Korean Job Discussion Forums

[stevemcgarrett]

Actually, my explanation could apply to all East Asian societies.

It has to everything to do with saving and giving face, as Michael Bond, the eminent comparative psychologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has discussed at length in his published articles.

When Korean students cheat, it is usually a source of great consternation to them IF it is publicly known and their classmates actually disapprove of it. That's why many are not even flustered if their classmates don't care about their actions and it isn't held up by the faculty or administrative staff as an egregious example of immoral conduct. Getting caught tends to matter less than it would for a typical Western student simply because it is far less likely to involve the conscience.

As I discovered after teaching Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and "Young Goodman Brown," the traditional East Asian concept of guilt is at great variance with that in the West. To wit: Korean guilt is externally induced; Western guilt is internally induced. In other words, the former's sense of guilt comes from others; the latter from oneself.

And the collectivist mentality contributes to this variance in reaction. If the majority are content to accept the bell curve, which unfairly alters the grades of some higher-achieving students, it won't be a source of guilt. What matters is the web of interpersonal relationships, not the plight of the individual, however deserving of concern he or she might be.

What are your thoughts on this essential cultural phenomenon?

(And let's hope this thread doesn't get deleted too)

[stevemcgarrett]

Guess I must have this situation completely figured out judging by the response.

Kimo, call the Governor and tell him I'm ready to retire from 5-0.

[Moldy Rutabaga]

[....]

[rothkowitz]

It was a pretty good argument.

Certainly in this part of the world one hardly ever(if ever) hears about people being wracked with guilt to the point that they blow the whistle.

Everyone just goes along with what is considered to be acceptable and woe betide the person that rocks the boat.

[Dev]

Are you suggesting that Asians have no sense of what's right & wrong as Western people do.

Because we know something we do is wrong, we feel shame. The shame comes from our own internalized belief system - code of morals.

As for learning to break rules and feeling okay about it, you also find this in the West. In Montreal, everyone jay-walks. People know they're violating traffic rules, but since so many people are doing it, not many people think twice about it.

[stevemcgarrett]

Dev:

Good question. Asians do of course have their own moral compass and those Koreans who are Christians might have a more Western orientation toward guilt, which would be interesting to research.

But I wouldn't equate jaywalking with wholesale cheating on college exams.

Rutabaga:

You make a good point: guilt can also come by shaming one's family. So this raises the ante, as it were:

Is it likely that Korean students brazenly cheat on exams because even if they're caught, their family will not feel shamed?

Or does the drive to succeed, or rather to compete with classmates, outweigh concern about family shame when the opportunity to cheat presents itself?

[rocklee]

OP,

You are trying to create a ripple in a storm.

We know cheating will be prevalent in any rapidly developing countries. If it takes less time to get something done, even to cheat, then so be it.

Case closed.

[markhan]

[rocklee]

[billybrobby]

I haven't read the articles you mentioned, but to me this is just another concocted theory. It might be right, but it draws such a sharp, artificial-seeming dichotomy between the east and west that it rings false.

Also, it seems pro-western and anti-asian in that it depicts asian morality as mere performance and western morality as more deeply felt.

Where's the evidence? Studies?

People have done a lot of experiments to show that westerners are more likely to cheat when they think they won't get caught and less likely in the opposite situation. Which to me suggests that their morality is not springing from some moral code but from social pressure or just practical consideration.

To me, moral decisions are always arrived at through a combination of inner morality and external pressure. And with socialization, it's hard to distinguish the two. So that's another sharp dichotomy made by your argument which rings false to me.