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Off DeWall: From Labs to Cabs

          When you of a scientist learning, where does that learning take place? In a sterile, laboratory environment? Or in the back of a taxi cab? Today I learned lessons in both places, but each lesson took a different flavor.

          If you’re like most people, you think of a scientific laboratory as a large room filled with beakers, Bunsen burners, and people with white lab coats not saying much. That might be true of some laboratories, but it doesn’t come close to grasping what most psychology laboratories look like. People occasionally traipse around in white lab coats (my research assistants do), but most of the time people simply wear slightly better than average looking clothes. There is usually a line of small rooms, in which individual participants are led and given instructions for what they’re going to do. Faculty members have their offices close by, often next door to other faculty who share their common interests. Even our faculty offices usually look the same.

          This is where I do a lot of my learning. I meet with students, with faculty colleagues, and with guests about their ideas, research findings, and other interests. Today was no exception, except it had a cool twist: I was in a conference call with a colleague in Wyoming who is working with my local host, Tom Denson, and I on a project. We opened up the Skype video call in Tom’s office, and voila! We saw our Wyominian colleague, Ben Wilkowski. Immediately something was clear: Ben’s office was almost identical to Tom’s. They had white boards with similar messages scrolled across them, they had two computer monitors to juggle their email and their iTunes list, and they were both wearing slightly better than average looking clothing.

          We spent an hour talking about ideas, especially regarding the relationship between self-control and aggression. Is self-control always a good thing? Are there times where there might be a so-called “dark side” to self-control? At the end of the hour we knew a couple of things. First, we had a plan for a collaborative project that would use our collective curiosity, talent, and resources. Second, we felt extremely connected to each other. I learned a ton. I skipped happily to lunch, where I had my new favorite food: laksa soup.

          I knocked off work early to go to the famous Sydney aquarium. I love fish, especially marine fish. When I was in college, I was the guy with three aquariums in his room. The fish helped keep me company as I studied late into the night. Plus, they’re easy to take care of when you’ve never really taken care of anything. The aquarium floored me. I loved it! I went next door to the wildlife exhibit, where I saw kangaroos, koala bears, crocodiles, and all sorts of other Australian animals (see picture of me at the entrance).

          But what I learned most took place on the way back from the aquarium. My taxi cab driver taught me a lot. When I sat down, I immediately started up a conversation with him in the same way I do with almost anyone I’m going to spend some time with. (See yesterday’s post on how I’m a talker.) “Man, the weather was vicious this morning, wasn’t it?” “Has it been a busy day driving?” “How long have you been driving here in Sydney?”

When I asked the driver where he was from, he told me. He asked where I was from, and I told him. “I don’t like America, and I don’t like Americans,” he said. “Really? Why?” I asked. “I just don’t like them,” he said. “You think you can run every country, but you can’t. This is true of Americans.” He went on to say some hurtful things about Americans, some of which aren’t worth repeating.

          I didn’t quite know how to respond. My first thought was that he was entitled to his opinion. It wasn’t my job to convince him that my country is great. All I can do is be an example of how one person from one country can behave. My second thought was that I needed to take his perspective. Why does he hold his negative attitudes? Did something happen to make him feel this way?

          “Have you ever been to America” I asked.

          “No, I haven’t,” he replied, his tone dropping a bit. “My ex-girlfriend left me to move to Philadelphia. I was supposed to go to meet her, but she ended the relationship three months later. I haven’t seen her since. She has children and a new husband now. If I went to America now, I wouldn’t even visit her.”

          Immediately I knew part of what happened. If someone I loved moved to another country and then ended our relationship, I might hold a grudge against the country. I would wonder if she had stayed in my country, or gone to a different country, if things would have been different.

          “I’m so sorry that happened,” I said. “I bet that was painful.”

          The car fell silent until I arrived at my hotel. As I was getting ready to pay, the driver perked up and said, “Please have a great rest of your visit. Have a great day.” We connected with each other. By taking his perspective, I learned that he and I were more similar than we were different. He might still not like America, or Americans, but he knows one American who tried to take his perspective.

