Do Americans Have a Robotic Tendency?

[zoobyshoe]

Being in the US Navy, I deal with procedure reinforcement numerous times daily. An all too common heard phrase being 'Did you use the proper procedure'? Reinforced through daily training, hot-wash's and critiques, proper procedure is most definitely paramount. In the submarine force (which I'm currently in) the reason for this dronelike adherence to procedure is due to safety. The military has found that the vast majority of accidents (fatal or not) are due primarily to simple human error. Complacency. Quite a bit of system knowledge and how-to of operation is passed down by teaching from the more experienced personnel to the 'new guys'. Many times teaching others, one way, simply because that's how they were taught, without regard to procedure.

Johnny quickly teaches Bobby how to operate a seemingly simple system without the procedure. Bobby then later teaches Chris how to operate the same system without procedure, so on and so on. Eventually you get to a point where no one really knows why they're doing something, what other systems may be affected, or what to do in case of a failure or emergency.

It could very well lead to someone being killed.

Yes, it could. But, the overall picture you paint is of strict adherence to procedure as a substitute for really understanding what you're doing. Which is what gives the military a definite "robotic" edge. I don't think there's any way around that for those in the military.

It's relevant here, in that, post 911 there has been a "tightening" in the US (a term I got from Apeiron's link) for the reason that we were attacked. All the airport procedures shifted from bureaucratic to something much more military in feel. Same reasoning: strict procedure, no one gets killed.

 

[S_Happens]

In my experience I'm not sure if the "procedural prevalent" is more often the case, or simply more noticeable. I work in a private industry filled with procedure. As someone who is solely oriented towards better understanding, and being deathly allergic to blind aherence (especially to procedure), I end up writing/modifying a lot of these procedures and user interfaces to try and "dummyproof" them. As much as I am disgusted by the fact that it is necessary to do this, I have accepted the fact that it simply makes life easier for all involved. Just recently a co-worker was converted to this view, when he started working with me on customizing the user interfaces and seeing how everyone else deals with them.

I have to tailor these procedures and interfaces for those that ARE "procedure prevalent," because those are the ones that are the potential problem. Those that are not simply following a procedure and can think for themselves do not present a problem and need no attention. So, whether or not the "procedure prevalent" types represent the majority, they are the ones that have be given special thought.

 

[zoobyshoe]

So there is "something going on" that could be attributed to some obvious causes. For example, the US is founded on self-assertion and free speech principles, which would naturally produce the counter response of a rather brittle authoritarianism in those who have to enforce the rules.

This isn't what happened, though. After having fought the British for independence from their taxes, the US was broke and decided to replenish its coffers by, guess what, taxing things, most notably the sale of alcohol. So the initial irritation between government and citizens wasn't about the government trying to control all that unruly free speech and self assertion that attracted many of those types in the beginning, it came down to money. What is the most robotic of US agencies? I think many would say it's the Internal Revenue Service, the Tax Man, (followed closely, perhaps, by The Department of Motor Vehicles, whose waiting lines seemed to have been designed in the old Soviet Union.) If there was "brittle authoritarianism" it most likely arose from embarrassment over the hipocrisy of enforcing the same kind of tax you just fought to free yourself from.

Likewise, as a nation of immigrants, official rules seem to have a heightened importance because cultural homogeneity cannot be relied upon to produce good order.

Hmmm. It seems to me that many homogenous countries are the "tightest". It is the presence of so much diversity that seems to have helped the US stay "loose".

So it rings true that robotic is all about sticking to the given script because of greater uncertainty in state/corporate interactions with the citizen.

This is certainly true in principle, and becomes an issue in practice when and where ever the government takes steps to tighten up on the citizens. And that, as your links assert, is almost always the case during war, and when injured by natural disaster.

There are companies that advise on essential national characteristics for business people who have to deal in foreign countries and here is what they say about core US characteristics.

US key 7 traits are: self-reliance, speed, control, equality, speaking up, law and order, and capitalism.

Whereas for China it is: face, family, relationships, hierarchy, prosperity, harmony and nationalism.

And for Swiss: follow the plan, slow but sure, Swiss-made, consensus and order.

Finally for New Zealanders (like me): ingenious, fair, restrained, modest, earthy and informal.

You can see that "law and order" does get mentioned as a key US concern, so that could be taken to back-up the OP comment.

But another good bit of recent research from Science in May was this study that rated countries on a spectrum from the uptight to the relaxed. The differences being explained by the levels of historical threat experienced by a country, from sources like wars, natural disasters, disease outbreaks, population density and scarcity of natural resources.

http://www.outlookseries.com/A0996/...ical_Interdependent_World_Michele_Gelfand.htm

http://www.boston.com/news/science/...tight_or_laid_back_cultural_differences_show/

The US towards the loose end of the scale (like Australia and New Zealand) on this score.

But would you have immediately guessed Pakistan and Malaysia to top the tightness and Hungary and Ukraine to be the most apparently laid back?

