Cultural Differences

Overview

A gesture that signals warm approval in one country is an obscene insult two borders away. This topic is, at its core, a lookup table: it catalogs the small number of hand signals, greeting rituals, and bodily habits whose meaning inverts by region, and warns travellers and businesspeople away from the errors that have derailed deals — and, in at least one case, a presidential goodwill tour.

The Peases open with a memory test of fifteen hand signals (labelled A through O), each carrying a different meaning depending on where you stand. The same circle-of-thumb-and-finger that means "OK" in North America means "zero," "money," or "you're an arsehole" elsewhere. Underneath the catalogue sit two stabilizing facts. First, the biggest cultural differences are concentrated in a few channels: territorial space, eye contact, touch frequency, and insult gestures — with Arab countries, parts of Asia, and Japan carrying the densest set of local signals. Second, core facial expressions of emotion are universal, verified across twenty-one cultures and even stone-age peoples isolated from the outside world. The practical takeaway: smiles travel safely; hand gestures do not. When abroad, narrow your body language and ask the locals to show you their insult signals before you accidentally make one.

Key takeaways

Mental model

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The cultural test — fifteen signals, many meanings

The Peases ask the reader to display "five" then "two" with one hand. Anglo-Saxons (96% likely) raise the middle and index fingers; Europeans (94% likely) raise the thumb and index finger, because Europeans start counting on the thumb while Anglo-Saxons start on the index finger. They then present fifteen hand signals — each with its catalogue of regional meanings. The full table, preserved:

| # | Signal | Regional meanings | | --- | --- | --- | | A | Ring / circle | Europe & North America: OK · Mediterranean, Russia, Brazil, Turkey: orifice signal, sexual insult, "gay man" · Tunisia, France, Belgium: zero, worthless · Japan: money, coins | | B | Index finger raised | Western countries: one; "Excuse me!"; "As God is my witness"; "No!" (to children) | | C | Two fingers, palm out | Britain, Australia, NZ, Malta: "Up yours!" · USA: two · Germany: victory · France: peace · Ancient Rome: Julius Caesar ordering five beers | | D | Three fingers | Europe: three · Catholic countries: a blessing | | E | Two fingers (counting) | Europe: two · Britain, Australia, NZ: one · USA: "Waiter!" · Japan: an insult | | F | Four fingers | Western countries: four · Japan: an insult | | G | Open palm, five | Western countries: five · Everywhere: "Stop!" · Greece & Turkey: "Go to hell!" | | H | Little finger | Mediterranean: small penis · Bali: bad · Japan: woman · South America: thin · France: "You can't fool me!" | | I | Horns (index + little finger) | Mediterranean: "Your wife is being unfaithful" · Malta & Italy: protection against the Evil Eye (pointed) · South America: protection against bad luck (rotated) · USA: Texas Longhorns logo | | J | Fingers spread / thrust | Greece: "Go to hell!" · The West: two | | K | Forearm jerk | Ancient Rome: "Up yours!" · USA: "Sit on this! Screw you!" | | L | Thumb-Up | Europe: one · Australia: "Sit on this!" (upward jerk) · Widespread: hitchhike, good, OK · Greece: "Up yours!" (thrust forward) · Japan: man, five | | M | Hang loose (thumb + little finger) | Hawaii: hang loose · Holland: "Do you want a drink?" | | N | Index + little finger + thumb | USA: "I love you" | | O | Both hands open | The West: ten, "I surrender" · Greece: "Up yours — twice!" · Widespread: "I'm telling the truth" |

The scoring is tongue-in-cheek — over 30 points marks a "well-travelled, broad-thinking person," while 15 or fewer means "you think everyone thinks like you do… you are probably an American." The serious point underneath: there is no safe assumption that a gesture means abroad what it means at home.

Why differences are shrinking

Because of the global reach of American television and film, younger generations everywhere are converging on a generic North American body language. An Australian in their sixties reads the British two-fingers-up as an insult; an Australian teenager reads it as the number two and treats the American raised middle finger as the main insult. Most countries now recognize the Ring as "OK" even where it isn't traditional, and children worldwide wear baseball caps backward and quote American films they don't fully understand.

Cultural basics are the same almost everywhere

Against the catalogue of differences, the Peases stress a floor of universality. Paul Ekman of UC San Francisco showed photographs of happiness, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and surprise to people in twenty-one different cultures. The majority in every country agreed on happiness, sadness, and disgust; twenty of twenty-one agreed on surprise; nineteen agreed on fear; eighteen agreed on anger. The one notable difference: the Japanese described the fear photograph as surprise.

