Is there a difference in people from Northern China versus those from the South in terms of individualistic behavior? Are people from the north more assertive and people from the south more collaborative?
Researchers Thomas Talhelm, Xuemin Zhang and Shigehiro Oishi from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Beijing Normal University and the University of Virginia wondered as well. They believed there would likely be differences based on lab-tests that suggest people with an ancestry in wheat-based cultures were more individualistic and people from rice-based cultures more cooperative.
Until the study highlighted here there had been no field work to test the hypothesis. The researchers required controlled environments for their observations. Ones where colors, aromas and layout were likely to be similar across the nation; and where better then to conduct your experiments than the Green Monster, or as she’s known in China, Xīngbākè (星巴克, Starbucks).
Via 8,964 individual observations they found 1) that people presumed to come from a wheat-based heritage were way more likely to be sitting alone than cousins from a rice-based background who were more likely to be found in groups, and 2) the wheaty crowd were more likely to try and control their environment when, in this experiment chairs blocked their path, than their ricey peers who consistently tried to squeeze past the obstacles.
With slightly less rigor the researchers applied the same chair obstacle test to non-Chinese subjects in Japan and America to see if the same rice vs. wheat behavior repeated. The extract here from the research has the loud-and-clear answer.
Americans were way more likely to try and change their environment when confronted with obstacles than either the Japanese or Chinese subjects.
I suspect there’s more going on here than just legacy crop raising history traits persisting; but that, as they like to say in academic circles, will provide the subject for useful further research.
You can read the more full account via this link Moving Chairs in Starbucks.
Happy Sunday.