#18 Harmonizing Social Expectations with Aging: Insights from Dr. Shinobu Kitayama's Culture and Cognition Lab

In this episode, I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Shinobu Kitayama, a distinguished psychology professor at the University of Michigan. Dr. Kitayama leads the Culture & Cognition Lab, where his groundbreaking research has uncovered valuable insights into the mind, culture, and well-being. We discuss how Western cultural norms often emphasize an active, positive self, setting unique expectations for aging. While these norms can be beneficial, they also risk creating a mismatch with the realities of aging. In our discussion, Dr. Kitayama enlightens us on these cultural impacts and introduces successful aging practices from various cultures. These insights pave the way for a richer, healthier perspective on aging, where wisdom and experience are in harmony with our evolving selves. Tune in to discover how integrating global aging philosophies can transform and enhance our journey through our midlife years and beyond.

Resources and Links;
Dr. Kityama's Culture and Cognition Lab

Culture and Wellbeing in Late Adulthood: Theory and Evidence

Varieties of interdependence and the emergence of the Modern West: Toward the globalizing of psychology

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Our names again to make sure that I've got it right. I'll leave it on when I record your intro, right?

Speaker 2: 0:07

Shinabu Kijima Kijima. Is that good? Okay, yes, All right. Well, I'm really excited to have you on the show. So welcome to the show, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: 0:16

Thank you, thank you, I'm excited.

Speaker 2: 0:18

I am very excited as well. I am very excited as well. Could you start by just giving us some background, how you got on this path to exploring culture, aging and movie?

Speaker 1: 0:28

Yeah, Well, I'm originally from Japan. I grew up in Japan, I went to college in Japan and I came to the United States, actually to Michigan, to study psychology in graduate school. Now, of course, I study psychology in graduate school, but also I experienced lots of cultural shocks. That is, I found many aspects of American culture a little bit puzzling and interesting, for sure, and that really motivated me to study how culture might get into the body and the brain and the skin to form and influence our ways of thinking, feeling and so on. And now I'm getting older. Unfortunately, or fortunately, that brought me into this important topic of aging, how aging might vary across different cultural contexts and what these cultural insights might tell us about current understanding of aging process in psychology and its neighboring field. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. That's why I want you to read it. It was just so interesting beforehand the differences and the insights that you gained and shared. So could you start by telling us a little bit?

Speaker 2: 2:08

about Western culture.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Yeah, western culture. One thing that amazed me when I came here is that people are very, very enthusiastic, and that doesn't really surprise me when I interact with my, say, cohort, just the same age graduate students, so even undergraduates. Young kids are supposed to be enthusiastic and positive and always thrilled to do a lot of different things, but many of my professors are like that. Well, how come? You guys are older and supposed to be wiser and more relaxed and broadly encompassing wide field, and if you become so myopic by being excited, how can you be more positive and wise and how can you educate young folks like myself? Of course, I didn't say that to my advisors, but the very fact that many of my young, older folks, particularly my advisors and professors, are so enthusiastic and so positive make me feel, oh, this is great, this is such a great culture. But at the same time, that was puzzling to me as well. And now, in the meantime, for 30 years or so, I didn't study aging, but when I came up with this idea, well, when we encountered this problem of aging in different cultural contexts, this initial puzzlement came back to me and just I began asking whether that initial impression might carry some interesting theoretical insight.

Speaker 1: 4:18

So for a long time we argued that in American middle class, mostly European American culture, there's a strong belief of the self as an independent entity. You have preferences, you have attitudes, you have internal attributes, maybe personality, maybe motivations. Those internal attributes that define the self are very, very important. We call it independent self. Now, independent self doesn't mean that people are asocial, surely not anti-social. Simply, this view encouraged people to use internal attributes to form social relationships. So, for example, you may choose your friends, or you may choose your spouse, and so on. So even social relationships oftentimes may be based on this view of the self as independent.