Ekman also studied the South Fore of New Guinea and the Dani of West Irian — peoples isolated from the outside world — and recorded the same results, again with fear and surprise being the one pair that blurred. When he filmed these stone-age people enacting the expressions and showed the footage to Americans, the Americans identified every one correctly, demonstrating that smiling and facial expressions are universal.

Dr. Linda Camras of DePaul University reinforced the point with infants: using the Facial Action Coding System, she found Japanese and American babies displayed exactly the same emotional expressions, showing the expressions are inborn rather than learned. The biggest differences, by contrast, cluster in territorial space, eye contact, touch frequency, and insult gestures — densest in Arab countries, parts of Asia, and Japan.

Greeting differences

Handshaking is a minefield of mismatched expectations. British, Australian, New Zealander, German, and American colleagues typically shake hands on meeting and on departure; most European cultures shake several times a day, and some French shake hands for up to thirty minutes a day. Indian, Asian, and Arabic cultures may keep holding your hand after the shake has ended.

The pump count itself differs and reads as character:

| Culture | Handshake style | | --- | --- | | Germans, French | One or two firm pumps, then a short hold | | Brits | Three to five pumps | | Americans | Five to seven pumps |

To Americans, the single-pump German seems distant; to Germans, Americans "pump hands as if they are blowing up an airbed."

Cheek-kissing counts vary too: Scandinavians settle for a single kiss, the French mostly prefer a double, and the Dutch, Belgians, and Arabs go for a triple. Australians, New Zealanders, and Americans tend to be confused by greeting kisses and bump noses through a single awkward peck; the Brits either stand back to avoid kissing or surprise you with a European double. Sir Edmund Hillary recounts that atop Everest he offered Sherpa Tenzing Norgay a proper British handshake — and Norgay leapt forward to hug and kiss him, the proper Tibetan congratulation.

When one culture encounters another

Italians keep their hands held high while talking — a way of holding the floor; the affectionate arm-touching is really a tactic to stop the listener raising their own hands to take a turn. To interrupt an Italian, you must grab their hands in midair and hold them down. By contrast, Germans and the British look "physically paralyzed" when they talk, standing at attention while the French use forearms and hands and Italians use their whole bodies. The Peases' research across forty-two countries ranks North Americans as the least culturally sensitive, with the British close behind — yet most foreign cultures don't expect you to learn their language, and are impressed by any traveller who takes the time to use local body-language customs.

The English Stiff-Upper-Lip

This expression involves pursing the lips to control the face so that as little emotion as possible shows, conveying complete emotional control. When Princes Philip, Charles, Harry, and William walked behind Diana's coffin in 1997, each held the Stiff-Upper-Lip, which much of the non-British world read as a lack of feeling.

Henry VIII popularized the Lips-Pursed look: he had a small mouth, and stiffening his upper lip for portraits made it look smaller still — which made a small mouth a superiority signal among the sixteenth-century English. Modern English speakers still use the Lips-Pursed expression when they feel intimidated by people they consider inferior, often paired with extended eye blinks.

The Japanese

Japan is the one major culture where handshakes, kissing, and bear hugs never took hold — bodily contact is considered impolite. People bow on first meeting, and the higher-status person bows least while the lowest-status bows most. Business cards are exchanged first so each person can assess the other's status before the appropriate bow follows. (The authors note dryly that you should keep your shoes spotless: every time a Japanese person bows, they inspect them.)

Japanese listening uses a repertoire of smiles, nods, and polite noises with no direct equivalent elsewhere — meant to encourage you to keep talking, but routinely misread by Westerners as agreement. The head-nod is an almost universal "yes," except among the Bulgarians (who use it for "no") and the Japanese (who use it for politeness). A Japanese Hai ("yes") usually means "yes, I heard you," not "yes, I agree." Asked "You don't agree, do you?" a Japanese person may nod and say yes, meaning "Yes, you are correct — I don't agree."

Concerned with saving face, the Japanese avoid saying "no" outright. The closest you'll get is "It is very difficult" or "We will give this positive study" — which can really mean "Let's forget the whole thing and go home." The practical rule: avoid forcing questions whose answer might be no.

Nose-blowing — "You dirty, disgusting pig!"

