The Guardian: The Bitterest Pill: "German film-makers are now daring to tackle the Third Reich and the Holocaust. Can they portray the reality, or must history be sweetened?". Interesting about current cultural taboos. (I must say that it can also be applied for other countries' movies)

Simon Baron-Cohen (Borat's cousin): I Cannot Tell a Lie - what people with autism can tell us about honesty.

Firstly I have to say something about the similarities with the research made in Psychology between psychology of personality and psychology of individual differences because of I am currently reading a book about the psychology of personality. Briefly,

1. Psychology of individual differences deals with the differences in people, their quantification and the relationships between the differences (traits)

2. For psychology of personality the differences are based on personality's characteristics. Up to a certain extent it represents a more unitarian concept than the former one.

Just replace individual / personality by "culture" to see it more clearly.

So, the analogies that I have found are:

1. The focus of analysis: about differences themselves or about the supposed ground of those differences. For instance, it's the difference between saying "A is taller than B" and saying "A's feeding has been richer than B's". I discuss about this issue later.

2. Traits vs. Dimensions: with traits you are trying to identify which are the main stable characteristics of someone's behavior (culture) (and nothing else). Example: "this culture is open, individualistic, with respect to the elder ones". It's something that you have or not. Dimensions would be understood as "meta traits". In addition, they have a more quantitative approach. For instance in Hosftede's sense, to say that a culture is individualistic imply: people taking care of themselves (including immediately family only), self-orientation, identity based on individual and so on

3. The "danger" of defining unique elements in cultures so that they could not be compared. Or in other words, the description of cultures should be very wide and abstract to avoid being lost in "particularities".

For instance, I think the danger those particularities is well expressed in the paragraph (p. 4) that states: "[...] It is simply that they are better prepared for that situation with a cultural worldview is more consistent with the worldview of the teacher and school than is the cultural worldview of the learners from a minority culture".
In my opinion this sentence partially expresses the contrast between learning and performance. The idea is that the only way to measure learning is to observe what an individual does. And that can be influenced by knowledge acquisition as well as by performance itself. In other words, in the former sentence "better prepared" would mean better knowledge acquisition or better level of performance (independently of how knowledge is acquired. For instance the practices used would be more familiar for a given group than to another).

In my case, I reckon that if I do not have in mind this fact, it is quite natural for me to think that differences are more representative than they really are. In this sense I also reckon that it would be easier to find unique aspects in different cultures leading to a huge difficulties in how they could be compared. On the other hand, I must say that culture affects both sides: how knowledge is acquired (more specifically: which knowledge is acquired) and the level of performance (how things are done).

4. Nomothetic vs. ideographic. In the paper is also reflected both ways of researching. Nomothetic stands for generalization: the study of a lot of cultures / individuals in order to find general characteristics or traits. More or less what Hofstede has done. Ideographic reflects the study in depth of something (personality or culture). For instance, psychoanalysis is ideographic. Or when an anthropologist submerges herself in a tribe.
It seems that in the former history of psychology - which up to a certain extent deals with problems similar or related to the ones stated in the paper - was quite easy to narrow your focus and get stuck in one of the research trends and forget the other one and leading to endless discussions about which methodology is the best one. (Apply that to Hofstede's methodology and its critics).

5. The critics made by Lamiell [look at the file attached] which deepen the former aspects and have quite sense to me. I have attached an article where he explains in length his thoughts. Summarizing:

5.1 The knowledge of the individual differences is not the knowledge of an individual. It only has sense if the variance is 0. In other words, what is true for a group is not necessarily true for individuals. Up to a certain extent what is measured for a group are adjusted values or emergent properties.

5.2 The individual behavior is not caused nor can be explained by the differences between individuals. It's just a statement of the difference. Dot. Differences are just relative measurements. It's like two cars crossing in opposite directions. The relative speed of the cars (from the point of view of the passengers) is bigger than the absolute speed of the cars.

