COVID-19: An unlikely agent of international sociocultural exposure

A drastic difference, in terms of upper-level public health responses to COVID-19, is quite apparent when comparing the East to the West. Even when it comes to personal choices and social distancing practices, a similar degree of contrast is observable. Surgical masks are commonplace in public spaces in many East and South Asian countries, while the same safeguards are met with negative responses ranging from resistance to xenophobic remarks in the States. In terms of governmental initiatives, Asia’s public health authorities seem to have taken a much more proactive and involved approach than that of the United States. Not to say that Asia is a monolith — it resembles more of a gradient based on the given political backdrop. Citizens in India and South Korea regularly receive aid in the form of care packages with food, cleaning supplies, and information on how to minimize transmission risk in order to maintain as airtight of a lockdown as possible, while China’s authoritarian management of contact tracing and surveillance saw citizens receive regular temperature checks followed by swift extradition to quarantine centers. Western countries have taken a much more laissez-faire attitude toward drafting and enforcing quarantine regulations, as case numbers continue to climb while lockdown legislation has loosened up.

Surgical masks are commonplace in public spaces in many East and South Asian countries, while the same safeguards are met with negative responses ranging from resistance to xenophobic remarks in the States.

Why do these extreme variations exist on such a global scale? One explanation comes in the form of a region’s past experience with similar pandemics. The normalization of wearing masks in many Asian countries is due in part to impactful prior experience with droplet-based viruses like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and the same can be said for their comparatively quick and comprehensive pandemic response plans. An additional route of reasoning can be traced back to any given country’s history with air pollution or natural disasters. But even if one were to eliminate this experience factor and take Asian governmental and individual behaviors at face value, whether they be public health-based or otherwise, a common difference can explain certain Eastern and Western behaviors: collectivist versus individualistic thinking. Individualistic cultures like that of the United States place value on independence and self-reliance and generally disprove of the state wielding the majority of governing power, while collectivist cultures like that of many Asian and African nations emphasize the importance of prioritizing the well-being of the group over the self. The degree to which these schools of thought are ingrained in a culture has a profound impact, all the way down to the psychological level. 

A social experiment conducted by Toshio Yamagishi and colleagues in 1999 reveals behavioral trends and value systems that remain relevant over 20 years later. In this study, college-aged participants from both Japan and the United States were presented with a scenario involving an array of colored pens, which was said to contain one pen of one color and four pens of another color. When asked which pen they would choose, without knowing context about other participants, the Japanese students tended to choose the majority color, while the American participants preferred the rarer color. In a slightly different scenario, when asked which pen they’d choose given that they were the first of five participants to get to choose one, both groups tended to select the majority color. But when told that they were the last of the group to see the pen selection, and that there happened to be five pens remaining, both groups displayed a large preference toward the rarer-colored pen. 

When asked which pen they would choose, without knowing context about other participants, the Japanese students tended to choose the majority color, while the American participants preferred the rarer color.

The similarity across both groups when it came to the initial-selection and final-selection scenarios demonstrates how uniqueness and consideration are valued equally across these cultures. When given the context that they were the first to choose a pen, both American and Japanese subjects tended to be a bit more considerate of their group members who hadn’t gotten to select, and the opposite was true across both groups after they were told that their action would have no effect on any other individuals. These trends helped to debunk prior stereotypes that painted Asia as a continent of conformist attitudes. The fact that when given an non-contextual choice, Japanese participants continued to choose as if they should be concerned with other people’s responses, while Americans saw this scenario without this concern reveals the value that collectivist cultures tend to place on harmony and cooperation, not conformism.

Given the culturally-influenced nature of the choices we make and the actions that authorities take, the contrast between the East and West can be partially explained.

This experiment is one of many that has been used to demonstrate the behavioral differences between those raised in collectivist versus individualistic cultures but is especially relevant when considering the nuanced responses to the coronavirus on a global scale. Given the culturally-influenced nature of the choices we make and the actions that authorities take, the contrast between the East and West can be partially explained. The value that collectivism places on group effort and harmony gives relevant context to why masks are the norm and seen as a symbol and a tool of protection and solidarity in big cities of Asia such as Hong Kong, and why the self-sacrifice that comes with social distancing is seen as a duty in Eastern sociocultural practices.

All this is not necessarily meant to demonize individualism nor promote collectivism. Both schools of thought have their pros and cons that manifest themselves in the ups and downs of the cultures and countries they reside in. But when it comes to this pandemic, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to conclude that skewed individualistic thinking could be responsible for generating more harm than good. 

Psychological Science (2008). DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02126.x

Image source: Pixabay.