Speaker 1: 5:28

In this cultural context Now, given this point of view, positive enthusiasm and being young seem to make sense. That is, those are positive things and you really have to utilize your positive attitudes, positive dispositions, to organize your behavior, approach to other people, promote your goals and do everything quite right by interacting with others as equals. So that's ideal scenario in American cultural context. So to interact with younger students or to interact with younger colleagues, even if you are getting older and you know it at some level. You know your knee is hurting now in a way that did not before, and yet this culture demands that you energize yourself and you approach others and you engage with other people in very, very enthusiastic way. That's a cultural recipe of forming social relationships.

Speaker 1: 6:45

So, okay, that's good, you know, perfect culture, except for the fact that, as a function of age, oftentimes your body and sometimes brain decline, show some clear signature, clear signs of decline, and so there are some dissonance. So that was one interesting possibility we wanted to explore. So we looked into some existing data and we actually did empirical studies as well, and what we are finding is that, on the one hand, as a function of age, many Americans seem to seek positivity, positive energy, enthusiasm and to try to stay young, but at the same time, this seemed to entail some negative consequences, sometimes very negative consequences. That is, it's very hard oftentimes to catch up with this ideal, which can diminish your positive personality or even your sense of meaning in life. So that was a major thesis we put forward and we did so. That's an interesting virtue, interesting thing. A cultural comparison can do.

Speaker 1: 8:23

But really, knowing other cultures, people may say, yeah, that's how things go, how else can that be? But of course, when I initially came here, I was stunned that people are doing this. So we went back to the literature in East Asia and tried to see how aging might figure out in that cultural context, and for some time we have argued that instead of independence, actually East Asian culture seems to emphasize interdependence. So it's not really you as a person that is driving the car, but really it's the car, social relationship and groups are some surrounding context that's driving you. So people are interdependent with the surrounding social relationships and this interdependence is really essential.

Speaker 1: 9:34

Maybe you are social roles, maybe you are social status, maybe peer expectations or parental expectations or whatever those fitting in to social expectations. Role expectations is seen as fundamentally defining the self. So who you are is defined by social roles and you are worse is defined by your capability to making do adjustment to a different social context. So that's very different view of identity and self. Now let's apply this to aging. Now, given this view of the self, it's just okay and actually it indicates some virtue to make adjustment to different social roles, which are oftentimes age graded. So when you are young, it's just perfectly fine to be crazy and to be active, to be enthusiastic and middle with myopic. That's completely fine and actually desirable.

Speaker 1: 10:55

But as you get older, well, you have to make adjustment. By the time you become a parent, for example, you'd better to have some social roles which are appreciated, acknowledged in society, and also you ought to be able to take care of your kid. How can you take care of your kids if you are acting like just a mere equal? If you are in some way caretakers, you have to play the role of a model so that kids can see and maybe imitate and learn from, and then maybe you climb the ladder in your company or whatever, and eventually you have to retire and then very different roles may come in. That is what's the point of really actively engaging in everything when you have to retire.

Speaker 1: 12:03

Now you have to create, figure out new stage in your life. And now, given this surely Japanese age as well, no question about this, knee could hurt and all of maybe heart conditions may decline and so on. And this age-related decline might be less impactful, less damaging, because of this willingness, willingness to make adjustment, and cultural virtue attached to this adjustment. And we found initial evidence indicating that, as a function of age, there is no real evidence that people try to seek positivity or enthusiasm and correspondingly, there's much less decline of positive personality aspects or meaning in life. So that's essentially the article that you mentioned in a single shot. I appreciate that so much.

Speaker 2: 13:57

It affected me.

Speaker 1: 13:58

It's funny that you said the car. I had this experience in the car. It sounds funny. I'm going to get you on the car this week. You know, I've kind of been socialized to first thing in the morning and then accomplished things for my job, you know, and I give my daughter a ride to work. I admittedly have felt like I got to get my daughter to work, so I can get to my real work, my real work or to her school, I should say.

Speaker 2: 14:27

But now it struck me like a thunderbolt.

Speaker 1: 14:32

No this ride this car, this together with her is the biggest thing of the day, it's not getting past the real. This is what I'm at at. Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure, that can be real and that can be just as important. You know, there's no need to separate your personal agenda from social expectations To a greater extent. Those two may be more matched, more fused in Asian cultural context.