          Did I learn more in a lab or in a cab today? I don’t know. I learned different things from different people. But one thing is for sure: learning can take place anywhere, with anyone, if I’m open to it. A&S Wired pushes the boundaries of where – and how – learning takes place. It helps me develop a new attitude toward learning and other people.     

Off DeWall: Wired in Australia

DeWall at Coogee Beach, Sydney, Australia (March 5, 2012)

Off DeWall: Wired in Australia

          That’s right, I’m off to Australia. This is the blog of my adventures. I will update it every day.  

Being a simple man, my first adventure takes place in the plane itself. That’s right, I’m currently at the tail end of my flight to Sydney. This leg of the journey is about 16 hours, depending on the headwind. Being an odd duck, I love the long plane ride! You always have time to do what you want. I can blog, watch movies, write, sleep, and read books – over and over again. Unlike the usual hour or two-hour jags you do flying State to State, international flights give you time to make a nest for yourself. But I didn’t fly all the way to Australia so that I could build my nest.

Australia selected me as a Visiting Fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales. They identify scholars from universities outside the U.S., fly them to Sydney, have them give speeches, and encourage them to build connections with other faculty and students. It’s just me this time. Other times, they fly people in pairs or trios. Just as A&S Wired has the mission of connecting students with each other, with faculty, and with their community, the Visiting Fellows program has as its mission connecting international scholars with Australian faculty and students.

How did they identify me, you may ask? Social connections! Several years ago, I started collaborating with Tom Denson, who is a professor at the University of New South Wales. Tom and I share common research interests in self-control and aggression. In fact, we published a recent paper in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science on how most acts of aggression result from poor self-control. (Eli Finkel, from Northwestern University, also co-authored the paper.) When Tom emailed me last summer to see if I had an interest in being a Visiting Fellow, I jumped at the opportunity.

While I’m in Australia, I’ll give a speech about my self-control research, a writing workshop to graduate students and junior faculty members, and have many meetings with Tom and other faculty. Of course, I’ll also have time for fun and playing. My apartment is right on the beach!

Off DeWall: What Relationship Do You Mean?

            Most of my posts and thoughts focus on relationships and, more broadly, social connections. I often treat social connections as these simplistic things that govern thought, emotion, and behavior. But social connections have many different flavors. Your relationship to your parents gives you something different than what you get from your best friend, your professors, or your local Starbucks barista. Each relationship partner also gets something different from you. In a keynote address by the eminent cultural psychology, Michael Harris Bond challenged me to think differently about how people relate to each other.

            Michael shoots out of any crowd in Asia. At a lean 6’5”, he towers over most people here. He has a bald, shiny head that emits a ray of light if the spotlight catches it at the correct angle. Just before he started speaking, he donned a white floppy hat (a la Gilligan’s Island). Maybe it’s his trademark.

            During his talk, Michael urged us social psychologists to consider how situations impact people differently according to the type of relationships they’re in. People behave differently when they’re with a single other person compared to when they’re around a bunch of other people. I buy that. When I’m around one person, I usually say and do things that I won’t do around a bunch of people.

            What’s missing, however, is which flavor of relationship we’re talking about. If I’m alone with a parent, how does that relationships change my behavior compared to when I’m with a bunch of professors (as all of the A&S Wired students will experience in a few short weeks)? And what happens to my behavior when that relationship changes? We shouldn’t think of relationships as static things; they swell, grow in intricacy, and can crumble over time.

            Or how about when we see groups of people as a single person? Social psychologists, who make their dough giving odd names to simple concepts, call this tendency entitativity. (You’re spell-check isn’t broken. That’s how you really spell that clunky word.) Under these circumstances, my behavior around a single person will mimic how I behave around a throng of people if I perceive that throng as a single person. For example, my behavior toward a Duke University basketball fan and a bunch of Duke University basketball fans might not differ much if I simply think of them as a single thing: rival.

            Where does this leave us? A lot closer to many more questions.  

Off DeWall: Are Narcissists Everywhere?

