The Culture Code

Clotaire Rapaille, The Culture Code

All human beings are born with brains divided into three parts. One part, the cortex (the cerebral hemispheres), handles learning, abstract thought, and imagination. The cortex comes into practical use in most children after they are seven years old [..] [T]he limbic system [..] deals with emotions. Emotions are never simple; they are often rife with contradiction. In a business context, for instance, when customers tell you they love you, this is good, right? What if they love your products and never buy them? Would you rather have them hate your products and buy them all the time? The limbic brain is structured between birth and age five [..]

Most humans find that in the struggle between intelligence and emotion, the limbic often comes out on top, as we are much more likely to allow our heart to guide us than reason.

The undisputed champion of the three brains, however, is the reptilian brain (the brain stem and the cerebellum). The name comes from this region's similarity to the brains of reptiles, which are believed to be relatively unchanged from the brains their predecessors had 200 million years ago. Our reptilian brains program us for two major things: survival and reproduction [.. Rapaille's famous quote here is 'the reptilian always wins'].

[At an emotional level] The Culture Code is the unconscious meaning we apply to any given thing a car, a type of food, a relationship, even a country via the culture in which we are raised [..] it all comes down to the worlds in which we grew up. It is obvious to everyone that cultures are different from one another. What most people don't realize, however, is that these differences actually lead to our processing the same information in different ways [..]. The combination of [an] experience and its accompanying emotion creates something known widely as an imprint.. Once an imprint occurs, it strongly conditions our thought processes and shapes our future actions. Each imprint helps make us more of who we are [..]

Most of us imprint the meanings of the things most central to our lives by the age of seven. This is because emotion is the central force for children under the age of seven (if you need proof of this, watch how often a young child’s emotional state changes in a single hour), while after this, they are guided by logic (again, try arguing with a nine-year-old). [And] Most people are exposed to only one culture before the age of seven [..] Therefore, the extremely strong imprints placed in their subconscious at this early age are determined by the culture in which they are raised [..].

Americans receive a strong emotional imprint from peanut butter. Your mother makes you a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich when you are little, and you associate it with her love and nurturance. Since I was born in France, where peanut butter is not a household staple, I never made this connection. I learned about peanut butter after the closing of the window in time when I could form a strong emotional association with it. Because it didn’t carry with it the weight of my mother’s love, it was simply another foodstuff. I tasted it and didn’t find it to be special in any way; in fact, I didn’t like it..

My review of hundreds of stories told by participants during the discovery sessions revealed that the American Code for cars is IDENTITY. Americans want cars that are distinctive, that will not be mistaken for any other kind of car on the road, and that trigger memories of Sunday drives, the freedom of getting behind the wheel for the first time, and the excitement of youthful passion. A car with a strong identity [..] has a much better chance of breakout sales than a cookie-cutter sedan [..].

This Code, however, is far from universal across cultures.  German automotive giant Daimler-Benz purchased Chrysler around the time the PT Cruiser was on its way to production.  When the German executives who now ran the company saw the car, they were appalled. Why? Because the Code for cars in the German culture is decidedly different from the American one. The German Code for cars is ENGINEERING. German car manufacturers pride themselves on the quality of their engineering, and this pride is so ingrained that people raised in that culture think of engineering first when they think of cars.

Tug of War

Life is tension. Everything we experience in life lies somewhere on an axis between two extremes. One cannot truly know pleasure without knowing pain. One cannot legitimately feel joy without having felt sorrow. The degree to which we feel an experience depends on where that experience lies on the axis (a little painful, overwhelmingly joyful, and so on).... Every culture is composed of an endless number of archetypes and of the tensions between each archetype and an opposing one...

US

For example, one of the primary tensions in the American culture is the one between freedom and prohibition...

France

In France.. the archetype on the other side of the axis from freedom is not prohibition; it is privilege. Throughout their history, the French have vacillated between periods when a privileged class ruled the day and periods when this class is overthrown and the nation abolishes privileges and titles. The most famous example occurred, of course, in 1789, though it is interesting to note that Napoleon began a new era of titles and privilege not long thereafter... When Disney launched Euro Disney in Paris, they learned how much privilege means to the French culture. Originally, the theme park had the same rules as all other Disney parks, barring pets, smoking, and the consumption of alcohol. The French stayed away in droves because they didn’t like such restrictions. Disney broke through to the French market only when they began to offer special “privilege passes” that allowed access (for a premium price) to certain parts of the park where visitors could take their pets, smoke, and drink wine. The idea of islands of privilege in a sea of equality was right on Code for [them].

Heritage

Because [USA] was so vast and underpopulated.. [citizens] have grown accustomed to a certain level of disposability.. [The Japanese] country comprises only 146,000 square miles.. There was never a vast frontier to explore. The Japanese couldn’t “dispose” of their houses or their property if they grew disenchanted; they needed to make the most of their land and to keep it as productive as possible. In addition, because so many people live in such a small space.. efficiency is critical. There’s no room for wasted products or wasted process. Mistakes are costlier. Quality is a necessity. Perfection is premium.

Americans, on the other hand, find perfection boring. If something is perfect, you’re stuck with it for life, and that doesn’t sit well with most Americans. We want a new car every three years. We want a new television every five. We want a new house when we have kids, and another new one when the kids grow up. My fourteen-year-old son, born and raised in this country, exemplifies this attitude. I went shopping for antiques recently and took him with me. We came upon a gorgeous seventeenth-century sofa and I told him how much I liked it. “You like that?” he said, sneering. “Do you know how many asses have sat in that sofa? Why don’t you get a new sofa?”