Speaker 2: 15:06

Yeah, another thing that really helps me was how you talked about high arousal, positive emotions.

Speaker 1: 15:16

Could you talk a little bit more?

Speaker 2: 15:17

about that please.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Oh yeah, so high arousal, positive emotions such as enthusiasm, joy and pride, those are really important emotions and you know especially American middle class culture. Those emotions are valid very strongly, in part because they demonstrate personal virtue that you have. If you have positive self, positive energy under the skin somewhere in your body, supposedly your spirit is so positive, this positivity demand expression. So showing enthusiasm, showing joy and showing pride is very important and very important and interestingly that's a cultural thing. People anticipate you to express those high arousal emotions if you are a decent person.

Speaker 1: 16:29

So when I came here I surely didn't have this cultural demand internalized in me. So, to add, the end of the day people ask how are you doing? And I was a little bit too honest in saying, oh, I'm tired, that didn't work, that didn't work, that's surely that elicited some degree of empathy or sympathy forever. But then say, oh, yeah, take care, see you tomorrow. But when you do culturally appropriate, saying showing enthusiasm yeah, this was a long day, but I feel very enthusiastic about this project, I get just, maybe just a glass of wine tonight, but I'll get back to this project. That's exactly what I want to do. So that's the right thing to say. And initially I forced myself to pretend that I have this positive energy. But that make you fit into social expectations and that make you fit into the natural flow of social relationship and that makes you a decent person, as seen by others for sure. But eventually you begin to fool yourself that you are a decent person in American style. So eventually I internalize this cultural value. So I feel I'm pretty comfortable and surely more natural to me to say, even when I'm tired, I'm excited, I'm thrilled and so on Okay, so that's cultural demand. That's very, very strong and Americans appear to have real problem when they fail to catch up to this cultural demand.

Speaker 1: 18:34

So, for example, I don't think we reported this finding in this particular article, but we are investigating physiological impact of experiencing negative emotions in American culture and Japanese culture. Okay, so you know, everybody feels sad, everybody feel frustrated and so on, but some people do experience such negative emotions more frequently. Now, interesting finding is that, among European American people, if you know that you are feeling those negative emotions that seem to have negative impacts on your biological health, so the level where inflammation goes up and immunosuppression seem to kick in, that is, you know, basically, negative emotions seem to harm your biological health, presumably. Mechanism is that it's so stressful, in addition to being negative. You know I'm failing to live up to this cultural ideal of being enthusiastic, being positive and so on.

Speaker 1: 20:05

So experience negative emotion is negative for sure, but for Americans it appears to be doubly negative in the sense that emotions are negative. But in addition to that, experiencing negative emotions is culturally inappropriate, indicating that you are not a decent court and court person as defined by this culture. So you know, generally people try to achieve positivity. That may be true, but surely that's true in American culture. But more than that, aging become very complicated. Very interesting in this context because, you know, even even Americans seem to know that this pursuit of positive emotions must be balanced well, if there's, there are some other priorities.

Speaker 1: 21:11

You know, when you are young. You have jobs, you have ovations, you have all sorts of things that you have to do and sometimes in your job you have to deal with very unpleasant colleagues because it's necessary and that's part of your job and that's maybe necessary to, you know, make advancement in your personal agenda, and so on. So, to a degree, when you are young, this pursuit of positivity is balanced by some immediate need of life. However, as a function of age, people begin to realize that life is short, life left is short and you really can afford to focusing on your immediate present and, as a consequence, this pursuit of positivity may become unhinged. That's why Laura Custon said in her theory of social-emotional selectivity in aging so when people are young you have to have a longer perspective, so that positivity in the present is the only one aspect that needs to be countered by and balanced by many other longer-term perspective considerations that are required. However, when you get older, especially after retirement, say after retirement age like 60 or 65, whatever people become really enthusiastic about their own enthusiasm, that is, this search for positivity become much stronger than before.

