Unknown Unknowns: The Problem of Hypocognition
Complete aside here, but this concept of Amae and hypocognition hit really close to home. My girlfriend is white and I am an E. Asian guy, we have completely different concepts of love and I suspect our unwillingness to compromise to the other&#x27;s perspective is a kind of unwillingness to concede our cultural preference to the other.<p>For example, if I don&#x27;t express enough words of affirmation or desire over a given period of time, she begins to worry that I no longer care for her and have lost interest. In fact, the opposite is true! In my culture, maintaining control of your own emotional expressions is considered polite and civil, emotional stability is the marker of a mature individual, especially when that stability is expressed in times where it is inconvenient for the individual to do so.<p>However, from her perspective, that approach is repressive, &quot;befuddling and Machiavellian to a Western mind&quot;. Perhaps cultural perspectives, combined with hypocognition, inevitably cause different cultures to be inclined towards conflict toward one another?