Have you ever known someone who loved himself? I’m not talking about the usual positive self-feelings people have. I’m talking about the guy who has a literal addiction to fame, constantly self-promotes, feels entitled to special treatment, and needs to have everyone gawk at how good looking he is. We all know people like this. They’re what we psychologists call narcissists. Narcissism is on the rise in the United States. American have never loved themselves more than they do now. But is this boost in narcissism isolated to Americans? Today, I learned that narcissism isn’t limited to Americans.

Let me back up a bit. In psychology, there’s been a debate over the past ten years about whether people from Asian cultures cherish self-esteem the same way Americans do. Whereas some people argue that Asians generally don’t think that they’re better than others (a tendency psychologists call self-enhancement). The presumption is that Asians generally include others in the self-concept, so it doesn’t make sense to them to think that they’re better than others. Others assert that Asians self-promote like Americans do. Like many academic debates, this one isn’t going to be resolved any time soon. It does beg an important question: do Asians show signs of narcissism?

According to a presentation by Huajian Cai at today’s conference, narcissism is present in China much like it is in the U.S. The talk, titled “Chinese Self-View: Goodbye to Modesty and Hello to Narcissism,” reported results dispelling the belief that narcissism is unique to Americans. China also has narcissists.

What can we make of this finding? It’s probably too early to tell. The broader question is what effect narcissism has on society. Although many people think narcissism is a good thing, I know better. Narcissists have all sorts of problems relating to others. Just ask anyone who’s been in a relationship with a narcissist. When I talk to college students about narcissism, sometimes they ask whether it’s good to be slightly narcissistic. For example, they tell me “it’s good to be confident.” I agree. But narcissists aren’t confident—they’re overconfident. Feeling that you deserve to be treated kindly is healthy; feeling entitled to special treatment because you’re better than everyone isn’t.  

I must admit that it’s slightly comforting to know that narcissism is also present China. In what’s becoming a common theme of this trip, I continue to recognize how connected Americans and Chinese are. This connection begins mostly in how similar our minds work, including our narcissistic tendencies.            

 

Off DeWall: A Tale of Two City Blocks

            Opulence and squalor usually seem worlds apart. Country clubs usually don’t border low-income housing, designer clothing stores purposefully keep access to their goods limited to only a certain clientele (if you haven’t seen the movie Pretty Woman, watch it and you’ll get the reference), and the checking accounts that most people take for granted are a privilege offered only to people who have quality credit. Yet, I just experienced an exception to this rule.

            I just landed in Kunming, which is a town in southwestern China. My hosts Xinyue Zhou, Ding-guo Gua, and I flew here to attend the biennial Asian Association of Social Psychology conference. (We’re usually in a town called Guangzhou, which is located in south central China.)

            Kunming is simply gorgeous. I’m staying at a beautiful resort called the “Crystal Place.” It has a huge pool, waterfalls, and the biggest koi pond (and koi fish) I’ve ever seen. They call Kunming the “Spring City” because the weather is like spring all year. It’s about 26 degrees Celsius, which is about 78 degrees back home. That’s quite a difference from the 36 degree (97 degrees Fahrenheit!) days I had back in Guangzhou.

            Is Kunming gorgeous for everyone? I think not. Ding-guo and I needed to grab a bite to eat because the resort buffet closed early. We walked down the street to the nearest restaurant. Although we were only 50 feet from the resort’s 100 foot ceilings, marble floors, and picturesque statues, it looked like the entire block had been bombed. Entire storefronts were filled busted concrete walls, people dumped their garbage in the alley (much to the delight of a bunch of stray cats), and people were brokering what was possibly illegal activity openly.

            Once we made it to the restaurant safely, we had an absolute blast. It was a restaurant where you actually pick out your fish to eat. They had a big pond in the kitchen filled with enormous fish. They killed the fish in the back and then brought it out to us to cook in a stone bowl built into our table. It was easily the freshest fish I’ve ever had—and remember, I lived in Florida for four years during graduate school. Ding-guo and I had several laughs and chatted about America and China’s relationship (and how much we citizens from each country have in common with each other). We also chatted with the cook who took care of our fish. He was such a nice, smiley guy. After a long dinner, Ding-guo and I said farewell to our new friends from the restaurant and hurried home to our resort.