Speaker 1: 23:08

And surely we found evidence for this, and evidence is very abundant, but much of the evidence is limited largely to American middle-class culture and to some extent Western European culture. Now we reviewed in this article what is known or what has been found in Asian culture and the evidence is much more mixed. So, as a function of age, people pursue more positivity or try to feel positive emotions. We found very clear evidence supporting this kind of possibility for Americans, but virtually none among Japanese subjects we tested. So basically this and also, by the way, I'm sorry, I'm a little confusing. I now realize.

Speaker 2: 24:06

No, no, you're doing great. This is wonderful.

Speaker 1: 24:09

Yeah, I mentioned, there's a double negative of negative emotions among Americans and this effect simply doesn't exist among Japanese.

Speaker 2: 24:20

Wow, wow.

Speaker 1: 24:21

Yeah, experience negative emotions is unpleasant, didn't you know that? And that's it. That's it. There's no need to be stressed out just because you are feeling negative. So we are getting that kind of wave of thought in combination. Feeling positive is a cultural demand that is internalized among many Americans and that's okay and probably that works out very well, until you fail to live up to that cultural ideal, which sometimes happens for some people, almost inevitably when they get older. Does it make sense?

Speaker 2: 25:15

Yes, it makes a lot of sense and it really struck me too as I read it.

Speaker 1: 25:21

I'm surprised I didn't. I wasn't aware of this now, but I'm thankful that I heard this from you, dr Kijama. It is such an expectation that a lot of people don't realize it.

Speaker 2: 25:37

And we are expected to be positive and energetic throughout.

Speaker 1: 25:41

And we feel bad if we are. But that's not what reality of AGM is. It's our body, like you said. Our brains decline. We have different social roles that are more important.

Speaker 1: 25:53

And to allow ourselves to feel that it seems like it really contributes to a healthier way of being. Agm is such a daunting task and now my general point would be that every culture has a virtue. Positivity can be a virtue, or balancing, like in the end emphasized in Asian culture, could be a virtue. But I would say, if virtue become a demand imperative, that can backfire.

Speaker 2: 26:43

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1: 26:46

So positivity, enthusiasm, that's really good, very adaptive, and in fact I myself try to be enthusiastic, positive and proactive, actively engaging with my younger colleagues and my graduate students or undergraduates, and I do appreciate if and when they treat me like they are equals, with equal degree of enthusiasm, and that's a virtue, no question about this, and I really value this aspect of American life that is largely missing in Japan or East Asia. But you know what you imposed can be a burden. Yes, so you know. I think it's very important to keep that point in mind and just to make the point clear. I'm not saying that aging in East Asia is much easier or much healthier, Just on the contrary. You know, virtue emphasized in East Asia say, for example, adjustment to age-based, age-graded expectations that can be a burden too.

Speaker 2: 28:11

Yes.

Speaker 1: 28:13

When pushing it to the extreme, especially when you are young, when you are psychologically young, your health is perfectly fine and you know you are capable and you are willing to positively engage with other people and do whatever you can do to contribute. You know you want to do it and actually this cultural virtue may get harder to live a full life under those circumstances. So again, I think Asian virtue of balance or adjustment, pushed in the extreme, can be a burden as well.

Speaker 2: 28:58

Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 1: 28:59

Right so, but I think it's a good thing to know that if that's good about your culture and if that can be a potential limitation of it. So now, my general impression of American aging is that this emphasis on positivity may become a little bit excessive, to the point where that became a burden to many people, and then surely vice versa in many cases in East Asia. Yes, so well said. Could you talk about low arousal, emotions and differences?

Speaker 2: 29:43

there as well.

Speaker 1: 29:45

Yeah, generally literature shows that low arousal emotions, like calmness or relaxation, those are appreciated more in East Asia. So that may make aging process easier to some extent if your body or your health make it more challenging to experience, for example, enthusiasm in other high arousal emotions. And it is perfectly fine culturally to feel calm and to relax and to stay peaceful and that's a culturally a cultural virtue, culturally appreciated, sanctioned emotional state. Evidence is very clear that those low arousal emotions are valued more in East Asia compared to North America.

