Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)

behavioralscientist.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 135 posts

Re: Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)

#61

Post by Lio »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #46
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #29

A couple of questions/observations as someone born in the UK who emigrated to the US at 25. 1. I wonder when this "difference between culture-driven emotions" fades away. I've been in the US for 35 years now, and I still sometimes sense that I'm viewing interactions the way a British person would (less often than I used to) 2. I wonder how the "noise" of differences between individuals compares in "amplitude" to the…

> 4. US English really needs to re-acquaint (no pun intend) itself with the word "acquaintance" as an alternative to "friend". The almost universal use of "friend" to describe anyone you know (even from the most singular and minor of interactions) really robs verbal behavior about the social environment here of so much subtlety Well, we just call them brothers or sisters if they are that close. Actually…

I'm not sure what it means about me that I can't tell if you're joking or not.

As a Brit I have one friend I've known since childhood I'd call "brother" unironically. Even then I'd probably have to have been drinking.

Re: Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)

#62

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

jansan wrote: post #44
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #20

As a Frenchman, when I worked in the valley, people told me to tone it down, that I could come off as rude. On my side, I wanted to slap those people calling others they barely knew "friends", overselling their lunch as "amazing", assuring an outcome with certainty, virtue signaling or refusing to say when something was completely wrong. It's like they were always in a tiny marketing process. Eventually, I learned to…

People in the valley seem to be quite different from people in the southern states (the only part of the US that I have been to). I wonder if the differences within the USA are actually be as significant as the differences between parts of the US and Europe.

When I first visited the US in 1981, I was pretty convinced (as a young, naive and somewhat ignorant Brit) that the differences between someone from New Orleans and someone from Portland, Maine were far greater than anything you could find between any two parts of Europe.

Decades later, that's clearly an exaggeration or just plain wrong, but it is certainly true that people do underestimate cultural differences within the US, and overestimate them within Europe.

Re: Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)

#63

Post by wozniacki »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #5

As an American in Finland I'm sure plenty of Finnish people think my mannerisms come off as fake. But I just figure the best of them will take my natural bubbliness as a fun treat, something a bit different from the otherwise reserved nature of the culture here. There's very little to be sad about in my life, especially given that I get to live in such a lovely country, and I'm not shy about showing it. :)

Mind you being nice is not the same thing as being genuine.

The problem is not with advertising ( or over advertising ) that youre happy when your are indeed happy.

The problem is with not doing so when the situation is inversed - that is advertising youre unhappy when you are indeed unhappy - and couching it in good cheer for outward appearances.

People in most cultures value genuineness over fake cheer although no one really is fully immune to fake cheerfulness and often find themselves falling for it - even when they want to fight it. Because in the end after all the cake and watermelon, its a form of deceitful presentation of the self - whether the person intended it or not. It trips you up in your read of the other person and thus leads to a maladjusted state of affairs where you are forever adjusting and hedging your reactions to the others person true emotions. Its a tax on your mental faculties.

Re: Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)

#64

Post by StreetChief »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #23

I have a long history of trouble with intimacy and long-term relationships, and as a result, I live alone and rather isolated. I have a few friends on FB and others who I email on a regular basis, and I try to cultivate closeness with them as much as electronically possible. But many of my social interactions are based in commerce. So I'll go to a restaurant to eat, alone. I'll go grocery shopping, alone. And so the…

You are not alone.

Re: Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)

#65

Post by j7ake »

SoftTalker wrote: post #15

American living in America. I've encountered all types of people. Some are taciturn, some are very direct, some dance around the subject for fear of offending, some are excessively friendly. We're a mix of cultures and I don't think you can say that all or even most Americans have the same social/emotional tendencies.

Nowhere in American is asking “how are you today” to a cashier abnormal. But the article suggests that it is indeed abnormal from a a Dutch perspective.

There are distinctly American customs and cultures that Europeans would look as stereotypically American.

Re: Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)

#66

Post by xhevahir »

mpol wrote: post #25
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's opportunity cost. New Yorkers making $300,000 feel the twinge of lost time much more acutely than, say, the average Minnesotan making $30,000. Indeed, in most countries, you'll notice the dialect of the capital city of the prominent language contains a lot more clipped and shortened words than the rural dialects tend to. This happens here in Finland - Helsinkians speak a much more abbreviation heavy Finnish than…

Huh, why is this downvoted? In the Netherlands, efficiency is part of communicaton, especially in cities. In more rural places people connect a bit more and take time for eachother. These are different rules. And yes, sometimes Dutch people are rude because they like to be. Different people, different strokes.

I didn't downvote the comment myself, but I do think it's glib and reductionist in a way that purely economic arguments often are. In general I find explanations of this kind of behaviors are often facile rationalizations of things that are mostly non-rational and that are absorbed from one's social environment and then imitated.

Re: Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)

#67

Post by cauch »

SoftTalker wrote: post #15

American living in America. I've encountered all types of people. Some are taciturn, some are very direct, some dance around the subject for fear of offending, some are excessively friendly. We're a mix of cultures and I don't think you can say that all or even most Americans have the same social/emotional tendencies.

While I understand the meaning of this comment and see its value, I wonder how you would know to which extend it weakens the initial thesis, though.

If some people live in an island where some place are around 10 degrees and other around 15 degrees, they may say "our island is very diverse, look, yesterday I went to the south, and it was freezing! 10 degrees! it's 5 degrees less than here!"

I understand you see the differences in people you meet in your same culture. But how do you even see the similarities, if you have no experience of other cultures?

Re: Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)

#68

Post by renewiltord »

Haha, this is a cluster of things.

- Americans do reduce social distance with phatic conversation. "how are you?" "Good, how about yourself?"

- Americans do have expected formal acknowledgements. There are a few cultures where formality is a sign of adding social distance, but in America it's definitely an acknowledgement. In another culture the emphasis will be on how much you liked the thing, but in the US, it is important to say "thank you"

- There is a lot of fake positivity in the US for sure. For instance, you'll see this online with "I don't know who needs to hear this but YOU ARE LOVED". That's a strange sentiment to express. How could you know?

But ultimately it's mostly just words. The sentiments expressed are the same and the language is just different. It might just be a thing among Anglophones since the British are somehow worse about the word / intention mismatch though without the enthusiasm.

This does remind me of that Reddit thread where an Eastern European asks "Guys, what is a chamicha? My American colleagues always compliment me on it and I thank them and we go on." where it was discovered that it was "Nice to meet you".

Re: Americans are fake and the Dutch are rude (2022)

#69

Post by kazen44 »

teekert wrote: post #55
fredsmith219 wrote: post #42

So which is it? Do you want fake civility or sincere rudeness?

The whole point is is that it’s not fake, it feels fake to us, and we (I’m Dutch) are not rude, it feels rude to Americans. We value different things. They are trying to be nice by making compliments, we try to connect by being brutally honest (orthogonal but both positive?). I can tell you our Dutch waiters can learn a thing or two from their US counterparts about service (well maybe it’s also because we hardly tip,…

tipping in my opinion is rather rude.

as a bussiness, you are basically asking for a handout to make the lives of your waiting staff bearable. In my opinion this mean you should not run a business.

Why would i tip someone when they do their job? Should we do this for all jobs? (the same goes for the military in my opinion).

Post reply on HN