Chapter Content
Okay, here we go... let's try this out.
So, um, where do I even begin? You know, it's fascinating to think about how much our surroundings shape us, right? I mean, think about Maria Ressa, right? Standing there, about to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Like, wow. Talk about a huge moment. And it was all for safeguarding freedom of expression, which, let's be honest, is kind of the foundation for everything good.
You might think, "Okay, Nobel Peace Prize winner, this person's life must be, like, epic, full of these super important decisions." And, yeah, it's true, she was CNN's bureau chief in Manila, a lead investigative reporter in Asia, then co-founded Rappler, this news website back in the Philippines. And they, like, really held the government accountable, you know? Which, of course, didn't make them any friends with the president at the time. She even got arrested for cyber libel, which a lot of people thought was totally a political move.
But, you know, it wasn't just these huge, dramatic choices. She also talks about the smaller, everyday stuff. Like learning, prioritizing integrity, being vulnerable, honest, embracing fear, and working with others. These things helped her through moving countries as a kid, making friends, learning English, all that stuff. And they shaped her career, too, leading her back to the Philippines, where she eventually did the work that got her to Oslo.
She goes back to the Philippines in '86, and an old friend invites her to this kinda rundown news station. I mean, broken lightbulbs, smells like cat pee... not exactly glamorous, right? But the Philippines was still pretty fresh out of a dictatorship where the news was totally controlled. So, even just *doing* the news was a big deal. And she saw that potential, that opportunity.
She looked around at everyone working together, scripts being written last minute, going straight to the anchors... "The first page of history being created with tremendous impact," she said. So she jumped in, and that was it. Her career was launched. And it was all shaped by the cultures she grew up in.
And she said, with her Nobel Prize, you know, that journalism has this code of honor, and hers was layered on everything she'd experienced. What she learned about right and wrong as a kid, the honor code from college, the journalism ethics she learned and helped write. And then she added in this Filipino idea called "utang na loob." It's like a debt from within, this system of paying it forward.
"Utang na loob" is this cultural value that really shapes how we make decisions every day, right? Someone from a culture that really emphasizes that might feel a bigger pull to help someone out instead of focusing on themselves. Her take was that "you are responsible not only for yourself but also for the world around you, your area of influence." Because, I mean, our cultures are really just made up of what everyone believes, what they like, and how they act. And that includes you and the people you’re around.
It’s like, our cultures, our values, and our daily decisions, they all kinda feed into each other, you know? Culture shapes how we see the world, what we value, and what we pay attention to. That includes everything from what we think is normal for breakfast to whether we believe democracy is the best form of government. But at the same time, we aren't robots, right? We can choose to go against the grain. And when we do, other people see that, and it can shift things over time.
So, we learned earlier that watching other people affects how we see things, and what we pay attention to, right? Now we're gonna see how culture shapes our calculations and how we have the power to reshape those cultural norms.
Like, think about your favorite comfort food. Or how much freedom you think young people should have in picking a career. Or whether you think it's okay to express a strong opinion at the dinner table when you first meet your new partner’s parents. Someone on the other side of the world might have a totally different answer. I mean, it’s been shown that people from a wide range of cultures soak up similar values to other people in that same culture.
Like, people from Western cultures tend to be more independent, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, whereas East Asian cultures often focus on working together. And studies have actually shown that this is reflected in how people use their brains. People from East Asian cultures tend to show more activity in the parts of the brain that deal with social relationships, and people from Western cultures show more activity in the parts that deal with themselves.
Researchers even compared the brain activity of Danish and Chinese volunteers who were rating how much different words described them. Everyone showed activity in the parts of the brain related to themselves, but the Danish volunteers showed *more* activity in the *core* parts of that system. And when they were asked to think about their relationships, the Chinese volunteers used the parts of the brain related to social stuff *more* than the Danes did. I mean, wow, right?
Culture even affects how we value things! Some researchers found that Latinx young adults and European American young adults processed choices to donate money to their families differently. The Latinx young adults, on average, felt that their family was a greater part of their identity and they also helped their families more with things like chores and business assistance. And their brains showed more activity in the value system when giving up their own money to help their family, while the European Americans' value systems responded more to personal gains. Isn't that fascinating?
It goes beyond the lab, too. The more activation people showed in the value system when helping their family, the more they actually helped them in real life. And the ones who felt that their identities were more connected to their families showed the strongest effects. Which basically means that culture doesn't just shape what we *do*—it shapes how *meaningful* and *rewarding* we find it.
Think about that lady who broke into the bank in Germany, right? She made a scene because she knew that German culture prioritizes public order. She correctly guessed that the guard would be embarrassed and let her in. But that might not work in a Mediterranean country where people are more relaxed.
We gotta be careful and try to understand the background assumptions and decision-making processes of people from different cultures. How do your coworkers like to receive feedback? How appropriate is it to express a strong opinion at the dinner table when you first meet your new partner’s parents? Rather than assuming others would answer these questions the same way you do, it is helpful to gather data by observing and asking.
But, as powerful as culture is, it doesn't control everything. We all have our own identities that may or may not fit the mold. Our age, race, gender, sexual orientation, education, career, all of that shapes what people expect from us, how we're rewarded, and what we expect from ourselves.
Research shows that people’s preferences can be directed based on what identity they focus on. When some researchers made Canadians think about their Canadian identity, they liked maple syrup more than honey. But when they were primed to think about other parts of their personal identity, they thought maple syrup and honey tasted the same. Our identities are multifaceted and the context we’re in can shape which aspects get the most weight.
So, how do these different identities and different contexts shape how our brains calculate what matters?
