141–150 of 235 posts
I have been in Russia when the Kursk submarine sank. This event was on the news for days and whenever an official spoke about it on TV I had the impression that they were admitting guilt. This was not the case I've been told. The difference in body language is considerable.
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To be frank, he does sound like a Russian-American. They are often pretty dismissive of their heritage. Rightfully so, judging by your comment.
What does it mean to be a Russian-American? He left the country when he was 5? He was born in US to Russian parents? His comment is pretty ignorant. The article is fairly accurate.
I worked with some Russians a few years ago. Great guys. One wasn't very well adapted to American culture. He came to my cube one day. He's like "Let's go get a smoke", but his face and tone was flat, so it came across as "You've pissed me off in some way and I'm probably going to kick your ass now". I demurred. A couple more offers over the next few days and I finally relented (I don't smoke, but went to hang out).…
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Have you written more about this and other culture comparisons (i.e. blog, article, etc)? If not, do you recommend any sites for cultural comparisons by other sociologists?
Sorry no, i leave sociology long ago and making software as most of HN visitors. Very few of humanitarian science publications is translating from Russian, on the other hand things that opinion journalism is revealing often weird and politicized. If you want some kind of overview of Russian specific, writers done this work better than scientists through generalized characters and situations. Reading cultural research…
As a Russian-American this comes off as complete BS. I've seen this written before and it's always in the form of "It's not us that smile too little, it's you Americans that are fake and smile too much!". For one, Americans don't just smile to be polite. For the most part it's genuinely conveying positive emotions. Now I know this is going to be unpopular, but I think the real reason Russians don't smile is cultural.…
You don't sound like a Russian. You don't think like a Russian. You don't know like a Russian. Russians don't smile because any person who smiles to a stranger either wants to sell something or is insane. Smiles are for friends, real friends - whopping 2 or 3 of them. "And if anything goes wrong you can be... No sense of community..." This part betrayed you. You don't know anything about Russia or Russians. If an Afr…
Hi, i'm Russian sociologist of culture. The conclusion about different culture code and semantic is right. But there is more some interesting things. Russians have really poor toothcare, and this is joined with non-smiling bidirectionally. There is nothing abnormal for Russian to have couple of missing teeth. I've seen a really rich people (for example owner of Rolls Royce fleet) with just a couple of yellow teeth le…
Hi, I'm from Lithuania, where people are smiling (or not smiling) in the exact same way as described in the article. I can assure you that teeth has absolutely nothing to do with this. Same goes for your missing muscle theory, absolute nonsense. It seems like you think people are way more conscious about smiling than they really are. I could not care less about my tooth when "deciding" whether to smile or not. It's n…
Maybe you confused with the mentioning teeth by itself, but its normal for cultural anthropology to try taking physiology, language, healthcare e.t.c as a whole if it giving any clues.
Talking about conscious we should consider that it is one of the reflexes "tamed" by human. Reflexes have its own specific muscle tension/relaxing patterns. You can see reflexes in clean form when looking on babies. Than human learning some communication norms and codes just imitating what it see around. Than he can use trained gestures, sounds e.t.c unconsciously, just little cortex fire and we performing it. We can train to suppress reflexes this way.
Imagine, we have salute gesture like scratching a nose. The muscle tension and motional pattern will be a little different from the case we really have an itchy nose.
Or you have a cough or just imitating cough sound. It's easy to separate. But if you spent time training imitate cough naturally it will look and sound naturally.
So we can differ several cases: Human smiling but suppressing it. Human smiling or well trained or self-trained to smile "sincerely". Human imitating smile of request.
And i behold that Russians: imitate smile on request very rough and this mean deficient practice of imitation. have suppressed smile relatively as often as other ones. smile noticeable rarely.
So we really have rare-firing reflex. What the reason? This is separate and interesting question.
you could write the same article for french people , it wouldnt make a difference, We french wont fake smile like americans do,even in shops or cafés , where waiters dont expect you to tip them anyway. It's just the french way, and customers are used to it , as long as you are not "too" rude...
When I first moved to eastern Europe I couldn't make friends at all. After a few months I started to get really discouraged and somewhat depressed and stopped trying to engage people. As soon as that happened, my social life did a 180.
I can attest though, having spent a little bit of time in the Russian interior as a student that, at least to this American, Russians in public come across as rude, cold distant and all that, but once a Russian gets to know you (usually over some vodka and pickles) are almost unfailingly warm, kind and generous people who have ready smiles in the intimacy of close friends.
As a Russian-American this comes off as complete BS. I've seen this written before and it's always in the form of "It's not us that smile too little, it's you Americans that are fake and smile too much!". For one, Americans don't just smile to be polite. For the most part it's genuinely conveying positive emotions. Now I know this is going to be unpopular, but I think the real reason Russians don't smile is cultural.…