Error of attribution to culture

Once you have lived overseas for a while, you start to realize that many of your assumptions about culture are not true. Most of this realization comes via comments others make about your home culture, as they assume that you represent the norm for what every country you hail from, in my case America. I have created a term for this called error of attribution to culture. By this I mean that someone observes a behavior in a person from another culture. We then conclude that all members of that culture must act exactly the same. We attribute their behavior to an entire population. Saying it another way, we take the actions of one individual and stereotype the entire culture as being exactly the same.

The offending wallet.

An example of this that I have seen recently is my wallet. For years I carried a wallet in my back pocket. The wallet would become a thick monstrosity as I accumulated receipts and business cards. Eventually it was like sitting on a phone book. I took quite a bit of good-natured ribbing about this. So, last year when I thought it was time to get a new wallet, I bought a front pocket wallet. This is basically a couple of leather pockets and then a money clip for your cash. I love it. It worked better in the US because you can pay everywhere with your credit or debit card and just keep a bit of money on you. Here in Malaysia it doesn’t work as well because I carry more cash due to a high rate of credit card theft. You give you card to someone, it comes back but they swiped it in a machine and then make a second card and charge things on your account. Malaysian money is also poorly designed for this. Denominations are 1, 2, 5, 10, 50 and 100 so if you break a 50 to pay for a 7 ringgit item, then you get 4 ten ringgit notes and 3 one ringgit notes. Therefore, my money clip often looks untidy. I pull it out and people notice it. They then say, “So this is the kind of wallet Americans use.” I laugh and try to set them straight. “No,” I say, “I’m the only person I know with a front carry wallet.” But I know the damage is done. They will forever think that Americans use the kind of wallet I do.

Of course this is a two way street. We have all met people of different cultures and labeled an entire culture bases on our interactions with .00001% of the population. What I’ve tried to do is show how this is different than stereotyping. Stereotypes are the nerdy Asian kid, the AK-47 wielding Arab, the loud and boorish American. Those are based on a larger sample of the population. This is how we personally stereotype a culture based on our own experiences. Perhaps the safest thing to do is see each person as unique and try to shed our own or societies stereotypes. It is only then that we can really get to know the true heart of another person.