Is this basically an American culture?

41 comments

1. A bit of both ways here – we’re generally more sociable, *and* we’re often fascinated by foreigners, especially in school settings.

2. Cultural, religious, and regional differences.

3. We do have a reputation for being friendly.

   I mean, I’m not. But lots of Americans are.

4. Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

5. Many Americans would try to make friends with a brick wall. Heck I am one them. Another human? That’s a future friend

6. Europe is not Europe. The countries vary a lot in their social culture. What countries are we talking about?

7. Here’s guessing those studying in America were on one of the coasts. There are mixing pot cities where people from many backgrounds mix together there, particularly in college areas.

   The interior/northern US (let’s say Minnesotans in particular) are quite well known for being outwardly friendly but really hard to actually befriend.

8. Think about our history. Most of us haven’t lived here for thousands of years. Most of us came from somewhere else. When most people are from somewhere else, they have to cooperate with people different from themselves.

9. I don’t know that it’s uniquely American because I’ve traveled places with extraordinarily friendly and welcoming people, but we do have a reputation for it.

   Americans are often earnestly curious when someone is from somewhere else, and we’re known to be chatty. It throws off Europeans in particular.

10. Are you from a country that Americans like?

11. We are not a reserved culture. We talk to strangers while in line at the grocery store. Also being a foreign student in a US school is basically free cool points and will act as a catalyst for people wanting to talk to/befriend you.

12. We’re basically as friendly as a Golden Retriever. As an American I never meet a stranger; it’s just a friend I’ve not met yet

    I’m considered kind of aloof and hard to connect with, too

13. America is literally a nation built on immigrants. And we are a massive, massive country where people move around a lot. Historically it meant that people reached out to neighbors and people that lived near them to survive in harsh conditions and create towns and cities.

    This resulted in a more friendly, open society that is reasonably welcoming to newcomers and this has stuck around.

    A lot of Europeans find American friendliness “fake” and annoying, but it’s just the way many of us are. If we’re standing in a grocery store line, it’s not unusual to chat about nothing, really, to total strangers. We smile and say hello to people. It’s just considered polite.

    And if we meet someone from another country, we’re often very welcoming and have lots of questions.

14. Americans can be chatty and outgoing in a public way but are really pack animals.

15. That depends heavily on state, region, and more. The US is a huge place with many cultures.

16. University culture in the US is particularly new friend oriented. I would have assumed all universities world wide would have students who were open-minded, trying to learn about the world, and excited about broadening their world view! I’m surprised and I wonder if there’s a possibility that Europeans are more likely to have some bias against your culture or ethnicity specifically?

17. In general, Americans are very friendly, yes.

18. I think this is not just American culture but specifically American college campus culture. At most four-year American colleges, there is a good portion of students who live on campus and/or make campus the center of their social life. It’s also very common to go to college very far away from your home town, so people are specifically looking to form new social connections with strangers. From what I understand, European universities do not have that strong of a campus culture.

19. As an incredibly introverted person I find it TOO easy to make friends in America. Even as introverted as I am I think it’s ingrained in me as an American to always be friendly, sociable, polite, and accommodating around others.

20. I would say it’s a lot easier to make friends in America. I found Eastern Europeans to be a lot more friendlier than western when I was out there. But I can also understand why some European countries could be weary of Americans with the current political climate.

21. It’s hard to define one characteristic as “American behavior” because the country is so vast and diverse.

    I was on a cruise last year and found the English people much more friendly than most Americans were. They came right up to our table at the bar, sat down, and started chatting with us. Americans don’t usually do things like that with strangers lol.

22. There’s an old saying that’s still basically taught in primary schools that America is a “melting pot.” On the Statue of Liberty is a poem that says “give me your tired, your poor.” So many Americans are the children or grandchildren of immigrants. None of this makes Americans immune to things jingoism or racism of course. But it is a part of our culture that’s different from most other nations. I will say from my limited travels in Europe, some countries seem friendlier than others. Germans in particular seemed pretty friendly.

