Why We Mistake Cultural Solutions for Universal Truths & What History Can Teach Us About Working Across Cultures

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INTRODUCTION The most powerful intercultural lesson I learnt was at home 36 years ago. In the most casual and most disturbing way, the man I had just married challenged my understanding of what I considered the most important universal value: Equality. My French education was shaped by Enlightenment universalism. In high school, I studied Rousseau and Voltaire, thinkers who sought moral principles grounded in reason. Human beings, they argued, possessed natural rights independent of status or birth, the foundations for Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "all human beings are born equal in dignity and rights". In my world, this statement was a universal moral truth. I saw inequalities of any sort as worth fighting against and assumed this was a universal conviction that everyone should share.

For him, however, people are born into very different circumstances that concretely affect their actual dignity and rights. A baby born today in a war zone doesn't have the same dignity or rights as a baby born in an affluent neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur or Beijing. The first article felt idealistic and unrealistic to him. In addition, the moral principles that he grew up with were grounded in Confucian principles of filial piety, which clearly define one's place in society not as equal but in relation to others, with duties towards one's parents and family. Equality had a very different meaning for him.

At first, his perspective was absolutely shocking to me. It took me years to realise that the tension was not whether equality is desirable, but whether it describes reality, or a moral principle that some societies choose to elevate above others. My husband was not rejecting equality. He was rejecting the assumption that the question of equality, as I understood it, was the most important question to answer as a society. And I was not defending a principle. I was defending a cultural inheritance I had never been asked to examine.

After 30 years spent outside Europe, I am still trying to make sense of this early conversation. What makes us see our own values as universal? Is there such a thing as universal values?

That gap — between a shared human concern and a specific cultural solution — is where many intercultural misunderstandings live. This is what this article, and the work I do, is about.

I have come to think of the universal not as a set of shared values — but as a set of shared questions. This is not a new idea. Trompenaars called them universal dilemmas: the fundamental tensions every human society must resolve. Shaules puts it simply — cultural difference revolves around the challenges communities face when trying to organise themselves and collaborate. What I want to add is the historical dimension: it is not just that different societies answer the same questions differently. It is that specific historical conditions made certain answers feel necessary, natural, and right — and those answers, embedded in institutions over generations, shaped the psychology we carry into our workplaces today.

The work of Henrich has introduced this framework with a focus on Europe. I attempt to look at China and Malaysia with that same lens. PART ONE: A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON HUMAN EVOLUTION

Henrich demonstrates how historical conditions shape psychology quite well in the case of Europe. But when he seems to imply that the psychology that emerged was necessary for societies to succeed, I do not fully agree with his analysis. In the second half of this article, I will therefore apply his approach to China and Malaysia to explore what different historical conditions produced.

In his earlier book, The Secret Of Our Success, Joseph Heinrich looks back at the early days of human history and prehistory. He highlights two key factors that shaped our development.

First, we possess a uniquely powerful ability for cumulative cultural learning—the capacity to learn from others and to build on what previous generations have discovered (Henrich, 2016).¹ We are equipped with a basic learning toolkit that includes innate biases that help us select what and from whom we choose to learn. One of the most important is our tendency to imitate successful or prestigious individuals, allowing us to shortcut trial-and-error and progressively refine effective strategies.

Second, our success is deeply tied to our ability to live and work together in groups. Over time, groups that shared knowledge and coordinated effectively outcompeted others. This idea is echoed in many cultural sayings—for example, a proverb from the Tang dynasty in China: 一根筷子容易折，一把筷子难折断 (it is easy to break one chopstick, but much harder to break a bundle)².

According to Henrich, early human groups all had to address similar problems: survival, stability, and collaboration. But as each group evolved in different contexts (ecology, geography, then history and social structure), they developed different solutions specific to their different environment³. Different contexts produced different subproblems, different solutions, and ultimately different social norms.

As norms became central to group stability, they needed to be enforced⁴. What began as rules for survival gradually shaped how people thought, what they valued, and what felt self evidently true.

In many early societies, the model that helped uphold these norms was based on kinship⁵—organising social life around family ties, shared identity, and mutual obligations, which reinforced stability, trust and cooperation. Within these kin-based structures, conformity to the group was expected ( conformity bias), and successful or respected individuals were followed (prestige bias) (Henrich 2016).