            It’s so easy to take what we have for granted. Usually this is because the rich and the downtrodden are segregated from each other. When the veil that separates people is cast away, it’s a much different world. It’s a world where people are just people, where a belly laugh is intoxicating no matter where you are, and where you can easily embrace the common thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that connect all people.  

Off DeWall: Nothing Lost in Translation

DeWall speakingYesterday I gave a speech at the Department of Psychology that covered my social exclusion research. It lasted about 90 minutes, which included time for me to field questions from the audience. I had a terrific time! But this isn’t a post about how great the talk went. That’s not up to me, and it’s none of my business. What struck me, from the second it started to when I floated up to my office afterwards, was that the talk made sense because it focused on something that’s true for most people—the need for close relationships, and the pain that ensues when those relationships crumble.

To be honest, my talk got off to a rocky start. My host, Xinyue Zhou, introduced me. This is completely normal. But it wasn’t like any other introduction I had ever experienced: she introduced me in Chinese. I caught about five words of her introduction (Nathan DeWall, social rejection, Kentucky). While I was listening to her, I wondered what else she was saying. Was she giving them special instructions about how to listen to my talk? Were they supposed to interject questions if something wasn’t clear? Did she forget to tell me that I had to give my talk in Chinese?

            These thoughts rushed in and out of my head, distracting me a bit from what I was there to do. And then people started to applaud, which let me know it was my time to talk. Slightly dazed and confused, I thanked her for her kind introduction, curious about what she actually said. (She told me later that it was a standard introduction and that I didn’t miss anything important.)

            Once I started talking, things fell into place. Getting to share the research we do at the University of Kentucky with other people is truly one of my favorite parts of being a professor. To see people grab on to new information, to make common sense seem like uncommon sense, and to hear their reactions and ideas is like the cherry on top of a wonderful ice cream sundae.

            When my talk was over, a faculty member stood up, turned to the audience, and said something in Chinese. I knew she asked them a question, but I didn’t know what it was. To try to figure it out, I looked at the audience members’ non-verbal behaviors. They were all nodding their heads and smiling. I asked the faculty member what she asked them. She said, “I asked them if they understood the material you covered. They all did.”

            That was when it struck me: no matter what language people use to communicate, there are some topics that strike home for almost everyone. Close relationships, in all their glory and gore, are no exception.  

Off DeWall: School’s Out for Summer

     Whew! Class is over. We met for five hours a day for a week, which would have been grueling had we not had our two-hour lunch breaks. I love, love, love the students here. They’re smart, hard-working, polite, and a pleasure to be around. We also had a ton of laughs. For example, one of my students (named Yalu) knew how much I like the noodles here. I would often mention them in my lectures whenever I wanted to contrast something awesome with something not so great. Yalu is interested in applying to the graduate program in social psychology at the University of Kentucky. To tell me how much she loves psychology, she told me “psychology is my noodles.” Priceless!

     All in all, the class was a tremendous success. It was one of those extremely positive experiences that fundamentally changed how I think about myself and others. It taught me quite a bit not only about working with Chinese students, but also about how much of the work that I do is focused on people from North America. When we would discuss one of my papers, the students would often ask whether the social psychological research we conduct at the University of Kentucky would replicate in China or other Asian cultures. This experience motivated me to more fully acknowledge the limitations of my research, especially regarding cultural differences.

     I look forward to connecting with my Chinese students in the future. We took a ton of pictures at the end of class, including a picture of the whole group. Several students have aspirations of attending graduate school in the America. I’ll write them strong letters of recommendation to help them get in. Although Facebook isn’t permitted by the Chinese government, I heard that there is some software that people can purchase to allow them to access Facebook. Who knows, I might just find a bunch of friend requests from my students once I return to Kentucky and can access my Facebook account.

