USA!

[Kaida]

In Short, I need help.

One of my courses at collage is on Cultural Diversity and I'm required to find Typical Cultural Behaviors for a few different country's. One of these Country's is the USA.

Here's my problem; I can't find what I need, the only thing I've found is that Americans a generally loud. But i need more then one example.
So I figure 'I'll just make a random thread on PVF and see what they have to say'. So do you guys know any Typical Cultural Behaviors for the USA?

[Giga-Gar]

Well, you've got to know that America is basicly a conglomeration of numerous cultures. Mexicans, English, European, African, ect. But the fact is, the USA has many cultures in itself, or sub-cultures if you will. We have rednecks, black people, people who commonly live in the city, people who live in rural communities, Hawaiians, native americans; the list goes on.

I really don't know how to help you. it's sort of hard to evaluate you're culture. Well, at least for me. The best advise I can give you is to look at the culture of the U.K. because when the U.S. started out, we basicly came from that wet island. But here are some useful notes on America.

I hope this helps. We do like sports and fast food though. Well, most of us.

[Silver]

Yeah, we've got that thing for fast food...

Er, I could probably help you more, but I don't know what types of things you're looking for... Plus I can't really speak for the United States as a whole. I know there are some "cultural Behaviors" here in New Jersey, like the complete resentment for tourists and generally being aggressive, crappy drivers... but that's not true for all of the U.S.

[Kaida]

I suppose I should have been a bit more specific. Such as Italians upon meeting each other there's lots of embracing and friendly kissing type thing even if their in public. Russians converse quietly with others. Swiss and Germans are Punctual. Asians are very formal.

The trouble is asking for typical cultural behaviors for the USA is like asking me to another assignment on "Australian Identity." I've got a chart from 2006 that lists residents of Australia that come from other country's and theirs 26 different cultures including Australians themselves and 948 502 people that are born elsewhere (as in not in the country's listed.)

[Josiah]

I really don't think that you can say Americans are generally loud.

Anyway, as previously mentioned, we've got more or less the most culturally diverse country in the world so it can be kind of hard to nail down things are being typical of Americans in general.

To help you out a little though (note, there are plenty of exceptions to everything I'm about to say)...
1. Americans in general have a strong belief in individuality, non conformity, and sticking up for what they believe in regardless of what everyone else thinks.
2. Excessive formality is frowned upon.
3. We've got a tendency to directly confront people we have problems with.
4. The vast majority of the country is at least nominally Christian (though spread over a zillion different denominations) and even most of the ones that aren't believe in a god of some sort (over 80% according to the last poll I saw). Not that you can tell from the media...since the hardline atheists are extremely vocal.
5. We've always been one of the more tolerent and inclusive countries. A trait which, over the last couple decades, has twisted into an extremely bad case of political correctness.
6. There's a strong focus on doing what is right, even if it isn't popular. Unfortunately, that belief has been steadily slipping in recent years thanks to the afore mentioned push for extreme political correctness.

[Siranae]

...Wow. Josiah really hit the nail on the head there.

I've never really had the taste for fast food, but many people around me do. My brother is a huge example of this. He's lucky he's got a fast metabolism.

The only thing I can really add is that people around here tend to be very sarcastic. They joke around a lot, too. I don't know about the rest of the country, though.

Um, I'd just listen to Josiah, Kaida.

[PoikSpirit]

Actually, I took sociology and am currently taking AP psych, only high school versions. But for a couple of the other traits of Americans:

1. General intolerance of intolerance. Okay, I'm sorry, I had to say that. Actually, I found that varies from place to place, so no.

But really:
We have a interestingly strict social adherence to proxemics of about an arms length. Otherwise, our personal bubbles are about 2 feet, and we tend to avoid moving any closer than that to anyone.
And we don't eat many bugs here. Our soc. teacher thought that was important for us to know.

Other than that, I've been out of country once in my life so I can't really give a detailed list. All I know is I'm a big fan of food, but not fast food. In fact I hate the most "American" of food. McDonald's really does make me sick for the rest of the day.

[Giga-Gar]

As I said. We like fast food. Most of us.

We also tend to follow the majority. Wait, that doesn't make sense. If we follow the majority, wouldn't that mean that we are the majorty? Then that would mean that if all of us are the majority, then there would be no minority for there to be a majority, but there are obviously minorities and majorities, but we tend to follow the majority, but...my brain hurts....

[PoikSpirit]

I'd like to disagree. We don't like to follow the majority. Politically, we give the majority a chance, but most people do not agree with the "majority" on any subject for even half of things. I don't know if I worded that well, but I'm sure you got my point.

[Josiah]

Not that we don't ever follow the majority, but we're pretty individuallistic so we're a heck of a lot less likely to follow the majority than a lot of countries. Not to mention that thanks to political correctness we're now overly obsessed with doing everything and everything please the minorities. And I quote (well, paraphrase), "Ten people in the entire state don't like this monument, even though they live five hours away?!? Oh no! We've got to get rid of it!" Situations like that happen way to often lately.

[Kaida]

Thanks a lot guys. That should be good enough and if Chef disagrees I can direct him to this thread so he can see the evidence!