As certain behaviours were rewarded more than others, these norms began to shape human psychology - how people think, what they value, how they behave.

In this way, culture influenced how people thought and behaved, and in turn reinforced the validity of those norms. Over time, norms became self-reinforcing, and change grew more difficult⁶.

As groups grew in size, norms and psychology alone were not enough. Institutions emerged to structure social life more formally — beginning with the rules around marriage and family. This dynamic interplay between norms, psychology, and, as we will see in part 3, institutions lies at the core of Joseph Henrich’s work—and helps explain how different societies followed distinct developmental paths. One of the most influential of these paths is the emergence of what Henrich calls WEIRD societies.

PART TWO: THE EMERGENCE OF WEIRD SOCIETY

In my intercultural work, despite the richness and diversity of cultures, I find that people often fall back on a simplified lens: East vs West; or more broadly, “Western” versus everything else. This dichotomy persists in part because what we call “global culture,” and especially corporate culture, is still strongly influenced by Western norms, largely shaped through the global reach of Western institutions, education systems, and multinational organizations.

If we look at the behaviours most commonly encouraged in workplaces today, words like speaking up, autonomy, ownership, and empowerment frequently appear. Many organisations and leaders take these as universal standards.

I remember, when working with Western diplomats, how difficult it was for them to see that placing individual freedom first was a Western ideal, not a "universal aspiration."

Across cultures, most people value individual freedom to some extent, but the priority given to it differs significantly across cultures⁷.

For some, individual freedom is seen as essential — something that should never be compromised.

For others, it is desirable, but not at the expense of group cohesion or social harmony.

In my work in Asia, and even within my own family, I have seen how difficult it is for people to stay curious once they are convinced their answer is the only reasonable one.

So how did these Western norms become the dominant reference point? Here, Joseph Henrich's work offers a useful lens again.

The big idea, developed throughout his book, is that culture shapes human cognition and preferences and, over time, can produce new psychological tendencies:

"We humans are a cultural species. But that means more than just that we are influenced by culture. It means that our behaviors and minds are coevolving with our institutions and technologies" (Heinrich, 2020)

In Western Europe, a unique set of institutional changes, particularly driven by the Church, progressively weakened intensive kinship structures. This is one of the strongest arguments in Henrich’s work⁸.

Through a set of new marital and family laws, the Church significantly weakened the kinship system, gradually shifting authority and laws away from kin-based groups toward those of the Church and what he calls "voluntary associations". Henrich argues that this transformation gave rise to new institutions that "built their laws, principles, norms and rules in ways that focused on the individual, often endowing each member with abstract rights, privileges, obligations and duties to the organisation."

As kinship became less central to social organisation, it reshaped not only institutions and norms, but also the behaviours needed to thrive in this new environment, as well as the way people think, what they value, and how they relate to others.

This process gradually gave rise to a distinct psychological profile:

• A stronger emphasis on individualism

• A greater emphasis on impersonal fairness (rules applied to kin and to strangers more equally)

• A greater tendency toward analytical thinking (focus on objects, rules, categories)

• Higher levels of trust toward strangers and institutions.

With one caveat: for the new system to work, people had to adhere to the new set of rules and principles defined by each group. As Henrich puts it:

"To thrive, these voluntary organisations had to attract mobile individuals and then cultivate adherence to, and preferably an internalisation of, their mutually agreed upon principles and rules."

The key word here is "Internalisation". The goal was not merely compliance with external

rules, but the shaping of values and cognitive habits from within — carried by individuals

wherever they went. This shift weakened the support and shared responsibility that individuals would devote to and could expect from family and kin-based groups. It also altered how rules were enforced to maintain social cohesion. As a result, institutions became more necessary to fulfil this role in a more impersonal, contractual, and less flexible manner. By contrast, in many other societies, social order tends to rely more heavily on relationships and shared responsibility within the community to uphold rules and agreements.

A personal experience from Penang illustrates this contrast. Traditional shophouses often include a kaki lima—a covered public walkway intended to protect pedestrians from the sun and rain. As parts of the city gentrified, some homeowners began enclosing these walkways for private use.