Besides of the similarities I have more issues to discuss, specifically with the idea of Communities of Practice (CoPS) by Etienne Wenger and more specifically with the last of the recommendations for future research: "how do online learning platforms and online learning communities get structured in a way to better understand and respond to cultural diversity and even gain from it?". I think that the concept of CoPs is very useful for the following reasons:

1. Because of the idea itself. CoPs can be explained in this way: We do different things in order to accomplish certain enterprises. This process relates us with others and the world (the environment and even ourselves). These relationships are tuned as long as the interaction lasts. That is: there is learning. We learn.

The interaction (with the people and the world) and the pursuit of enterprises crystallizes in practices. Practices belong to a group of people (a community) in a continual pursuit of a shared enterprise. Practice is social (or at least it seems to be). That's why the name of communities of practice.

2. How learning is understood as something that happens anywhere at anytime. Wenger expresses it in this way:

"1. We are social beings
2. Knowledge is a matter of competence with respect to valued enterprises
3. Knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of those enterprises
4. Meaning is what learning is to produce"

3. The level of analysis. Firstly, in a theoretical level CoPs are in the between theories of social structure (which emphasize cultural systems and give primacy mostly to institutions, norms and rules) and theories of social experience (they focus on the experience and the local construction of individual or interpersonal events such as activities and conversations).In other words, learning would be between something BIG such as culture and the individual or interpersonal interactions.

Besides, in my opinion sometimes the term culture is far too big and its prone to an inadequate analysis. I think that sometimes, if difficulties challenges arises from culture, a possible solution would imply to change the culture itself (as a whole). CoPs would allow a most accurate level of analysis: the culture as a whole should not be "changed". With the community - their systems of meanings and values - the problem is scaled down.

Let me share my thoughts with you about this issue. We have been collecting different attributes of what we mean by "trust". Summarizing (more or less) :

• Clint: To rely on someone as well as a sense of predictability in the behaviour (to do what you say you are going to do). It's also to take care of the others.
• Esko: The quality of the relationship. Feeling respect and reciprocity
• Marcus: The basis of many relationships. To understand each other (especially between cultures). He also addressed how you can feel trust.
• Sabine: A basic ingredient. It arises from the character: reputation, willingness, presence. To give a chance.
• Tentim: Trust is built from a common goal or ground to start with.
• Adele: It comes from history, looking backwards, after reflection. "An intention to allow a state to develop"
• Minjuan: Belief, faith, to openly share yourself. To share your goals. There are different levels of trust
• Diego: Nemawashi. To develop a shared understanding as a scaffold.
• Me: A gut feeling. Confidence and predictablity. Physical and ethical dimensions.

Up to a certain extent it seems there are two big dimensions in our definition of trust: what I called "affective" (how we feel) and what I called "competence" (how we do). When I read all the answers I had the feeling of having dealt with this issue before. I reviewed my handbook of social psychology and I found that it seems that people distinguish easily between social-affective competence and intelectual-performance competence for socially valuable values. Further, it seems that the most valued features among people are: sincerity, honesty, understanding, loyal and trustworthy which, in my opinion, fit quite well with our definition of trust. (Lydon: "Interpersonal similarity and the social and intellectual dimensions of first impressions" Social Cognition 6, 269 - 286)

I dug a little bit more to find out why. A possible explanation comes from the implicit personality theory (IPT). IPTs are the beliefs we have about which people's features or characteristics happen together (for instance, quiet people are timid).

What do you think about their method of using Hofstede's national level characteristics to understand individual group members?

Some years ago I was interested on Hofstede's ideas. I think they are a good place to start to think about cultural differences or at least it was a serious effort to address those questions. For instance, his definition of culture is quite intriguing to me. I have attached four articles about Hostede's "theory" and the dicussion generated if you are interested (look at the end of the post, "attachments"): 1. An article by Hofstede himself; 2. A study which states that"national character does not reflect mean personality trait"; 3. A criticism by Brendan McSweeney to Hofstede; 4. Hofstede's reply to McSweeney.

In my case, some doubts arised which are pretty much the same ones Sabine has correctly pointed out. Let me try to summarize them:

1. Hofstede's method is Factor Analysis. As far as I know about it - very little, and specially searching in my handbook of individual differences in psychology - it seems that factor analysis is prone to circularity, the factors themselves are quite subjective and with Factor Analysis is a bit difficult to make causal inferences. On the other hand, Factor Analysis gives us a map to explore.