23. Well it’s literally a melting pot here. Not to mention many of us are very transient in the sense that it’s not unusual to move our lives from one city to the next, or even an entirely new state or region. All of those things grow and openness and an eagerness to connect, otherwise many of us would have no one at all.

24. i’ve lived in big cities and small towns, and americans are just genuinely curious people no matter where they are from. its part of the culture everywhere here. in small towns its because they are snoopy and want to know about anyone new in their small town so they can go over to the bar/bank/gas station and gossip about the new foreigner – and in the cities it is so multicultural with so many different kinds of people that a lot of city people dont have the same hesitation towards someone who is different from them and can get to know people different from them easily. 

    we also have a culture of small talk and politeness. (not everyone follows it of course) but for the most part we are kind, chatty, curious with people because silence for most americans is uncomfortable and just isn’t normal in our overall culture. (there are always exceptions of course.)

    all this tends to make americans seem more friendly and easier to become friends with or get close to with minimal effort. 

    sometimes we are just that kind and friendly, but more realistically its just the “public face” we use around people we don’t know.

25. It’s culture, but that culture is a product of our history. Unless you’re Native American, most of our ancestors aren’t from here. They came from all over. And, up until the early 20th century, we had a substantial frontier. Hence, many different groups of people kind of had to make work, otherwise they would have perished from the elements.

    Edit: Finally the one time the only thing I remember from my high school AP US history class, Fredrick Jackson Turners’ Frontier Thesis, actually was relevant in my day to day life!

26. Michael Palin did a wonderful documentary where he tried to circumnavigate the globe like was done in the book “Around the World In 80 Days”. The second where he takes a train across the US really sums it up. He can’t get over how open and friendly Americans are.

27. Friendliness and openness varies hugely around the US.

28. I think it depends on where we’re talking about, yeah? I find some European countries to be very outgoing and friendly. I have never been to Spain without making new friends. But yes, it’s just the culture. Americans(most countries in the americas) are generally outgoing and friendly to some extent. We enjoy making new friends and meeting new people. It’s fun and joyful to live openly 

29. America has been a country of immigrants since the start. People from all over the place moving to a new place, without the same familiar social groupings.

    We also tend to move around a lot more. Moving to different states is pretty common. To say nothing of moving around in states or cities. Where you need to restart social circles, meet new neighbors, co-workers and so on.

    Even if you haven’t moved, how many school systems are set up, especially in larger cities, kids won’t move through all the levels of school with the exact same classmates. Elementary schools are smaller, and feed to middle schools, where not all the kids from one elementary always move to the same middle school, then the same moving from middle school to highschool. And the college, where it’s unlikely any of your classmates go to the same college. So, every few years while growing up, kids have to adjust their social circles.

    So many things add together, and it’s definitely made a culture where talking to new people, and welcoming them is commonplace.

30. Interesting that you mention this, I think Americans are generally friendly by personality. I too am American, whenever I am on vacation (usually travel solo), and meet another American internationally, we likely can talk for hours and make ourselves laugh.

    One time I met an American couple on a day boat trip viewing whales off of Tahiti. There were 3 other French couples, one UK couple, and one German couple. They had no interest in talking to each other but me and the american couple could not stop talking and joking around! We even met up for dinner after docking. I think us Americans pissed the rest of the boat off, lol.

    I do think though that since so many Americans are exposed to different cultures, creed, religions, food – it allows us to be a bit more open minded about the world.

31. I guarantee you that it’s all about where you are in America. You’re talking about geography of almost 10,000,000 square kilometers. That’s about the size of the continent of Africa.

32. Well, it varies person to person and area to area, but generally speaking people loved hanging out with the forgiven kids. It’s a great conversation starter, we get to learn a bit about the world, and those kids are usually pretty interested in being friendly.

33. I mean…it costs nothing to be kind lol

34. It can be easy to make acquaintances, hard to make close friends. I think “shallow friendships” can be more of the norm – someone you you’re comfortable chatting with in public but wouldn’t go over to their home sort of thing.