Speaker 2: 30:48

Yeah, I found that really interesting. I also found it really interesting about personality traits and how those change across aging. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Speaker 1: 30:58

Yeah, sure. So that's a very complicated story. It's not easy. It's not easy to study because you just cannot follow a single individual in their lifetime. Now some people try to do it, but it's still nonetheless. It's very, very challenging.

Speaker 1: 31:18

So what we did was to use longitudinal data for five to 10 years and so, for example, if you are, say, 30 years of age in the first testing, by the time you are tested in the second time, you become 40, right? So 30-year-old become 40, 40 become 50, and so on. There's tremendous amount of individual variation. But if you combine those age trajectories from different life points, you can kind of extrapolate, that is, you can infer overall age trend across time. So you can use some statistical magic that is, statistical method to accomplish this. And that's exactly what we did.

Speaker 1: 32:08

And what you find is that there's very clear decline of conscientiousness, extra virgin and openness to experience, that is, some kind of openness to novelty and so on, toward the end of life among Americans. And that's consistent with the notion that those people experience some real problems in handling cultural pressure to be enthusiastic and so on. Japanese showed no evidence of this, absolutely no evidence of this, and very similar pattern we found in some aspects of, say, meaning in life. Meaning in life has many aspects. For example, you feel your life is very meaningful when you think that you are experiencing some kind of growth as a person, or really purpose in life is fundamental in maintaining the sense that your life has direction, has organization, some structure. Now, very, very interestingly, americans show very sharp decline of personal growth, sense of personal growth and also sense of purpose in life after, say, 60 or surely 65. And that's considered to be the indemitable thing. What's the point of maintaining purpose when there's no time left? That seems like a completely sensible finding, given human biology.

Speaker 1: 34:13

But actually when we looked at the data, Japanese don't show this effect. Japanese maintain overall, on average, keep feeling that they are still growing even though they are getting older, or they have some purpose in life even when they get older. Now what kind of purpose do they have At the end of the day? We don't know, because we didn't ask those questions.

Speaker 1: 34:44

However, it seems very plausible to me that many Japanese would feel, yeah, my grandkids were maintaining my family lineage, were creating some cohesive community in my neighborhood. Those become purpose in life and also those kind of age-graded tasks may make you feel that you are showing some degree of growth, even though the contribution that you're making might be much less now than before. So, anyway, those are very interesting consequences of the cultural demand for positivity for Americans, which is not really positive, actually negative. And those effects appear to be nearly completely missing in Japanese, consistent with the notion that this demand for enthusiasm, youth and youthful enthusiasm, is also missing in Japanese cultural context. Yeah, that is so interesting Something to really think about talking about being 60 and our listeners.

Speaker 1: 36:14

My listeners are midlife and kind of thinking about that trajectory. It's really helpful as we're trying to get on that shit, live a meaningful life and to keep on that trajectory. And I hear you saying that it's interdependent, interdependent, intergenerational. So can you talk a little bit about how we, as midlifers, might kind of strengthen our relationship with older generations as part of this.

Speaker 1: 36:49

Well, that's interesting. Some people argue that, as a function of age, people may become more interdependent, because personal agenda may become less relevant as a function of age. But surprisingly, we found very little evidence for something like this. Now my general hypothesis, which I call it hypothesis merely because evidence is very, very weak, but generally seem to me that cultural effect is very, very prominent in middle age and become weaker as a function of age. And why is that? Well, we don't know. One possibility is that in the middle age you really have to use culture as a resource and nothing at your life. So well, one metaphor I propose is a metaphor of culture as a game like baseball or football. And you know, when you are very active in life, you have to participate in the game very, very actively and, conversely, you culture influence your psychology very, very strongly and sometimes in very dramatic way.

Speaker 1: 38:28

Now to add the end while in older age, especially after retirement, this demands to play culture as a game may diminish and, as a consequence, impact of culture may become less. So, to some extent, all the age you know, elderies in different cultures may become more similar. But that's just my speculation, something somebody need to investigate.