The city eventually sent a notice to property owners throughout George Town’s UNESCO-protected area, requiring these enclosures to be removed. Two neighbours responded very differently.

Jo, an Australian who had lived in Malaysia for many years, understood that he had pushed the boundaries. After speaking with a contact at city hall, he was reassured that the matter would probably be handled informally, without immediate enforcement.

Hans, a Swiss man newly settled in Penang, saw the situation differently. He assumed that because the walkway formed part of his property, enclosing it fell within his rights as an owner. What he had not understood was the particular status of the kaki lima as a walkway intended for public use. Convinced that the law supported his position, he went directly to the authorities and insisted that it be applied.

His action triggered precisely the outcome he had sought: strict enforcement. Fences were removed, including his own.

Their responses reflected different expectations about social order. Hans’s assumptions shaped both his interpretation of the rule and his expectation that it would be applied formally and consistently. Through years of living in Malaysia, Jo understood the local context better and had learnt that rules may be interpreted and negotiated through relationships, with the preservation of harmony influencing how they are enforced.

These contrasting approaches to rules and social order raise a deeper question: do they reflect fundamentally different ways of thinking?

Henrich argues that they do and that the difference runs deeper than habit or preference. His second major claim is that the psychological tendencies that emerged in Western Europe are distinct from those found in most human societies across history. He coined the now well-known acronym WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) to describe societies that do not represent universal ways, but rather are the result of a specific cultural evolution. PART THREE: HOW WEIRD BECAME GLOBAL

Europe's institutional transformation did not remain contained. Henrich shows how institutions, social and cultural norms, as well as human psychology influenced each other over generations, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Greater impersonal trust enabled broader trade and cooperation; broader cooperation generated wealth and complexity; wealth and complexity demanded more sophisticated institutions; and those institutions further shaped the minds within them.

Four voluntary associations were particularly significant in broadening this effect: charter cities, monasteries, apprenticeships, and universities. Together they created channels through which knowledge, technology, and new ways of thinking could travel — pulling people beyond their kin circles and rewarding those who could operate effectively among strangers and within the associations' spoken and unspoken rules.

It makes for a compelling argument- Henrich links the success of Europe's rise to this distinctive psychological and institutional evolution. These developments enabled Europeans to cooperate and innovate beyond kinship networks, extending their influence globally and spreading many of the WEIRD values and norms that continue to shape business and governance today.

But here is where I start to cringe: travel, trade networks, knowledge exchange, universities, religious organisation — all existed earlier and often more sophisticatedly in other parts of the world.

Just looking at trade, the Islamic world had highly developed long-distance trade networks requiring exactly the kind of impersonal trust Henrich attributes to Europe. The Silk Road — connecting China, Central Asia, Persia, and the Arab world — was a knowledge and technology exchange system of enormous sophistication. Asian merchant networks operated across Southeast Asia centuries before European contact.

Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist centres of religious scholarship spread far beyond their

regions of origin. Monks and theologians had always travelled. So how and why did a set of psychological tendencies that emerged from a specific European institutional history become the default grammar of global business and leadership today?

Henrich's framework explained above gives us only part of the answer. The spread of WEIRD norms cannot be explained by psychological or institutional superiority alone. It reflects a combination of:

• Historical contingencies — particular moments where European institutions happened to align with conditions for expansion

• Geography and accumulated advantage — access to trade routes, resources, and a measure of luck

• Power asymmetries — including colonisation, which did not merely spread ideas but actively suppressed alternative ones.

This last point is the one Henrich underweights most significantly and where his argument weakens. Although Henrich is careful to say that the emergence of WEIRD culture was not a plan and that it was the result of the cultural, psychological, and institutional changes that drove each other in a feedback loop over centuries.

However, the global spread of WEIRD norms was not simply a story of coevolution or superior institutions attracting willing adopters. It was also driven by what historians have long summarised as Gold, Glory, and Gospel — the systematic pursuit of economic extraction, imperial dominance, and religious conversion.

These were not neutral forces of cultural diffusion. They actively dismantled existing knowledge systems, trade networks, governance structures, and belief systems — many of which, as we have seen, were already highly sophisticated.

This is not to diminish Henrich's contribution. His core insight remains important and underused: WEIRD psychology is not the human norm. It is one cultural solution among many — and a historically recent one at that.

