2021-07-15
50 分钟We often look to other countries for smart policies on education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. But can a smart policy be simply transplanted into a country as culturally unusual (and as supremely WEIRD) as America?
How much time have you spent thinking about what makes America America?
It may help if you're not originally from here.
When was that moment that America became the most american America it could possibly be?
Have you ever noticed how Americans are not stupid?
I was so excited to be in America, I couldn't sleep.
John Oliver, Hannah Gadsby, and Kumail Nanjiani all grew up outside the US.
When you are trying to understand the nature of something, an outside view can be extremely helpful.
Did you know there is an entire academic field called cross cultural psychology?
It's a subfield of psychology that tries to understand what's universal, what's similar, and what's culture specific.
Michelle Gelfand is one of the premier practitioners of cross cultural psychology.
After 25 years at the University of Maryland, she is moving to the business school at Stanford.
Why the business school?
We are fiercely interdisciplinary.
We do lab experiments, field experiments, computational modeling.
We bring in neuroscience to understand all things cultural.
You might think that someone who studies cross cultural psychology also grew up abroad, or at least in some big city with a melting pot vibe.
But no, our group on Long island, you have to pronounce it right.
Long Island, New York, is the birthplace of the american suburb.
And I had that typical New Yorker view of the world, the cartoon where there's, like, New York and there's New Jersey and then there's, you know, the rest of the world.
When it was time for college, Gelfand went all the way to upstate New York, Colgate University.