2. The misunderstanding of supposing that the cause of the differences between groups is the same one of the differences between individuals of a given group.

3. Comparing groups tends to ignore the heterogeneity within a group. For instance, the differences within women (or men) as a group are bigger than the mean differences between men and women.

And, in my opinion, this is exactly the "error" the author has made. While you study groups (i.e. nations) is ok. But if you compare individuals the results may lead to wrong conclusions

We are kind of in the "transition process" with this research group. How have you felt about the degree of ambiguity regarding what exactly we will be doing? Would you prefer this group to be either more flexible (defining your own role) or prefer a structure that is more pre-determined with someone telling you exactly what is happening and what your role is?

Ambiguity is fine to me because it gives enough freedom to think on your own words and not about what the "teacher" expects. Within the ambiguity realm, I see myself as an explorer. Besides, a higher or lesser degree of flexibility is also good - both of them allow to stretch your mind in different ways while they are appropiate -. In other words, in my opinion it's not the flexibility what matters (so far) but the content itself.

In your opinion, how much does culture really matter in distributed teams? In what way?

It matters quite much. According to Hofstede's culture definition (bold is mine): “as a collective phenomenon, because it is at least partly shared with people who live or lived within the same social environment where it was learned. It is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.”

In my opinion Hofstede is trying to say that humans are "information processors" and that culture shapes how that information is processed (sometimes in a very basic level, given by language. Sometimes in a very high level such as politeness, etiquette and, yes, trust).

As I was not able to participate in the former conference, Clint suggested to post the questions proposed in the blog. So here they are:

1. one thing in your life that you think you have done very well (e.g. an accomplishment that you are proud of - try not to be
too modest)

Hmm... that's a difficult question to answer. The first thing that pop up into my mind was how I ended a personal relationship. But it involves (too) many personal details to be talked about. However, all in all, I reckon that the best thing I have done in my life was the firm decision to go abroad - eventually I ended up in Finland -. Everything that happened afterwards is based on that decision.

Why I think is important? Well, it happened in a crucial moment in my life: I was having a (sort of) depression and everything seemed and tasted quite negative. In fact, many things were developing quite badly. I was stuck and I had to move forward but I did not know what to do. Decisions were hard to make. The announcement of the student exchange positions (Erasmus program) seemed to be a suitable option so I applied. Once I got elected I had to make more decisions and to mobilize all my resources to come here and it was a huge effort. Somehow it made me a different person (well, all decisions make you a different person). I had to do things that I had not done before. And the results have been mainly positive.

2. one hypothesis/ idea you have about what makes cross-cultural virtual learning teams effective

This is an hypothesis. People from different cultures have to overcome many different "invisible" meanings from their very own culture. Experience and knowledge help in the understanding. Somehow it is like learning a new language. The idea is to make those implict assumptions explicit as well as increasing the awareness of possible misunderstandings. How? Well, maybe a sort of dictionary or a collection of short stories stating those differences (for instance, the concept of punctuality or time between different cultures). Secondly, increasing the joint experiences between the members of the virtual course and to try to point out what one has understood from the other in order to show the possible misunderstandings.

In your opinion, what does it mean to trust?
Interesting question. Up to a certain extent trust is a "gut feeling". You just know (feel) who to trust and who not. It gives you confidence and a sort of predictability. That feeling can be based on several things: knowledge, reputation and, especially, similarity. We are wired in this way (up to a certain extent of course) so the awareness of this bias is central to extend our notion of trust. So to speak, this is the... "physical" dimension of trust. The interesting part, in my opinion, arises from the ethical perspective. What you should do and you should not do. (And very probably we have different meanings and implications about ethics)
Why do you want to be a part of this research team?
Firstly, because this is a VERY interesting and challenging experience. Secondly, because it's like an experiment with ourselves. We want to try out new ideas and approaches about group dynamics and learning and people from different backgrounds.
What are your personal goals for what you would like to have accomplished by the end of this research period (in December)?
to learn something I would say is meaningful and concrete. To listen to new experiences, to know people and to develop that trustability called friendship. And finally, because the interesting thing is not the goal but the way we are doing things