35. I would say it’s basically a culture thing. We can strike up conversations with strangers standing in line at the grocery store and sound like we’re long lost friends. And if we ever happen to see the same person later, even in a different setting it’s like, “hey, I remember you, how are you?”, and then carry on another conversation. Sure there are some differences depending exactly where you’re at within the country. It’s a large country. But for the most part I believe most of us are very welcoming. And we’re curious about accents. If we hear one, we always want to strike up a conversation, find out where you’re from and a learn a little about your country.

36. My little theory is that America is a relatively young and massive country.

    During its age of discovery and exploration i think settling Europeans had to learn to adopt a spirit of openness and cooperation. The space to settle was so vast with little infrastructure and hostile natives. They had to work together to tame the land.

    I think it developed into a more open culture where people were more likely to engage with strangers.

    Europe by comparison had development and systems, structures, politics etc entrenched, for as far back as people can remember.

    I think this lead to a generally more enclosed culture where one more likely engaged with people they knew and trusted.

    Beyond that… America needing a population increase for much of its history had a welcoming and open door to foreign immigration.

    The influx of other cultures and the mixing of demographics probably also lead to a sustaining tolerance for openness.

    Today its regionally specific.

    You’ll find more open people in big cities whom are used to many different cultures and ways of thinking
    Most universities are near high pop density areas so its no surprise your family members came away with this impression.

    Americans in rural areas are famously unfriendly toward foreigners, these people have grown up in a monoculture world and dislike change

37. If you discount tourism and tourist areas, I believe most people in USA are drawn to anyone not from where they are, and want to get a sense of others’ perspective. I might be projecting there, who knows?

38. There are definitely groups that it can be hard to join in a social sense, but that is typically specific to that group. The reasons vary.

    As individuals and in more “casual” social groupings Americans tend to be quite friendly, though. Doesn’t mean we’re your best or deepest friend, but friendliness is typically seen as a good trait regardless. Some people take a while to “open up” in a personal sense but that is a different aspect of your personality than general friendliness.

    Does that make sense?

    As to *why* this is, I’m not sure. Americans are much more likely to make small talk, to offer general assistance, to make short-term bonds (eg. study groups for one class that only exist for that single semester), and so on. I suspect this also goes with smiling, which a lot of non-Americans find bizarre.

    Part of it is simple survival for newer immigrants or people whose parents were born abroad — most of your family may be across an ocean somewhere, your coworkers or fellow students, etc all have their own lives, few or none of your fellow students speak your language, the customer service people at shops and stores speak 30 languages (none yours) and your shared language is not native to either of you, etc. Your kids grow up with multiple identities and, often, multiple lanuages.

    General friendliness, smiles and other “no threat” signals become much more important when ten of the fifty people you have to talk to today don’t share a spoken vocabulary with you (and another ten barely share it). These, and small talk, are an easy way to aggregate all of these sensations of displacement and convert them into a stable “collective” experience, which in turn becomes a culture of its own. Or at least that is my personal hypothesis.

    And it’s not just day-to-day. The long-term affects this, too. In a close, perhaps insular, community with a shared language and social expectations there is a set of shared expectations for the near-future of each individual, for church, for the local economy or work/jobs situation, and so on. But when you displace yourself into a situation where half your immediate neighbors are also displaced but none of you share a common “center” of social expectations for the future…how do you navigate that? You have two primary options: (a) you grind it out and mostly keep to yourself and your immediate household, or (b) you codeswitch to become highly gregarious in order to create a stable social situation, network, and find a way that moves your neighbors (and shopkeepers, bus drivers, etc) forward, because when they are stable and succeed in their endeavour then the chances of your own stability and success also improve.

39. Are Americans known for making friends of people from other countries, particularly those with darker skin? Do Europeans generally view Americans as friendly people?

40. We like people and interested in your viewpoints, we also want you to have the best experience.

41. It’s correct but as many people have said some of us are still very introverted and aren’t that way. It’s a case of a “loud majority” aka the people who just walk by like normal won’t be noticed but you’ll definitely notice when some guy in the elevator can’t stop blabbing about the weather lmao