglo-American progressivism, purity norms of parts of Christianity, traditional cultures, and Confucianism), and demographics (i.e, topics like racism/discrimination that might arise in contexts that are ethnically diverse instead of homogenous).
I’m skimming through an academic paper[1] that I’d roughly describe as cross-cultural psychology about morality, and the stark difference between what kinds of behaviors Americans and China view as immoral[2] was surprising to me.
The American list has so much of what I could consider as causing harm to others, or malicious. The Chinese list has a lot of what I would consider as rude, crass, or ill-mannered. The differences here remind me of how I have occasionally pushed against the simplifying idea of words having easy equivalents between English and Chinese.[3]
There are, of course, issues with taking this too seriously: issues like spitting, cutting in line, or urinating publicly are much more salient issues in Chinese society than in American society. I’m also guessing that news stories about murders and thefts are more commonly seen in American media than in China’s domestic media. But overall I found it interesting, and a nice nudge/reminder against the simplifying idea that “we are all the same.”
Dranseika, V., Berniūnas, R., & Silius, V. (2018). Immorality and bu daode, unculturedness and bu wenming. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 2, 71-84.
Note that there are issues here relating to meaning of the words in English and Chinese (immoral and bu daode) not being quite the same, which is a big part of the paper. In fact, the authors even claim that daode is not a reasonable translation for morality (a claim that I roughly agree with).
Similarly to morality, words like friend, cousin, to be open, or hair have different connotations and are used in different ways, and shouldn’t be viewed as exact translations, but rather as rough analogues. My naïve assumption is that the more closely related languages and culture are, the easier it is to translate concepts directly.
I wonder if the main difference is that the Americans and Lithuanians are responding more based on how bad the things seem to be, while the Chinese are responding more based on how common they are. Most of the stuff on the Chinese list also seems bad to me, just not nearly as bad as violence.
I’d think the article you’re referencing (link) basically argues against considering “daode” to mean “morality” and vice-versa.
The abstract: “In contemporary Western moral philosophy literature that discusses the Chinese ethical tradition, it is a commonplace practice to use the Chinese term daode 道德 as a technical translation of the English term moral. The present study provides some empirical evidence showing a discrepancy between the terms moral and daode.”
Yes. The idea of English immoral and Chinese bu daode not being quite the same is a big part of the paper.
I think this is a really big and valuable finding, and generally agree with your thinking about language and morality differences, which are valuable research areas.
Anyone doing a deeper dive in the paper might want to think about whether Chinese survey participants are surprised to see relatively extreme and serious crimes like theft and violence and decide not to touch those concepts with a ten foot pole, and default to things that people frequently talk about or are frequently criticized by official news sources and propaganda.
Not that they’re super afraid of checking a box or anything; it’s just that it’s only a survey and they don’t know the details of what’s going on, and by default the tiny action is not worth something complicated happening or getting involved in something weird that they don’t understand. Or maybe it’s only that they think it’s acceptable to criticize things that everyone is obviously constantly criticizing, especially in an unfamiliar environment where everything is being recorded on paper permanently (relative to verbal conversations which are widely considered safer and more comfortable). It’s not that people are super paranoid, but, like, why risk it if some unfair and bizarre situation could theoretically happen (e.g. corruption-related, someone’s filling quotas), and conformity is absolutely guaranteed to be safe and cause no major or minor disturbances to your daily life?
I didn’t read the paper, and these musings should only be seriously considered as potentially helpful for people reading the paper. The paper seems to have run other forms of surveys that point towards similar conclusions.
From the study it looks like participants were given a prompt and asked to “free-list” instead checking boxes so it might be more indicative of what’s actually on people’s minds.
The immoral behaviors prompt being:
My impression is that the differences between the American and Chinese lists (with the Lithuanian list somewhat in between) appear to be a function of differences in the degree of societal order (i.e., crime rates, free speech), cultural differences (i.e., extent of influence of: Anglo-American progressivism, purity norms of parts of Christianity, traditional cultures, and Confucianism), and demographics (i.e, topics like racism/discrimination that might arise in contexts that are ethnically diverse instead of homogenous).