Speaker 2: 38:59

Yeah, I love that analogy. That is really helpful. So much to gain from this. Just appreciate your time so much.

Speaker 1: 39:07

Thank you, this was really exciting oh.

Speaker 2: 39:10

I'm so happy to hear that. I hear that, yeah, like I said, it's been a meaningful meeting and I'm excited to share this. Oh, thank you. I think I have my most difficult question coming up for you. You know, you studied and lived this for probably decades. What are some key takeaways that you would, our listeners, take away from your work and our conversation today?

Speaker 1: 39:37

It's interesting.

Speaker 2: 39:39

You've said a lot. I don't know if there's an open-ended opportunity, if you had other ways to share.

Speaker 1: 39:44

Yeah, key takeaway is something like this. We often constructualized culture has something like clothes, or some wear sports shirts. You know, in some culture you have to wear sports shirts, some other cultures you have to wear something else. So you know, once you strip the person and make him naked, everybody is the same. So that's one view of culture and human mind.

Speaker 1: 40:23

Now, another very different view is that you know you are person, maybe shaped by culture. So, for example, you know, if you use chopstick, your perception, your motor coordination change very systematically. Now, if that's merely chopstick, as opposed to knives and the forks, it's not a big deal. However, culture is here to organize your life and almost your biology, and your mind is meant to utilize those cultural resources to learn good life and survive. So your mind maybe transformed in something different way how you think about things, how you feel about things and how you, what you try to do and how you want to do it. All this may undergo some systematic transformation, which amounts to saying that culture become part of you. So I think that's the biggest takeaway. And now, one implication of this is that this process of psychological transformation by culture may have significant impact on the aging process.

Speaker 2: 41:51

Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1: 41:54

Really great.

Speaker 2: 41:55

Really great. Okay, really thoughtful, really thoughtful.

Speaker 1: 41:58

Yeah, thanks so much. I have one last question for you. Yes, For those of you for those of you listeners, and for me for the readings or war resources what would you recommend? What would you?

Speaker 2: 42:10

recommend Websites books.

Speaker 1: 42:12

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. I would say a few now. Book, I want to write one and I want to recommend it. I don't have, do you?

Speaker 1: 42:29

If you go, if you go to my website, there's a general description of this field called cultural psychology, and I try to describe exactly what the field tried to accomplish. Probably that's a good way to start learning a bit about this field. And now, if you are interested in cultural differences in aging, this American psychology speaks maybe good, you know a little bit, you know academic, but hopefully that's not too difficult to read. So that may be a good introduction. And also I want to emphasize that East and West is only one segment of massive cultural variations that you can find on the globe. So just I'm saying, okay, westerners are like this and Asians are like this. That doesn't mean that, you know, nobody else is relevant, that's right. Very contrary, you know we are covering only tiny segment of the people on the globe.

Speaker 1: 43:49

So actually, my current agenda, or more project right now, which we are doing with the enthusiasm, is to go beyond East and the West and very, very little research exists, especially in connection to aging. So I have very little to talk about this in the context of aging research, but nonetheless, it's very important to explain the school and to realize that surely West is only part of the story and East Asia can be added to enrich the story, but still in combination. This story of East and the West is limited, severely limited, and that need to be expanded. If people are interested in this effort of expanding the field, we have another American psychologist piece published last year entitled Varieties of Interdependence. So again, that's a scary paper, but that's a review paper. I try to write, we try to write in a way that is highly accessible to a general, intelligent audience. So that's American Psychologist 2022. First off, that is me, so I'm sure people can find it easily.

Speaker 2: 45:27

Yeah, I will definitely put those links in the description of this episode, so this episode can find those, and I want to echo what you said, that you said that he is very acrobatic and professional, but also accessible, and I really, really appreciate that. Thank you, well, this has been wonderful.

Speaker 1: 45:44

And I appreciate your time Just tremendously. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you very much, Kyle. It was such a pleasure to have this conversation with you Wonderful.

Speaker 2: 45:58

Thank you again, thank you. I'll stop here.

Speaker 1: 46:01

Okay.