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.

            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.

Yesterday 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.

     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!

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.

            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.

            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.

            What a first day! With all of its excitement, anticipation, and curiosity, we began our class yesterday. There are about 50 students in the course. They’re all 2^nd or 3^rd year students. At Sun Yat-Sen University, they have a separate campus for the 1^st-3^rd year students. It’s located in a small, sleepy town called Zhuhai (CHEW-HI). Mountains surround the town, rivers snake through campus, and there are luscious trees adorned with Spanish moss. Very pretty!

We began with course introductions and a brief lecture on how to think like a social psychologist. We focused on how social psychologists use the same scientific method that the “hard sciences” use, but that what we measure is often subjective. For example, you can’t go the local supermarket and order a six-pack of self-esteem. How, then, do you measure self-esteem when you can’t put your hands on it and toss it your backseat? It takes work, but you can devise clever and nifty ways to measure most psychological things you’re interested in.

Travelling to China takes a long time. After 24 hours of travelling (and two seriously delayed flights), I’m finally here! What, you might ask, was the first thing that I saw in the airport after getting off of my airplane? A Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurant! KFC was the first American fast-food restaurant to open in China. I mentioned the KFC spotting to my hosts, who quickly pointed out how much they loved the Colonel’s recipe. I’m literally on the other side of the globe, yet I still feel very connected to my Kentucky roots.  

Off DeWall: Wired co-Director Goes to China (July 20, 2011)

Wired has the mission of connecting members of the UK family with each other and our local and global communities. This is my first blog entry to show you how I live this mission. I’m in the air right now, on my way to China. I’ll be there for a month doing a bunch of different things devoted to connecting members of the UK family to the global community.

First, I’ll be teaching a short course to Chinese students at Sun Yat-Sen University, which is located in a town called Guangzhou (pronounced GWAN-JOE). It’s in the Southern Part of China, making it something like the Miami of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). I’ll teach psychology students about social psychological research—how to do it, how to evaluate it, and how to get excited about it. I’ll focus on my areas of interest: interpersonal relationships, self-control, and aggression.

Second, I’ll give a speech to the School of Psychology on my research program on how people respond to social exclusion. I relish the opportunity to share the research we’ve conducted at the University of Kentucky with the Chinese faculty and students.