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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   16082 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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My country is being exceptional again on European polls. (If you don't want to click, it's a poll on how many agree with the question "One of my main goals in life is making my parents proud", and while in most European countries well over 70% would strongly agree or agree with this statement, and even in other Nordic countries the affirmative answer ranks in the 50% range, in Finland only 25% agree.)

Some explanations I've seen:

  • The word "proud", or rather its translation, just has a different, considerably more negative connotation in Finnish. Like, if hearing this question in English, the idea of "pride" I'd get would just be a beaming parent going "So proud of you, son!" while imagining the same phrased in Finnish, using the word "ylpeä" (direct translation), has much more of a connotation of an arrogant, conceited parent going around their friends going "Oh, you didn't know my son/daughter is a doctor?"

  • even taking this into account, the Finnish/Nordic culture of "collective individualism" (which I've discussed here) might play a role

  • some have just guessed that Finns tend to answer surveys like this more honestly and bluntly, actually thinking about their priorities instead of just automatically giving the pro-social answer - yes, something of a self-serving explanation

How many here would answer this question in affirmative, anyway?

Yeah, I would not say "Make my parents proud" is actually a life goal to me but I'd certainly think twice about doing something that would move away from that direction.

Yeah. I'm not necessarily driven by doing things for my parents' approval, but a lot of the situations that would equate to 'my parents disapprove' would likely be what I'd consider failure states for myself regardless.

Same. I don't have a strong drive to make my parents proud, but I have a VERY strong drive to not make them ashamed. To @hydroacetylene's point, it certainly helps that most of the things that would make them ashamed would be bad things in and of themselves.

I don’t feel strongly either way. I mean I like my parents but don’t respect their opinion with regards to my life goals. I don’t want kids so that’s a big issue.

I would probably answer the question in the affirmative, because I can't think of anything disappointing to my parents that wouldn't be a bad thing, and so "make your parents proud" comes off as "avoid bad outcomes". And, yes, I do consider going to prison, having children out of wedlock, using narcotics, etc to be things that are unstated goals to avoid.

If asked to list my lifegoals, I probably would not say "make my parents proud". Partly because this is accomplished, but also because it seems unstated and can therefore only be conspicuous by its absence.

That sounds like the life goal of someone who has never explicitly thought about their life goals, but just read the question and interpreted it as something like "how much do you love your parents". A true life goal is supposed to actually guide your decisions, not just be something nice that you'd like to get. I think about my life goals at least weekly, when I take an hour-long evening walk to think about how my current short and medium term plans will achieve the ultimate goals of my life. I very, very much doubt that people are doing this sort of goal-oriented optimization with the goal of "making my parents proud", most people just don't have life goals that they're explicitly optimizing.

some have just guessed that Finns tend to answer surveys like this more honestly and bluntly, actually thinking about their priorities instead of just automatically giving the pro-social answer - yes, something of a self-serving explanation

I used to do some work for a major american company with customer satisfaction scores, customer retention and upsales. A major issue was that the American management compared different European countries with each other using only the CSR score and there were very large cultural differences in how people answered them.

An Italian company that was about to drop us could rate us as 10 while a Swedish company where we did a ton of business and that loved us, with no plans of changing partners, could rate us as 7 with comments like "it isn't perfect", and a customer with minor complaints could rate us a 6.

We had far higher retention and upsales and yet far lower CSR, and this wasn't just a Swedish problem. The entire Nordics and to a lesser extent all "germanic"/protestant countries trended far below the Mediterranean and eastern countries, regardless of actual customer satisfaction.

Some made accusations that the Mediterranean

and eastern countries encouraged their customers to lie, which might have been true, but I suspect that differing cultural interpretations of the question played a large role.

I almost never answer a question like this as 10. To me 10 would mean service above and beyond the call of duty, a truly mindblowing experience.

I rate adequate service with no problems as 5/5 because it would be unfair to expect anything more.

I do not expect nor do I wish for anyone to go above and beyond the agreed upon level of service. I think it is unhealthy for society to expect more than what they paid for and unfair to workers.

