The Asian Courtesy of Nervousness

Late night conversations with immigrant friends always results in the collision of perspectives that can't be replicated during any daytime civil discussion. That day's discussion etched into memory the conversation of North American affinity to emanate opinions upon the aether of society's woes, joys and opinions muddled into a slurry of political and cultural expression; the fatigued evening minds hold little regard for proper definition much less the scientific method, thus the resulting term "virtue signaling" became the broad definition of all such Western behaviour. Our naive critiques stemming perhaps from familial fondness or the symptom is viewing greener grass in other pastures, believed the absence of "virtue signaling" contributed absolutely to the surge in Asian prosperity, confuted absolutely upon my very first interaction in Asia.

Suffering from jet lag during early hours of the morning my wandering self was at disagreement with my purposed senses, scouting. It landed on a 24 hours gym billboard. With impromptu intent I brazenly greeted the night guard with perfect English expecting a jovial conversation followed by access to the public entrance. This did not happen. The youthful night guard immediately defaulted to jittery nervousness. As mentioned previously, the aether of society contained many frequencies but nervousness was unwelcome, decidedly eradicated with inexhaustible inclusivity upon first detection. Thus, armed with the North American made DeWalt emotional perception repair kit I donned the distinctive American smile expecting to calm nervous spirits. This also did not happen. This nervousness confusingly intensified as the conversation progressed. He stood continually tense, arms neatly by his side, head repeatedly bobbling and bowing corresponding to each intonation of his sentences. This subservient nervousness was body language intentionally being conveyed. My aether flowed with newfound information like a crash course of Confucian roles and hierarchy unto my sphere of understanding.

This was no anomaly, in the weeks that followed it asserted itself everywhere: at the register of a convenience store in Mong Kok, in an office in Central, over wine in Admiralty after hours with a boss.

What in North America we have as virtue signaling which exists in the form of compulsive emanation of opinions upon the aether, has here another form. In these cities, nervousness itself appears to be a signal. It is read as an act of Confucian subservience, a bodily grammar that says to one's superior: I am properly intimidated by your superiority. The bowed head, the hands fixed at the sides, the quick, repeated nodding with each sentence, represents a courtesy in detriment to one's health.

And so high functioning anxiety gets conflated into the expectation of what good workers look like. The clerk who never sits, the junior who laughs too quickly, the employee who answers messages at 1 a.m with a rushed tone. Distress is seen as diligent. He has shown, without saying a word, that the job is being done correctly.

Consider what nervousness does to the body. The heart quickens. The shoulders rise. The proper prescription is to pause and breathe. The conditioning here is to answer stress with more work, as if the tension could be worked off.

It cannot. It kills. Long working hours led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016. That burden, according to the joint analysis by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization, is particularly significant in people living in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions, disproportionately affecting workers in those regions. In Japan they have had a word for it since the 1970s because of course they do - karo死, death by overwork, usually a sudden heart attack or stroke, a term now borrowed as gwarosa in Seoul and as guolaosi in Beijing.

And for all that, there is no benefit. In field tests of soldiers under induced anxiety, findings indicated that soldiers' shooting accuracy and decision-making and mathematical skills decreased significantly under anxiety. Worry occupies the working memory needed to do the job. The performance suffers while the posture improves. There is, in that sense, a quiet epidemic of nervousness in Asia, it is at once social, physical and inefficient.

A direct comparison at two California public universities by Lau and colleagues in 2009 found 116 Asian American students and 148 European American students scoring, on average, 46.02 and 42.31 on a social-anxiety questionnaire that runs from 18 to 90. The difference was 3.71 points, p = .042, d = 0.25. This is a statistical difference, with substantial overlap between the two groups. These were symptom scores, not percentages of students meeting criteria for a disorder.

Krieg and Xu's meta-analysis pooled 32 studies comparing participants of Asian and European heritage. In 28 of the 32, scores pointed toward higher social anxiety among the Asian heritage participants. The pooled effect was d = 0.36, 95% CI 0.27–0.45 or about a third of a std. The analysis included North America and Australia and drew heavily on student samples; across all backgrounds of immigrants with Chinese heritage.

For the Asian American reader, this is worth sitting with. You may inherit a nervous system trained to signal deference as diligence, in a country that has no lexicon for that particular signal and offers only mindfulness applications in return. It is not a virtue to be displayed, nor a flaw to be hidden in the American slurry of public opinion. It is a learned reflex. And like any reflex learned early, it must first be noticed before it can be unlearned.

Works Cited

Krieg, Alexander, and Yiyuan Xu. “Ethnic Differences in Social Anxiety between Individuals of Asian Heritage and European Heritage: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Asian American Journal of Psychology, vol. 6, no. 1, 2015, pp. 66–80. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036993.

Lau, Anna S., et al. “Explaining Elevated Social Anxiety among Asian Americans: Emotional Attunement and a Cultural Double Bind.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, vol. 15, no. 1, 2009, pp. 77–85. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012819.

Nibbeling, Nicky, et al. “The Effects of Anxiety and Exercise-Induced Fatigue on Shooting Accuracy and Cognitive Performance in Infantry Soldiers.” Ergonomics, vol. 57, no. 9, 2014, pp. 1366–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2014.924572.

Pega, Frank, et al. “Global, Regional, and National Burdens of Ischemic Heart Disease and Stroke Attributable to Exposure to Long Working Hours for 194 Countries, 2000–2016: A Systematic Analysis from the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-Related Burden of Disease and Injury.” Environment International, vol. 154, 2021, article 106595. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2021.106595.

World Health Organization, and International Labour Organization. “Long Working Hours Increasing Deaths from Heart Disease and Stroke: WHO, ILO.” World Health Organization, 17 May 2021, https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2021-long-working-hours-increasing-deaths-from-heart-disease-and-stroke-who-ilo.