I found all this and the links very interesting. Thanks for bringing them in.

I am still of the mind, though, that if we can be described as "slightly robotic" or overly adherent to procedure it has nothing to do with the government or military. Rather it is because of fast food and fast coffee, and in back of that, because of Henry Ford. The point of strict procedure in the military may be safety, but in real life it is money. Starbucks, and the others, train their customers to follow procedure because they can serve more people faster that way with a given # of employees. They rake in more dough. I find that training of the customers to be insidious. It's a soft and subtle version of the Seinfeld "Soup Nazi". Instead of the customer being king, as in a nice restaurant, the experience is turned into a school cafeteria style thing, where the customer is made to feel he must integrate himself into a machine which is already in motion.

That may or may not be a superficial phenomenon. I'm not sure how deep it goes. But Penguino is right about there also being an attitude prevalent nowadays that a person must get on a track at a very young age and stick to it. There's an attitude that life takes place according to a schedule, and that's just the way it is. This comes out in education, and, in the workplace, as S Happens speaks about. I'm not sure how much any of that would be evident to a visiting foreigner, though.

Evo's beauty pageant YouTube certainly puts me in mind of The Stepford Wives. If you've seen that movie you know that the wife-robots turn out to have been the brainchild of a woman, not a man as you would suspect. Likewise, those bizarre child beauty pageants seem to be driven by the mothers. There's an obvious "robot" element but I can't sort out if this is cultural, or female, nor am I sure I understand what it's about.

 

[xxChrisxx]

That may or may not be a superficial phenomenon. I'm not sure how deep it goes. But Penguino is right about there also being an attitude prevalent nowadays that a person must get on a track at a very young age and stick to it. There's an attitude that life takes place according to a schedule, and that's just the way it is. This comes out in education, and, in the workplace, as S Happens speaks about. I'm not sure how much any of that would be evident to a visiting foreigner, though.

I just used the interaction with people in a commercial setting as an example.

The trend runs deeper than that. I work for a company that has engineering offices in the UK, US and Norway. The 'robotisation' isn't as obvious, but there is a trend to dealing with things in a single way.

There is a distinct difference between the way US and European engineers seem to work. Engineers from the states tend to know one subject extremely well; the average depth of knowledge of 'their' subject is probably greater than the average depth of the equivilant european engineer. The european engineers tend to have a broader range of experiences to draw on leading to more innovation.

 

[apeiron]

I just used the interaction with people in a commercial setting as an example.

The trend runs deeper than that. I work for a company that has engineering offices in the UK, US and Norway. The 'robotisation' isn't as obvious, but there is a trend to dealing with things in a single way.

There is a distinct difference between the way US and European engineers seem to work. Engineers from the states tend to know one subject extremely well; the average depth of knowledge of 'their' subject is probably greater than the average depth of the equivilant european engineer. The european engineers tend to have a broader range of experiences to draw on leading to more innovation.

I think it was a good point that the US took a mass production approach to business practices, with McDonalds being a prime example. If you mechanise the process of production - breaking it down into a chain of small, simple repetitive actions whose total speed can tightly controlled - then it is not so surprising that the people implementing the process become robotic, restricted even in their mental ability to break out of their strict job definition.

Given the OP stemmed from an incident of unthinking police brutality, is this then really talking about the same thing? Is law enforcement also "production line" in the US so that officers have little lattitude or creativity in the way they apply the rules? I think other stuff is going on there too.

 

[JDStupi]

These businesses are so popular that they have inadvertantly programmed people to think this way and expect things to be done this way.

I would completely agree with this statement. There is a reciprocal relationship between the buisnesses and the people purchasing from them, because the people purchasing from them are just workers who aren't currently working. We have a push towards "being professional" and there is a distinction between what type of mannerisms are accepted as "professional" and what are seen as too informal.

These procedures are adopted because people tend to suck and be sensitive. If you don't fake a "professional" robotic interaction with recited politeness people can get offended or complain. Then they call all of their stupid over sensitive friends with no real values and tell them not to shop at store x, and store x, in an attempt to save the almighty dolla,r intervenes.

Everybody is worried about "offending" somebody so we make everything procedural and if you deviate from procedure you have the slightest chance of offending some A-hole and then thee company fires you because "If you would have followed the procedure exactly you would not have offended that person".

Also, following rules and doing procedures is built into our heads. You find people who get quite emotionally excited if you fail to do things the normal way. They get angry and call you stupid or immature or something of the like, this type of negative reinforcement has obvious consequences.
I worked at a Burger King once, and fellow employees would make a big deal over the order of operations. That is to say, if you made the sandwich on the top bun and then put the burger together afterwards in order to microwave the bottom bun and save time (resulting in a completely equivalent sandwich) you would get in trouble for "violating procedure".

Then, because we are trained so procedurally, when something deviates nobody knows what to do. But it is ok, because we just figure out a new procedure.