Author: Mia Moran

In my very first blog I had mentioned how last summer, working at Hesed House (the homeless shelter) had changed my life and that perhaps my success was going into it without much expectations, just trying to show up in the moment.

Well, this summer was equally impactful and influential in my life. And boy, did Costa Rica humble me, challenge me, and push me.

Even when I was tired, even when I was feeling insecure, even when I did not want to, I had to talk and listen to Spanish in order to communicate with host parents (although my host brother did lend me a hand at times translating).

And although still far from perfect, I am so delighted to be able to recognise how much my Spanish has indeed improved (particularly my listening!).

And I am beyond proud of myself (if I am totally frank) for actually trying to put myself out there even when I felt too overwhelmed to talk to be in the presence of my host family’s extended family and friends (although I admit I was way more shy in the beginning).

Wow am I grateful to my host family, program director, and friends who have guided and been with me for the past two months.

When it comes to culture, I have thought about it so much during my time in Costa Rica, I am well aware I would be quite a task to share everything.

The one thing I will like to touch on is whether having judgements regarding cultural differences was indeed unhelpful or somehow “bad.”

I admit I still do not necessary have an answer to this, but I do have some thoughts. Of course, balancing cultural similarities and differences is important in not being too polarising or minimising, but I think that it can be healthy to have some levels of judgements.

Although having judgements can be a risky business as it can invite prejudice and feelings of superiority, I think it is possible to have judgements to assess your own preferences than to judge which culture is “better” or “worse.”

I also would like this to be taken with a grain of salt as I also think that understanding your preferences can be helpful, but also restrictive in how are preferences are dynamic, not static as people.

Moreover, that judgements are much more useful when actively analysed and thought through than quick on the stop interpretations (refer to the DIVE exercise).

All in all, I am excited to see how my opinions about this and cultural approaches in general will continue to evolve throughout my life.

But for now, I will continue to show up and take in the moment.

I have known about Hofstede’s work on cultural dimensions since high school when I took IB psychology. And I have always appreciated how useful it was to have some language that helped discuss some of the notable patterns in cultural differences between countries.

However, I believe my thoughts on cultural dimensions have gained more nuance now that I have been able to be apart of culture different than my home cultures for two months.

I specifically want to articulate my thoughts on the Individualism—Collectivism dimension. Costa Rica scores compared to Japan and the US (my home countries) as the following:

Individualism— 15 (CR); 46 (JPN); 91 (US)

As the scores indicates, the US scores the highest relatively on the individualism scale, making Costa Rica the least individualistic out of the three and Japan right around the middle.

Growing up constantly comparing the US and Japan (my two cultures) had manifested Japan as almost a baseline for what I consider to be a collectivistic culture and the US as an individualistic one (although I recognise this is my metacognition being lazy and wanting to simplify concepts).

I can understand why Japan is almost at the cusp between being considered more collectivistic or individualistic as it is not exactly collectivistic perhaps in our traditional sense of family, but more so in regards to company loyalty and the overall population/environment.

I think this is the major difference that made me at first question why Japan scored higher than Costa Rica on this scale. Because to me, Japan is more collectivistic (as in there is a difference to how that is defined to me perhaps compared to the Hofstede Insights team).

From my observations petty crime is much lower in Japan (as there tends to be feelings of obligation to look after others even if they are strangers), whereas petty crime is quite high in Costa Rica. Or even the cities tend to be cleaner in Japan as again, there is a sense of responsibility felt towards how we as individuals are impacting our environments which did not seem to be as prevalent in Costa Rica (and mind you, on a whole the cities in Japan are more populated than the ones in Costa Rica).

However, the way Costa Rica was more collective showed up in their family cultures. Ticos care deeply about their family bonds, often living close to their extended family, spending holidays (even small ones) or weekends with them.

In comparison, I saw my extended family in Japan and even in the US maybe for major holidays once or twice a year only because we all lived far apart from each other. Even on a day to day basis my host parents spent a lot of time with each other, whereas people and parents in Japan typically work extremely long hours every day.

Overall, this has made me think deeply about what makes a culture collectivistic and what “group” responsibilities mean to each culture.