Europeans and Westerners blow their noses into a handkerchief or tissue; Asians and Japanese spit or snort — and each side is appalled by the other. The Peases trace this directly to tuberculosis. In past-century Europe, TB was a near-certain death sentence — "the AIDS of the era" — so governments instructed people to blow their noses to limit its spread; this is why Westerners react so strongly to spitting, which they instinctively associate with disease transmission.

Had TB been the Eastern epidemic instead, the reaction would be reversed. As it is, the Japanese are appalled when someone blows their nose into a handkerchief and returns it to a pocket or sleeve — equivalent, in their eyes, to dangling a roll of toilet paper from the jacket. Asians believe (correctly, the authors note) that spitting is the more hygienic option. The cross-cultural advice: never blow your nose in front of a Japanese person, and don't be offended by an Asian colleague who spits or snorts.

The three most common cross-cultural gestures

The Peases single out three gestures travellers are most likely to misuse: the Ring, the Thumb-Up, and the V-sign.

The Ring

Popularized in 1830s America by newspapers' craze for abbreviations — "OK" variously explained as "oll korrect," the opposite of "KO," or "Old Kinderhook" (a president's birthplace and campaign slogan), with the ring shape standing for the letter O. Its meanings:

| Region | Meaning | | --- | --- | | English-speaking countries | OK | | France, Belgium | Zero, nothing, worthless | | Japan | Money (could read as a request for a bribe) | | Mediterranean countries | Orifice signal; implication that a man is homosexual | | Greece | "You or he is gay" | | Turkey | "Arsehole" | | Arab countries | Rare; a threat signal or obscenity |

The cautionary tale: before becoming president, Richard Nixon stepped off his plane on a 1950s Latin American goodwill tour and flashed the American OK signal to the waiting crowd — who booed and hissed, having read it as "You're all a bunch of arseholes."

The Thumb-Up

In strongly British-influenced places (Australia, USA, South Africa, Singapore, New Zealand) the Thumb-Up carries three meanings: hitchhiking, "OK," and — when jerked sharply upward — the insult "up yours / sit on this." In Greece the thumb is thrust forward to mean "get stuffed," so the authors advise: never hitchhike in Greece. When Europeans count, the Thumb-Up means "one"; for Anglo-Saxons counting on the index finger first, the thumb represents "five." As the most powerful digit, the thumb is also a power-and-superiority signal — seen protruding from pockets and lapels, and embedded in the phrase "under their thumb."

The V-sign

Common in Australia, New Zealand, and Britain as "up yours." Churchill popularized "V for victory" in WWII with the palm facing out; the palm-facing-in version is the obscene insult. Its origin traces to English archers: a captured archer's two shooting fingers were cut off, so showing the intact fingers became a battlefield taunt — "I've still got my shooting fingers." In parts of Europe the palm-in version still means "victory," and elsewhere it means the number two — so an Englishman flashing it as an insult to a German might leave the German thinking he'd won a prize, or a European bartender pouring two beers.

To touch or not to touch?

Whether a touch during conversation offends depends entirely on culture. The French and Italians touch continually as they talk; the British prefer not to touch at all — except, oddly, on a sports field in front of a crowd, where British, Australian, and New Zealand sportsmen embrace and kiss after a goal, a habit copied from South American and Continental players. The moment they leave the field, it reverts to a strict "hands off" policy.

Dr. Ken Cooper measured touch frequency as touches per hour:

| Location | Touches per hour | | --- | --- | | Puerto Rico | 180 | | Paris | 110 | | Florida | 2 | | London | 0 |

The spread — from 180 down to literally zero — captures how wide the acceptable-touch band runs between cultures.

How to offend other cultures

The Texas Longhorns gesture — index and little finger raised as the bull's horns, recognized across America and used by supporter George W. Bush — is the "cuckold" sign in Italy, telling a man other men are sleeping with his wife. In 1985, five Americans were arrested in Rome for jubilantly making the gesture outside the Vatican after a major Longhorns win. The same raised fingers: school spirit at home, a jailable offence abroad.

Summary

People do business with those who make them feel comfortable, which comes down to sincerity and good manners. On entering a foreign country, reduce the broadness of your body language until you've had a chance to observe the locals. The Peases suggest a training exercise: record foreign films and replay them with the sound off (no subtitles), guess what's happening from the body language alone, then re-watch with subtitles to check. Always consider a person's cultural background before drawing conclusions about their gestures — and when unsure how to be polite, simply ask the locals to show you. For a deeper reference they recommend Roger Axtell's Gestures: Do's and Taboos of Body Language Around the World, which catalogues over 70,000 physical signs and customs.

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