Science Confirms The Obvious: Americans Are Selfish
Standing Out From The Crowd Wikimedia Commons We're less motivated to do something challenging if it benefits the common good. If you need an American to do something, don't mention the common good, team work or caring for others. A new study in Psychological Science this month found that trying to get Americans to think and act interdependently failed--and may have even decreased motivation. After being prompted to think about either independence or interdependence, a group of Stanford students were given difficult word puzzles to solve, and later, a physical challenge (squeezing a handgrip for as long as possible). "Chronically independent European Americans" fared much worse when primed to think about interdependence while completing the task. For bicultural Asian-American students exposed to both the independence-loving culture of America and a more communally based East-Asian culture, thinking about either value set was equally motivating. In another test, students viewed a...