    With or without Facebook, I feel more connected to the global community at this moment than I’ve ever felt before. And for that, I’m deeply grateful.   

class photo

Off DeWall: Happiness Across Cultures

On my way to class this morning, I saw one of my students gazing at the beautiful scenery surrounding the classroom building. His English name is Garden (he’s next to me in the attached photo). We talked for a bit and then Garden asked me a question I had never been asked, “Are all Americans happy?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I told Garden that his question intrigued me, and I asked him what led him to ask me whether all Americans are happy. He told me that I seemed quite happy, even happier than most people he sees every day. Because I’m the first American he’s ever met, he wondered if most Americans were like me. Garden said that he believes Chinese people don’t wear a smile on their faces that much, possibly because they have a lot to worry about.

There are cultural differences in happiness. People from France are happier than people from America, whereas Americans are happier than people from Finland. But what I think is more important is how similar people are in what makes them happy. Whether you live in China or America, having positive and lasting relationships – the sort of strong social connections that Wired seeks to cultivate – is a key to happiness.

I told this to Garden, who understood what I meant. I told him that I’m a naturally happy guy, which I probably get from my late mother. She was the sort of person who could light up a room with her positivity. Some people will always be happier than others, but having supportive relationships can rid people of the sadness, uncertainty, and unpleasantness that are inevitable parts of life. 

Off DeWall: Research the Day Away, but with a Long Lunch

            We had a full day of learning today, with a long break sprinkled in for fun. Although it would be unheard of to have class on Sundays in America, it’s somewhat normal in China. We met from 9:50am-12:25pm and 2:25-5:00pm. We covered a lot of material, from how and why social psychologists do their research using the scientific method to how social psychologists formulate and test their theories. It was a ton of fun!

            Between the two class sessions, we had a two-hour break for lunch. This is quite common at Chinese universities. Students and faculty have a long lunch and then usually take a nap for about 30min-1hour. I couldn’t believe it! When my teaching assistants told me that I would be able to change the schedule, my first thought was that we needed to shorten the two-hour lunch to about 30 minutes. After all, that’s what I do at home in Kentucky. (In reality, I usually eat my lunch during a meeting, so I effectively don’t take lunch breaks.)

            This idea did not go over well at all with the students. “We’ll get tired in the afternoon, making it hard to concentrate,” they told me. I agreed and we kept the two hour lunch break.

            I must admit that I didn’t know what to do with myself during this long break. Do I write? Do I email? Do I, heaven forbid, rest? I ate some Oreo cookies, read the NY Times, and played a game on my iPad. It was actually pretty fun. My batteries were re-charged by the time the second class session started.

            Each day I gain a new appreciation for the small cultural differences that make travelling so interesting. Whether it’s the exotic foods, the different ways we express ourselves through language and our non-verbal behaviors, or long lunch breaks that encourage rest and relaxation, I feel like I’m more connected with the global community. 

Off DeWall: Island Cycling Adventure

            What has two steering wheels, a roof, two rows of seats, and four wheels? You guessed it: a bicycle! Today, three students took me on an island cycling adventure. We went to an island just outside of Zhuhai, which faces the South China Sea. There were many people out there enjoying the weather and scenery, including small armies of young children collecting crabs they yanked from the rocks on the sea.

            Because there were four of us—me, my teaching assistants WenWen and Lingnan, and another student named Bi Shuang—we rented a bicycle for four. It was a blast! We cruised around the island, stopping here and there to go out on the rocks next to the sea. We tried to race a couple of the other bicycle groups that passed us. We always lost, but we had a ton of fun competing.

            After our island adventure, we had a very popular Chinese meal called “Hot Pot.” Think of a typical American buffet, except that you cook your food at your own table. We got all of the foods we wanted at the buffet—beef, frog, fish, noodles, vegetables, even pig brains!—and put them in a large bowl of boiling water at our table. I’m adventurous, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat the pig brains.

The Hot Pot meal was very fun. I have a lot of respect for Chinese culture and traditions, including how their meals are set up to facilitate social connections. I often eat my lunch alone at my desk, so this is a nice change.