To those of you who write reviews like "Amazing restaurant, the food was delicious and service was excellent. 4/5 stars", what the hell do you want? Pre-meal sloppy toppy? Explain why one star is missing so they can improve their service or stop pointlessly penalizing them because you had a better meal at the French Laundry three years ago (assuming their aggregate rating is greater than 4.0).

My average restaurant rating is a 3/5 lol. I ignore all social conventions. My head canon rating is normally distributed and I rate accordingly. Only the very best restaurants will get a 5/5, like truly exceptional amazing restaurants, where the food is better than a pre meal sloppy toppy.

Idgaf if this hurts business. I write reviews for no master but the truth.

Well, it would be nice for a consumer to be able to distinguish between delicious-food-and-excellent-service and oh-my-god-this-place-is-on-par-with-the-French-Laundry by seeing if people rate it 4/5 or 5/5. For many people, 4/5 means "excellent service".

I think giving a place a less-than-5-star rating for adequate service does not mean we expect more than we paid for. Maybe what we're paying for is a 4-star restaurant!

tldr: ridesharing apps offer rating systems out of 5 stars and anything other than 5/5 threatens the driver's longevity on the platform. I think at one point, ~4.7 was the cutoff. Local restaurant owners and other similar industries; a "bad string" of "bad" 4/5 reviews and The Algorithm rears its ugly head.

The USA tends to treat less-than-perfect scores as egregious failures. Two issues: enough people are somewhat conscious of the reality that, despite agreeing with your sentiment (it wasn't perfect; there's room for improvement; giving a 100 percent makes no sense), the choices available are "perfect" or "bad enough that I want to damage their bottom line." So we maintain the "perfect is the normal answer" -- but there's still enough people who aren't in the loop (or don't care) that they'll write a glowing 4/5 review for a local business not understanding how frustrating that must be for the proprietor: clearly the customer enjoyed their experience and plans to return... but a 4/5 just lowered the restaurant by seven positions on assorted metric consolidation sites... because the top 10 restaurants are all between 4.7 and 4.9 (for example).

rating systems out of 5 stars and anything other than 5/5 threatens the driver's longevity on the platform. I think at one point, ~4.7 was the cutoff

I considered that academic scoring could potentially play a big role. In the French system, getting a 20 is extremely rare. It'd be like a 14 year old wrote publishable research. A score of 13 or so is considered fantastic. An Iranian friend applying for US PhDs had an issue where enrollment offices just turned her score into a percentage, giving her a 2.something GPA yet a 170 GRE score. Eventually we got it sorted. The UK has a similar thing too, if I remember correctly. Finland doesn't have such a range however. Germany also only uses 1-5 and expects near perfection.

Finland uses 1-5 for normal academic scoring. However, things like matriculation examination, grad theses etc. have a weird Latin grade system explicated here, and elementary schools use a system where the lowest (failing) result is 4 and the highest is 10.

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Probably because fake reviews are almost all "this place is absolutely perfect" and real reviews are dominated by "the serial killer owner looked me into the eye while masturbating on my sandwich and held me hostage until I ate it". Since places that aren't terrible have no real reviews, the average good restaurant has a 5/5.

An old manager of mine told me an unverified story about peer reviews at the company.

Some cultures (e.g. Indian) would give effusive reviews regardless of the actual effectiveness of the employee. The modal review was essentially "this employee is perfect." Others (I'm told the Israelis stood out here) gave relatively critical reviews, with most employees getting a "they're okay." But this affected comp and promotion decisions. So the company had to adopt a strategy where they normalized scores to get a meaningful signal out of them.

Haha -- an absolutely fantastic mom & pop's breakfast diner near me has 4.7 (out of 5.0) on Google. They'd obviously rather get no review at all from you than receive a 4/5.

My guess is it's an emergent property with a self-sustaining feedback loop. If enough people are mapping a perfect score to "I was pleased" and the opposite to "I wasn't pleased" and most people are pleased, then you'd expect to see some sort of pareto distribution with a slight bump at the lowest.