It does seem that today global business and political institutions remain strongly influenced by WEIRD values and assumptions. However, these are also being increasingly challenged by other values systems and frameworks. This is why I deeply believe that it matters today more than ever to understand why and how different cultures developed different solutions to succeed.

Which brings me to the question that Henrich's work raises and attempts to answer — but does not fully answer: how did other societies respond to the same foundational challenges of survival, cooperation, and stability? And the questions he doesn't ask: what can we learn from their solutions?

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Footnotes:

¹ Humans’ ability to learn from others and accumulate knowledge across generations is central to their evolutionary success and is supported by a large body of research, in particular by Joseph Henrich: “Humans are a cultural species, and our ability to learn from others is the secret of our success” (The Secret of Our Success, 2016), and Michael Tomasello: “Human beings have a unique form of cultural transmission that allows them to accumulate modifications over time” (The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, 1999).

² The saying comes from a story about A-chai (阿柴, r. 417–424 AD), a king of the Tuyuhun (吐谷

浑), a Xianbei-led kingdom in what is now northwest China. The story is recorded in the History of the Northern Dynasties, specifically in the "Biography of the Tuyuhun" (Bei Shi, Volume 96). The Original Context: As King A-chai lay dying, he gathered his 20 sons. He gave each of them a single arrow (the original version used arrows, not chopsticks) and told them to break it, which they did easily. He then took 19 arrows, bundled them together, and asked his brother, Muleyan, to break the bundle. When Muleyan could not break them, A-chai told his sons: "One is easy to break, but many are hard to destroy. Only by working together can you preserve our state." While the original historical record mentions arrows, the story evolved into a folk parable using chopsticks to make the lesson more relatable for daily life.

³ These learning biases are widely documented in cultural evolution research. Individuals tend to preferentially copy successful or prestigious others—“people preferentially learn from those they perceive as successful, skilled, or prestigious” (The Secret of Our Success, Henrich, 2016)—and to adopt behaviours that are most common in their group, a process known as conformist transmission. As Boyd and Richerson (Culture and the Evolutionary Process, 1985) describe it, “conformist transmission is a process in which individuals disproportionately adopt the most common behaviour in a population,” a mechanism that helps stabilise cultural norms and maintain differences between groups.

⁴ The stability of social norms depends on both conformity and enforcement. Individuals tend to adopt the most common behaviours in their group—a process known as conformist transmission—and groups often sustain these norms through enforcement mechanisms. As Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson note, “conformist transmission is a process in which individuals disproportionately adopt the most common behaviour in a population,” a dynamic that helps stabilise cultural traditions and maintain group cohesion (Culture and the Evolutionary Process, 1985). Subsequent research also shows that the enforcement of norms, including punishment of deviance, plays a key role in maintaining cooperation within groups.

⁵ Kinship-based social structures have historically organised cooperation, trust, and obligation in most human societies. As Joseph Henrich explains, “for most of human history, social life was structured by dense networks of kinship and extended families,” which shaped norms, cooperation, and social expectations (The WEIRDest People in the World, 2020).

⁶ Cultural norms do not merely regulate behaviour; they also shape cognition and perception. As Joseph Henrich argues, cultural practices and institutions can “shape our brains, biology, and psychology,” leading individuals within a society to perceive and interpret the world in ways that reinforce those norms (The Secret of Our Success, 2016). Similarly, Richard Nisbett shows that people from different cultural backgrounds develop distinct cognitive patterns—for example, more holistic versus more analytical modes of thinking—highlighting how culture influences not only behaviour but also how individuals understand problems and solutions (The Geography of Thought, 2003).

⁷ Research in cross-cultural psychology (e.g. Geert Hofstede; Shalom Schwartz) suggests that while values related to autonomy and individual choice are present across many societies, the importance given to them varies significantly. In some contexts, they are central to identity and decision-making; in others, they are balanced with, or secondary to, group harmony and social obligations.

⁸ Joseph Henrich argues that the medieval Church’s marriage and family program (e.g., bans on cousin marriage, polygamy, and lineage-based alliances) progressively weakened intensive kinship networks in Western Europe, reshaping social organisation and cooperation patterns (The WEIRDest People in the World, 2020).