Some researchers explored how stereotypes about gender interact with the cultural values of independence and interdependence when people make decisions. They found that people who aligned with societal stereotypes had higher activation in the social parts of the brain when they were doing what the group expected them to do. It might be easier for them to stay in alignment with group expectations, or they might view conforming as the most socially relevant path.
On the other hand, people who defied the stereotypes showed increases in the social parts of the brain when they were defying the group, but not when they conformed. It might be that the way they process social relevance didn’t value conformity as much as going against the grain; defying mainstream expectations might feel more socially relevant.
It's not just culture *or* individual identity; it's the interplay that shapes how we respond to the world. And that creates potential for change.
When Maria Ressa decided to keep reporting and stand up for her values, she knew she was taking a risk. But she knew her choices would influence others, who would then make their own decisions about freedom of expression and democracy.
The stakes for us probably aren’t as dramatic, but what we share and how we show up can still influence others, even in small ways. It can spread across groups of people, and norms can change.
Back in 2016, some researchers worked with kids in New Jersey schools to show them that they had the power to affect the culture around them. They worked with small groups of students to figure out how to take a stand against injustice, create online hashtags, and give out bracelets when other students were kind.
And it worked! Disciplinary reports declined by almost a third. Students were more likely to talk about how to reduce harmful conflict and updated their perceptions of how much others disapproved of bad behavior.
We each have a role in shifting norms, even if it's one small step at a time. Think about the books we read to our kids, the movies they watch, the toys they play with. It all shapes their ideas about gender, power, and so on. The conversations we have with our children also help them understand what we think of these messages.
We can also call attention to good behavior, like sharing a toy, and talk about our decision-making process. Like, "I'm happy to give you a bite of my ice cream, since in our family we share food". It can highlight the values we want to pass on to our kids.
And this works with adults, too. Our behavior influences our friends. It can change their assessment of beauty or what foods they want to eat. People also observe what we're doing, and this influences their actions.
Researchers have found that we sometimes assign more value to agreement than to our own preferences. And the more we value being in line with the group, the more likely we are to change our preferences when we learn that other people like certain things more or less than we do. In other words, the people whose brains placed the most value on being aligned with the group were most susceptible to peer influence.
You also see the potential impact of peer influence on a person’s behavior in the brain. When people were told about other people’s healthier preferences, their brains tracked their peers’ opinions. The volunteers in the study later said they liked the foods that other people also liked more, and said they liked the unpopular foods less than they initially had, even though all the feedback was actually randomly generated by a computer. So the choices you make influence the choices that others make, and their choices influence even more people.
This goes beyond food. Moral norms are also influenced by those around us. Taking your kids with you to volunteer helps them see the social relevance of doing the same. Wearing your “I voted” sticker, as well as giving the people you manage time off to vote, signals the social relevance of participating in our democracy.
Even simple actions, like showing up and providing "likes," influence people's value calculations. Teenagers made more generous donations when their peers were in the room, and even more when those peers gave them "likes" for larger donations. But there are other motives can hijack the same brain systems to different ends. Consider the ways that social media algorithms often amplify outrage by promoting cultural norms that condone it. People get rewarded for expressing outrage, so they express more over time, reinforcing the norm that it's okay to do so.
So, we cocreate norms with others, and "everything we say or do impacts our friends, our friends' friends, and even our friends' friends' friends," to quote Maria Ressa again. We create synchrony between people's brains. When we watch her accept her Nobel, our brains replicate some of what happened in her brain.
She used this in the Philippines, when she ran a campaign with the slogan, "Ako ang Simula" which literally means, "I am the beginning" and in spirit means "Change begins with me.”
Researchers found that volunteers who were randomized to play games in an environment built to support cooperation behaved more cooperatively themselves, while the folks who played with more competitive players behaved less cooperatively. When they then played in a new environment, those who'd been in the cooperative environment were more likely to behave in cooperative, prosocial ways. One way that norms might spread from one context to others.
So, the choices we make influence others, and their choices influence us. And as more people adopt certain ideas and behaviors, culture shifts and changes the way our brains take in information.
That’s what happened with Maria’s campaign, right? The Commission on Elections in the Philippines asked them to slow down—"Its systems couldn’t keep up with the number of voter registration applications pouring in."
Knowing that what we express can be contagious, we can be more aware of which behaviors and rhetoric we reinforce and which we discourage. That may lead those around us to be more aligned with the values we want to see in the world.
Sometimes we have the time and energy to align our decisions with our values; sometimes we're just trying to get by. But when we do have that space, we can take a step back and think about how we spend our time and energy and who we give our attention to.
As Annie Dillard reminds us, how we spend our minutes and hours adds up to how we spend our lives. Would you rather go to the school play or the board meeting? Speak up when a colleague is mean or stay quiet? Call your senator or let someone else decide? How might your choices change if you thought about all the people who are influenced by seeing your example? What if someone behind you sees where your beam of light points?
Young Maria took a job at a news station that had suffered under censorship, focusing on the potential. And throughout her life, she used the lessons she'd learned during small moments in her childhood, the books she read in college, her early training, and the practice of making decisions under pressure. Toward the end of her Nobel speech, she looked out at the audience and said, "I didn’t know if I was going to be here today. Every day, I live with the real threat of spending the rest of my life in jail just because I’m a journalist. When I go home, I have no idea what the future holds, but it’s worth the risk."
When we make choices, others see them. It highlights what’s possible. It doesn’t erase all the issues or constraints, but if enough of us make different choices, we can shape cultural norms that challenge the problems.
Slowly, we realize that we aren’t alone. That each one of us has so many sources of light, illuminating so many possibilities. The choices we make, together, create the world we live in. So, yeah, that's... well, that's a lot to think about, isn't it?