Why do people do this? Not sure; maybe shared empathy from working customer-facing jobs. A server could knock it out of the park on a grueling horrendous shift for every customer but one; and that one customer leaving a scathing review online would seriously jeopardize the server's job. So, if I leave a review it's with perfect scores and if I mention names I'll speak of them with exuberant glowing language (even if they were just decent) because it may brighten someone's day a bit.

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Yeah, I was once in a Germanic country where I was reviewed as 8 or 9 out of 10 on all except one aspect, but as a 7 overall. I haven't experience anything similar in the US or Asia.

OTOH it's easier for me to give 5/5 than 10/10, funny how it works.

I wonder if rideshare apps operating in other countries eventually learn to adjust their scales culturally or if people using the rideshare apps tend to have the sort of cultural awareness to fix their own behavior to fit the company's expectation. The first would be more likely.

I instinctively almost never give 10/10 scores to anything, and appreciate it when companies that are really just wondering if service is good enough use a three point scale; I think it captures what they're looking for better (was it good enough? Was it so terrible I'll be complaining to everyone who will listen?)

I think the perfect-or-nothing attitude is well in effect in Russia, for what it's worth.

I remember a girl I know telling an internet stranger off for giving one of her photos on OK.ru less than 5. She explained that only two marks were allowed: 5/5 or no vote. You wouldn't tell a girl she's pretty, but not very pretty, so why would you do the same online?

Zuck was smarter, and Facebook only lets you "like" stuff.

This is quite an accurate attitude, in my experience, even on a broader grading scale. Russian neighbourhoods tend to be either "horrendous dystopian mudpit" or "super-rich paradise". Usually the former. Russian businesses tend to be either amazingly conscientious and accommodating, or pathologically dishonest and uncaring.

Also: https://youtube.com/shorts/xikDWOtOOiw

I would, and honestly so. Not that it worked out, mind you, but it was my goal.

“ylpeä" (direct translation)

Just to double check: is this the same translation that the survey used? I’d think if the connotation is positive in English and negative in Finland, then that isn’t a direct translation.

But you do raise an interesting point: it seems like we should be taking surveys that cross language barriers with even more salt than we usually do, since translations and cultural contexts affect them so much.

Do you think in reality Finns aren’t so different? Or do your second two bullets override the translation problem?

I'm not sure what question was used, but this would be one potential explanation. I cannot think of another translation for "proud", actually, at least one that wouldn't have even more of a negative connotation.

Also, the fact that the direct translation of the word that might have positive connotations in other languages but more of a negative one in Finnish might tell of a cultural difference in itself.

Is there a plausible Finnish translation of "proud" that doesn't have a negative connotation? How do Finnish people describe how they feel when they've accomplished something praiseworthy?

Glib answer is "we don't".

Words that might translate to "glad" and "happy" might be used, and "omanarvontuntoinen" ("one who feels one's own worth") might be something like it.

Indeed the exact question is

Yksi elämäni päätavoitteista on ollut tehdä vanhempani ylpeiksi

Good sample size too of >1000 for each country.

Also:

The main mode in EVS 2017 is face-to-face (interviewer-administered). An alternative self-administered form was possible but as a parallel mixed mode, i.e. there was no choice for the respondent between modes: either s/he was assigned to face to face, either s/he was assigned to web or web/mail format. In all countries the EVS questionnaire was administered as a face-to-face interview (CAPI or/and PAPI); in Germany, Netherlands, Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, and Latvia additionally self-administered mode (CAWI/Mail) was used.

Interviewer administered questionnaire would surely bias the subject towards more socially acceptable answers. A few countries (including Finland) had some people self-administer. So might we expect those countries to answer slightly more honestly? Perhaps they controlled for this somehow.

https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/methodology-data-documentation/survey-2017/full-release-evs2017/

https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/methodology-data-documentation/survey-2017/full-release-evs2017/participating-countries-and-country-information-survey-2017/

Yksi elämäni päätavoitteista on ollut tehdä vanhempani ylpeiksi

Yes, that's a fairly awkward literal translation and would definitely tend towards being understood, at least subliminally, as "make my parents arrogant and conceited". (Even "Yksi elämäni päätavoitteista on, että vanhempani voisivat olla ylpeitä siitä, miten elämäni on sujunut" or something like that would be more neutral.)

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