From my perspective, although family priorities can be viewed as collectivistic, this still feels relatively more individualistic than collectivistic for me because you were born into these families, it has become an extension of the self.

In comparison, looking out for your impact towards complete strangers feel more collectivistic because it feels more concerned with the community as a whole than your family that you have perhaps more of a direct care for or stake in.

However, I acknowledge that perhaps as the social contract theory theorises, looking out for strangers come with the trust that they will look after for you in return, so perhaps it is still self-serving in a way.

I wonder if therefore, it would be more beneficial to think about what type of group orientations exist within cultures than to just say that they are relatively more collective as clearly that can appear in many ways. And what cultures count as the extension of the self and therefore we can determine perhaps that some countries are more individualistic than first meets the eye.

All in all, something I have been thinking about a lot regarding the dimensions is how they all work a lot more dynamically together. For example, if Ticos are more family oriented this directly could be influencing also the more indulgent or feminine (nurturant) aspects of the culture I have observed. Specifically, as spending time with family requires a balance with work and the ability to share perhaps more intimate vulnerable parts of yourselves within those circles.

This is all to say, cultural dimensions are clearly a great jumping point and there can be some expansions on the way we even define the dimensions; could cultures even be placed on spectrums or is each country like it’s own constellation (it’s own thing)?

They say you learn a lot about others and your compatibilities with them when you travel together.

Well, let’s just say I stand by this argument.

During my time in Costa Rica so far I have had the privilege of going on excursions and touring some of the wonders this land has to offer. And in those moments, whether it’s using the public transport or driving around, those different cultural approaches to travelling become more transparent.

Compared to the insanely punctual and the excessive number of directions that Japan places in their public transport systems (and even in general), private knowledge is key in navigating Costa Rica.

Even trying to find the fees of riding certain buses were unclear online and a lot of charter buses only had uploaded their schedules on Facebook or you could only access an updated version by contacting the bus companies on Whatsapp.

Even more so, when my friend and I rented a car we realised that people honk to say thank you or even flash their lights.

But these differences I expected. They seem more obvious or explicit.

Critical incidents I had with people’s preferences and actions while travelling were more enlightening to me.

Now, I want to be careful as I recognise the encounters I have had with a small number of people barely begin to represent the whole population of a country or culture.

But I would like to take this opportunity to complete the DIVE exercise with some of the encounters I had with the other girl who was also home staying at my friend’s home stay during a trip to one of Costa Rica’s top tourist destinations: La Fortuna.

This girl was interestingly memorable to me. Coming from a French background, (northern France that is) she offered us (my friend and I) with some insight (frustrations) on what may be our cultural differences.

This girl was calm, collected, cool even, but it was extremely hard for my friend and I to understand what it is that she wanted. What it is that she was feeling in any given moment.

Every time my friend and I would ask, oh, what did you want to do? would you like to join us? don’t feel pressured to stay! these were answered pretty drily: I’m good with anything… yes I can join you… uh, no it’s okay, I can stay with you guys… (description)

But what did she really want??? Our initial response to these moments were met with confusion and frustrations. We felt very conscious and aware of her presence and felt bad because we could not tell if she was enjoying whatever mischief we were up to. She also did not offer a lot of comments and verbal cues that would perhaps help give us an indication to what she was feeling.

I believe our annoyance with the girl is indicative of a culture that desires to over clarify our consideration for others and in return are sensitive to whether they are pleased or not. And an expectation therefore that we carry for others to then let us in the loop of whether they indeed are pleased or not. (interpretation)

It was hard to verify this incident as she was the outsider in this culture (in Costa Rica). But I did give this a thought. And I wonder if—regardless if it’s just her personality, it is the norm in her culture, or the language barrier making it difficult to fully communicate and express your true personality/considerations—to her it is not that big of a deal to constantly appease others and that you can just be. She definitely felt like the type of person to be comfortable with silence even with strangers. (evaluation)

Overall, reflecting on this however, I feel as though the V in the DIVE model tremendously shapes the usefulness of the exercise… an opportunity to not be stuck in your head… and an opportunity (even if the verification isn’t perfect either) to think beyond the confines of your own thought bubbles, which are likely informed by our own cultural norms and confirmation biases anyway.